Stumping for a charter school

“Parents are disappointed. We could do so much better. Where is the money going?” said Dash, a North Woodmere resident. “A lot of parents feel they have no choice but to take their child outside the district.”

Dash, along with Michael and Leena Dannan, who live in Atlantic Beach Estates, and Inwood residents Joovani Alvarado and his wife, Angelica Estrada, said they support the proposed creation of the Lawrence Charter School.

A group headed by Burton Sacks, the deputy chief operating officer for the City University of New York, submitted a revised application in March to the New York State Education Department to launch such a school. Last year, Sacks and several others applied for a charter for what was then called the New American Leadership Academy Charter School. That application was withdrawn in November. A decision on the amended application is expected to be made in June by the state Board of Regents based on an Education Department recommendation. 

If approved, it would be the sixth charter school on Long Island. There are two in Hempstead — the Academy and Evergreen charter schools — as well as Riverhead Charter School, Roosevelt Children’s Academy, in Roosevelt, and the Childhood Development Center of the Hamptons, in Wainscott. 

A charter school is defined by the Education Department as a public school that is financed by state and federal money, and is independent of local school boards.

Using a survey that asked parents questions ranging from what kind of school environment they wanted for their children to what they expected from the school, Sacks and his team are hoping to build a charter school that, in their words, “has the best features to meet our children’s needs.”