Reply to EdFest Tips and Retro

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We had a really positive experience at EdFest on Saturday, and we also learned a lot in going through the process, so wanted to share some tips for anyone searching next year.

1) It's CRITICAL to come in with a list of schools you are interested in. There are hundreds of schools and lots of them are super far from your house and/or no good, and it's not really possible to tell that by walking by. "Let's just go check it out, see what schools look interesting" would make it a huge waste of time.

2) If you have more than about 2-3 schools you want to check out, do NOT bring your kids. We opted to get a sitter and were really glad we did. It'd probably be fine if you had plenty of time and only needed to talk to a couple of schools.

3) My husband and I did eight schools each (16 total) and I'd say that's about the max. We were there at opening time and stayed the whole time with one break and were VERY task oriented.

4) Have a list of questions ahead of time. Ideally, differentiated between the different people you'll talk to. We had (slightly) different lists of questions depending on whether we had the principal, a teacher, or a parent, and that was really helpful. There's no point in asking a parent about how teachers differentiate, or what the curriculum is. And particularly if you get the chance to talk to a principal (which you often do! I talked to the principal at about half the schools!), you really want to ask key questions and not spend your time talking about aftercare or nap time. One thing I didn't expect is that there were a lot of random administrators - the registrar, the front office person, the director of whatever-the-heck, so if I had to do it again, I'd be prepared for that.

5) Put some thought into your questions. You can probably only ask 3-5 max, so make sure you're going for stuff that will help you make your decision (which, for us, was really, do we like them enough to want to go to an open house?) and not stuff you can find out online or just general info.

We got a ton out of EdFest and will probably be able to narrow our list of 16 schools down to about 9 for open houses.

Anyone else have tips for future EdFest goers?[/quote]

Take full advantage! I remember speaking with the principal of a school that had two campuses, and gave a brief description of what I was looking for, and they came right out and told me which order to rank their campuses to best fit my kid. With the info they provided as to why, it had a huge impact on my overall lottery list order.[/quote]

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