The parents have to write seven little essays of their own and then fill out the child’s medical history, including medications (an intrusive request that some critics say violates federal privacy law) — and remember, this isn’t for an accepted student to attend, but for a student to apply in the first place. It’s capped by the would-be student’s minimum three-page autobiography, typed, double spaced and “well constructed with varied structure.”

This is for a taxpayer-funded public school that, by law, all students are supposed to be able to attend, regardless of background. If too many sign up, enrollment is supposed to be handled by a lottery. That’s supposed to keep charter schools from cherry-picking students so they can show the best testing results, as they’ve long been accused of doing.

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The ACLU’s Southern California chapter partnered with Public Advocates to examine the application policies of 1,000 of the state’s 1,200 charter schools. A fourth of them, Roseland included, had a policy that could be used to exclude some types of students in violation of state law, including those with lower incomes or poorer English skills, the report showed, whether it was requiring parents to volunteer, demanding students’ academic histories or failing to provide services for special-education students. On some applications, the obstacles were relatively minor and easily corrected, but others appeared aimed at keeping out low-performing students or those whose families weren’t in a position to handle the complicated forms.

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In some cases, though, charter schools — public schools — are clearly laying out obstacles bigger than those in the applications of private universities, with requirements that put low-income students, foster children and those from poorly educated or immigrant families at a disadvantage. No students should have to write lengthy autobiographies or divulge their medical histories to a school that could then decide their asthma or history of cancer makes them a bad bet. Their autobiographies might include information about parental ties to the community or immigration status — information that no public school has a right to know. Parents shouldn’t have to volunteer on campus to get their kids into school — those who work two jobs, or have younger children to care for, probably don’t have the time — or write essays of their own, especially when they might not be literate.