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LONG ISLAND / NASSAU
Hempstead Village home to two new charter schools
By JOHN HILDEBRAND
john.hildebrand@newsday.com
Updated September 3, 2009 10:35 PM
Next week, students wearing plaid jumpers and dark slacks will start classes in two public charter schools within
blocks of each other in Hempstead Village. It's the rst time a suburban community in New York State will
become home to more than one such school.
Both the Academy Charter School and the Evergreen Charter School will initially be housed in rented church
schools on Hempstead's Fulton Avenue, with combined enrollments of about 265 pupils. Evergreen will start with
grades K-1 and Academy with K-2. Both schools plan to eventually serve grades K-5.
The near-simultaneous openings are the latest sign that the state's charter movement - still largely conned to
cities - is solidifying on Long Island as well. While some school district ofcials still have reservations, a growing
number of parents and national advocates of educational change praise charter schools for their personal
attention to students, discipline and focus on academics.
Tuition-free charter schools operate independently of regular school systems, with public nancing based on the
number of students they attract.
"Two new schools on Long Island - that's never happened before simultaneously," said Peter Murphy, policy
director for the New York Charter Schools Association, an Albany-based school advocacy group. "It takes a lot of
guts to step up and propose a charter school, because there's always district opposition, and opposition rings
louder in smaller suburban communities."
So far, the Island's charter schools have drawn students largely from communities sharing many of the same
problems as inner cities: pockets of poverty and complaints from some parents, especially blacks and Hispanics,
that their children get short shrift in traditional schools.
Five miles south of Hempstead, the Roosevelt Children's Academy Charter School, which opened in 2000, is
completing a 12,000-square-foot annex that will more than double the size of its main building. The school boasts
some of the highest test scores among charter schools statewide.
Farther east, the Riverhead Charter School, which opened in 2001 and faced threatened closure in 2007, has
recently improved test scores and nances and won a ve-year renewal of its state operating permit.
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