Question about DCPS pre-K lottery

[Anonymous]

Is it necessary to attend the open houses? Other than giving you a feel for a place, does attending an open house increase your odds for getting in or getting off waitlists?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Even if the principal were able to move you to the top of the waitlist (some folks say this is impossible; the DCPS principal I know best would never do such a thing), s/he wouldn't remember you from an open house that took plave before the lottery. I'd wait until after the lottery to start schmoozing.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

No, they will not remember you from attending an open house and NO you will not be in a better positon--it's a lottery. But you better go and visit some of these schools. I would never blindly send my kids to a pre-school without looking at it first. Good grief!

[Anonymous]

Nope, it does not make a difference at all in the lottery. And principals are required to follow their lottery wait lists and not give any preference outside that.

I did find the open houses helpful in terms of getting a better feel for the community, vibe of the parents, etc. that you cannot glean from the website. Also, some schools don't have great websites but don't assume that means they don't have great things to offer. I was on the fence about a few schools, but the open houses gave me much more information and convinced me that a particular school would be a good fit.

Having said that, due to scheduling I just couldn't make all the open houses I wanted to attend. I coordinated info with a few close friends who were looking for the same kind of educational experiences. This was very helpful when one of us was not able to make an open house. We also compared notes on the open houses we all attended but on different days; or that we attended together but we ended up talking with different parents and teachers. We tried to get the fullest picture we could on each school.

So do your best, know that it may not be logistically possible to get to every single one, so join forces with trusted friends and colleagues to complete your information.

And then...good luck in the lottery! It is frustrating to do your best due diligence and make an informed choice when applying and ranking, only to draw an utterly hopeless number. But something seems to work out for most people in the end.

[Anonymous]

I did not attend any open houses, and I found/got into a school that works really well for DD.

Initially I scheduled to attend a few open houses, but as a single working mom I found either they didn't fit my schedule ( I have to save time off for when DD is sick) or some work issue came up where I had to be in the office. Also, it really just didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, given my time constraints, to attend a bunch of open houses and get my mind set on a school where we might not have a chance of getting in, so I decided to wait until after the lotteries and only go to open houses if we stood a good chance of getting into the schools.

That said, I spent a lot of time, years in fact (since DD was 6 mos old), researching education methodologies, reading DCUM and other parent sites, asking questions about parent/child experiences at schools that seemed like they would fit what I wanted. When it came time for lotteries, based on my research I applied to 6 publics and 7 charters -- some schools I really wanted, some fairly good choices, and 1 charter and 1 public each that I thought were decent but not highly in demand so I had a good chance of getting in.

My waitlist numbers were pretty bad for all but 1 of my top choices, where I had waitlist number in the teens. They still had one more open house I could have attended, but DD ended up being sick, so I missed it. We got in 1 week before school closed for the year, so I made an appointment to tour the school, which worked really well for me.

DD is at that same school now, thriving and happy.

So my advice is, do your research, and if you have time to attend open houses, take advantage of them, but it's not necessary to go.

P.S. I did get calls from some other schools over the summer.

[Anonymous]

We didn't attend a single open house pre-lottery. We just picked the 6 IB/OOB schools and applied to about 8 charters. Once we got in, then we worried about open houses (they still have them after lotteries, and always have them for admitted people). If you want a tour of a neighborhood DCPS, just do an individual one. We did, and I'd be waving a big red-flag if a school didn't want to do that. We were welcomed into our neighborhood school with open arms to visit whenever - we chose it in the end.

[Anonymous]

With Charters, the wait and see approach works because you can get into more than one. BUT with DCPS, you can only get into 1 of the 6 you apply for, so if you don't know what order you prefer those schools in then yes, definitely go.

[Anonymous]

Besides the need for information to rank your choices (for DCPS not for chaters), I think it's useful to attend open houses to better know what you're looking for and what you want to prepare for. But no you don't need to and I can't see how it would be an advantage in the application.

[Anonymous]

Agree with everything stated above. If you have a reasonable lottery number, be sure to visit the school at some point so that you will know whether to say yes if you get the call. Sometimes they only give you 24 hours to decide and you won't have time at that point to do a bunch of site visits.