| dc.description.abstract | Sustainable student enrollment is vital to a charter school’s economic and organizational performance. It is a metric that drives countless decisions. Charter schools use various techniques to recruit and retain students. From the school’s location to parent preferences, there are a plethora of factors that directly and indirectly impact a school’s enrollment. A major side effect to inadequate charter school enrollment is negative budget implications. Knowing that every charter school’s budget is based on the number of students enrolled, executive school and network leadership must understand recruitment and enrollment as it relates to building an adequate budget to fund the program. Despite the number of factors that influence enrollment, charter schools are left with decisions to determine which factor(s) aligns most to their school’s priorities and capacity. In other words, charter schools must determine the factors that have the highest leverage on their school community. Over the last 20 years, the educational community has experienced a strong wind of change that fosters increased parental choice and empowerment. Now, more than ever, parents can determine where their student will go to school. A quantitative methods approach was used to analyze and guide the investigation into a local charter school's enrollment challenge. Additionally, this capstone aimed to answer two important questions: what factors are most important to families for choosing their student's school, and what factors influence families to decline certain options. | en_US |
