pre-K lottery

[Anonymous]

At Murch and all DCPS I beleive, once a kid is in they are in, barring an insanely huge influx of inboundry children that would put the school to absolutely be bursting. The classrooms at Murch are 2 classes capped at 20 for preK, and 3 Kindergarten classes, which have been as big as 25. So the OOB preKers do not get bumped.
But you are right, if the kindergarten classes are full, as they were a few years ago, the OOB siblings did not get spots automatically for kindergarten. I beleive most of them got in throughout the yr or in 1st grade. But for the record some of the OOb kids I am talking about were not from outside of ward 3, but from different ward 3 school zones (Eaton, Hearst). With the DCPS wide OOB sibling preference policy they would have preference over other OOB kids after preK. But since preK is not a compulsory grade, no one is guaranteed a spot and so the local schools can make the decisions themselves- for better or worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are, of course, many people who will never send their kids to DCPS or to a school they perceive as "risky." But for the people who truly are on the fence between DCPS and private, I think pre-K admission to the neighborhood school is a HUGE factor. And those are the people -- along with people like me who are fully committed to sending their kids the neighborhood school -- I'm concerned with. Finally, what I'm aiming for is a central policy that makes the MDT policy moot. I think it's actually pretty simple to say that DCPS pre-K will follow the same admisstions/preference approach as K. I agree that if left up to the neighborhood schools, they'll err toward a more OOB-friendly policy since (as a previous poster mentioned) OOB parents with kids at Murch have a say while those of us in the neighborhood whose kids aren't yet school-aged do not.

We went through pre-K admissions hell this year for public, private, charter, boundaries, siblings, language preferences, financial, housing - you name it. I totally feel OP's frustration over the process. It's PRE-K for [bleep] sake.

But reading the Post Extra section on DC today was a reality check. No matter how many emails pre-k parents in NW wards send, the bottom line is still that pre-k is not required. I'm sure Rhee is well aware of the policy issue and I do believe she's working on it. She's a parent herself afterall. But the list of system-wide policies and changes being worked on is unimaginable.

Personally, I'd feel bad filling her inbox with a request for something she can't immediately deliver on and nor has ultimate authority over (pre-k admissions) when there are schools without enough toilets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/community/dc/index.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

. . . the bottom line is still that pre-k is not required. . . .

. . . . Personally, I'd feel bad filling her inbox with a request for something she can't immediately deliver on and nor has ultimate authority over (pre-k admissions) when there are schools without enough toilets. . .

The district is not (currently) required to provide pre-K, but they do. So everyone paying taxes should have the same opportunity for the limited spots. Unless it is solely need-based, as it is in many areas, but NOT in DC.

Under the new pre-K legislation -- regulations for which should be in the process of being written -- they will be required to provide it for 3 and 4 year olds, so it is something Rhee needs to be thinking about and moving towards policy anyway. And I do not feel bad about asking anyone to do their job. There are a lot of problems with DCPS, but issuing a one-page policy is not going to be what keeps the other issues from being solved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are, of course, many people who will never send their kids to DCPS or to a school they perceive as "risky." But for the people who truly are on the fence between DCPS and private, I think pre-K admission to the neighborhood school is a HUGE factor. And those are the people -- along with people like me who are fully committed to sending their kids the neighborhood school -- I'm concerned with. Finally, what I'm aiming for is a central policy that makes the MDT policy moot. I think it's actually pretty simple to say that DCPS pre-K will follow the same admisstions/preference approach as K. I agree that if left up to the neighborhood schools, they'll err toward a more OOB-friendly policy since (as a previous poster mentioned) OOB parents with kids at Murch have a say while those of us in the neighborhood whose kids aren't yet school-aged do not.

We went through pre-K admissions hell this year for public, private, charter, boundaries, siblings, language preferences, financial, housing - you name it. I totally feel OP's frustration over the process. It's PRE-K for [bleep] sake.

But reading the Post Extra section on DC today was a reality check. No matter how many emails pre-k parents in NW wards send, the bottom line is still that pre-k is not required. I'm sure Rhee is well aware of the policy issue and I do believe she's working on it. She's a parent herself afterall. But the list of system-wide policies and changes being worked on is unimaginable.

Personally, I'd feel bad filling her inbox with a request for something she can't immediately deliver on and nor has ultimate authority over (pre-k admissions) when there are schools without enough toilets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/community/dc/index.html

Actually, having corresponded with Rhee by e-mail on this point, I can say that she wasn't aware of the pre-K admissions issue. She made that clear in her response. And one of the responses I received from a Rhee subordinate -- whom Rhee cc'd on her response to my original e-mail -- said that the city could in fact set a central policy on this.

In terms of the last line of your post, I feel pretty confident that Chancellor Rhee knows how to prioritize. So I'm not terribly concerned about her deciding to stay up tonight personally writing a new pre-K admissions policy when there are basic repairs to schools' physical plants to be made. And I certainly don't feel bad about bringing her attention to an issue that is troubling to many parents. If, when, and how she decides to address it are up to her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is a question, in light of the last few posts.

If the preK central policy were to align with the K-12 policy, I think this would mean that at schools like Murch, the preK classes would have more in-boundary kids than they have had, and that there would be several OOB preK siblings who do not get a spot.

So what happens the following year, at K? If all the inboundary preK'ers move up, the K classes will be full, and there won't likely be spots for OOB kindergartners.

So where do the sibling OOB kindergartners go? Inboundary to their assigned school (while their siblings still go to Murch, etc.?

Even though it would suck for families who have OOB siblings, I think that it is completely unfair that schools like Murch offer OOB spots when they can/should fill with in-boundary families. I don't live in a neighborhood with a good school, and I would have loved to apply OOB to one if the better schools, but I am not willing to move to go to one of the schools. If families are moving to go to their neighborhood school, they should be able to get a spot at the earliest year that the school accepts students. I think the policy for pre-K should match the k-12 policy. If there is room after all inboundary families have enrolled that want to, then the OOB process should apply. Many private schools have sibling preference but not sibling guarantees...why should public be different?

[Anonymous]

Just curious, has anyone ever considered whether there is a legal/equal protection problem with giving preferences (as opposed to a pure lottery) that are not need based or otherwise justified? I haven't thought it through (let alone researched it), but I wonder.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on the specific history of a particular school district, and what courts have found to be true previously for *that* district. To the best of my knowledge (it's been 15 years), there isn't a per se Constitutional prohibition on neighborhood schools nationwide.

However in certain school districts -- I've long forgotten which ones are famous -- the neighbors-get-a-preference scenario has been stuck down by courts as being separate and unequal. This, of course, gave rise to busing in the 70s and, in later decades, free-for-all lotteries in some districts.