The Day After Approval: Enrollment and Recruiting
Lisa DiGaudio
Founding Board Member & Principal, New Dawn Charter School
Well, you can’t have a school without students now, can you? Your enrollment policy is so important at this time because it must be reflective of what you put in the charter. Remember, you were chartered based on certain “promises” you made to the state/authorizer when you wrote the full application. You can’t write your application for high school students and then decide that you’re going to be an elementary school. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, if you were to change your enrollment policy, you might have a deal breaker on your hands. Stick to what you wrote! (To see what we wrote for New Dawn Charter School, download a copy of our application.)
Make sure that your enrollment policy is aligned with state guidance and laws as well as your enrollment and retention targets listed in the charter. Be sure to include targets for English language learners (ELLs), students with disabilities and students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Even if it is not formally required, it is best to submit your enrollment policy to your authorizer prior to beginning the enrollment process in order to ensure full compliance with your charter and state laws/regulations.
Hand-in-hand with the enrollment policy should be your recruitment plan. As a charter school, you must perform outreach to your entire community, including the ELL population as well as the Special Education population. So, where do you go and how do you effectively recruit students? Part of the process in getting your charter was reaching out to the community. The same needs to be done for recruitment. This means handing out flyers, attending school fairs, going to local churches, meeting local representatives, and attending community board meetings. All of these activities will put your school on the map. Radio spots, newspaper articles, interviews, anything you can do to get the mission and vision of the school out there for the public to see will help you make your numbers. Stick to your recruitment plan outlined in your charter. This will help you stay on course. Social media like facebook and twitter are also two methods to get your name out there. In many instances, you can connect all of these on your website, enabling visitors to see any kind of activity happening with the school. Check out the websites from some of the Model Schools in the Network of Independent Charter Schools to see how they provide materials and information to help in the recruitment process:
Academy of the City Charter School
Heketi Community Charter School
John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School
Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School
Lefferts Gardens Charter School
Renaissance Charter High School for Innovation
Staten Island Community Charter School
Tech International Charter School
Do not forget to make sure your recruitment materials are in the languages that dominate the community in which you seek to open. Handing out flyers in English will not encourage non-English speaking applicants to come to your school. By distributing flyers in many languages, community members know that you are in tune with the entire community living in the neighborhood who will benefit from having a charter school in the area. Again, this includes reaching out through local media (newspapers, radio and TV stations, etc.) but in multiple languages. I know of several schools that have weekly spots on different local radio stations, have had camera crews come in to do small spots advertising the school for websites and local TV stations, and have written small articles for the local papers in the languages spoken within their neighborhood. Making sure that your website is available in the predominant languages within your community is key to successful recruitment. See, for example, the Boston Bridge Charter School website, which uses the Microsoft Translator tool to allow users to translate pages in their website into various languages. There are a number of other translation tools available for free on the web, including Google Translate and Free Website Translation.
Reaching the special education population can be a bit tricky, as some potential parents do not want to entrust their children in a new school if they have special needs. One of the myths about charter schools is that special education students are not serviced in the same way as traditional public schools. It’s important to reach out to local supports for special education. (In New York State, you should contact your local Committee on Special Education). Establishing a relationship with local resources agencies is paramount to ensuring your students receive the proper services. It’s also important that parents see that you are active in implementing the goals set forth in a student’s individualized educational plan (IEP) and helping that student be successful in achieving those goals. These small steps speak volumes to parents and community members who may be skeptical of a charter school’s effectiveness in teaching students with IEP’s.
If you begin thinking about recruitment as soon as you are chartered, then you will be on the right track. Once again, there are many resources available to you for help. Authorizing agencies typically provide you with the timelines in which certain activities must be conducted. The Network for Independent Charter Schools, particularly through the Online Hotline, is available to help with questions and training that you may want to receive. Don’t be afraid to ask for help--it is there for the taking and is intended to help your school be successful! When we’re successful at recruitment, we are successful at helping more kids achieve their dreams.
