The state’s Office of Charter Schools (OCS) received 17 applications for new charter schools during the 2025 application cycle. Those figures were provided by Ashley Baquero, the director of OCS, at the May 5 meeting of the North Carolina Charter Schools Review Board. The application cycle closed on April 25.
Five of the new charter applications are from Wake County, three are from Mecklenburg County, and two are from Gaston County. The following counties each had one application: Durham, Moore, Forsyth, Edgecombe, Franklin, Pender, and Union.
One of the Gaston County applicants has already withdrawn, according to a new article published yesterday by the News & Observer. That article also included input from Coalition Executive Director Dave Machado about the new applications, parental choice, and demand for charter schools.
We share an excerpt from the News & Observer’s article below:
… Dave Machado, executive director of the N.C. Coalition for Charter Schools, said what matters most is that charter schools are helping some families escape from low-performing schools.
“Parents have the option to decide where their children will go to school not based on their ZIP code,” Machado said in an interview.
Some charter schools in Wake have had problems attracting students. Machado said the market will decide whether any current or new charter schools rise or fall.
“I don’t know if there’s a number that a person or a bureaucrat can put on what is the saturation point,” Machado said. “Saturation is when people stop applying, and for the most part people have not stopped.”
Read the full article from the News & Observer. See EdNC’s coverage of the May CSRB meeting.
