Pre-k 4 lottery
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Anonymous
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Did we essentially miss the boat if we didn't get in with pre-k 3? I'm looking at some of the waitlist numbers and it seems there are minimal availabilites in the schools we would want after pre-k3. Am I reading these numbers wrong or are we essentially talking just 1 or 2 spaces to lottery into each year after pre-k?
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/aaron2446/viz/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData_draft/MSDCPublicDisplay/ |
Anonymous
The numbers are accurate. Which school are you looking? If the school is great, the chances of people leaving are slim. |
Anonymous
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You definitely did not miss the boat. It seems like there is a lot of seats offered in PK3 but a lot of those went to siblings anyway, you couldn't have had them.
Things tend to open up more in Kindergarten because the class size goes up and kids leave charters for their in-boundary schools. But you don't see that in the data because people don't need to lottery for K at their in-boundary school. |
Anonymous
Was looking at Inspired Teaching, LAMB, and then some of the Petworth traditional publics like John Lewis, Dorothy Height and EL Haynes. |
Anonymous
El Haynes is a charter. Inspired is hard for PK4 because unlike at many other schools, the class size does not increase between PK3 and PK4. |
Anonymous
This, we got multiple offers in K for schools we'd written off because we were totally locked out in PK. Same thing in 1st. I can tell you from experience that moving schools in K or 1st is totally fine for kids socially and academically. Statistically, almost no one wins the PK3 lottery. Those handful of charter schools that tons of people lottery for and only give out 30 spots and half or more go to siblings? Well do the math. Almost no one gets in. Yet a lot of people wind up happy with their elementary school. Because it turns out that even if you "lose" the PK3 lottery (like virtually everyone does) you still have lots of options. |
Anonymous
You missed the boat on LAMB but you could get spots at the others. One thing you may not realize from the waitlist numbers is that that as you go up in grade, the number of people trying to lottery in goes way down. This results in much shorter waitlists, and they often move more. Like look at John Lewis. Last year they had 356 applications for 35 PK3 spots , and 92 applications for 9 PK4 spots. Roughly 10 applications for every PK spot, plus consider many of those applicants are IB. But there were just 50 applications for 10 K spots -- 5 applications per spot. So your chances are twice as good in K as they would be in PK, plus unlike in PK, every one of those K applications is OOB. So your waitlist number will only be bumped down for siblings. And it gets better! A significant number of those 50 applications actually matched with a school they ranked higher than John Lewis in the lottery, so even though only 10 of those 50 applicants got spots on match day, the waitlist for K was only 14 kids long. And then they made 8 waitlist offers. All by June. So of the 50 families vying for a spot in John Lewis's K class in the lottery last year, only 6 were SOL. Those are actually pretty darn good odds. |
Anonymous
| Where are you now? A lot of people settle or go to an ECE only option like Appletree for PreK3 & 4 and then move for K. If you are lotterying for the first time for PreK4, just list a a mix of 12 options near you understanding it might not end up being your first choice long-term elementary school option. |
Anonymous
We’re at Francis Education Campus (former SWW@Francis Stevens). We got a placement in their 10:6 class through my son’s IEP but he’s doing great, they are moving him out of that into a regular classroom next year, so he does not need to be at that specific school. We’re actually happy with the school, the commute is just awful though. Of course there is hesitation about taking him out of a place he is doing so well, but just want to explore the options closer to us. |
Anonymous
There's no harm in trying, then! You can always stay at Francis for PK4 and then try again in K, when the chances go up again. We always had offers in K. |
Anonymous
| Play the lottery this year. Reassure yourself that if you dont love the option(s) this year, your current school placement is solid and there will be more options come K. |