Application schools decide whether each applicant is eligible or ineligible. They then admit all the eligible students for whom they have room who do not match with higher-ranked schools. |
Yeah I really don't like this. This is supposed to be a feeder track that appears to run parallel to DCPS as an alternative. The system should be organized so that all the feeder elementary schools can send their kids to the middle school. Who is running this system? |
So is the 1126 the number of kids who were determined eligible at Ellington? Or is it the number of kids who completed the application process, the eligibles plus the ineligibles? |
OK . . . So does this mean Banneker still has 21 available seats? |
No. They make the number of seats greater than the class they want because they know not everyone will match/accept. |
It's all very confusing. Why is there no wait-list yet? I read the numbers as 1126 applied and 236 were accepted. It's not that straightforward? |
PP here. Never said DCI is for everyone. Latin might be a better fit for some kids but we knew it wasn’t for ours. If you don’t think it’s a good fit then don’t list it in the lottery so that spot can go to another feeder family who really wants it. BTW one of the 2 families above who went to Latin, the 1 family took the spot because it was a sure thing not because she thought it was the best for her DS. I think she might have some regrets but was not willing to take the risk like us. |
Banneker might not WL. Walls does (but 40 or so kids have to turn down the spot before they get into the WL). |
Banneker has gone to its waitlist in some past years. If you go on the Tableau site you'll see that usually there's no or very little wait-list. But then for SY 23-24, 72 kids WL and 70 offers. I honestly have no idea what caused that unusual year-- was it the year of the move? Remember that Banneker is not completely in control of whether it has a waitlist. Banneker has a certain number of seats it's offering, and a certain number of kids it would like to match in the lottery. And then it has its pool of eligible kids. But Banneker does not know whether those eligible kids are likely to match at other schools they ranked higher, so it does not know how many kids it will actually match from its eligible pool. It can estimate based on past data, but it's never going to be really precise. |
Parents at DCI feeders should play the lottery on 5th grade too. It will only get harder to get into a middle school. |
The problem is that Stokes, MV, and DCB got greedy and expanded. The system was developed with set number of DCI seats set aside for each feeder. |
All feeders expanded. |
Well, accepted students haven't even made their decisions yet, so . . . |
But are all feeders allowed to stop accepting new students after first like LAMB? I don’t think so, I think LAMB got that exception because it was Montessori and Spanish. The other schools have buildings and renovations invested in accommodating the expanded sizes, so they’re not going to care about screwing over families until they have trouble filling seats. And as that interesting PP says, there are enough families for now that either don’t realize or are willing to gamble with their kids’ middle school experience that the impacts on the feeder enrollments won’t be felt for a few years. |
YY also stops accepting new students. The other feeders take new students because they have attrition, so if they didn't, they'd run short of students in the upper grades. And I think they're gambling on attrition to keep their 5th grade classes small. It's not necessarily a gamble if you're happy with your backup plans. |