How to avoid the September shuffle?
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Anonymous
| We had a spot for DS in a charter but were on the wait list for our local ES (PS). Got a call at the end of week 1 and decided to move. Painful for us and DS. From the postings on these boards it seems there is a lot of this going on. Problem being people have no incentive to commit to a place until school starts. What if people were required to put down a refundable deposit for their place, say $100 which they lost if they pulled their child after a certain date. Could be waived for families that meet FARMS criteria. |
Anonymous
I have no problem with it; the shuffle only will result in kids getting into more desired schools  . It's inconvenient, yes...
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Anonymous
| So, in effect, paying for public school. Yeah, don't see any problems with that. |
Anonymous
No, paying for your inability to commit, if your kid turns up for the school you enrolled in you get your money back. |
Anonymous
| Yeah. This is the dumbest idea I've heard in a while. |
Anonymous
| Would that have stopped you from moving schools? My guess is no, so your solution is not only horrible philosophically but it also doesn't work. |
Anonymous
At 3 years old, your DC will get over it pretty quickly. It's only been a week. Why do you feel bad about going to your local school? Charter schools and public schools can't, legally, charge for school. Preschool is not compulsory, so there's no way to really enforce this type of thing anyway. School funding is based on October deadline, so the schools have no incentive to scare people off with a $100 deposit. It might be more realistic to address the current chaos by reducing the number of DCPS OOB lottery picks to 4 from 6 (do you really want to go to your 6th choice?) and to require a "use it or lose it" intent to enroll deadline of September 15th or 2 weeks after school starts for charter and OOB school spots. This would be for for non-compulsory years of preschool and pre-k only. |
Anonymous
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The Sept shuffle is primarily driven by 3 things:
1. holding multiple spots 2. deciding after the school year starts that their child is not ready / school is not a god fit 3. decising that the commute will not work The only one of these that should be addressed is holding multiple spaces. This could be fixed by DCPS requiring schools to check enrollment data to see if children are enrolled at multiple spots including charters. If schools were required to do this in early June, they would be able to identify situations where someone had more than one spot - and they could flag these children for the schools. The school has incentive to make the family make a decision - so they are not redoiong class lists, calling families to fill spots the 1st week of school etc. If families are not forced to make a decision, they will not make it until the 1st week of school. IMO this is the only way to fix this problem. |
Anonymous
| OP here. In our case we know the family that vacated the dcps spot we ended up getting moved out of DC, they just didn't bother to tell the school. Bet they would have if they had had to commit a hundred bucks the week before school started. Its hardly the end of the world for us or DS just a PITA which seems likeit should be possible to avoid. |
Anonymous
do you really think the school can manage holding a refundable deposit? historically, DCPS could not figure out how to collect fees for aftercare costs - you needed to pay with a money order! I know of families who gave up trying to pay aftercare b/c no one at the school knew who collected the money. |
Anonymous
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WaPo article on the same subject.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-school-parents-struggle-with-wait-list-shuffle/2012/09/09/6b10eb26-f2f1-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html Like the idea in comment from tobor, but if they can't organize to collect lunch money.... |
Anonymous
| Keep admissions at the individual charter level. The issue is made out to be worse than what it truly is... so many factors go into why a parent would switch their three or four year old's school, unfair to limit options just for the sake of the bottom line. |
Anonymous
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We are among those hoping for these double bookings by parents so that we an move our child!
On a side note, I accepted a spot at a charter school in May and then decided on our neighborhood school within weeks. We accepted the charter because we had a week to decide and the school would only allow us to see the school one particular morning where we had a doctors appointment. We had to decide blind and didn't want to miss out on a good opportunity. The next open house was 3 weeks later. When we declined, I called and emailed multiple times. In August we got a call for a parent/teacher meeting. They still had us as enrolled! Point being, its only the parents creating the problem! |
Anonymous
| Ooops..."its NOT only the parents creating the problem!" |
Anonymous
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for grades K to 2, Yu Ying required a 2 week summer session. The deposit is $450. You get the deposit back if your student attends, forfeit the deposit if a no show.
The justification is that YY hires the faculty, but only gets the summer school funding from the city after a child attends. |