How CMS parents play the school lottery, take a chance and customize child’s education
Tonya Bruce views her child’s education with a global lens.
Bruce was born in Germany, where her father was stationed for the Army. So, when her 5-year-old daughter was ready to enter kindergarten, Bruce wanted her to learn German and be immersed in the language.
She considered her assigned school — Blythe Elementary in Huntersville — and private schools before entering the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools choice lottery. It was a chance to customize her child’s education, Bruce said.
“Sometimes home schools are not a viable option, or you want your child to specialize in something,” she said.
Bruce’s daughter got a seat this school year in the North Academy of World Languages, a K-8 magnet school in Huntersville and one of 104 different magnet programs CMS offers. She’s one of the roughly 30,000 students who take advantage of magnet programs or CMS school choice — about 21% of the district’s population — as part of a yearly lottery.
By keeping the Bruce family in a publicly funded school, CMS accomplished part of what it hopes to do by offering specialized programs and classrooms for students other than where they’re assigned. It’s one way the district can compete with Charlotte-area private and charter schools.
“These experiences are truly unique and provide an opportunity for access for all regardless of ZIP code or median household income,” said Walter Hall, director of magnet programs. “Families don’t have to look outside the district for an amazing, unique, and rich educational experience.”
Bruce says her daughter’s long-term academic performance looks good because of the new opportunity.
“It feels like a private school,” she said.
CMS wants all families to participate
CMS’ school choice lottery for the 2023-2024 year opens Jan. 16. The lottery application window runs through 10 p.m. Feb. 13. While all CMS students are guaranteed a seat in an assigned home school, the lottery allows parents to choose magnet options that match a child’s interests and talents, Hall says.
That’s part of the reason the lottery was created in the first place, to match what children want and need, said CMS school board member Jennifer De La Jara.
“They deserve unique opportunities to embrace their learning styles and interests,” De La Jara said. “A secondary side-effect is that indeed magnets function just like their name suggests – by attracting families, including charter and private families, to their unique programming.”
Hall told The Charlotte Observer the district doesn’t publish the number of available seats for its different magnet programs until after the lottery. That’s because different variables allow CMS to increase seats throughout the lottery season. But he encourages all families to participate.
For the 2022-23 school year, more than 3,500 CMS children were on wait lists for magnets or school choice.
There are both full magnet and partial magnet schools, which have 14 themes running the gamut from automotive technology to cosmetology. An aviation academy and new early college program at Central Piedmont Community College are among new offerings for 2023-24.
Parents no longer focused on systems
The opening of this year’s lottery comes as traditional K-12 public schools have lost 5% of total enrollment over the last decade while enrollment in home schools increased 115%. Enrollment increased 202% in public charter schools, according to a 2022 BEST NC report. Private school enrollment increased 12% over the same time frame.
In Charlotte, where the population grew by 31,381 people between 2020 and 2021, CMS’ enrollment has been mostly flat. It declined from the 2019-2020 year to the 2020-21 year. Hugh Hattabaugh, who served as interim superintendent, said this year’s enrollment is 141,219, about 250 more than officials projected. That’s an increase of about 800 students, from 2021-22.
Parents are no longer focused on systems. They want the best options for their child’s education, says Mike Long, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina.
“The win-win for school choice is that it makes all educational options better by ensuring every family, regardless of race and socioeconomic status, has an equal access to a quality education,” Long said.
Equity in school lottery
Hall says students work better in diverse schools and that CMS’ lottery is built to increase equity and reduce the number of schools with high concentrations of poverty and need.
The district does this, he says, by working to develop boundaries that incorporate socioeconomic diversity, meaning magnet programs have a mix of students whose families have different income levels and backgrounds.
CMS uses factors such as census data and family-reported questions, including the median household income, the number of minors in the household and the highest level of educational attainment to ensure equity.
“Our goal is to try to diversify each school’s student population,” Hall said.
CMS has full magnets, which don’t have an attendance boundary — and partial magnets, which have an attendance boundary, with lottery seats.
Full magnet schools are broken into thirds, with available seats distributed evenly among students depending on their access to financial, educational and social resources. In partial magnet schools, students who live in the neighborhood are automatically assigned. The remaining seats are filled with groups of students the school is missing based on income and social metrics.
For example, if a school has 90 seats and 30 of those seats are filled with students from moderate-income families, remaining seats would be filled with students that come from lower and/or higher income families, Hall said.
Therefore, lottery applications are given priority when they include data about household income, number of minors in the household and highest level of education obtained.
Siblings and more choices
CMS’ lottery system also includes built-in guarantees.
Siblings and proximity: Once a student gets a seat in a school, he or she doesn’t need to reapply every year. For most schools, a younger sibling has a guaranteed seat in the same magnet school as the older sibling, too. A proximity guarantee gives students living in a geographic area of a full school magnet an automatic seat.
Transportation: Students accepted to school choice programs also are guaranteed a ride to schools within their transportation zone, either with neighborhood bus stops or shuttle stops.
More choices: The lottery system gives families assigned to a “priority school” — one ranked among the lowest-performing in the state — six choices instead of three.
“How do you know if you’re assigned to a priority school?” Hall said. “The best way to know is by entering your lottery application and seeing what’s there. Your lottery application will tell you if your assigned school falls under School Performance Priority, and you will see that you have six slots available to fill.”
Parents can participate in the lottery by visiting the district’s enrollment and lottery site and following the link to the enrollment process.
A parent’s changed opinion
Wesley Keith is the father of three young children and a staunch advocate of traditional public schools.
When his wife mentioned a Montessori school, which emphasizes independence and children seeking natural interests, Keith pictured a private school. That, he says, wasn’t an option.
Then the family heard about CMS’ Trillium Springs Montessori, a pre-K through sixth grade school in Huntersville.
“Montessori emphasize(s) self-motivation,” Keith said. “The lessons are interactive, and the children have a lot of options as to how they want to approach their day. I honestly laughed at the idea of self-motivating 6-year-olds, but I have seen it in action and it works.”
Long says providing more educational options only elevates the choices available to families.
“To me, the CMS magnet program offers families the chance to find a school whose philosophy is best suited for their child, all while remaining in the public school system,” Keith said.
This story was originally published December 30, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
