Questions to Ask a Charter School
Written for a parent deciding whether to put a child's name into a charter school's lottery, and meant to be taken along to the open house, the tour or the enrollment office. The questions sit in six groups: getting a seat, who holds the charter and runs the school, the teaching, support services, discipline and who leaves, and the daily business of buses, meals and fees. Charter rules differ from state to state, so treat any answer about lotteries, teacher licensing, buses or special education as local to where you live.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Getting in
How does your admission lottery work, and on what date is it held?
Why ask it
A charter with more applicants than seats usually admits by random drawing, but the rules come from the state and the school's own charter, so ask how it runs here. Get the application deadline, the drawing date and whether families can watch. A school that hands you the procedure in writing is easier to trust than one that describes it loosely.
Do we have to live in a particular district or county to apply, and what happens if we move during the year?
Why ask it
Who may enroll is set by state law and the school's charter: some schools draw from one district, others from a county or the whole state. Bring your address and have the enrollment office check it against the boundary. If a move is possible, find out whether your child could finish the year from the new address.
Who gets a preference in the lottery: siblings, children of staff, families in a certain zone?
Why ask it
Preferences decide how many seats are truly open: a grade of sixty with forty siblings is a drawing for twenty. Get last year's count of preference seats in your child's grade, and find out whether a sibling preference is a guarantee or only a head start.
How many applications came in for my child's grade last year, and how many seats were open?
Why ask it
Those two figures give you rough odds, which tells you how seriously to keep a second plan alive. Openings tend to cluster in entry grades such as kindergarten, sixth and ninth, and a few schools admit nobody above them, so get the numbers for the exact grade your child would join.
If we end up on the waitlist, how will we know our number, and how far did that list move last year?
Why ask it
A position means little until you know how many families were called from the same grade's list the year before. Find out whether an offer comes by phone, email or text and how long you have to answer: some schools move to the next name within a day or two, which matters if you are traveling in July.
Does the waitlist carry over to next year, or do we have to apply again?
Why ask it
Plenty of schools clear the list each year and run a fresh drawing, which catches out families who thought they were holding a place. Write down the date the list expires, and whether a child who waited all year gets any credit for it the second time.
Is there anything we have to do before the lottery, such as a test, an interview or an information session?
Why ask it
The thing to learn is what each step is for and whether skipping it takes your child out of the drawing. A placement test after admission is common. A step that screens children before the drawing is a different thing, and what a charter may require varies by state, so check with the authorizer if an answer surprises you.
After an offer, which documents do you need and by what date do we have to accept?
Why ask it
Proof of address, a birth certificate, immunization records and transcripts are typical, but the list is the school's, so take it home on paper. A missed acceptance date usually sends the seat down the list. If you are still waiting on another school, ask whether saying yes here commits you to anything.
Who runs it
Who authorizes this school, and when is the charter up for renewal?
Why ask it
A charter is a contract with an authorizer, which may be a school district, a state board, a university or another body depending on where you live. The renewal date is when the school next has to prove itself, and a child starting now may still be enrolled when that review lands. Get the length of the current term as well as its end date.
What year did the school open, and is it still adding grades?
Why ask it
A school in its second or third year has no record in the grades it has not taught yet, and your child's class may be the first through each one. That can mean energy and small numbers, and it can mean a new teacher and a new curriculum every fall. For a growing school, find out which grade it will stop at and whether the charter already allows for it.
What did the authorizer say at the last renewal or annual review, and has the school ever been on probation?
Why ask it
These reports are often public and list what the school was told to fix. A full-term renewal with no conditions reads differently from a short one with a corrective plan attached, though a past warning that was dealt with and closed does not rule a school out. If nobody at the table knows where the document is, look on the authorizer's website that evening.
Is the school run by a management organization or a network, and which decisions does that organization make?
Why ask it
Some charters stand alone. Others contract with a nonprofit network or a for-profit company that may pick the curriculum, hire the principal and keep the books. Neither arrangement is better by default; the point is to learn whether the people deciding things for your child work in this building.
What does the school pay the management organization, and what does it get in return?
Why ask it
Where there is an operator, a fee is normal, so the useful half is what it buys: curriculum, payroll, training, the building. Two follow-ups show where the power sits: could the board end the contract if it were unhappy, and is the operator or a related company also the landlord?
Who sits on the board, how are members chosen, and are any of them parents?
Why ask it
The board holds the charter and hires or contracts the leadership, so it is where a serious complaint finally lands. It helps to know whether members live nearby and whether any are employed by the management organization. A board picked entirely by the operator will find it hard to push back on the operator.
When and where does the board meet, and can parents attend and speak?
Why ask it
Open-meeting rules for charter boards differ by state, so ask how it works at this school and where agendas and minutes are posted. Two or three sets of minutes show what the board is worried about this year: enrollment, staffing, the lease.
Is the school fully enrolled this year, and where can we read the latest financial audit?
Why ask it
Funding generally follows students, so a school well short of the enrollment it planned for is probably trimming somewhere. This is the polite way to find out whether the money is steady. A principal who can point you to the audit and sum it up in a sentence has read it.
Does the school own this building, lease it or share it, and how long is that arrangement secure?
Why ask it
Charters often rent, share a campus with another school or move as they add grades. 'Where will the school be in three years' is the version that gets a straight answer, and it matters because a relocation across town can undo the reason you chose the place.
How long has the current school leader been in the job, and who would choose a successor?
Why ask it
A young charter can change character quickly when a founder or principal goes, because so much of the culture sits with one person. Whether the board or the network would pick the next leader tells you whose school it is. Three leaders in five years deserves a follow-up.
If the school closed or lost its charter, what would happen to the students and their records?
Why ask it
Charter schools can close, sometimes mid-year, and it is fair to ask about it plainly. A school with a closure plan on file with its authorizer can say where transcripts would go and how families would be helped to find places. Notice whether the question is answered or brushed off.
Teaching
What is the school's model or focus, and where would I see it in an ordinary week?
Why ask it
Charters are usually founded around an approach: classical, STEM, arts, project-based, dual language, college prep. Push for the concrete version, meaning what a child does on a Wednesday here that they would not do at the district school. If all you get is the mission statement, the model may live mostly on the website.
How many students are in a class in my child's grade, and is there a cap you hold to?
Why ask it
Small classes are a common reason families look at charters, so get this year's real number for the grade, not the schoolwide average. The follow-up is whether the charter or the board limits enrollment, and what happened the last time a grade went over. A school that opened a second section instead of squeezing in five more children has shown you what it protects.
Are the teachers certified, and what does this state require of charter school teachers?
Why ask it
Licensing rules for charters vary, and some states allow a share of teachers without a certificate. The useful figure is the count in your child's grade or subject, along with what training an unlicensed teacher gets. A strong teacher without the paper can be fine; a school that does not know its own figure is the worry.
How many of last year's teachers came back this year, and did any classroom change teachers mid-year?
Why ask it
Get the two numbers separately, because a class that loses its teacher in February loses weeks, and you will want to know who covered and for how long. Some charters ask long days of a young staff, and turnover is where that shows. If the grade your child would join is staffed by first-year teachers, find out who coaches them.
How long are the school day and the school year, and what is the extra time used for?
Why ask it
Many charters run a longer day or year than the district around them, and the added hours might be more reading and math, tutoring, electives or a study hall. With a young child, the details to get are when in that day they run around and what time they would actually be home.
Which reading and math programs do you use, and were they chosen by the school or by the network?
Why ask it
A named program is one you can look up. Who chose it tells you how much room a teacher has to adjust when the class is behind or ahead. A school on its third reading program in five years is still searching, so get the year the current one came in.
How much of the day is taught by a teacher in front of the class, and how much on a computer program?
Why ask it
Some charter models lean on adaptive software or online courses with an adult supervising the room. That suits some children and loses others. Ask to see the room where it happens and how many students one adult oversees.
How did students here do on the state tests compared with nearby district schools, and how much did they grow in a year?
Why ask it
Raw scores say as much about who enrolls as about the teaching. Growth, meaning how far the same students moved in twelve months, is the fairer measure, and many states publish it on a school report card. Look it up afterward and see whether it matches what you were told.
Where do you teach art, music, PE and science, and how many times a week does each happen?
Why ask it
A small school in rented space may have no gym, lab or library and may cover those subjects with a part-time teacher or a partner organization. That can be a fair trade for what the school does well. A walk past the actual rooms tells you more than the timetable does.
Where did last year's oldest class go next, and does any school hold places for your students?
Why ask it
For a school ending at fifth or eighth grade, the answer should be a list of middle or high schools, and some networks give their own students a preference at the next campus. For a high school, find out who helps with applications and how many students each counselor carries. Either way, get the size of that class so you know how many children the list describes.
If we went back to the district school later, how would grades and credits transfer?
Why ask it
A school with its own curriculum, grading scale or course sequence can leave a returning student out of step, most of all in math and in high school credits. Have them describe how a recent leaver's transcript was read by the school that took them. The district registrar can give you the other half of the answer.
Support
Who provides special education here: your own staff, the district or a contractor?
Why ask it
Responsibility for special education in a charter depends on how the state and the charter set it up, so you need two names: who is accountable and who physically shows up. Get the number of special education teachers and aides on staff this year as well. A therapist contracted for one day a week is a schedule your child would have to fit.
My child has an IEP or a 504 plan. Who would review it before school starts, and how would each service in it be delivered?
Why ask it
Bring a copy and put this to the special education coordinator, not only the admissions desk. You are listening for how: which room, which adult, how many minutes. If you hear that the school may not be the right fit, note who said it and ask the authorizer or your state education agency what the school is required to provide.
How many students here receive special education services now, and what kinds of needs are you serving?
Why ask it
A share far below the surrounding district's can mean families with greater needs are being steered away or are leaving, though a small school's numbers jump around from year to year. Listen for the services delivered in the building today: speech, occupational therapy, a resource room, a one-to-one aide. Experience with a need like your child's counts for more than a promise to arrange something.
What support is there for a child who is still learning English, and who teaches it?
Why ask it
A full answer covers three things: a dedicated teacher, minutes per day, and whether the help comes inside the classroom or in a small group down the hall. The parents' side matters as much, so find out how the school reaches you in your language: translated notices, an interpreter at conferences, a staff member who speaks it.
What happens when a child is behind in reading or math and has no diagnosis or plan?
Why ask it
Plenty of children who struggle have no paperwork at all. The details that matter are what triggers extra help, who gives it and during which part of the day, because tutoring that replaces art or recess has a cost of its own. A named intervention with a timetable beats a general promise that teachers differentiate.
Is there a counselor, a nurse and a school psychologist on site, and on which days?
Why ask it
Small charters often share these roles, contract them out or go without. The test is the day that person is at another campus: who gives a child their medication, and who does a child talk to on a bad afternoon? Part-time is workable when the school can describe the cover.
Is there a gifted program, acceleration or advanced coursework, and how does a student get into it?
Why ask it
Gifted funding and requirements may not reach a charter the way they reach a district, so what exists here is whatever the school chose to build. At a high school, get the advanced or college-credit courses that ran this year and how many students sat in each. A course in the catalog that never fills is not an offering.
Discipline and who leaves
What is the discipline system here, and what does it look like in a classroom on an ordinary day?
Why ask it
Charter discipline runs from merits, demerits and silent hallways to loosely restorative, and whichever it is usually applies in every room. Take the code of conduct home and read it before you accept a seat. Then picture your own child under it: a tight system suits some children and wears others down.
How many students were suspended last year, and how many were expelled?
Why ask it
Many states publish these counts by school, so you can check the answer and set it beside the district's. What a child is typically suspended for tells you more than the total: repeated suspensions over uniform or talking paint a different picture from a handful for fighting.
If the school moved to expel a student, what is the process, and who hears the appeal?
Why ask it
A charter may follow its own handbook here instead of the district's procedure, so ask how it works at this school and get the page number. An appeal heard by the board is not the same as one heard by the principal who made the decision. You hope never to need this, and it takes five minutes to read.
How many students who started the year in my child's grade were still enrolled in June?
Why ask it
Push for the mid-year figure, then ask where those students went and why, in the school's own words. If most returned to the district school after a discipline problem or a conversation about fit, you have learned how the school deals with children it finds hard.
How large is your oldest class now, and how large was it when those students first enrolled?
Why ask it
A cohort that began at ninety and finishes at forty tells you something the test scores of the forty cannot. Some shrinkage is ordinary, since families move. Get both numbers and do the subtraction on the way home.
When a student leaves, do you fill the empty seat, and up to which grade?
Why ask it
Filling vacated seats is called backfilling. A school that stops admitting after its entry grade ends up with small upper grades made of the students who stayed, which can flatter its results. The answer also tells you whether a seat could ever open for a younger child of yours who misses the entry year.
Has a family here been advised that another school might suit their child better, and what led up to it?
Why ask it
Ask it evenly, then ask what the school tried first. An honest answer describes a specific need and the steps taken before that conversation. Advice of this kind is sometimes called counseling out, and it matters whether it follows low scores, behavior or a disability.
Do students ever repeat a grade here, and who makes that call?
Why ask it
Some charters hold students back more readily than the district around them. You want the criteria, the month a family would first hear of it, and whether the parent gets a say: a conversation in October is a very different thing from a letter in May.
Daily life
Is there bus service, and from which neighborhoods?
Why ask it
Whether a charter must provide buses, or the district does it, depends on the state, and many families end up driving. Get the routes, the nearest stop, any cost, and whether older students are given transit passes. Then make the trip once at drop-off hour before you accept the seat.
Do you serve breakfast and lunch, and does the school take part in the free and reduced-price meal program?
Why ask it
Not every charter has a kitchen or joins the federal meal program. Some bring in a caterer and some ask families to pack a lunch every day. The practical details are what a meal costs, how to apply for free or reduced price, and where the children sit to eat.
Is there care before and after school on site, who runs it, and does it fill up?
Why ask it
A longer school day still may not cover a working day. An outside provider often runs the program, with its own fee and its own sign-up date, so get both. Check for early-release days too, which some charters hold every week for staff training.
Does your calendar match the district's for the first day, the breaks and the days off?
Why ask it
Charters often set their own calendar. An August start or a different spring break matters when another child is in a district school or your childcare follows the district's schedule. Next year's calendar is the one to take home, since this year's is already history.
What would we pay for over the year: uniforms, supplies, a device, trips, activity fees?
Why ask it
A charter is a public school and should not charge tuition, but the extras add up, uniforms most of all. Get last year's total for one child in this grade, and whether there is help for a family that cannot cover it. A single required uniform vendor tends to cost more than a rule about color and style, so find out where the clothes are bought.
Are parents expected to volunteer a set number of hours, sign a family contract or make a contribution?
Why ask it
Some charters ask families to sign a compact covering hours, homework checks or attendance at meetings. Ask what happens when a family cannot meet it and whether it has ever affected a child's place. Whether a school may require any of this depends on the state, so if it sounds like a condition of enrollment, raise it with the authorizer.
Which sports and clubs ran this year, and can students play for a district team when you do not field one?
Why ask it
Small schools field fewer teams. Whether a charter student may join the neighborhood school's team depends on state and league rules, so ask how it works locally and whether any current student does it. For a teenager who lives for a sport, this one question can settle things.
How to size up a charter school before you apply
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
What to look up before the visit
Find the school on its authorizer's website
Authorizers commonly post the charter contract, the renewal decision and the yearly reviews. Ten minutes there gives you the renewal date and any conditions attached, so the visit can be spent asking what the school did about them.
Pull the state report card for two schools
State education agencies generally publish test results, growth, enrollment by grade, discipline counts and the share of students with disabilities for every public school. Print the page for the charter and for the district school your child would otherwise attend, and bring both.
Put the lottery dates on a calendar
Application deadline, drawing date, acceptance deadline. Charter deadlines can fall months before a district opens registration, and a late application usually goes to the bottom of the waitlist.
Read the family handbook with a pen
The handbook holds the discipline system, the uniform, the attendance rules and anything parents are asked to sign. Mark the pages your child would find hard and ask about those pages in person.
Cross off what the paperwork already answers
Once you have the charter contract, the report card and the handbook, a fair part of this list is answered or half answered. Bring the dozen questions that are left, plus any where the documents and the website disagree.
At the open house or enrollment night
Take each question to the person who knows
The enrollment coordinator can answer the lottery questions. Special education goes to its coordinator, the budget and the building to the principal or a board member, and the classroom questions to a teacher in the grade.
Ask for the number, then the story
'How many students left mid-year' gets a figure, and 'where did they go' gets the explanation. When a number is not to hand, ask who can email it to you and write down that person's name.
Come back while classes are in session
An evening event shows the staff at their best. Ask to walk the building on a school day, watch one hallway change and stand for ten minutes in a classroom in the grade your child would enter.
Find a parent the school did not choose
At pick-up or in a neighborhood parents' group, ask what surprised them in the first year. If you know a family that left, ask them too. Two unprompted accounts balance a polished presentation.
Weighing it against your district school
Compare one child's day, not two averages
Ask each school what your own child's day would hold: the class size in that grade, the reading program, the services written into an IEP, the bus. A higher schoolwide score is no help if the support your child needs is thinner.
Lay the logistics side by side
Start and end times, the commute, meals, after-school care, the calendar and the cost of uniforms. A school that looks better on paper and adds an hour of driving a day is a household decision as much as an academic one.
Keep the fallback open until you hold a seat
A lottery entry is a chance, not a plan. Find out whether accepting a charter seat affects your child's place at the district school or a transfer you applied for, and the date by which you would have to give either up.
When an older child does not want to move
Show them the building and the handbook, and let them say what they would lose by leaving. A twelve-year-old who arrives unwilling at a school with a strict conduct system is in for a hard first semester, and you are better off knowing how they feel before the acceptance deadline.
Answers that should slow you down
Nobody can name the authorizer or the renewal year
A teacher may not know, but the principal and the enrollment staff should. If the people running the evening are vague about who oversees the school, look up the authorizer's file before you go further.
Disability questions answered with talk of fit
A school that greets an IEP by wondering aloud whether your child would be happier elsewhere is showing you how the year would go. Ask what it would provide, ask for that in writing, and take an unanswered question to the authorizer.
Upper grades half the size of the lower ones
Unless the school is still growing a grade at a time, a steep drop from the entry grade to the top one needs an explanation. 'Families move' covers a few students a year, not half a class.
Hoops before the drawing
An essay, an interview or a required session offered only on a weekday morning sorts families before chance gets a turn. Ask what the step is for and what happens to an application without it.
Pressure to commit on the spot
An acceptance deadline is real and you should respect it. A push to sign enrollment papers at the open house, before you have read the handbook or seen a classroom, is a different matter. Take the papers home.