Reply to Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm really confused as to why Lee has openings in 1st and 2nd. I just looked at their waitlist data on the MSDC site.

For 1st, they had no open spots at the time of the lottery and had a waitlist of 55. They made no offers by June and 6 by August. I get that waitlists move quickly after school starts because families often don't want to move their kid after school starts. But how many kids did they leave at that point? Enough to go through nearly 50 people on the waitlist and still have openings? That's odd to me. Also, why were enrolled students leaving so late in the summer or in September? Usually this happens because students are offered spots at other schools. To me it is a red flag that families are jumping on late offers from other schools in August/September -- that indicates a lot of motivation to leave.

For 2nd, they had no open spots at the time of the lottery and waitlist of 28 (normal for waitlist size to be smaller as grade level goes up). But then no offers at all before August and now they have open spots? Again, why are people leaving, and most specifically -- why are they leaving so late in the year?

Either there is dissatisfaction with Lee among families OR the school is doing weird mismanagement of their enrollment/waitlists.

It just doesn't make sense that Lee apparently reenrolled their entire 1st and 2nd grade class in the spring (thus no open lottery seats), made very few offers over the summer, and suddenly has open seats. Something does not add up.[/quote]

I would think a lot of people are declining wait list offers, or getting off the list before receiving an offer at all.

Waitlists move fast in late August through early October.  Burning through a waitlist of 28 for 2nd isn't really unusual or concerning.  It's the empty seats that are concerning, for budget reasons.[/quote]

PP here and I agree that fast waitlists in September aren't unusual but what is unusual is for a school that appeals to the demographic that tends to gravitate to Lee (high SES parents), it's very weird to leave the school in August or September. That kind of ship jumping is common at crowded DCPS schools, Title 1 schools (or any school with a large FARMS population), or other schools that may be more challenging for parents in this demographic to navigate. It's unusual at these niche charters with specialty programming and nice facilities. Especially weird for Lee to be losing students at this stage when schools like ITS, LAMB, CHMS, and Two Rivers (which tend to attract the same people in the lottery) still have waitlists for those grades. You would expect Lee to have few issues filling the spots given that schools that attract similar students still have people trying and failing to get spots. It would be weird, for instance, that none of the 50+ families on the CHMS waitlist for 1st would also be trying to get into Lee and be willing to take a spot there given that CHMS's waitlist isn't moving at all.[/quote]

Well, ITS is on the Short Waitlists thing too and so is Two Rivers, for a few grades.

I think the total number of students in the public school system has dipped a little bit, and that should lead to shorter waitlists because each kid in the system can join a lot of waitlists.  And with less kids, some schools are going to come up a bit short, and it's likely to be the schools with lower performance and/or lower parent satisfaction.  It's interesting that Lee is one of them, previously it had a pretty good reputation but maybe people are looking more critically at it now.  [/quote]

ITS has a shortwaitlist for 1st (9 people) which again makes Lee's open spots strange -- there are 9 people who have stuck around on the ITS waitlist (meaning they didn't get a spot at a school they ranked higher) but Lee has open seats availabl[b]e. I'd normally expect those folks to be looking closely at Lee.[/b]

And the other short waitlist for either school are for grade 5. That's normal because of the MSs that start at 5th -- a family could love an ES but still choose to leave at 5th if they get a spot at Latin or BASIS. Leaving in 1st grade is a different deal.[/quote]

That's really not how it works.  Families that want Montessori but don't get into Lee for ECE go to Breakthrough, SSMA, or CHML.  Families that want a crunchy school with very solid academics go to ITS, and they aren't gonna trade that in to enter Montessori in 1st.  People from SSMA or CHML might go to Lee for 1st, and it's interesting that they haven't, but entering Montessori for the first time in 1st grade is rare.  I'm an ITS parent and I've never heard of anyone leaving for Lee after preschool or K.[/quote]

PP here and the point is not that you'd expect current ITS families to leave for Lee. It's that you'd expect families that are waitlisted for ITS at 1st or 2nd grade to jump at a spot at Lee since these are, by definition, people who are looking for a new school.

People don't jump around between charters often but they DO jump between DCPS and charters and it's common to make this jump in early elementary.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics