Aftercare availablity

[Anonymous]

We go to Tubman, everyone can go to aftercare, no waitlists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our charter does not have a waitlist for aftercare. The only time that it had a waitlist was 2021-2022, because it was hard to hire staff.

Op here. I understood that there would be a hard time hiring staff in 2021-2022. But this is for 2024-2025 and hundreds are on the waitlist because “covid” prevents them from hiring enough staff. I don’t know if the administration even realizes that this is not the case elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We go to Tubman, everyone can go to aftercare, no waitlists.

Putting it on my school dc list for next year.
Is it hard to get in out of bounds?

[Anonymous]

What school is this?

[Anonymous]

Our DCPS school guarantees aftercare for everyone. I agree it seems crazy that you could just get shut out of aftercare at some schools and no one views that as a big problem that needs to be fixed.

[Anonymous]

I've gotta say as someone who will need aftercare, this seems absolutely insane. For 2-working-parent households not having aftercare is largely not an option. How can DC not provide it to everyone at least for a fee? I have never heard of that anywhere else.

[Anonymous]

Is this LAMB?

[Anonymous]

I have heard that Shepherd and MV have had this issue too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've gotta say as someone who will need aftercare, this seems absolutely insane. For 2-working-parent households not having aftercare is largely not an option. How can DC not provide it to everyone at least for a fee? I have never heard of that anywhere else.

In our MoCo ES aftercare slots for next school year filled up in January. The school did say they are trying to open up more slots. But I don't think this is specific to DC at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've gotta say as someone who will need aftercare, this seems absolutely insane. For 2-working-parent households not having aftercare is largely not an option. How can DC not provide it to everyone at least for a fee? I have never heard of that anywhere else.

It's not easy to find people who want to work roughly 3-6pm, less than 180 days a year, for what aftercare pays, and who can pass a background check. And who would actually show up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they all have a max. Is that your only question?

Are there hundreds of students on aftercare waitlists all over the city? This is for next year, not this year.

I still can't figure out your purpose. If your school has a waitlist, what does it matter if others don't?

Because if this is a problem all over the city, it doesn’t make sense to leave our charter. It does NOT seem to be a problem all over the city. So I am going to look at other options for my kids for the following year. Our inbound school has lots of aftercare options, but I wasn’t sure if it was an anomaly. At this point I’m just trying to figure out if it’s worth staying at our charter.

I know it sucks, but leaving your charter presumably has other significant consequences. How does that impact your middle school plans, assuming this is a school that feeds to DCI. Unless you have this sorted out, I would think that aftercare is not worth leaving unless you’re prepared to do private or move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they all have a max. Is that your only question?

Are there hundreds of students on aftercare waitlists all over the city? This is for next year, not this year.

I still can't figure out your purpose. If your school has a waitlist, what does it matter if others don't?

Because if this is a problem all over the city, it doesn’t make sense to leave our charter. It does NOT seem to be a problem all over the city. So I am going to look at other options for my kids for the following year. Our inbound school has lots of aftercare options, but I wasn’t sure if it was an anomaly. At this point I’m just trying to figure out if it’s worth staying at our charter.

DC Bilingual (charter) has space for any interested student. Mundo Verde and LAMB have waitlists. Those are the only schools I know but I am sure others have familiarity with other specific schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've gotta say as someone who will need aftercare, this seems absolutely insane. For 2-working-parent households not having aftercare is largely not an option. How can DC not provide it to everyone at least for a fee? I have never heard of that anywhere else.

It's not easy to find people who want to work roughly 3-6pm, less than 180 days a year, for what aftercare pays, and who can pass a background check. And who would actually show up.

And yet every other community I'm familiar with manages it. This seems to be a uniquely DC issue and a deeply backwards one at that. Daycares are open until 6 because obviously you need childcare until then if you work a 9-5, as most do. Shouldn't it be a axiomatic for public schools to do the same?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I guess to answer your question no most schools don’t have hundreds on the waitlist. But again it didn’t matter. We never got into aftercare being number 3.

That sucks. We are in the 60s with one kid, so I doubt we will have aftercare either. And this isn’t good aftercare and we pay a lot for it, but I need it so I can work and put food on the table.

It feels frustrating to me that it by April, you have hundreds of families scrambling for care, and the school is basically telling us to figure out alternatives. This is the third year in a row where aftercare is an issue.

If this is the 3rd year in a row, then it’s not a surprise and why don’t you have plan B and C?

[Anonymous]

There are third parties that provide bus pickup and aftercare if a threshold number of kids will be picked up from your school. Your best bet is probably finding the other parents on the waitlist and signing up together