Young Scholars Responds to Patch Readers' Concerns Over Mailings

Mailings

When some readers of the Baldwin-Whitehall Patch began receiving mailed application materials from the , a tuition-free public charter school that is set to open in this coming fall, many other readers were asking, "Where are mine?"

Young Scholars, as a public school, cannot set criteria for whom it recruits to enroll other than trying to find interested residents of the .

Still, before the Baldwin-Whitehall Patch published an , several readers sent the B-W Patch news tips claiming that mailings from Young Scholars to their homes over the previous few weeks may have shown a bias toward potential applicants. Readers were claiming that they had received mailings inviting them to apply for their children to enroll at Young Scholars even though some of their neighbors with eligible children had not received them.

The concern was if Young Scholars was targeting specific students given that receiving an invitation to apply to the school through the mail is a more direct method of communication than a posted application on the school's website.

(You can view Young Scholars' mailing as a PDF below the photo gallery toward the top of this page. Those documents are also available on the school's website.)

The B-W Patch had asked Young Scholars for comment on its mailings process prior to publishing the aforementioned April 13 article, but a phone message was not returned in a timely manner.

Young Scholars did eventually return the B-W Patch's message by email on April 29 after B-W Patch Editor Bob Healy went to one of the school's open-house sessions on April 28 to inquire again.

Dr. Melih Demirkan, president of the Young Scholars' board of directors, issued the following written response to the B-W Patch on April 29:

"YSWPCS does not target any particular parent or student demographic to which to send application packages - application packages were mailed to all parents who have school-aged children and live within 6 miles of the school. We purchased these addresses through the U.S. Postal Service, although the accuracy of these addresses is not fully guaranteed by them. Thus, if someone does not receive a package, it is and (sic) unconscious oversight over which we have little control. However, mailings is not the only method by which we seek to publicize our open enrollment process to potential parents. Parents can go to our website www.yswpcs.org to apply online to our school. Our open houses are another opportunity for them to attend to get more information and complete their applications. First preference for admission is given to students from the Baldwin-Whitehall district followed by students from other districts if there are further spaces available."

Board of Directors

At the April 28 open-house session attended by Healy, President Demirkan revealed who the other members of the Young Scholars of Western Pennsylvania Charter School's board of directors are:

• Dr. Isa E. Hafalir (Assistant Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University)
• Dr. Laura Mahalingappa (Assistant Professor of Instruction and Leadership in Education at Duquesne University)
• Dr. Peng Yuan (Researcher at Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC)
• Dr. Onur Kesten (Assistant Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon)