Burned Riverhead school may move to new space by Friday

The Riverhead Charter School, whose kindergarten-to-third-grade building was damaged by fire Tuesday, could be back in business at a new location as soon as Friday, according to school officials.

Dorothy Porteus, the school's principal and executive director, said Wednesday that a lease for a new site is being reviewed by the school's attorney and could be signed Thursday.

Porteus spent Wednesday assessing the damage to the 10-classroom modular building and working with teachers to set up lesson plans and prepare them for a move. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, officials said.

Like the South Bay Elementary School in West Babylon, which was gutted by fire last week, there were no sprinklers in the building, according to Riverhead Town officials.

There are two classroom buildings at the school on Middle Country Road in Calverton. One, serving grades 4 to 6, is across a parking lot from the other building and suffered no damage. It does have sprinklers, Porteus said.

Because the two buildings share many services - things like art and music and English as a Second Language - Porteus said it would be easier to move the entire school to a new location rather than using two sites.

Porteus said the staff was "devastated" by the fire. "One teacher bought books for her class every year. They're all gone," she said.

Under state education law, charter schools must meet local building and fire codes and are classified as "nonpublic schools," according to Jane Briggs, a spokeswoman for the State Education Department. Most public schools on Long Island do not have sprinklers.

The fire broke out around 5:30 p.m., hours after the school's 235 children had left. Teachers working in the building said they noticed only an odd smell at first.

"I smelled something, it was like a microwave [oven]," said Kristen Rosini, a second-grade teacher from East Northport. "I turned the heat off. It started getting a little stronger, and we called the administration. We didn't see anything."

Porteus, who was also working, said the smoke alarms went off within a minute or two of Rosini's call, and that the first volunteer firefighters arrived even before any flames were visible.

After the fire was put out, hundreds of phone calls were made to ensure that students would not come to class Wednesday. The school, which gets students from 16 school districts, also called transportation coordinators in those districts to be sure that buses would not pick up students for the charter school.

Laurie Behrhof of Bellport, who teaches fourth grade, has worked at the Riverhead Charter School for eight years, most of the time at the building that was damaged. "It's just devastating to see," she said. "It's disheartening. . . . You feel like this is part of your home."