The phone call to Lesley Henry about her 4-year-old daughter made her scream – and she was one of the lucky ones.
More than 14,000 students scrambled for fewer than 2,500 seats in a lottery yesterday at 33 city charter schools.
The cheers and sighs of parents marked the beginning of notification season for kids vying to attend one of 79 charter schools this fall. “I’m so excited! My daughter and I have been talking about this for days,” said Henry, after learning that her daughter, Akayla-Grace Mack, would have a seat at the Hellenic Classical Charter School in Brooklyn.
The school got 211 applications for 35 openings this September.
*While some charter schools hold lotteries with hundreds of parents in a festival-like atmosphere, others seek a more subdued tone because of the less-than-1-in-5 odds of a landing a coveted spot.
“We do a pretty low-key lottery because we have 307 applicants for kindergarten for about 32 spaces,” said the head of school at Harlem Day Charter School, Anne Burns. “We don’t want to see hundreds of people crying.”