Reply to Alexandria City Public Schools new policy to possibly impact rising Kindergartners

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[quote=Anonymous]Superintendent's reply:

From: "Morton Sherman" &lt;morton.sherman@acps.k12.va.us&gt;
To: 
Cc: "Board" &lt;Board@Acps.k12.va.us&gt;, "executivestaff" &lt;executivestaff@acps.k12.va.us&gt;, "karl smith" &lt;karl.smith@acps.k12.va.us&gt;
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 8:56:02 AM
Subject: Modified Open Enrollment

Good morning,

Several questions have been raised about the process and timetable used to make final determinations for placement of elementary students who are new to our schools for the 2012-13 school year. Most of the questions have come from families of entering Kindergarten children.

So that all of you have the historical information, including policies, regulations, and analysis of enrollments by school and grade level, the best source of information can be found at this link: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/budgets/moe/

We are in the final stages of updating projections for this coming school year. According to board policy, I must present that information by April 1. You can see on the site noted above how we have handled that the past two years. The expectation is that as soon as I have the updated information, it will be posted, shared with the board and community, and on the agenda for March 22.

One of the goals we set in creating these policies and regulations was to personalize the placement of children in our schools. To accomplish that, I have asked one of our most respected administrators with great history of the school division, Karl Smith, to oversee the communication and recommended placements. Mr. Smith has done an exceptional job of coordinating these efforts the past two years and will continue to handle the overall responsibility for working directly with families and for keeping me updated on a weekly basis about any issues or concerns that have developed.

We take great pride in the way we have implemented the MOE policy and regulations, even as we would much prefer to have sufficient space throughout the school division to have no need for this process. We have not used a lottery, as is mentioned in the policy; we continue to be optimistic that we will not have to use a lottery this spring.

Some key issues have been raised by parents in the past couple of weeks, i.e.,

- why even think of a lottery rather than a "first come, first served" approach?
- why not move the dates earlier than June 15th for traditional calendar schools?

The rationale for not using the first come, first served approach was to avoid potential "3 am wait lines" to register children. The fairness of keeping an open window for registration was a key discussion when the policy was first created... one of the conclusions was that an open registration process during a window of time would avoid some families not able to get to the early lines of registration for any number of reasons (e.g., what if a child were sick that day?).

The setting of the June 15th date for deciding if a lottery were necessary due to over enrollments was set simply to allow a sufficient window of opportunity for families to register.

As with any policy, it is up to the School Board to decide whether to revisit these or other provisions. I have been asked by several board members to look at the June 15th date to see if there should be a change.

Our long term planning calls for new PreK schools at Jefferson-Houston, Patrick Henry, and Cora Kelly. In addition, we have added modular units at Barrett, Adams, Patrick Henry, and Polk. (Some parents have asked why we can't simply add more "learning cottages" to some of our schools... for most of our schools the answer is simply that there is little room on the sites, e.g., Tucker, Lyles Crouch, Maury, George Mason.)

Please feel free to share this note with parents and staff members. We are all committed to working together to assure each of our students the best possible education; so, if there are questions or suggestions, please let me know.

Best wishes,

Mort Sherman

-- 
Dr. Morton Sherman
ACPS Superintendent of Schools[/quote]

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