Original Research by School Decision on Community Roots Charter School
Community Roots Charter School is a small charter district serving kindergarten through eighth grade in Kings County, New York. The enrollment is modest and stable across grades, with a student body that is roughly half white, nearly a quarter Black, and a mix of Hispanic, Asian, multiracial, and other backgrounds. Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and counts of students with individualized education plans or English learners is not available.
The school's academic proficiency results and graduation rate are not reported in the available data, which is common for charter schools that operate outside traditional district reporting structures or serve grade bands where state testing does not apply to all grades. A parent seeking detailed academic performance metrics would benefit from contacting the school directly or reviewing materials on its website.
What does appear in the data is attendance. Community Roots shows a chronic absenteeism rate that places it in the top quartile among Kings County's districts, a genuine strength indicating students are in school regularly. Per-pupil spending sits in the middle range, somewhat below the median for the county, suggesting the school operates with tighter resources than some district peers but not on an extreme shoestring.
The school has embarked on a visible facilities improvement effort. A Facilities Committee is working to secure public funding for the buildings, and this push has already yielded concrete upgrades: new bathrooms at the elementary school and auditorium improvements at the middle school. A 2024-2025 community survey signaled family support for the public-funding bid, and the school appears positioned to continue investing in the physical learning environment. For families considering a small, community-focused charter, this trajectory suggests a school that is attending to the basics of infrastructure and daily operations.
The student population is intentionally diverse. Community Roots describes itself as "diverse by design" with an anti-bias model embedded in its mission and pedagogy, a framework that has been in place since the school's founding. That approach to community and curriculum is a distinguishing feature, though the degree to which it shapes day-to-day classroom experience is something a prospective family would want to explore in visits and conversations with teachers and administrators.
One limitation for prospective families: detailed program offerings, course availability, staffing ratios, and disaggregated performance data for subgroups are not in the available record. A parent considering Community Roots should plan to gather that information directly from the school, particularly if there are questions about curriculum breadth, special education services, English learner support, or how the school measures academic growth over time.
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