Lottery Guidelines

According to Maryland Charter School Legislation (Statute § 9-102(1-13)), enrollment in public charter schools is open to all students on a space available basis and admits students on via a lottery if more students apply than can be accommodated. City Springs’ lottery procedures apply to any K-8 vacancies that exist after all in-zone students are served. Lottery participation is open to all students who are residents of Baltimore City.

Lottery participation is also open to non-resident students who pay tuition at the rate established by BCPSS, though available slots are allotted to Baltimore City students first. A public charter school may not limit enrollment based on student’s race, color, religion, national origin, language spoken, intellectual or athletic performance.

Enrollment/Lottery Process

  1. Charter lottery applications will be released in the fall of each school year for the following school year.

  2. The City Springs lottery will include all completed pre-registration applications for enrollment received by the published date.

  3. City Springs will make available at the public lottery the projected number of vacancies at various grade/multi-grade levels. Students at City Springs are homogeneously grouped by skill level and not strictly by grade. Therefore, vacancy projections may be made for multi-grade groupings (for example 3 slots are available for grades 1, 2, etc.). As a point of reference, there are fewer than five spaces available per grade level.

  4. The lottery is a system of random selection of pre-registration applications that identifies students for enrollment and generates the school’s official waiting list. During the lottery process, all completed and accepted pre-registration applications submitted during the enrollment period are publicly drawn by student name in random order until capacity is reached in that grade or multi-grade grouping.

  5. The remaining pre-registration applications for that grade or multi-grade level will be drawn and placed on the waiting list in the order they are drawn. In the event one sibling is chosen through the lottery, the remaining sibling(s), if not chosen, will receive a preference on the waiting list by being moved to the top of the waiting list. In the event there are multiple families with sibling(s) on the same waiting list, they will remain in the order in which they were drawn. The date of the lottery drawing will be set district-wide, usually in February.

  6. The waiting list ranks applications by the order they were drawn in the lottery and by grade or multi-grade grouping. Pre-registration applications received at City Springs after the public lottery is held will be added to the waiting list in the order they are received. As spaces become available at the school, they are offered to the applicants in the order of placement on the waiting list. A current waiting list will be maintained in the school’s main office through September 30th of each year.

  7. The waiting list is only valid until September 30th.

Retention Clause

If a student is chosen for a grade or multi-grade slot and is then retained at their sending school, or if the information provided on the enrollment form about the student’s grade level is found to be inaccurate, the offer of admissions will be rescinded and the student will go to the end of the waiting list for the newly identified grade level.

Preference for Employees

Employees and administrators of City Springs and City Springs’ operator (the Baltimore Curriculum Project) are given preference. Such applicants will be given priority for vacancies after any slots going to in-zone students and kindergarten siblings of current students and before students are admitted to City Springs via the lottery.