Zeta Charter School, located in the South Bronx, received 348 pre-K applications for the Fall of 2022, and administrators told News 12 that at the final hours, the DOE denied several families seats for children whose older siblings had been admitted to the school.

Dian Walcott applied for the school lottery at Zeta for three of her kids. Her 6-year old son Chandler was accepted, but his twin younger brothers were put on the waiting list. For a parent, something of this nature can pose a lot of problems.

“I need all of them in one school” said Walcott. “I have four children. It’s gonna be hard for me to take the baby to day care and then take my oldest to Zeta and then take the twins somewhere else.”

The DOE told News 12 that the decision was made after careful analysis for the demand of pre-K seats in the community, and that there are pre-K seats available in other parts of the community. However, school administrators side with the parents more on this.

“The DOE should be making it easier for families to bring their children to school to start the recovery process” said a Zeta staff member. “But this makes it so hard that families have to juggle with DOE’s splitting up their children.”

Next week, staff, teachers, and parents at Zeta Charter School are planning to hold a rally at City Hall to call on the DOE to stop forcing parents to separate their kids across different schools.