Is the lottery more intense than usual this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree there is a LOT of variability in how waitlists are handled--a distressing amount for potential PS3 parents, in fact. At our current EOTP school, which is considered pretty desirable, we were IB and in the single digits all summer. We only go in after lobbying hard and hounding the woman in charge of the list with weekly calls and visits. In the end, we realized there is probably no real "list" at all--it may be something she just sort of has in her head.

At the WOTP school we looked at this past week, the principal said that she works the list like it's her full time job. She calls and emails everyone as soon as the list is official. If you go away on vacation and want to give her a different number or email to use while you're away, she'll use that one instead. It was pretty incredible to see the different attitudes, and sad, too.

Waitlists really should be managed by the central office. Until then, the lines will be fudged by some principals, either due to ineptness or outright favoring. It still happens, even at the most-desirable schools, and I get the impression DCPS really doesn't mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree there is a LOT of variability in how waitlists are handled--a distressing amount for potential PS3 parents, in fact. At our current EOTP school, which is considered pretty desirable, we were IB and in the single digits all summer. We only go in after lobbying hard and hounding the woman in charge of the list with weekly calls and visits. In the end, we realized there is probably no real "list" at all--it may be something she just sort of has in her head.

At the WOTP school we looked at this past week, the principal said that she works the list like it's her full time job. She calls and emails everyone as soon as the list is official. If you go away on vacation and want to give her a different number or email to use while you're away, she'll use that one instead. It was pretty incredible to see the different attitudes, and sad, too.

Waitlists really should be managed by the central office. Until then, the lines will be fudged by some principals, either due to ineptness or outright favoring. It still happens, even at the most-desirable schools, and I get the impression DCPS really doesn't mind.

I agree with this in principle, but I can see a lot of ways that could go wrong. Last year for PS3, DD got into a DCPS. We were all set to send her there and were filling out the paperwork. The school handled everything fine. Then we got an email from someone at the central office to talk about the Ages and Stages questionnaire, which contained the following fuck-ups:

DD's name spelled wrong
DD referred to as "him"
The email sent to me having my ex-husband's name on it (and referring to him as Ms. HisLastName)
The email sent to him having my name on it
Him cc-ed on the email I received, but with his email address spelled wrong
Me not cc-ed at all on the email he received

When I responded to the email correctly the errors, the person who sent it was pretty bitchy about it. She said that the paperwork she received had the incorrect spelling, despite the school communicating with us using the correctly spelled name and gender. We got into the charter we're happy in now, but other than the inital lottery, that was my one and only experience with DCPS and it did not leave me with a high level of confidence that the central office could administer the rapidly-changing waitlists at schools all over the city.