City parents are chomping at the bit for charters.
An estimated 70,700 families submitted more than 210,000 applications for 21,000 open seats at city charter schools for the coming school year, New York City Charter School Center officials said Wednesday.
The record number of applications will leave about 50,000 kids on waiting lists.
That’s about the same number of wait-listed kids as last year, despite 15 new charter schools set to open in the 2014-15 school year.
“Demand for charter schools from parents continues to exceed the supply of seats by a high margin, as is the case with high-quality traditional district schools,” said James Merriman, CEO of the Charter School Center.
“Though we are pleased to see even the slight improvement in the wait list numbers, sadly we have a long way to go before we can tell every parent that wait lists are a thing of the past.”
The number of applications increased from 181,600 to 212,500 this year, making this the fifth year in a row that the number of applications continued to climb.
Charter schools serve 6% of the city’s kids attending public schools.
