NYSUT lawsuit seeks to halt Diamond Charter School relocation

New York State United Teachers today filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Diamond Charter School from opening in West Hempstead instead of Hempstead, the community where the school originally applied for and received approval to operate.

The filing calls for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order against the authorizing entity, SUNY, including its Board of Trustees, Charter Schools Committee and Charter Schools Institute, as well as Diamond Charter School and other respondents.

The suit lays out how SUNY Charter Schools Committee approved Diamond Charter School's request to relocate from Hempstead to West Hempstead despite failing to follow legal requirements designed to ensure transparency, public participation and accountability. SUNY Charter Schools Committee allowed the revision to move forward without providing statutorily-required analysis of the impact that the move would have on families or on the districts as a whole, and in the face of near-unanimous community opposition.

"This isn't just about one school. It's about two communities that were ignored," said NYSUT President Melinda Person. "People in Hempstead and West Hempstead spoke out, showed up and made their concerns clear, but SUNY Charter Schools Committee pushed ahead anyway. This pattern of blatant disregard for the law and for the communities our public institutions are supposed to support is why we're asking the court to step in."

Hempstead residents would face the consequences of a charter school approved for their district operating somewhere else entirely, while West Hempstead taxpayers, families and schools could bear the financial and logistical impacts of hosting a charter school that was never approved to open there.

The relocation would additionally inject unnecessary instability into students' educational experience by allowing a school to open in one community and then move to another just 18 months later. Because the schools are supposed to prioritize admissions in the district where the school is located, the resulting uncertainty would disrupt enrollment, transportation and family schedules, while leaving students caught in the middle of a process that remains mired in legal and logistical questions.

Residents, educators and community leaders in both communities overwhelmingly opposed the proposal during public hearings and through hundreds of written comments. And notably, the Board of Regents rejected the proposal in May and voted to send it back to SUNY Charter Schools Committee for reconsideration, citing concerns about public opposition, lack of transparency, transportation challenges, enrollment issues and insufficient analysis supporting the move. Rather than addressing those concerns, SUNY Charter Schools Committee simply approved the proposal a second time.

Today's filing is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought by NYSUT regarding SUNY Charter Schools Committee's authorization process, including litigation filed earlier this year challenging the approval of charter schools beyond the statutory cap and a separate challenge to charter approvals in Brentwood and Central Islip that were also rejected by the Board of Regents and vehemently opposed by the communities.

The petition was filed in Albany County Supreme Court by NYSUT and parents and educators from both the Hempstead and West Hempstead communities.

• View the filing here: https://nysut.docsend.com/view/5nhy56trq6wg9gxp