Charter Schools, The Need-to-Know Basics

I reached out to NYC school expert Joyce Szuflita to zero in on some of our questions about Charter Schools here in Brooklyn. Please take a look at this helpful information, and decide whether it’s right for your family to apply:

Charter Schools are publicly funded, privately run programs. Even though they are not administered by the DoE there is a world of information about them on the DoE’s website. You can find information about individual Charters in the Charter School Directory. They generally do their lotteries right around April 1st. You can submit an application before then in a couple ways. Each Charter School will have its own application that you can find on its website or you can fill out the Charter School Common App (although not all charters will be listed on it). I prefer to go to each school site separately – the applications are simple and short and that way, I won’t miss any of them. You don’t need to rank Charters in the order that you like them.

Charter Schools give priority to families who live within the district where the school is housed. While you can apply to any and all schools, you will get preference at schools in your district. If the school is popular it is very unlikely that they will have room for families outside of district, but heh, you have to be in it to win it. If you get a placement at a Charter, it will come independently of your public kindergarten or G&T placement. You can only be pre-registered at one school at a time and as the spring progresses, you can accept or reject placements you receive as they come. This doesn’t impact any public or charter wait list that you may be on. You are just trading up.

There are a lot of strong feelings around Charter Schools and like any program you can’t paint them all with the same brush. They provide additional options for families. There can be less transparency around the information about Charters. There are very understandable hard feelings about co-locations within public school buildings. They can draw focus and resources from emerging public programs that neighborhood families are trying to support, among other things. There will be some you like and some you don’t like as with any public school. Generally Charters may have a longer day or longer year, experienced Union Teachers are not often attracted to working in Charters, and they don’t have to use the city’s curriculum (although they do have to follow the State’s regulations and take the State tests).

Most Charters will begin at kindergarten but State law has changed and some are now offering prek classes.  Some Charters do tour, but if the charter is very popular, it is more likely that you will attend an information session and only tour after you have been offered a seat. You don’t have to rank it, so touring ahead of time is not as critical.