Why is 5th grade waitlist up so much this year for Charter Schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents of 2nd and 3rd graders need to be paying attention to this thread.

the real eye opener is the tightening of favored MS landing spots. Hardy offered 1/4 OOB 6th seats as last year. Latin nearly doubled its already large 5th grade waitlist and BASIS increased six fold. I wonder how much of this is driven by schools not wanting to overextend by offering the true number of expected available seats. For 5th grade there's an x factor in not knowing how your rising 4th graders will fare in lottery and open seats can be filled via waitlist over summer. Hardy should have a better read on its rising 6th grade because lottery odds are dim for 6th grade charters. Aside from Hardy, all of its feeders offered an extremely limited number of 5th grade seats and lower than SY14/15.

I have no horse in this race, but I'd say the arrow is pointing up on Hardy.

For 5th BASIS offered fewer seats than in the past; Latin was steady at 90. But the number of 5th graders overall is up by 500 students. Not all were playing the lottery, but demand is definitely outstripping supply.

Remember Hardy only takes 6th graders - so people who struck out at 5th should be concerned if that was their plan for next year.

So people are either going to decide to take a chance on a less favored option, or move or apply for private at 6th.

But Latin has 266 deep on its 5th grade waitlist and a share of the 90 seats filled were offered to siblings

Hardy did offer 20 seats OOB and will dip into the waitlist but not like the 80 offered last year which was on par with Latin.

BASIS will go deep into that waitlist. Not sure if they're projecting scarcity or if they genuinely don't know how many students are staying for 9th.

[Anonymous]

Yes - the WL wait list is longer this year.

But WL has never offered more than 90 seats for 5th and there have always been siblings taking a portion of those 90 seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the WL wait list is longer this year.

But WL has never offered more than 90 seats for 5th and there have always been siblings taking a portion of those 90 seats.

I guess the difference between being 125 vs. 250 on the waitlist is irrelevant if your mind is set on Latin but those waitlisted students will need to land somewhere. Not everyone is moving or going private

[Anonymous]

Agree - especially since it's been years since WL went more than 25 deep into its wait list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the WL wait list is longer this year.

But WL has never offered more than 90 seats for 5th and there have always been siblings taking a portion of those 90 seats.

For me the longer waitlist means a key difference that last year, being in the top 40-50% of lottery 'winners' would get you a spot at Latin. This year, you have to be in the top 25-30% of lottery winners (assuming they again move through about 20 waitlist spots and of the 90 spots, 50 are available for non-siblings).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents of 2nd and 3rd graders need to be paying attention to this thread.

I went to several elementary schools, two middle schools, and several high schools (my parents worked internationally) but was never short on friends a month or so into any given school year. Why are PP's sounding so concerned about where the friends end up? Most kids are able to make new friends if they have to, and you can keep neighborhood friends (through sports, scouts, church/temple etc.) and even moved-to-the-burbs or Upper NW friends if you try, even if the kids no longer attend the same school. Not ideal, but perhaps good preparation for life to branch out socially post ES. '

When you rely on a computer in the sky to assign in-demand MS spots, with no change in sight for years to come, of course your family could land on the losing side with few or no appealing options come the start of the school year. Parents of 2nd and 3rd graders in our in-boundary school seem to have their heads around this.

[Anonymous]

I'd guess the "165% increase" is the result of a data error -- that the SY15-16 waitlist for 5th grade was actually much higher than the 423 reported at the link. Compare it with 4th, 5th, and 6th for SY16-17 and with 4th and 6th for SY15-16: It looks like an anomaly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd guess the "165% increase" is the result of a data error -- that the SY15-16 waitlist for 5th grade was actually much higher than the 423 reported at the link. Compare it with 4th, 5th, and 6th for SY16-17 and with 4th and 6th for SY15-16: It looks like an anomaly.

I don't know if statements like this are denial or wishful thinking or what. I'd sure hope there isn't a data error - they had a month to clean it up!

There are now addtl data available for this year's lottery at My Schools DC. For the past two years, you had a low-mid 80s chance of getting your top two choices for 5th grade; this year, you had a 56% chance.

With only three years to look at and with two looking very similar, you can't know if this was a particularly bad year for the 5th grade lottery or a harbinger of things to come.