Hempstead charter gets bond approval for $72M classroom project

A Hempstead Village charter school has been approved for $72 million in tax-free bonds to build a new classroom building.

Evergreen Charter School was approved for the bond by the Hempstead Local Development Corporation, which offers low-interest bonds to nonprofits, hospitals and colleges.

Board members, on July 26, voted 5-0 in favor of the bond, which will be repaid via long-term refinancing by the school at no taxpayer expense, according to the corporation's chief executive.

Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin approved the bond sale on Aug. 5. School board leaders have objected over cost and crowding concerns.

Terms of the bond have not been completed, said Fred Parola, CEO of the Local Development Corporation, a state entity focused on development issues. 

“Hundreds of the children enrolled in the Evergreen Charter School will benefit from this bond sale, which will allow the school to expand to accommodate its growing enrollment,” said Parola in a statement.

The $72 million will be used to build an 85,000-square-foot classroom building on land not far from the charter school's Peninsula Boulevard headquarters near Laurel Avenue, according to Evergreen’s application to the Hempstead development corporation.

The project's construction will add an estimated 250 jobs with a salary of $65,000 for full-time jobs and $18,400 for part-time jobs, according to the application.

The building will house about 750 middle and high school students. 

The school, which offers bilingual education and serves students in grades K-10, will expand to the 12th grade in the 2023-2024 school year.   

Sarah Brewster, Evergreen’s co-founder, and vice president of its board, said “we’re very excited with the bond process because it’s to help a secondary school get constructed in the Village of Hempstead.”

Charter schools are run by independent boards, and their funding is based on tuition payments from districts where students enrolled on charter campuses reside.

In January, the Hempstead school district was among nine on Long Island characterized as “susceptible” to fiscal stress, according to a report by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. 

A financial burden is one reason Hempstead schools Vice President LaMont Johnson remains opposed to the charter school addition.

“Hempstead public schools are already inundated and oversaturated with charter schools," Johnson said Wednesday, adding that another charter school “increases the tax burden for residents.”

Hempstead schools are “providing a quality education,” he said. “Our high school graduation rate is over 80%” since 2020.

In April 2020, Evergreen won growth approval by the Board of Regents, which sets the majority of the state's education policies, to add a high school unit. 

Evergreen was founded in 2009 by a group that includes officials from Circulo De La Hispanidad, a Hempstead-based advocacy group. Circulo De La Hispanidad has about $15 million of outstanding tax-exempt bonds through the Hempstead Local Development Corporation, according to a news release from the LDC.