Addressing Housing Stability in Choice

For several years, the housing market in many cities has been hot.  Increasing rent has led to decreased housing stability for many vulnerable families.  Most choice application windows occur in January or February, more than 6 months before the start of school. And most high-performing schools fill their available seats during the main application process. This can create a "false choice" because it disadvantages families that are unable to secure long-term housing from being able to access high-performing schools.  It also pits neighborhood boundary schools against choice schools in their area, because they are not necessarily serving all students.

In Denver, we conducted extensive analysis about the academic and socioeconomic needs of students who are experiencing housing instability.  Additionally, we created a data-driven methodology to determine the number of seats needed to meet the needs of our students based on historic summer enrollment rates by grade by neighborhood. Then we worked with a group of school leaders, both charter and district, to create a new enrollment process that reserves 2,500 seats for students who need a seat over the summer. 

Read more about this from Chalkbeat, here.