School Results "D-Day" approaching - forums format?

[Anonymous]

Any ideas on an effective way to share feedback on the looming acceptance/rejection dates? The current school forum has an interesting "share results" thread, but it's kind of hard to follow. It seems likes lots of folks would like to vent (or brag?).

I'm new to the school applications process in DC (202). So I'm curious: how do people handle March-April application madness?

At the risk of still more forum proliferation, in general for the school forum, how about sub-forums just about Big 3(4?) schools? Or maybe a one for 202 public/charter schools? On casual observation, the big 3 constitutes a significant amount of post traffic. Maybe that fuels some of the anxiety/competition?

Just a thought

[jsteele]

Are you kidding me? I thought we already had D-Day. There's more to come?

As most things with DCUM, the most successful aspects come as surprises to us. We created the schools forum based on a user's suggestion and I had no idea it would get so popular. Clearly, this is an area of user interest and something we would like to address more adequately. The idea of sub-forums is a good one. The nanny search forums should probably also be re-arranged into sub-forums as well. I see if I can make some changes this evening.

If anyone else has feedback on this suggestion, speak up.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure a forum for the big three makes the most sense. If it's specifically b/c of traffic related to admission results, then it's going to get seasonal attention, and the rest of the year be a forum without a lot of action. Also, most people don't apply to only the big three. I think a private school forum is as specific as it should be. But that raises questions of where preschools fall? They're almost all private. Preschools associated with large daycare centers private. But daycares are part of the original forum. So it gets complicted. I say leave it as is. Just my .02.

[Anonymous]

I think it might make sense to separate the daycare from schools since they're so different in terms of applying, acceptance, etc.

[Anonymous]

Also, daycares tend to be for infants, and schools are for older kids, typically.

[Anonymous]

I guess this just illustrates my point. Most large daycare centers have preschools in them. And their preschools have more children than their infants rooms, because of ratio requirements. So it's not that easy to separate.

[Anonymous]

I just think it's strange to read posts about moms looking for "immediate in-home infant care" in the school forum. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Anonymous]

I was planning to start different "Master Thread for [fill in school name here]" posts for several preschools. This worked fairly well on another board I frequent.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for separating the daycares from the schools. I was going to ask for this because, as the mother of a 2 year old, I didn't want to half to skim through all of the private school messages to try to find responses to good childcare in my area. This will be very helpful to those of us who (a) can't afford private schools and (b) don't want to have to think about it right now.