Thousands Face Slim Odds In Lottery For Boston Charter School Seats

BOSTON (CBS) - On Wednesday evening, thousands of families huddled in cafeterias and gymnasiums to see if they had won a seat in the Boston charter school lottery.

More than 13,000 children vied for roughly 1,400 seats meaning about 9 out of 10 of them did not get one.

Nine-year-old Desmond Taylor was one of those kids. Desmond's mother, Debbie, said her son is not challenged enough by the Chelsea Public School system.

"I kind of feel happy and nervous," Desmond said while waiting to hear the lottery results.

The process is now entirely electronic. Numbers are assigned to each child and chosen at random.

"It's not a fun night. For 9 out of 10 families in kindergarten their going to walk home disappointed tonight," John Clark, co-director of the Brooke's Charter School in East Boston.

Families are willing to endure the agony in the hopes of achieving a better education for their kids. According to a 2015 Stanford University study, Boston charter schools outperform their public counterparts by a striking margin.

Those results are part of the reason why Boston Mayor Marty Walsh supports lifting a statewide cap on charter schools through legislative means.

"How can people share best practices from the charter schools, which are doing very well, to work with the public schools. That's really what we have to do. We have to feed off each other," Walsh said Wednesday.

Opponents of the charter school movement say the long wait lists as well as the academic successes are the result of inflated numbers and rigged classrooms.

"The 13,000 figure is inflated by phantom students, according to a study done by Citizens for Public Schools, by as much as 100%. On the other hand, there are no less than 7,000 and as many as 10,000 Boston Public schoolchildren on waiting lists for their first choice of Boston Public school seats," the president of Boston's teacher Union, Richard Stutman wrote in a statement.

For now, Desmond Taylor's dreams are on hold. He is number 111 on the waiting list.