Riverhead Charter School wins approval to add trailers to its high school campus

High schoolers at Riverhead Charter School will soon catch a break from cramped, crowded classrooms.

Charter school officials plan to build three trailers outside its high school campus on Sound Avenue in Northville to help alleviate space concerns posed by a growing student body. The high school has outgrown the building it leases — a former schoolhouse — and the trailers will serve as a temporary fix while officials search for a new high school location.

The trailers will span 2,880 square feet on the school's campus. The charter had renovated the schoolhouse, which was vacant, and opened the Riverhead Charter High School there in 2022. Two trailers will be used as student classroom space and the third will be for faculty, officials said.

The Riverhead Town Board approved the trailers last week after nearly eight months of negotiations and debate. A split town board voted 3-2 to grant the permit for the trailers on April 1 with conditions that prohibit the school from expanding any more.

Some board members said school officials should have better anticipated the overcrowding issue and raised concerns about educating children in trailers. But others, including Supervisor Tim Hubbard, said the trailers were not a long-term solution.

Hubbard, who cast the tiebreaking vote, said he did not want to stand in the way of any student's education.

“They are bursting at the seams,” Hubbard said in an interview. He recalled a recent tour of the building when he saw teachers’ desks in hallways and other signs of overcrowding. “They keep getting more and more kids wanting to come in, and they have to turn them down. This buys them a little bit of time.”

Expanding population

The charter school leased the high school on Sound Avenue in 2022 after it had outgrown its main building on Middle Country Road in Calverton.

When the charter school was founded in 2001, there was no high school. By 2022, the state Board of Regents had allowed the charter school to offer grades 11 and 12 and increase K-12 enrollment from 850 to 1,244 students by the 2026-27 school year. There are currently 940 students enrolled in grades K-12, Ankrum said in an email.

“We’ve been very creative with the space we had, but there is a finite amount of space, and we are beyond it,” Ankrum said. “Our goal is to provide a place for our students to learn and grow.”

The charter has struggled to find a permanent home while contending with community opposition to various proposals.

Last year, school officials dropped plans to build a new high school on farmland next to the Sound Avenue facility it currently is leasing.

Riverhead residents said plans for a new charter school on Sound Avenue would worsen traffic and whittle away preserved farmland. The town also rejected a zoning proposal to allow charter schools to be built on industrial land last year, saying commercial development on the valuable land generates tax revenue.

Calverton site eyed

Both town board members who voted against the permit for the trailers — Joann Waski and Ken Rothwell — criticized the school for enrolling students knowing there wasn’t enough space. 

“The charter school entered into a lease agreement for the property on Sound Avenue knowing — fully acknowledging — what the maximum capacity was there,” Waski said at the meeting.

Ankrum, in his email, said the school is close to finding a new site for the high school and is in contract for vacant property in Calverton.

The school plans to buy the 13-acre site at the corner of Route 25 and Fresh Pond Avenue for $4.1 million, according to school board meeting minutes. That property is 2 miles west of the school’s main campus in Calverton.

Ankrum said the search for a new location has been a “challenging” process for the school community.

“Many suitable parcels require special permits due to zoning regulations, which can be met with community resistance,” he said.

The town board also required the charter school to post a decommissioning bond to ensure that the trailers are eventually removed. The charter school must also update town officials about their plans to develop the Calverton site.