There has been a huge controversial debate on whether a Charter School would benefit the students of Peekskill, and on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 it was finally discussed. Voices from the Student Council of Peekskill High School presented the “district” and “Charter School Reps” with questions about the charter school and how it would affect the normal public schools. The PHS Student Council reached out to the Guardian Academy Founder, Audrey Warn, to participate in the debate held at PHS. Audrey Warn agreed to make an appearance at the debate, but never showed up due to unknown reasons. Therefore, students at PHS “stepped in” to try and debate the Charter Schools position.

The students of PHS asked many important questions that were on everyone’s mind like, “What will happen to sports and clubs” and “What is the Charter School going to offer that the PCSD doesn’t already?” The answers to these questions were very vague and disappointing. What will happen to sports and clubs? Well according to the district representative, there would be a huge financial impact, causing there to be budget cuts on sports and clubs. These budget cuts on sports and clubs would be totally unfair to students and staff, leaving us asking what are we supposed to do for extra curricular activities? If students no longer have sports, what would they have? These cuts are also very unfair because not only would we be losing funding for sports and clubs in public school, we could possibly be funding sports and clubs for the Charter School.

So what does this Charter School offer that PCSD doesn’t already? According to the Charter School, absolutely nothing besides smaller classes and “special teachers”. Those “improvements” sound very unbalanced considering the huge impact this Charter School will have on PCSD. Quite frankly, the only thing this Charter school will provide is another option for only about 10% of the student population. Is this Charter School really worth the amount of revenue that will be lost from public schools? Is this logical? Is this fair?