Buffalo Charter Schools Suing School Board to Stay Open

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Two Buffalo charter schools are suing the School Board in order to remain open. Westminster Community Charter School and Enterprise Charter School have filed suit against the Buffalo Board of Education in the New York Supreme Court. Westminster and Enterprise hope to keep their two schools, which serve 'economically disadvantaged students,' open. The Buffalo Public Schools Board voted on March 31, 2021, to close the two schools. The decision impacts approximately 950 students in grades kindergarten through 8th. Westminster and Enterprise said, in a media release I received, the decision to close them creates disruption for students and parents, as it came too late for families to apply to other charter schools. It also says that the decision will cause students to have to enroll in schools that are underperforming - noting that its two schools have better test scores than 25 schools in BPS.

Westminster and Enterprise Charter Schools Sue Buffalo Public Schools Board

The lawsuit alleges that the Board is short-changing students,

“Notwithstanding the availability of … data – which would have demonstrated that a substantial number of Westminster’s students were either proficient or trending towards proficiency in both Math and ELA – BPS Board chose to completely ignore current statistics on Westminster student progress and chose only to look at data from the 2018-2019 school year. Thus, BPS Board willfully ignored the data relating to student progress during Westminster’s current charter term, and only looked to data that had been generated during Westminster’s prior charter term.”

You can visit Westminster's website here and Enterprise's website here.