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125 happy applicants win spots in UFT-Green Dot charter
May 22, 2008 2:46 PM
Estrella Sosa, with her grandfather, Mario Perez, shows off her new T-shirt after being selected.
Dozens of anxious parents and children were on hand on May 12 for the admissions lottery for the Green Dot New York Charter HS to select 125 students out of nearly 500 applicants.
The path-breaking school, which will open this fall in the South Bronx, is being founded by Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles-based operator of unionized charter schools, in partnership with the UFT.
Families, sometimes represented by three generations, waited attentively as school officials pulled names one by one from a cylinder and announced them. The names were also typed onto a laptop and then projected onto a screen.
“I’m so excited I can hardly stand up,” said Daisy Williams, whose granddaughter, Rhonda, was the first name called. She’s “very smart” and “reads a lot,” said Williams.
Williams was accompanied by her daughter, Areatha — Rhonda’s mother — who was especially impressed with Green Dot’s class size average of 25 students.
Kelvin Urena, who stood proudly with his mother when his name was called, said, “I wanted to get into this school so I can go to college.”
UFT Bronx District 7 Representative Patricia Filomena (left) makes the selections while future principal Ashish Kapadia reads out the names of the lucky winners.
Estrella Sosa, who also was selected in the lottery that evening, said she had sought information on the Internet about the school after learning that it offered an “exciting college-preparatory opportunity.”
The lottery took place in the auditorium of JHS 162, where the new school will be housed.
Only 9th graders are being accepted in the fall; additional grades will be added in succeeding years.
Green Dot currently operates 12 high-performing public charter schools in Los Angeles’ highest-need communities. With to their college-preparatory curriculum, the Los Angeles schools graduate 98 percent of seniors, 78 percent of whom go on to four-year colleges.
Green Dot schools encourage parent and teacher participation. Their unionized teachers are involved in deciding school policy, curriculum and the discipline process. The schools also stay open late for community use.
The Green Dot New York Charter HS will be the first charter high school in the South Bronx and the first partnership in the country in which a teacher union and a charter school operator are working together from the ground up to open a school.
Many of the students who won placements at the school are from first-generation immigrant families. The school is located at the corner of 149th Street and St. Ann’s Avenue in a neighborhood that is home to many English language learners.
All of the winning applicants were given a Green Dot T-shirt and urged to sign up for one of five orientation sessions in May.
If any of the 125 students selected to attend in the fall fail to complete the enrollment process, students will be selected from a wait list, said Ashish Kapadia, the school’s principal and a former Jane Addams HS history teacher.
