How to Get Into a Charter School in California (2027–28)

When do California charter schools take applications for 2027–28?

Most charter schools set their own dates, and they can be weeks apart. So in October 2026 we read charter school websites across Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco counties. This calendar shows the 2027–28 dates we found, for the county and grades you choose.

Look at the earliest dates first. In the three counties we read, most of the December dates to apply by were at middle and high schools. A family whose child starts 6th or 9th grade next fall may need to apply a month or two earlier than at many elementary schools. A few schools with younger grades are early too, so the calendar names them. If your child is starting middle or high school, check those schools’ pages now, not in the new year.

Most of the schools whose sites we could read hadn’t posted a 2027–28 date yet. A school with no date on its page may post one later in the fall. It may also have put the date somewhere we didn’t look, such as a network’s main page or an enrollment portal. We’d check each school on your list again in December and January, when more of them may have posted.

A date on a school’s page can mean different things. It can be a final deadline. It can be a priority date: apply by then for a better chance, and the school still takes applications afterward, often onto a waitlist. Or it can be the lottery itself, which comes after the school’s deadline. High Tech High in San Diego, for example, keeps taking applications after its open enrollment period ends. Its page says those later ones “are considered post open enrollment” and don’t get priority in the lottery. The calendar labels each date with what the school’s page says it is, so read the label as well as the day.

Read the line on the school’s page that names 2027–28, too. Several pages we read still showed last year’s dates beside this year’s, and one printed the year as 2007.

Do we apply to the charter school, or to our school district?

Usually the school. Most charter schools in California run their own admissions, on their own website or an enrollment portal they choose. San Diego Unified says it plainly: “Charter schools operate independently of San Diego Unified, and each school sets its own enrollment and admissions procedures.”

One account can cover several campuses. Charter networks often use one online system for all their schools. PUC Schools’ enrollment page says, “Only one account is needed per family.” Each school or network still sets its own dates. A family applying to three schools in three networks fills in three applications.

Charters run by a school district can work differently. In Los Angeles, LAUSD runs a group of “affiliated” charters. A family inside one’s attendance boundary enrolls with the school directly. Other families apply through LAUSD Choices, the district’s own application, on time by November 6, 2026. LAUSD’s other charters, the independent ones, aren’t on that form. The district’s Choices FAQ calls them charter schools “that are not part of the CHOICES application.” Our LA charter finder marks which kind each school is, and the LAUSD Choices guide covers the district form.

Online and home-study charters also take applications on their own forms. Before you apply to one, ask whether it can enroll a student from your address.

If you aren’t sure which kind of charter a school is, ask its office: “Do we apply on your form, or through the district?”

State law sets the same basic rules behind each form, and it says a good deal about who may apply.

Can anyone go to a California charter school, and does it cost anything?

A charter school is a public school that runs under a charter. The charter is an agreement approved by a school district, a county board of education or, on appeal, the State Board of Education. Some, like LAUSD’s affiliated charters, are run by the school district. The rest have their own board, and some belong to a charter network. None of them is a private school.

It doesn’t charge tuition. Education Code § 47605(e)(1) says a charter “shall not charge tuition.” A second law, § 49011, says students can’t be charged a fee for “participation in an educational activity.” It names charter schools. A school can still ask for voluntary donations. “Free” here means no tuition and, as a rule, no fees to take part in the school’s educational activities; before- and after-school care can still cost money. High Tech High’s FAQ, for example, says its before and after care has a cost “on a sliding scale.” Ask each school what its care costs.

Where you live in California doesn’t decide admission on its own. The same section says admission “shall not be determined according to the place of residence of the pupil” within the state. Address still counts in a drawing, though. Families who live in the school district get preference there (in the county, for a countywide charter), and some schools have a neighborhood preference their authorizer approved. A public school that converted to a charter must also give preference to children who live in its old attendance area. That rule is why some charters have something that works like a catchment area. Palisades Charter High, for example, lists “Residents of the former attendance area of Palisades High School” first.

The law also limits what a charter can ask of you before your child is in. Under § 47605(e)(4), a charter can’t discourage a child from enrolling for any reason, including grades or a disability. It also can’t ask for your child’s records before enrollment. If an application wants report cards or test scores before the drawing, ask the school to put that in writing. A charter can encourage parents to get involved. Under § 47605(n), though, it must tell families that parental involvement “is not a requirement for acceptance to, or continued enrollment at, the charter school.”

What decides who gets a seat when more families apply than there are seats?

California’s charter school lotteries follow Education Code § 47605(e)(2): a charter school must admit every student who wants to attend if it has room. When more students apply than it can take, a public random drawing decides the remaining seats. Students already at the school keep their places and aren’t part of the drawing. Students who live in the school district get preference, or students in the county for a countywide charter under § 47605.6. The exception, under § 47614.5, is some charters in the state’s facility-grant program that give a neighborhood preference. A charter may add other preferences. The statute’s examples are siblings and children of the school’s teachers, staff and founders. The authority that approved its charter has to allow each one at a public hearing, and the school’s charter sets their order. No preference may limit access for students with disabilities, English learners or low-income students. Those are the rules in force for 2027–28 applications, as of October 2026.

How the drawing itself runs is up to each school:

1. Many schools draw group by group, in the priority order the school’s charter sets. Some weight the drawing instead: Helix High gives district residents a “60% weighted preference.”
2. In a group-by-group drawing, if a group has more families than the seats left, the drawing decides among them, and the groups after it may get no seats.
3. Families not drawn join the waitlist, under the school’s own rules.

The order in a school’s approved charter is the one that counts, and it differs from school to school. Schools can win approval for preferences beyond the statute’s examples. Larchmont Charter in Los Angeles lists children who live in LAUSD first, then siblings, then “Students eligible for the National School Lunch Program.” Palisades Charter High lists “Those who qualify for free or reduced-price meals” fifth. Neither meal preference is among the statute’s examples. Each is that school’s own, and the law says its authorizer must approve each one.

Siblings don’t come first everywhere. Palisades Charter High puts residents of its old attendance area ahead of them, and Larchmont’s page lists LAUSD residents above siblings. If you have a child at a school and live outside its district, ask where a younger sibling falls.

To find a school’s real order, ask for the admissions section of its approved charter petition, or look for it on the authorizer’s site. LAUSD’s Charter Schools Division posts approved petitions for the charters it authorizes. A school’s website summary is a good start, but the petition is what the drawing follows. Before a lottery, the school must also give you a state notice that it can’t discourage you from enrolling or ask for your child’s records first.

The order tells you where your family stands, but not how many seats will be left when your group’s turn comes.

What do lottery, magnet, priority points and selective admission mean?

These words describe different things, and a school’s name doesn’t tell you which one applies. For each school on your list, ask two questions: whose application do we file, and what decides the seats if the school is full?

A lottery is a rule for a full school, not a kind of school. A charter holds its drawing only when more students apply than it has room for. A charter that gets more applicants than seats every year still follows that rule; it just holds the drawing every year. A school can also be full without being oversubscribed, if exactly enough families applied. Most district schools follow a similar rule inside their own district. Under Education Code § 35160.5, you may ask for any school in your district, and a full school must choose by “a random, unbiased process” that doesn’t weigh grades or athletics, except at the specialized schools described below. Families who live in a school’s attendance area can’t be pushed out by transfers. Our guide to every option beyond your assigned school covers moving within your district and transferring to another one.

Magnet describes a program, not an admission rule. The California Department of Education says a magnet program “usually focuses on a special area of study, such as science, the performing arts, or career education,” and that districts set them up. The state’s school list marks a school “Y” if it “is a magnet school and/or offers a magnet program,” so one flag covers a whole magnet school and a school with one magnet program inside it. How a magnet chooses students is the district’s rule. In LAUSD, magnet seats go by priority points, the need to keep enrollment racially balanced, and the space available (2027–28 Choices brochure). Points come from things like years on a magnet waitlist and a sibling at the school. The brochure doesn’t say how ties are broken, and LAUSD’s dual language programs use no points. Some LAUSD magnets are Gifted or Highly Gifted programs, and a student must first meet their eligibility criteria to apply, as one LAUSD school’s magnet FAQ explains.

Selective admission means the school looks at your child’s work. The same district law lets districts keep “existing entrance criteria for specialized schools or programs if the criteria are uniformly applied to all applicants.” For 2027–28, San Francisco’s Lowell High admits about 70% of students on their 7th grade and first-semester 8th grade grades plus reading and math test scores. Oxford Academy in Cypress, part of Anaheim Union High School District, gives an entrance exam, and its 7th grade applications are due November 3, 2026. Fullerton’s Troy High tests 8th graders for its Tech program in January 2027. These are district schools, and their deadlines can come months before charter lotteries.

A charter’s rules are narrower. The law says it must admit every student who wants to attend if it has room, and it can’t ask for your child’s records before enrollment (§ 47605). The law doesn’t mention auditions, and at least one arts charter uses a placement step. OCSA in Santa Ana says applicants “may only enter the lottery for a conservatory in which they have completed the appropriate Conservatory Placement Activity and met the minimum proficiency level.” Its Arts & Enterprise conservatory needs the placement activity but “has no minimum proficiency requirement.” We haven’t found a ruling on whether a step like that is allowed. If a charter asks for an audition, a test or grades before its lottery, ask it to explain in writing how that fits the law.

How hard is it to get into a charter school?

We can’t give you a number for any one school. To work out odds, you’d need each school’s applicants and seats at each grade. We looked for a statewide, school-by-school count of either and found none: the state’s charter data pages cover schools and enrollment, not applications. Treat any acceptance rate you see for a charter as an estimate unless the school gave it to you.

Start with three things. The first is how many seats open at your child’s starting grade. Entry grades can open far more seats than later ones: Palisades Charter High’s FAQ estimated 750 openings in 9th grade for 2026–27 and 50 in each later grade. The second is how many of those seats go to current students and to the groups drawn ahead of yours. The third is whether the school is oversubscribed at all, because if it isn’t, everyone who applied on time gets in. School size tells you less than you’d think. A large school can still have few seats left for families with no preference once siblings and other groups are drawn.

A school’s own numbers from last year are the best guide to your odds that we know of.

Email each school on your list these four questions about your child’s entry grade:

1. Last year, how many seats did you have at this grade, and how many went to current students’ siblings, staff children or other preference groups before the drawing?
2. How many applicants were in the drawing for the seats that were left?
3. How far down the waitlist did you get by the first day of school, and by your last offer?
4. Is your entry grade TK or kindergarten, and which one can my child apply for?

Then apply to every school you’d actually send your child to. Separate schools run separate applications, so a family can usually apply to several charters and a district program in the same season. A school you’d turn down is a wasted line on your list.

The information doesn’t reach every family at the same time. Each date sits on a school’s or a network’s own page. A parent who hears about a charter from a friend can find its date in time, and a parent who never hears of the school can’t. We can’t measure what that’s worth in seats. It’s one reason we put the dates we found on one calendar.

What happens after the lottery: offers, waitlists and a backup?

Each school sets its own rules for offers and waitlists, so two schools on your list can work quite differently. LAUSD’s affiliated charters put families who aren’t drawn “on a waiting list for one school year,” according to the district’s 2027–28 brochure. Some independent charters keep taking applications after their lottery deadline and add them to the waitlist. San Diego Global Vision Academy says later applications “will be placed on the waitlist,” and San Diego Cooperative Charter says they “will automatically be wait-listed.”

Answer every offer by the date the school gives you, and keep each confirmation email. Before you accept one seat, ask the other schools whether accepting it takes you off their waitlists. Each school or network answers that for itself.

Keep a district school as the backup, and find out when your district takes registrations or applications.

In some districts that means registering at your neighborhood school. In San Francisco, district schools take one main application instead, due February 1, 2027 (Lowell and Ruth Asawa School of the Arts are due December 11, 2026). Either way, have proof of address and your child’s immunization records ready. A school must ask for immunization records at entry (Health and Safety Code § 120375). For kindergarten or first grade, bring proof of age too, such as a birth certificate or passport (Education Code § 48002). Some waitlists keep making offers into the school year, so a backup in place means your child has a school on the first day.

Our application tracker keeps your schools, their dates and where each application stands in one list.

What should we check before we apply: TK, special education, the ride and home-study charters?

A few practical questions can rule a school in or out before you spend an application on it.

Does the charter run TK?

Transitional kindergarten (TK) is the free public year before kindergarten. At a charter that runs TK, a child who turns 4 by September 1 is old enough (Education Code § 48000(c)(1)(G)). For 2027–28, that’s September 1, 2027. A seat still goes through the school’s application and drawing. Some charters don’t run TK at all, so ask whether the school’s entry grade is TK or kindergarten. Our TK and kindergarten cutoffs guide explains the birthday rule.

What if our child has an IEP?

A charter handles special education in one of two ways. It can be its own agency for special education (§ 47641(a)). Or it can count as a public school of the district or county office that approved it. Then the agency that granted the charter must make sure children with an IEP (an individualized education program) get their services (§ 47646(a)). Ask each school which way it works, and who delivers services on that campus. Admission rules protect your child either way. A charter’s preferences can’t limit access for students with disabilities, and the school can’t discourage a child from enrolling because of a disability (§ 47605(e)(2)(B)(iii) and (e)(4)(A)).

How will our child get there?

Charter transportation varies by school, so ask each one. KIPP SoCal says, “We don’t provide busing for students,” and adds that it works with families one by one on getting there. El Camino Real Charter High says students and parents “are responsible for their own transportation.” Palisades Charter High runs school buses, with limited spaces, that parents pay for each month. If your child’s IEP includes transportation, ask how the school provides it.

Is it a daily campus or home study?

Some charters teach mostly online or through home study, with little or no time on a campus each day. Our San Diego charter guide explains how to tell a daily campus from home study before you apply.

Is the charter better than our neighborhood school?

Charter status tells you how you apply, and very little about how good a particular school is. In Los Angeles and San Diego counties, charters run from near the top of the state to near the bottom. Put each school beside your neighborhood school on Compare, and use the Los Angeles and San Diego charter finders to read each school’s results. Then visit.

Where should we start in our city?

Where you live decides which of our city pages to open next.

• Los Angeles: the LA charter finder lists every charter in the county, area by area, and which ones you enroll in by address. Our LAUSD Choices guide covers the district’s own application for magnets, dual language and affiliated charters.
• San Diego: the San Diego charter finder lists the county’s charters with their dates, care, TK and home-study options.
• San Francisco: SFUSD’s main application for its own schools is due February 1, 2027. Ask each charter you’re considering how and when it takes applications.
• Anywhere else in California: look for the enrollment page on the website of every school on your list. Our city pages list schools in each city, charters among them: Oakland, San José, Sacramento and Fresno.

Most of this is paperwork and patience. Give each school its own line and answer every offer on time. With a district school kept as the backup, a drawing that doesn’t go your way still leaves your child a school in the fall.