Charter Schools Enlist Their Own As Recruitment Season Begins
To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.
Then come back here and refresh the page.
Every April, tens of thousands of families apply to local charter schools. And since getting families to apply is a major undertaking, current students are often enlisted to help out. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.Chris and Christopher Albino woke up early on the first day of spring break to spend the day with their principal -- voluntarily. The twins go to a charter school and it's lottery season, so when class is out, schools like Bedford-Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter focus on recruiting.
By law, charter schools have to hold admissions lotteries every April and so for the next few weeks there are application deadlines and lotteries for the 126 charters in the city accepting students for next fall. All those lotteries need applicants, leading schools to put up fliers, hold info sessions, and send targeted mailings with addresses provided by the Department of Education. They even stop families on the street.
"I think often people think that charter schools are selective because we are creaming people or looking for certain demographics, and we really want to make sure that we are as open, as inclusive to everyone as possible," said Bedford-Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter Co-Principal Mabel Lajes-Guiteras.
And even the youngest recruiters know their pitch.
"I am doing this today so we can get the scholars to come to our school. And it prepares them to go to college, and our goal is college. It's a good school because first of all we come early and we stay late, so we have more learning time and we get more education in," said Bedford-Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter student Chris Albino.
"We want to make sure every kid has an equal chance to go to college and have a good job," said Bedford-Stuyvesant Collegiate Charter student Christopher Albino.
All this recruiting leads to lots of applicants. Tens of thousands of students apply to local charter school lotteries, which means most don't get in.
Two days before the application deadline for Bed-Stuy Collegiate, there were already 322 applicants for 81 spots in the fifth grade, more than double last year's number.
Critics say charter school supporters use those numbers to push for their schools to expand. But charter school operators say it's important to have a large pool of applicants so the students who get in will really represent the community.