Amidon Inbound - PreK 3 List - Chances

[Anonymous]

Headed into our first DCPS lottery for PreK 3. Below is our list the schools that we are putting down for the lottery. Just hoping our little one gets into a DCPS for PreK3 (daycare is $$$). Listed inbound school. New to the process, so any thoughts on how to rank? Any CapHill schools that we left out that should have been included? Thanks!

AppleTree PCS - Waterfront Station
AppleTree PCS – Lincoln Park
AppleTree PCS – Southwest
Amidon-Bowen Elementary School (Inbound)
Capitol Hill Montessori
Maury Elementary School
Payne Elementary School
Peabody Elementary School
School-Within-School
Shirley Chisholm Elementary School
Van Ness Elementary School

[Anonymous]

What are your priorities? Are you fine w/Amidon for elementary? Are you hoping to secure an elementary path or just Prek?

In general, I would remove Maury and Peabody. You have no shot there for Prek OOB. Your chances at Payne and Van Ness are very slim as well. So fine to keep them, but consider removing them if you have other schools you'd like to consider instead. I would add in Miner Elementary and AppleTree Oklahoma (as a safety). You may want to add Brent. They are moving to swing space next year and there could be more opportunity in the lottery this year because of that. You may also want to look at Two Rivers.

Rank the schools in the order you prefer. If you truly have no preference between the two, then put the one who is harder to get in first.

[Anonymous]

Rank in true preference order. That's really all you need to know.

I think with your list you run the risk of not matching anywhere. Do you need help finding safety schools?

[Anonymous]

I'm not OP, but based on last year's results both AppleTree Waterfront Station and AppleTree Southwest had seats that went unmatched on results day. So OP would get in somewhere with those on the list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are your priorities? Are you fine w/Amidon for elementary? Are you hoping to secure an elementary path or just Prek?

In general, I would remove Maury and Peabody. You have no shot there for Prek OOB. Your chances at Payne and Van Ness are very slim as well. So fine to keep them, but consider removing them if you have other schools you'd like to consider instead. I would add in Miner Elementary and AppleTree Oklahoma (as a safety). You may want to add Brent. They are moving to swing space next year and there could be more opportunity in the lottery this year because of that. You may also want to look at Two Rivers.

Rank the schools in the order you prefer. If you truly have no preference between the two, then put the one who is harder to get in first.

Priority is to eventually get into a good elementary school at some point and getting out of daycare this year. Little one has no siblings, so we can only hope for proximity outside of Amidon.

Our top 5 would probably be:
Capitol Hill Montessori
Amidon-Bowen Elementary School (Inbound)
Shirley Chisholm Elementary School
Payne Elementary School
AppleTree PCS - Waterfront Station

[Anonymous]

Getting into Payne OOB won't happen for Prek3. And Chisolm seems pretty unlikely as well. But none of that matters if you are happy with AT Waterfront.

Last year AT Waterfront only fille 40 of their 80 seats. I'd assume you will be able to match there, though it doesn't solve your elementary years need.

[Anonymous]

Is this the order? You are guaranteed some combination of Amidon, AT Southwest, and AT Waterfront and being near home for preK makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are your priorities? Are you fine w/Amidon for elementary? Are you hoping to secure an elementary path or just Prek?

In general, I would remove Maury and Peabody. You have no shot there for Prek OOB. Your chances at Payne and Van Ness are very slim as well. So fine to keep them, but consider removing them if you have other schools you'd like to consider instead. I would add in Miner Elementary and AppleTree Oklahoma (as a safety). You may want to add Brent. They are moving to swing space next year and there could be more opportunity in the lottery this year because of that. You may also want to look at Two Rivers.

Rank the schools in the order you prefer. If you truly have no preference between the two, then put the one who is harder to get in first.

Priority is to eventually get into a good elementary school at some point and getting out of daycare this year. Little one has no siblings, so we can only hope for proximity outside of Amidon.

Our top 5 would probably be:
Capitol Hill Montessori
Amidon-Bowen Elementary School (Inbound)
Shirley Chisholm Elementary School
Payne Elementary School
AppleTree PCS - Waterfront Station

I would put the good elementaries you're hoping to eventually get into at the top of the list (regardless of how unlikely) and round it out with Amidon and the two AppleTrees (which you'll almost certainly get into). But really think about how far you're willing to commute with your three year old. And if you're at all interested in DCPS middle school options, maybe factor that into the order of your list.

Personally I'd look at:
- Ludlow (good test scores, feeds to Stuart-Hobson)
- Peabody (all ECE, feeds to Stuart-Hobson)
- Thomson (adjacent to Amidon-Bowen boundary, people seem to like it, feeds to John-Francis)
- Payne (good test scores, feeds to Eliot-Hine)

People seem to like Amidon-Bowen for ECE. We play on their playground on the weekends sometimes and have run into lots of friendly parents with kids at the school.

Based on DCUM, it seems like Capitol Hill Montessori is pretty disorganized and not so great after ECE. Might be worth searching for old threads on this if you're hoping for an option that will work through elementary school.

[Anonymous]

I'm not super clear on Seaton's feeder pattern these days, but you could add it if you just want to maximize your chance of matching somewhere that's ok.

[Anonymous]

Seaton feeds to John Francis but would instead feed to the new Euclid middle school by the time OP’s child would be middle school aged.

[Anonymous]

OP Here...

Thank you everyone for your great advice. Will be listing various schools first with Amidon and the two AppleTree schools last.

How does the waitlist move? If each student is matched with a school, how is there movement on the waitlist? I can't imagine a lot of people moving or saying no to a matched school. Maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP Here...

Thank you everyone for your great advice. Will be listing various schools first with Amidon and the two AppleTree schools last.

How does the waitlist move? If each student is matched with a school, how is there movement on the waitlist? I can't imagine a lot of people moving or saying no to a matched school. Maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks again!

The waitlists move quite a lot. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/aaron2446/viz/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData_draft/MSDCPublicDisplay

People do sometimes decide to stick with daycare, because it can be a lot more convenient than public school with all its breaks and summers and stuff. Considering that plus paying for aftercare plus having a sibling at daycare so sibling discount, DCPS isn't that great a deal.

People also just have changes in their lives, like moving away.

After the lottery, schools finalize their decisions about how many kids to have. For example if a school had only two Kindergarten classes, but then realizes it's going to need three classrooms to handle all the in-boundary kids that it cannot turn away, there might be a need for some wait-list kids to fill up that third room.

[Anonymous]

You are aware of the swing space for Amidon next year, correct? All the kids will be bussed to Columbia Heights for 2 yrs. Just making sure you want that for your prek3 and prek4 yrs if you do get into your IB. You're guaranteed that for K and up so maybe put it much lower on the list.