New Charter School Will Be 60% Latino, 30% White

The Redwood City School District's newest charter school, Connect Community Charter School (CCCS), recently held a lottery to fill all the open spots for its first full year in operation, the 2013-14 school year, beginning this August.

The school's founders said it received approximately 100 more applications that it had open spots for 2013-14, so it held a lottery last Sunday.

Friday, the school issued a statement indicating the lottery was complete, and that all families who applied a child to the school had been notified that they either had received a spot for their child, or had been placed on the waiting list.

The school said Redwood City Mayor Alicia Aguirre had donated her time to assist the school with the lottery.

"Our lottery last weekend went without a hitch, and we send a special thank-you to Mayor Alicia Aguirre.  She lent her impartial eye to the proceedings and pulled each student’s number for us," CCCS' founders said in the statement.

The school's founders said they were pleased that the mix of students enrolled for the school's debut year was "diverse."

"A student body that reflects the diversity of Redwood City has always been one of Connect’s most important goals, and we are so pleased to have achieved it," the statement read.

"Of the students offered a place immediately, 59 percent are Latino, 31 percent are white, and 10 percent are of mixed or another ethnicity or race," the founders indicated in the statement. "We have 68 girls and 72 boys, and every single neighborhood school in the district is represented.  All the students admitted are residents of the Redwood City School District."

CCCS is reportedly still in the process of screening applicants to select the school's first principal and a teaching staff.

Though the founders say the school will eventually serve kindergarten up through the eighth grade, the school is starting small in its first year and only offering classes for kindergarten, first, second and sixth grades, for a total of 140 students.

"Now we are busy getting families registered and managing our wait lists, as well as tackling our long and exciting to-do list as we get ready for opening day, August 26," the statement said.

Though the founders say they eventually hope to build or take over their own full campus for CCCS, the school plans to borrow classroom space from existing Redwood City School District schools in the meantime. However, CCCS founders have not yet announced exactly where classes for the 2013-14 school year will be located, though several founders toured both Taft and Fair Oaks elementary schools in late 2012, and said they thought those campuses fit well with their needs, as well as their goal to be located in the eastern part of Redwood City.

What do you think of CCCS' plans and progress so far? Tell us your opinion in the comments below.

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