Reply to Are we fools not to play lottery for our 3 y o?

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[quote=Anonymous]Yikes.  I have no idea who the bickering parties are now, and I don't have the fortitude to wade through all the previous poses to see if this has been discussed already, so I'm sorry if it has, but:

One of the problems with the current system is that free pre-k, which I believe was targeted at low income and at-risk kids, has become a gateway for Kindergarten slots. That is, parents don't have a reasonable chance of getting into a good school in K, so they are required to apply for Pre-K or Pre-S.  I'm not so much concerned for the well-off parents who'd rather have the kid be at home (though I don't have as much disdain for them as the rude, overly confrontational PP seems to) - but rather that this system adversely impacts the low income kids the Pre-K program is supposed to target.  Parents who would not otherwise send their kids to DCPS or charter pre-school end up entering the lottery and taking spots that should go to low-income kids.

My family is a perfect example.  We don't consider the IB DCPS elementary an option, and were very happy at our part-time private pre-school.  But we also like living in the city, so charters were really the only option (given the state of OOB admissions these days).  We applied to multiple charters and got into a great one.  If there were realistic options at the K level, we wouldn't have applied, and the spot could have gone to a low-income kid who needed it much more than my daughter.  But the system forced us into the pool.  It wasn't to the detriment of my daughter at all - she's thriving - but it was to the detriment of some other kid.  And that sucks (though there is something to be said for a socioeconomic mix at all schools).

And just telling people to not enter the lottery if they're not low-income isn't a solution, because of the far reaching effects.  I'd have considered myself selfish if I took up a public school slot that in a pre-k program ended before kindergarten.  But with the very small number of K seats available, there really was no choice.

I don't know a way around this, because it would be unfair to make kids who are in a school for 2 years alrerady reapply, but when what is supposed to be a voluntary program primarily targeting low-income, at-risk kids becomes a gateway to the highly competitive lottery for the "good" kindergarten slots - that just seems poorly designed to me.  
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