Massachusetts Charter Schools

2013-2014 Updated Charter School Student-Level Waitlist Report Submission

To:	Charter School Leaders
From:	Cliff Chuang, Associate Commissioner
Date:	December 11, 2013

This month, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Department) will collect updated waitlist data for each charter school in accordance with M.G.L. Chapter 71, Section 89(n), which reads, in part:

The names of students who entered the lottery but did not gain admission shall be maintained on a waitlist, which shall be forwarded to the department not later than June 1 in the year in which the lottery is held. In addition to the names of students, the school shall supply to the department each student's home address, telephone number, grade level and other information the department deems necessary. The department shall maintain a consolidated waitlist for each municipality in order to determine the number of individual students in each municipality seeking admission to charter schools.

For this submission, the Department requests that each charter school provide the following data elements for each student included in their current waitlist.

First Name Last Name Middle Name Date of Birth (MM/DD/YYYY) Town Code FY14 Grade

This FY14 Updated Charter School Student-Level Waitlist Report should be completed using the Excel template named FY14 Updated Charter School Waitlist that has been uploaded to the school's Charter School File Exchange dropbox within the ESE Security Portal. Please note that this is an update of the waitlist data your school provided last spring (see: http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=7437), and the waitlist data provided should be as of December 6, 2013. Unless your school has conducted subsequent enrollment cycles to add new names to your waitlists, it is possible that this will simply be a subset of the data previously provided. As with all data collections, the Department may review a sample of the waitlist data reported by charter schools. Therefore, please ensure that your charter school's enrollment process is clearly documented. Specifically, please be sure that you have carefully tracked the seats available at the time of the lottery (if applicable) and maintain records of all applications received. Please note, the Office of the State Auditor is currently undertaking a review of ESE's charter school oversight activities, and it is likely that this data will be shared with them. The deadline for submitting the FY14 Charter School Student-Level Waitlist Report is 5:00 p.m. on Friday, January 10, 2014. Please note, if your school did not report a waitlist in the FY14 pre-enrollment report, this additional data collection will not apply to your school unless you now carry a waitlist. We anticipate the next collection of waitlist data will be conducted in parallel with the submission of pre-enrollment data for 2014-2015 in mid-March 2014. Please be aware that the Department may need to collect and update this information on a monthly basis and is in the process of developing plans for automated reporting tool to minimize the time and effort needed to comply with this statutory requirement. We will keep you posted. Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter. If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact Lee DeLorenzo (ldelorenzo@doe.mass.edu; 781-338-3227) or Joanna Laghetto (jlaghetto@doe.mass.edu; 781-338-3221).

Last Updated: December 11, 2013