Another "safety" PK-3 question

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Cooke only took people with no preference last year for PK4, not PK3, so no longer a safety.

OP, why won't you consider Garrison? It seems fine for PK3.
Meridian is right near you. Appletree is accessible by bus. Bridges will have more spots next year because of the move.
The question is how much you need a spot. Personally I would prefer Garrison to Meridian, Appletree, and Bridges hands down (and would prefer Cooke to all of them - prefer the Creative Curriculum to totm). But you may very well say no to all of them and resign yourself to paying for private for another 1-2 years. Nothing wrong with that at all.

True, the lousy schools that everyone leaves by K/1st are in demand for PK. It's free daycare. HD Cooke would make a good safety in a couple of years, but you'll be safely into Ross until you have to confront MS by then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Cooke only took people with no preference last year for PK4, not PK3, so no longer a safety.

OP, why won't you consider Garrison? It seems fine for PK3.
Meridian is right near you. Appletree is accessible by bus. Bridges will have more spots next year because of the move.
The question is how much you need a spot. Personally I would prefer Garrison to Meridian, Appletree, and Bridges hands down (and would prefer Cooke to all of them - prefer the Creative Curriculum to totm). But you may very well say no to all of them and resign yourself to paying for private for another 1-2 years. Nothing wrong with that at all.

True, the lousy schools that everyone leaves by K/1st are in demand for PK. It's free daycare. HD Cooke would make a good safety in a couple of years, but you'll be safely into Ross until you have to confront MS by then.

HD Cooke parent here. A "safety" school by definition is a school that is possible to get into for PK3 without any kind of preference. That hasn't been the case at HD Cooke for a couple years now. PK4, yes, because it's an expansion year for us in both number of classes and class size (3 classes of 20 instead of 2 classes of 15), but for PK3, we've been all in bounds kids for a couple years now.

I think Garrison moved through more of its waitlist than we did, but I could be wrong about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Cooke only took people with no preference last year for PK4, not PK3, so no longer a safety.

OP, why won't you consider Garrison? It seems fine for PK3.
Meridian is right near you. Appletree is accessible by bus. Bridges will have more spots next year because of the move.
The question is how much you need a spot. Personally I would prefer Garrison to Meridian, Appletree, and Bridges hands down (and would prefer Cooke to all of them - prefer the Creative Curriculum to totm). But you may very well say no to all of them and resign yourself to paying for private for another 1-2 years. Nothing wrong with that at all.

True, the lousy schools that everyone leaves by K/1st are in demand for PK. It's free daycare. HD Cooke would make a good safety in a couple of years, but you'll be safely into Ross until you have to confront MS by then.

As someone who sends her child to Cooke - you know, someone with actual experience at th school - I can assure you that Cooke is not "lousy." To the contrary, it has been great for my child and is changing by leaps and bounds under the terrific new principal.

[Anonymous]

I have a 4th grader who was at Cooke for Prek3 - I prayed to the lottery Gods that I we would not need to continue at a school that offered sugary cereal with chocolate milk for breakfast (children poured chocolate milk over cereal each morning - yumm!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a 4th grader who was at Cooke for Prek3 - I prayed to the lottery Gods that I we would not need to continue at a school that offered sugary cereal with chocolate milk for breakfast (children poured chocolate milk over cereal each morning - yumm!)

Haven't seen chocolate milk at any meal. Seen cereal of various kinds, but I'm not personally bent out of shape about my kid getting Golden Grahams once in a while. I'm glad you found a school that works for your child, but your information is outdated. In any case, what kind of cereal we offer has zero bearing on whether the OP's kid will attend or enjoy our school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a 4th grader who was at Cooke for Prek3 - I prayed to the lottery Gods that I we would not need to continue at a school that offered sugary cereal with chocolate milk for breakfast (children poured chocolate milk over cereal each morning - yumm!)

I guess you are praying to God that your kid is not in DCPS - because Cooke's meal are the same as the other DCPS that use Chartwells, including the wotp schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Cooke only took people with no preference last year for PK4, not PK3, so no longer a safety.

OP, why won't you consider Garrison? It seems fine for PK3.
Meridian is right near you. Appletree is accessible by bus. Bridges will have more spots next year because of the move.
The question is how much you need a spot. Personally I would prefer Garrison to Meridian, Appletree, and Bridges hands down (and would prefer Cooke to all of them - prefer the Creative Curriculum to totm). But you may very well say no to all of them and resign yourself to paying for private for another 1-2 years. Nothing wrong with that at all.

True, the lousy schools that everyone leaves by K/1st are in demand for PK. It's free daycare. HD Cooke would make a good safety in a couple of years, but you'll be safely into Ross until you have to confront MS by then.

HD Cooke parent here. A "safety" school by definition is a school that is possible to get into for PK3 without any kind of preference. That hasn't been the case at HD Cooke for a couple years now. PK4, yes, because it's an expansion year for us in both number of classes and class size (3 classes of 20 instead of 2 classes of 15), but for PK3, we've been all in bounds kids for a couple years now.

I think Garrison moved through more of its waitlist than we did, but I could be wrong about that.

Garrison went through it's entire list and into the post-lottery applicants. At least, we were post-lottery and got offered a spot not too far into the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Thomson's open house wasn't great. The kids basically have recess in a parking garage and for a 3 year old the whole point of life is to play outside. We're going to the Cleveland open house next week. Appletree is out per my comment above. We work in Dupont and Chinatown so the hill unfortunately doesn't work.

But thanks very much, will look into HD Cooke further!

You understand that this is very common for city schools. Playgrounds on the roof top, crossing major roads to the public playground etc.
If you live in DuPont, and not willing to go off of a small range you do not have many options.

FYI - I do not think Cooke is a Safety. I think your best shot is SWW FS since the IB zone is pretty small (WRT residential living with children)

NP here. So do you think SWW FS is worth a spot on the list as a safety if you aren't IB?

It's worth a spot, unless you've got all 12 filled, in that it's not pointless, but it's not a sure thing. An IB family was initially waitlisted last year. I think there were several sibling enrolleds (not IB) after that family on the waitlist. I don't know how many families they ultimately went through, I'd guess someone (several someones?) out of bounds got in (one or more of the sibling enrolleds certainly did), but it wasn't a ton of spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HD Cooke - have friends who are happy with the preschool

Appletree Columbia Heights

Thomson or Cleveland might be worth a slot, if you have them to spare.

Where do you work? You could also put down Capital Hill Montessori at Logan, if one parent works on or near the Hill/Union Station

Thomson's open house wasn't great. The kids basically have recess in a parking garage and for a 3 year old the whole point of life is to play outside. We're going to the Cleveland open house next week. Appletree is out per my comment above. We work in Dupont and Chinatown so the hill unfortunately doesn't work.

But thanks very much, will look into HD Cooke further!

You understand that this is very common for city schools. Playgrounds on the roof top, crossing major roads to the public playground etc.
If you live in DuPont, and not willing to go off of a small range you do not have many options.

FYI - I do not think Cooke is a Safety. I think your best shot is SWW FS since the IB zone is pretty small (WRT residential living with children)

NP here. So do you think SWW FS is worth a spot on the list as a safety if you aren't IB?

It's worth a spot, unless you've got all 12 filled, in that it's not pointless, but it's not a sure thing. An IB family was initially waitlisted last year. I think there were several sibling enrolleds (not IB) after that family on the waitlist. I don't know how many families they ultimately went through, I'd guess someone (several someones?) out of bounds got in (one or more of the sibling enrolleds certainly did), but it wasn't a ton of spots.

The SWWFS boundary is smaller that it used to be (used to overlap with Ross and OA and Thomson), so there should be a few OOBs in the first round and more after things settle down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why you dislike Garrison. Their PK program seems terrific and it is close by. Most families there are really happy.

I'm glad to hear this, but was a bit disappointed at the open house. In particular, the PK classrooms they showed seemed miserable. And I don't mean the beige walls or bars on the windows, that I can deal with. I mean they were completely disorganized and chaotic. It didn't seem like much thought went into making it a nice space for the kids. That doesn't take money. I went to the open house on a Saturday morning too, so they should've been at their best. It just seemed like a sad environment for the kids to be in. There wasn't one snippet of delight in the room where 3 year olds spend their day. They apparently sleep near their seat and eat at their seat and I just got the feeling my kid would be tied to her "spot" in the room. Garrison is our "safety" for now, but I was hoping to find something that has a better atmosphere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, a true "safety" school is a school that has gone through all or almost all of its PK3 waitlist in the past 1-2 years. The only schools I can think of that even come close to your location criteria and that are/were true safeties in the past 1-2 years are: Garrison, Langley, Walker-Jones.

There are several other schools that may or may not fill with IB kids and that take some OOB - these are not safeties, but you (may) have a chance at getting in OOB. Most of them filled up their PK3 classes, or nearly so, with IB kids last year. They include: SWWFS, Seaton, Van Ness, HD Cooke, Thomson, Cleveland.

I think Langley is still a safety, although less each year. If they add a classroom this year, then it's definitely safe. If you can go that far east I would definitely consider it. I went to the open house and it seems like a really sweet little school. Tons of outdoor space, a gardening program, AND a really nice gym for indoor PE. It's on our list.

Langley is ABSOLUTELY, HANDS DOWN, a "safety school", in the sense that you'll likely get in. Every year Bloomingdale parents get together and say that they will send their kids there but virtually none of them do.

I don't mean that in a negative sense, since I've been very impressed by the principal but very few of the families responsible for the baby boom around Langley send their kids there. Also, it's not at all convenient for OP.

But Seaton is. Last year was the first year that Seaton actually had a waitlist and they still went through it significantly. So yes, apply to Seaton.

Agree that Langley is a safety, if you want something 100% safe. People in Bloomingdale/Eckington haven't historically enrolled, but the new principal is great. Also, before the boundary overhaul, much of Bloomingdale had IB rights at both Langley and Seaton or Garrison. Now Bloomingdale is mostly IB for Langley only. So that may cause more families to enroll. We are IB and are listing it-- I was happy with everything I saw at the open house. The PK3 teacher in particular was exactly what I have in mind for DD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why you dislike Garrison. Their PK program seems terrific and it is close by. Most families there are really happy.

I'm glad to hear this, but was a bit disappointed at the open house. In particular, the PK classrooms they showed seemed miserable. And I don't mean the beige walls or bars on the windows, that I can deal with. I mean they were completely disorganized and chaotic. It didn't seem like much thought went into making it a nice space for the kids. That doesn't take money. I went to the open house on a Saturday morning too, so they should've been at their best. It just seemed like a sad environment for the kids to be in. There wasn't one snippet of delight in the room where 3 year olds spend their day. They apparently sleep near their seat and eat at their seat and I just got the feeling my kid would be tied to her "spot" in the room. Garrison is our "safety" for now, but I was hoping to find something that has a better atmosphere.

You should check it out during a school day. It is so much easier to get a real sense of a classroom when the kids and teachers are doing their normal activities. Even if the open houses are over, I bet you'd be able to stop by.

[Anonymous]

Amazing Life Games, 16th and Varnum NW, Co-op

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sacred Heart school is $6k a year, on Park and 16th.

If the OP isn't going to go public in columbia heights, then why pay $$ for the same area?

Sacred Heart is in Mount Pleasant. Different neighborhood, different vibe. Though I have never felt unsafe in Columbia Heights, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sacred Heart school is $6k a year, on Park and 16th.

I don't think that Sacred Heart qualifies as a safety school. Every year it has become more and more difficult to get a spot, especially in the lower grades. It is a great little school and the parents who send their kids there seem very happy so if you are interested, definitely apply and go through the admissions process, but it's not an automatic fallback option. The wait list is pretty long these days.