Long Island charter schools draw support from some parents seeking more choices, opposition from critics over funding

Five years ago, Carmen Acevedo made the decision to pull her son out of Hempstead schools and enroll him in a charter school.

Acevedo said she had heard from other parents whose children had done well in charter schools and she liked that students wore uniforms. Her son, Brian Zelaya, started seventh grade at Roosevelt Children's Academy Charter School and now attends The Academy Charter High School in Uniondale.

During his time at the high school, which opened in 2020, the rising senior said he has founded a math honor club, served as a president of the student council and been certified to fly commercial drones through a school program.

“It offers just a fresh canvas,” Zelaya, 17, said of his relatively new high school. “It allowed me to create my own opportunities and be the leader that I've always dreamed to be since I was little.” 

More than 7,000 Long Island students attend charter schools, which supporters say provide families with a tuition-free alternative to their traditional public schools. But The Academy Charter's recently announced plans to open three new charter schools on the Island — two in Brentwood and one in Central Islip — have reignited a long-standing debate over the academic institutions' place in public education.

The charter’s proposals have faced fierce opposition from district officials,  teachers unions and some parents. Critics say charters drain much-needed funding from traditional public schools, threatening the education of the students they serve. They argue while some charter schools have reported higher test scores and graduation rates than their traditional public school counterparts, the comparison is unfair because public schools generally educate more English language learners and students with special needs.

“Some people worry that charter schools could ‘cream-skim’ the highest achieving students from the public school system … leaving the traditional public school district to serve the hardest-to-teach students,” said Susha Roy, a policy researcher at RAND, a research nonprofit headquartered in California.

Proponents, on the other hand, say parents deserve a choice if they are dissatisfied with the existing public education options and shouldn’t have to pay high tuition for private schools.

“It's not fair to tax parents and then when the district can't provide the instruction and education level they want, they’ve got to take them out and pay additional for private school,” said Barrington Goldson, founder of The Academy Charter School system.

National support for charter schools

Charter schools are public, independently run and have more freedom than traditional public schools in hiring and instructional decisions. They do not charge tuition to families.

The first charter on Long Island — Roosevelt Children's Academy Charter School — opened in 2000. The region is now home to five charter systems from Uniondale to Riverhead. A sixth, Diamond Charter School, is slated to open next year in Hempstead.

The Academy, which is seeking permission from the state to open three new schools in Central Islip and Brentwood, is Long Island’s biggest and highest-performing charter school system. The network runs two K-12 systems — one in Hempstead and one in Uniondale — and an elementary school in Wyandanch. In all, it educates more than 4,000 students.

Charter schools lately have been in the spotlight as the federal Education Department under President Donald Trump has prioritized expanding school choice. In March, Linda McMahon made her first school visit as the nation’s education secretary to a charter school in the Bronx. McMahon’s department also announced in May it will increase funding by $60 million for the federal Charter Schools Program.

“We hope to pave the way for more choices, better outcomes and life-changing opportunities for students and families,” McMahon said in a release at the time.

Mitzi Delarosa, a mother of two from Westbury, said she chose a charter school for her children in part because of her own upbringing. She graduated from a traditional public school in Brooklyn but believes her brothers, who attended a Brooklyn charter school, had a better education.

“He’s always happy to go to school,” she said of her son, who attended kindergarten at an Academy school last year. “Everybody knows my child by his name. The principal. Everyone. I’ve noticed even the nurses know the children well.”

For Sandrea Oneil, she took a chance when she sent her daughter in 2009 to The Academy Charter School in Hempstead — a new school without a track record.

Oneil, a graduate of Uniondale High School, wanted something different for her children. She was working for the New York State Division of Human Rights at the time and, she said, a colleague’s daughter was going to teach at the charter school.

“I felt comfortable saying that: ‘OK, I'll have a person. I have an extra eye for my child,' ” the Uniondale resident recalled. 

Oneil believes her leap of faith has paid off. In recent months, she attended two graduations — one for her daughter, who received her bachelor's degree from St. John's University in Queens, and another for her son, who attended an Academy middle school.

Oneil, who is now the charter school system's chief legal and compliance officer, credited her children's teachers with pushing for excellence.

“You can't lay low, and you can't try to do the bare minimum," she said. "You have to excel because that's the standard.”

Testing criticism

Researchers have tried to answer the question of whether charter schools are more effective than traditional public schools, and the result has been mixed, Roy said.

On Long Island, charter school students in recent years have generally outperformed their peers in traditional public schools from which charters draw students on state English Language  Arts exams. Results on math exams, however, have varied.

In Hempstead, for example, 69% of Academy students in grades 3-8 tested proficient in English and 73% in math in 2022-23, according to test data reviewed by Newsday. By comparison, the respective percentages for Hempstead district students were 26% and 26%, below the state averages of 48% and 52%.

While students at Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead did better in English in 2022-23, they underperformed compared with a neighboring district — Uniondale — in math.

Defenders of traditional public schools like Bob Vecchio argue the test results should not be seen as apple-to-apple comparisons. Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, noted charter schools serve a lower ratio of students with special needs and English language learners.

About 5% of students at The Academy's Hempstead campus had disabilities in 2022-23, compared with nearly 11% in Hempstead district schools, according to reports posted on the website of the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute. About 23% of Academy students were English language learners versus 45% in Hempstead.

“If you are not capturing the same demographic, how can you compare the same results?” Vecchio said.

In New York State, charter schools cannot refuse any student and they hold a lottery when the number of students who apply exceeds their capacity.

Critics, however, argue families with more resources are more likely to know how to apply for and better navigate the school choice landscape.

Funding concerns

Charter schools derive most of their revenue from tuition reimbursements from districts, based on the number of students drawn from those districts. They also receive state and federal funding.

Those payments, critics said, siphon needed dollars from districts and hurt their educational programs. Victor Pratt, vice president of the Hempstead school board, likened charter schools to “cancer” when speaking at a June hearing in Brentwood.

“Charter schools do not coexist with the public school,” he said. “They operate at the expense of the public school.”

Earlier this year, Hempstead officials blamed the proposed closure of an elementary school on an estimated $107 million payment to charter schools for the 2025-26 school year. The school was spared after a last-minute infusion of state aid.

“Imagine if we had that $107 million to put into our buildings and our facilities. We have buildings with no air. We cannot upgrade,” Pratt said. “We have to make choices between programming or student comfort. We can't do both. That's not a good place to be in.”

Charter school officials have dismissed claims that they are to blame for Hempstead's financial woes, noting the state sets per-pupil funding rates and arguing the issues facing the district are not new.

“People will keep the status quo going if [they] are left alone,” Goldson said. "But while they're keeping the status quo, students are failing."

He added: “We are serious about changing the landscape of education."

Officials with the Brentwood district have estimated they will have to pay $87 million in tuition payments over the five years ending in 2031-32 if the two proposed Academy schools are approved. In Central Islip, where a charter school, South Shore, already exists, the district anticipates paying $12 million in tuition in 2028-29 if the new Academy charters open.

Trustees of the State University of New York, one of the state’s authorizers, are expected to vote on whether to grant the new charters at an October meeting.

La’Shawn Maynard, a mother who said she pulled her son out of Brentwood schools because she was not happy with student performance, spoke in defense of charter schools at the June meeting.

“Nobody's speaking about the grades. My son had five tutors when he was in Brentwood,” she said. “Everyone is saying, you know, the funding, the funding, the money, the money. But what about the kids?”

Newsday's Arielle Martinez contributed to this story.