Policy 5111 ADMISSIONS (M)
The Link Community Charter School Board of Trustees utilizes the following process for student admissions and recruitment:
Admissions
Link Community Charter School participates in the Newark Common App, a centralized application, enrollment lottery, and waitlist system.
Families apply to Link Community Charter School through the Newark Common App process, which ensures that all students entering Kindergarten through Grade Eight from the school's region of residence will have equal access to enrollment, regardless of race, color, national origin, creed, sex, ethnicity and sexual orientation and with no prejudice based on "intellectual or athletic ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, status as a handicapped person, proficiency in the English language, or any other basis that would be illegal if used by a school, either by policy or any other means." The Newark Common App gives enrollment preference to families residing in Newark, East Orange, Orange, and Irvington, as well as siblings of currently enrolled students.
Link Community Charter School also gives enrollment priority to, regardless of residence, the children of teaching staff members of the School pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-8.c.(2). For the purpose of this Policy “teaching staff member” shall mean, a member of the professional staff holding office, position or employment of such character that the qualifications, for such office, position or employment, require them to hold a valid and effective standard, provisional or emergency certificate, appropriate to their office, position or employment, issued by the State Board of Examiners and includes a school nurse and school athletic trainer, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:1-1.
Families apply online at https://newarkcommonapp.org/. The application window is typically between December and March and families are notified of their acceptances in early April.
If all seats are filled, families desiring acceptance at Link Community Charter School are placed on a Waitlist, and additional acceptance offers are made if seats open up.
Families can visit https://newarkcommonapp.org/ or contact Link Community Charter School for additional application information.
Recruitment
While Newark Common App provides some student recruitment, Link Community Charter School also has its own recruitment and marketing plan.
Link Community Charter School's recruitment and marketing plan reflects the school's mission to provide an outstanding education for students of all abilities in the school's region of residence, which includes Newark, East Orange, Orange, and Irvington. The school's recruitment plan has been designed to ensure that the school's population is representative of the communities it serves in terms of academic, racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds as well as including at-risk, special needs and English language learning students. Additionally, the plan has been developed with the intent to not only comply with Federal and State statutes and administrative codes regarding discrimination, but to eliminate local influences that might either prejudice the admissions/enrollment process or lead parents/guardians to believe there is limited opportunity of enrollment for their child.
To recruit a cross-section of the kindergarten through eight student population in the school's region of residence without discrimination and eliminating the potential for exclusion of applicants, Link Community Charter School will have a comprehensive marketing and information campaign in place. The campaign will use several strategies for reaching out to parents/guardians encouraging them to apply for their children and to help them make an informed choice about enrolling their child in the school.
Link Community Charter School's outreach campaign will include information packets, Open Houses, information sessions throughout the school's region of residence, direct mailings to residences in the four schools the school will serve, press releases and feature articles, advertisements (print and online media sources, public locations), and public service announcements on radio and cable television. Additionally, the school will use social media, the school's website as well as Facebook, for recruitment purposes. Each year Link Community Charter School will review the recruitment and marketing plan and adjust as needed.
18A:36A-8.c.(2), N.J.S.A. 18A:1-1
Adopted: 10 June 2014
Revised: 14 March 2022
Revised: 22 January 2024
Revised: 26 June 2026