In 1998, State legislation authorized the creation of charter schools that operate independently of existing school districts. Applications to create such schools may be submitted to either the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees or the State Board of Regents. Applications must meet certain requirements to qualify for approval. For example, they must present evidence the anticipated enrollment for the new school can be reached and must describe the expected impact of the school on other nearby schools. We examined whether these requirements were met by selected applications. We found it was not always clear how the expected enrollment would be reached or how nearby schools would be affected by the creation of the new school. We recommended that better guidelines be developed for these requirements. We also found that improvements were needed in the practices used to monitor the operations of charter schools that had been established.

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