Anonymous wrote:But everyone has preferences at at least one school. The lottery is your shot at a better school, and it distributes this shot randomly. If you want a guarantee you need to move in bounds to the school you want to go to.

Anonymous wrote:Lots of confusion/fustration going on here, which is understandable. Keep in mind:

1) There is no secret ELL ("English language learner") preference. There is an explicit ELL preference, in the form of the sibling preference. At preK3 and 4, for all schools except dual language, IB beats OOB sib. But for dual language programs, OOB sib beats IB at those grades. This ensures that Oyster and especially Bancroft will maintain large numbers of ELL for some years to come. But from K onward, IB is guaranteed a spot.

2) If you are getting confused about your odds in a single lottery versus lottery for every school, just keep in mind that what doesn't change is the number of spots and the number of people applying. Suppose there are 3,000 families applying for 1,000 "desirable" preK4 spots this year. Then 2/3 of families will not get into any of these, no matter the lottery method.

It may be emotionally/pyschologically more appealing to be entered into a different lottery for each school because we "feel" we have a better chance. But we don't have a better chance - there are still 3 people competing for each seat, in that example. You have the same chance overall of getting a seat. But with the new algo, a better chance of an efficient result.

You will never know your lottery rank, BTW. You will know if you had broadly good, medium, or poor luck, based on your acceptance/waitlist status.

3) Every year there have been schools that have empty seats at most or all grade levels in September. These are the ultimate "safety"s. It used to be that a number of schools EOTP but west of the Anacostia river fit into this category, but due to gentrification and the low odds of getting into the best charters, this is changing. In future years there may be no such thing as a safety for preK3/4. There will always be a safety school for K onward: your IB school.

4) If you desire certainty of an excellent school from K onward, this can only be achieved by moving IB for your chosen DCPS school. If you desire certainty for preK3/4, as explained above, even IB may no longer be a sure bet, so we all need to accept that DC does not offer universal preK3/4. We take our chances in the lottery and if it doesn't work out we pay private or stay at home. Them's the breaks... we can also get involved with local politics and advocate for more prek3/4 seats, at our own IB schools or city-wide.