Has anyone on EL Haynes waitlists gotten a call/email?

[Anonymous]

I called the school again and the new word is that they may not start working the waitlists till the end of June. Yikes!

[Anonymous]

This may be because the school has experienced a couple of rounds of no shows with their early August start. They wait til the August school start, see who shows up, then work the wait list, say be here tomorrow for your slot in an ongoing classroom.

It may be their response to a situation where the wait list churn in May/June/July does not result in a lot of students in their August classrooms.

After all, how many DCUMers are currently holding slots in more than one school?

[Anonymous]

That's ridiculous. All the other charters require that parents confirm enrollment by a certain date. If they haven't confirmed, their slots get offered to people on the waiting list. Why would Haynes hold slots for parents who haven't confirmed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's ridiculous. All the other charters require that parents confirm enrollment by a certain date. If they haven't confirmed, their slots get offered to people on the waiting list. Why would Haynes hold slots for parents who haven't confirmed?

Because it's not the parents they're focused on?

[Anonymous]

There are very few spots, if any, that will open up this summer. Right now the administration is focused on completing the school year (Thursday is the last day), holding parent/teacher conferences and determining which children will progress to the next grade. And yes, staff will likely cover all bases to ensure that current students have the opportunity to continue, even if their parents missed a deadline. That child-focus is what makes the school such a special place in my eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are very few spots, if any, that will open up this summer. Right now the administration is focused on completing the school year (Thursday is the last day), holding parent/teacher conferences and determining which children will progress to the next grade. And yes, staff will likely cover all bases to ensure that current students have the opportunity to continue, even if their parents missed a deadline. That child-focus is what makes the school such a special place in my eyes.

the school has every right to focus on the children and should do that. But, an administration owes a responsibility to adults, as well. If you can't put a proper structure in place to operate a waitlist or worst yet, communicate properly about the processing of said waitlist, it speaks your ability to run a school. My wife and I have gotten more information about ELH's waitlist from people on this thread then we have from the school.

[Anonymous]

Don't assume that the school doesn't have a proper system in place to manage the waitlist, or that you have gotten any helpful information about the waitlist from this forum. This forum is just plain gossip and hearsay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are very few spots, if any, that will open up this summer. Right now the administration is focused on completing the school year (Thursday is the last day), holding parent/teacher conferences and determining which children will progress to the next grade. And yes, staff will likely cover all bases to ensure that current students have the opportunity to continue, even if their parents missed a deadline. That child-focus is what makes the school such a special place in my eyes.

the school has every right to focus on the children and should do that. But, an administration owes a responsibility to adults, as well. If you can't put a proper structure in place to operate a waitlist or worst yet, communicate properly about the processing of said waitlist, it speaks your ability to run a school. My wife and I have gotten more information about ELH's waitlist from people on this thread then we have from the school.

I can understand your frustration, but consider the school's situation. They need parents of current students to get in their forms, so they set deadlines and present them as real. But they won't punish the students for the failings of their parents, so the deadlines aren't real. So the waitlists won't really move until school starts on August 1st and there are chairs in need of butts (and the paperwork deadlines have finally, truly become real). Until then, the school will keep up the "deadlines are real" charade in hopes of getting the stragglers to turn in their paperwork, but won't actually kick out any kids for failing to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: But, an administration owes a responsibility to adults, as well. If you can't put a proper structure in place to operate a waitlist or worst yet, communicate properly about the processing of said waitlist, it speaks your ability to run a school.

Charter schools are on a fixed budget. Spending a lot of adminstrator time communicating to potential parents about wait list status is a black hole time sink. I respect a school that minimized the staff time and attention to that, and instead puts staffing dollars into classroom teachers. One of the things that I've heard about EL Haynes is that they admit students year round. If someone moves out of state in December (as happened in my daughter's class in another charter), Haynes works the wait list then to find another student for that classroom, even though they could leave the seat empty, and not lose any funding.

I respect a school that operates that way. It means there will be fewer new kids starting in August. It means their goal is to find a student for every seat in the school year round.

Communication is a tough issue, for schools in general, and for charters in particular. If you are not pleased with lack of communication about the wait list, maybe you are not cut out to be a charter parent.

[Anonymous]

That's a pretty ridiculous thing to say. But, if you feel the need to flame, so be it.

Again, I have posted several times in this thread. All ELH has to say is "all our students have provisionally accepted to attend the school next year. We have no wait list spots currently. Please check back in August." No one has said that to me, and it seems it is common with other people in this thread.

[Anonymous]

I think that what you are saying is that you want them to provide you with a definitive answer as to when the waitlist will move rather than give you the best information available to them at the time that you call. They are trying to be helpful, and I think that your frustration is probably more about wanting to have your DC's school plans finalized before the beginning of the summer than with the school itself. One thing I can tell you about Haynes is that the staff is very responsive to the needs of the families.

Perhaps your best response is to stop calling the school so often to find out if they waitlist has moved. Can you imagine how much work that creates if each of the 100 parents (or even if the top 30 or so parents) from each of the those 5 grades are calling the office on a weekly or bi-weekly basis?

The waitlist is a very real and set in stone thing at Haynes. We had a good number the year we got in, and got a call offering us a spot even though we didn't call on a weekly basis to check on the progress of the wait list.

[Anonymous]

I am not calling to check on the progress of the wait list. I am calling to find out when they will actually start moving the wait list at all. That is my frustration. I said it right above. If they told me, "The wait list has not moved because all students have accepted to date," I would stop calling. That is not what they say. And, the reason is because they have given people 3 months+ to accept. That seems unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's ridiculous. All the other charters require that parents confirm enrollment by a certain date. If they haven't confirmed, their slots get offered to people on the waiting list. Why would Haynes hold slots for parents who haven't confirmed?

This would do nothing. What does "confirm enrollment" mean? Fill out a fiorm and send it in? So even if a parent is undecided, he or she would "confirm enrollment," and then defer the choice until later. It's not a private school, where you sign a contract and can be forced to pay tuition even if you don't attend.

[Anonymous]

Oh, come on, it is obvious what the poster meant. Every charter school asks students who win the lottery to elect to accept the spot. Usually they have 2-3 weeks to do so. If you decline, they move down the waitlist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, come on, it is obvious what the poster meant. Every charter school asks students who win the lottery to elect to accept the spot. Usually they have 2-3 weeks to do so. If you decline, they move down the waitlist.

Of course - my point is that people who haven't decided will accept the spot and then back out later on when they DO make the decision. That's why there is much more movement after the first day of school, when they see who actually shows up. Getting all worked up now is pointless.