Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - After a March vote by the Buffalo School Board to shut down two charter schools at the end of the school year, Westminster Community and Enterprise Charter Schools have filed suit in order to keep the schools open.
The two schools together have about 950 students in grades K-8. The March 31 decision came too late in the year for many of the impacted students and families to apply to other charter schools, limiting their choices for next year.
The Buffalo School Board pointed to student proficiency in Math and English being lower than the district average in their decision to shut the schools down, but the schools in their lawsuit say most displaced students will likely have to enroll in schools that are lower performing. The suit alleges the Board used outdated and incorrect standards when reviewing the charter renewal application.
The schools point out that the state Board of Regents, the State University of New York, and the New York City Education Department have decided that all charter schools should remain open during the pandemic, but in the case of the only two schools where the Buffalo Board of Education was able to make the decision to close a school, they chose to do so.
