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The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued the following press release yesterday on charter school demand in the state, noting that roughly 34,000 Massachusetts students are currently on a charter school waitlist.
MALDEN, MA – The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) on Thursday released the most recent report of how many students are on a waitlist for admittance to a charter school in 2015-2016 based on data from October 1, 2015. This is an update to initial waitlists established in March 2015 that indicated approximately 37,000 students were on charter school waitlists. According to the October 1 data, approximately 34,000 unique students remain on a waitlist at one or more charter schools.
“My staff and the charter school sector have worked hard to ensure the accuracy of the waitlist. I am confident that these numbers reflect parental and student demand for additional high-quality educational options,” said Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell D. Chester.
Each spring, charter schools submit to ESE the number of students enrolled for the upcoming school year as well as the number of students who were placed on their waitlists through each school’s initial lottery. The March 2015 collection reported on the number of students who applied for admission for the 2015-16 school year and were put on schools’ initial waitlists. The information provided today is updated through October 1, 2015 and reflects late offers of admission and/or new lotteries for seats that opened up over the summer and into the school year. The resulting reduction of several thousand students from the initial spring list is consistent with the fall reductions reported in recent years.
The March 2015 initial waitlist reported that 75 out of 82 charter schools had waitlists and collectively identified 49,444 entries representing 37,470 unique students. Of the 75 charter schools who submitted initial waitlist data in March 2015, 74 schools continued to have a waitlist as of October 1, 2015. As shown in the table below, the 74 updated charter school waitlists contained 43,294 entries representing 33,903 unique students.
It is important to note that not every student on a charter school waitlist would necessarily accept an offer of admission if, and when, it might be proffered. Therefore, the number of students found on each charter school’s waitlist should not be understood as the number of students actively willing to accept an admission offered at any moment in time. This is particularly true for schools that have chosen to rollover their waitlists from one year to the next for waitlists established prior to March 31, 2014, as permitted by 603 CMR 1.05(10)(a), allowing students to remain on the waitlist for several years. A recent ESE survey found that approximately 75 percent of charter schools indicated that they chose not to rollover their prior year waitlists for the 2015-2016 school year. The Department is exploring ways to identify how many students continue to be rolled over in future waitlist submission cycles.
Despite the significant and continuing improvement efforts ESE has made in recent years, it remains impossible to quantify the exact number of students who may be actively waiting for admission to a charter school unless ESE makes speculative assumptions, and ESE has avoided doing so in compiling the numbers presented today. The unique waitlist counts provided in this report should be taken as ESE’s best understanding and representation of existing demand for the time period covered in the collection rather than exact numbers of students willing to accept offers at each school.
The Department has implemented a few changes to the most recent collection process to achieve as accurate a matching process as possible. Because the current collection process requires significant resources from both the charter schools and ESE, ESE will continue to explore other efficient and accurate methods for collecting future waitlist information.
In the following chart, some students are included on more than one waitlist:
School Name
Total Number of Students Reported on Charter School Waitlists
Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School
525
Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School
485
Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School
456
Alma del Mar Charter School
819
Argosy Collegiate Charter School
32
Atlantis Charter School
392
Barnstable Community Horace Mann Charter Public School
9
Baystate Academy Charter Public School
23
Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School
268
Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School
289
Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School
19
Boston Collegiate Charter School
2,725
Boston Day and Evening Academy Charter School
154
Boston Green Academy Horace Mann Charter School
170
Boston Preparatory Charter Public School
530
Boston Renaissance Charter Public School
686
Bridge Boston Charter School
1,800
Brooke Charter School East Boston
1,277
Brooke Charter School Mattapan
1,941
Brooke Charter School Roslindale
2,183
Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School
101
Christa McAuliffe Charter Public School
81
City on a Hill Charter Public School Circuit Street
352
Codman Academy Charter Public School
880
Community Charter School of Cambridge
215
Community Day Charter Public School – Gateway
387
Community Day Charter Public School – Prospect
443
Community Day Charter Public School – R. Kingman Webster
383
Conservatory Lab Charter School
442
Dorchester Collegiate Academy Charter School
277
Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School
661
Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers (Horace Mann)
345
Excel Academy Charter School
475
Four Rivers Charter Public School
57
Foxborough Regional Charter School
2,797
Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School
193
Global Learning Charter Public School
383
Hampden Charter School of Science
594
Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy Charter Public School
213
Hill View Montessori Charter Public School
476
Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School
253
Holyoke Community Charter School
487
Innovation Academy Charter School
306
KIPP Academy Boston Charter School
181
KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School
477
Lawrence Family Development Charter School
1,351
Lowell Collegiate Charter School
9
Lowell Community Charter Public School
392
Marblehead Community Charter Public School
104
Martha’s Vineyard Charter School
16
Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School of Excellence
178
MATCH Charter Public School
1,631
Mystic Valley Regional Charter School
3,616
Neighborhood House Charter School
648
Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School
37
Pioneer Charter School of Science
391
Pioneer Charter School of Science II (PCSS-II)
264
Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School
103
Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School
327
Prospect Hill Academy Charter School
534
Rising Tide Charter Public School
261
River Valley Charter School
603
Roxbury Preparatory Charter School
270
Sabis International Charter School
2,851
Salem Academy Charter School
157
Seven Hills Charter Public School
247
Silver Hill Horace Mann Charter School
107
Sizer School: A North Central Charter Essential School
3
South Shore Charter Public School
822
Springfield Preparatory Charter School
73
Sturgis Charter Public School
540
UP Academy Charter School of Boston
130
UP Academy Charter School of Dorchester
1,293
Veritas Preparatory Charter School
94
Total
43,294
There are 43,294 names on the wait list, which reflect 33,903 unique individuals. Of those 33,903 students, 4,833 students (14.3 percent) are on an average of about 3 different wait lists, but they are only counted once.
Number of Waitlists A Student Appears On
Unique (Unduplicated) Number of Students
1
29,070
2
2,582
3
1,209
4
496
5
227
6
145
7
73
8
46
9
32
10
9
11
9
12
2
13
2
14
1
Total
33,903
The full report can be viewed HERE.
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