what do you wish you had known/done differently in previous lotteries?
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Anonymous
| Also, if you don't mind naming schools where relevant (i.e., if you say you love your in-bound school, it would be nice to know which one). Thanks! |
Anonymous
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I was in the lottery pre-common lottery, so my help may not be as applicable.
I wish I had spent more time talking to parents in the older grades about their experience with the schools. Most of the PK3/PK4 at these schools are pretty much the same - but the rubber meets the road in the older grades. Even if you choose to do immersion as your school, the education aspect (math, reading, etc) is so important and the information I got from parents of 4th and 5th grade parents after I was settled. I wish I had done it while I had a chance to choose between the 4 schools we got into. |
Anonymous
| I wish I has relaxed a bit more. |
Anonymous
| I wish we hadn't chosen a school that ended up moving to a really inconvenient location. If I could do it again, I would weight potential future moves more strongly as a negative factor. They always say they will find a close location, but it's easier said than done. |
Anonymous
| I should have placed much, much more weight on commuting factors. The 1.5 mile commute we faced to our charter was awful, and we ended up moving to our local DCPS. It has been so much less stressful. If I had realized how taxing the commute would be, I would have put many fewer schools on my list last year. |
Anonymous
| commute, commute, commute. |
Anonymous
Seems like everyone speaks on the commute. I recently moved to DC from Maryland, so my thinking is that 1.5 miles isn't far at all. Of course, in MD, that takes 1 minute. In DC, it could take upward of 25-30 minutes. I may need to rethink some of my picks. |
Anonymous
I am PP who left a school where the commute was 1.5 miles. Part of the problem was that it was in the opposite direction from my work--if it had been 1.5 miles but right by my work, it would have been at least a bit different of a calculation (though I'm glad we are at a school that right on our block--cannot have an easier dropoff/pickup than that). Also, consider public transportation. I could take the bus to the charter we went to, but it was still a half-mile walk from the bus, and that took a long time to walk with a three-year-old. Biking worked pretty well, but it didn't work on rainy days and such. (We got a bike seat rather than trailer because it was a pain to haul the trailer down every morning, so our child was not protected from inclement weather.) That meant that on many days, we ended up driving. But we couldn't park in the zone where the school was, so I'd have to drive to the school, find parking, drop off my child, get back in the car, look for parking at home, and then take the bus to downtown. This meant that anytime I drove I was always late for work. The whole thing was very stressful, and now we're much happier and more relaxed at our neighborhood school. |
Anonymous
If it was only 30 minutes - I think it wouldn't have been a problem. My school is about 1.5 miles and it's 30 minutes in perfect conditions - which you know DC never is. Most days it takes 45 and in rain, snow, or any sort or race, protest, or basically anything unusual (3 days out of 5) it takes me an hour. We love the school - we DESPISE the commute. |
Anonymous
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I wish I had known how much of an issue commutes could be because it would have made our choice a lot easier. We decided to go with our neighborhood school (West), because we like the school and wanted the certainty / stability. But I probably would have thought (stressed out) about some charters and OOB schools in various parts of the city a lot less.
Reading other people's thoughts above, I'm glad we didn't start elsewhere and then figure it out. |
Anonymous
I can't imagine anywhere in the city where it would take 30+ minutes to go 1.5 mile. A little exaggeration here. Yeah it takes me 20 minutes for a hellish 4.7 mile commute, but no way it takes longer to walk 1.5 than drive. Name the school and where you are coming from. |
Anonymous
| To return to the original question -- I wish I had known my child better, or accepted that it's impossible to know what a not-even-3-year-old's strengths and weaknesses and "needs" would be. As my daughter grew older, my priorities completely changed, and I ended up not even applying to schools that I would've killed to get into in previous years (SWS). So just remember that it's not do or die for PK3, even if it feels like that. As you get to know your child better, you may have a very different perspective on what s/he needs in and out of the classroom. |
Anonymous
| Commute. Our DD was at home up until PK3 and we never had to take her anywhere in the morning. We had applied to schools all over the city, thankfully we got into a charter close to us, but never thought about commute and how stressful it can be getting a 3yr old ready and out the door on time and then driving yourself to work. That said, I would have spent less time at open houses of schools that were not close to our home or work. |
Anonymous
| I wish I had trusted my instincts in what I saw in open houses rather than focusing on what other people say on DCUM. Last year, whenever I read something about what is now our school, it was not positive, but we and other families are quite happy there. I feel bad that I was so disappointed to be matched there--we are very happy and I realized after the fact that I was disappointed because of what people on DCUM said about our school, not because it was a bad fit for our family. |
Anonymous
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I definitely agree with all the other PPs re: commute. Last year was my first playing, and I was completely fixated on trying to get my kid into one of the HRCSs, especially the immersion ones. However, as the lottery got closer, I started kind of hoping my kid wouldn't get into any of these, since I realized the commute would be a killer. No need to worry, we were way down on all the waitlists. So a lot of needless anxiety and obsessing--but perhaps that's par for the course in the DC school search.
Fast forward a year later--I'm on the job market, interviewing for positions literally all over the DC metro. If we'd landed a spot at one of the HRCSs I'd coveted, work commute and school pickup would have been epic--and not in a good way. 
Landing a spot this year at our surprisingly lovely IB school was a blessing in disguise. I can easily pop down the street and pick up my kid after getting home from work. And I can apply for jobs in locations I would not have otherwise considered given commute logistics. So for me, the moral of the story is: 1) try not to obsess too much since the odds of getting a spot are low at any one school. 2) If it's at all possible you'll be on the job market in the near future, you may want to weigh commute even more heavily (with a school near your home being most preferable). |