This school is NOT geared towards gifted children!
The Ross Global Academy Charter School is admitting children via blind lottery, and intends to include children with learning disabilities and ESL children.
From their website, "Ross School seeks students of diverse geographic, academic, economic, social, ethnic, and racial backgrounds."
http://www.ross.org/WebSite_98/index.asp
"Our goal is to serve students from diverse backgrounds with a variety of academic abilities, including students with special needs and English Language Learners (ELLs)."
http://www.rossglobalacademy.org/
Yes it is. When you look past the boilerplate description, you will see that the blind lottery pool is not purely random.
Applications are taken from children who fit the standards and then the applicants who measure up get into the lottery.
The school requires a massive amount of mandatory homework time and parents who demonstrate their commitment to supervising this rigorous study, the school is specifically geared as a college preparatory program, etc.
And every NYC school must have special needs students as a matter of official policy ("mainstreaming")- there are plenty of special needs students (dyslexics, behavioral cases, paraplegics) who are quite bright. The same goes for ESL students.
The Ross school is a school for gifted children just as surely as NEST - who children are also preselected according to the school's criteria and who include ESL and special needs children as well.