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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was just looking at the selective/city-wide section in the proposal and it looks like there will be selective admissions high schools (so test/audition in), specialized programs within neighborhood schools (so admission is with boundaries (except possibly set asides and native language preferences), and city-wide elementary schools (so admission is lottery based.)  Does that mean that the city-wide schools (the two that exist now and the ones that are rumored to be planned for the future) are really not going to be an option for most people in the district?  The lottery preferences go IB/sibling (not applicable), IB (not applicable), OOB/sibling (1), OOB/at risk (2), OOB (with proximity, but only if DCPS chooses), OOB.  It seems to me like the first two categories (OOB/sibling and OOB/at risk) will be sufficient to fill any city-wide school.  So, most of us just won't be able to get a seat at these schools.  It kind of makes the arguments that have been going on about proximity preference at these school obsolete since no one who does not fall into the at risk category has a prayer of getting into these schools, regardless of where they live.

What is going to happen to schools like SWS and CHML once the sibling pipeline dries up and they are filled almost exclusively with at risk kids?
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The DME needs to clarify the city-wide lottery component.  Since everyone has a fair shot at admittance into a citywide school, does it make sense that the city-wide lotteries will reflect the city's natural balance of at-risk/higher SES families that the set-aside is attempting to address? They may actually be limiting access by capping the at-risk population. [/quote]

I agree that the DME needs to clarify city-wide lottery component.  What makes you think that the DME means that the at risk population will be limited to 10% at city-wide schools?  The list of preference categories does not make it clear that the way the wait list will be generated is with only 10% of students at risk going to the top.  This isn't clear for non-city-wide schools also.  It reads to me like the boundary schools that qualify have to set aside 10% of seats and the preference order goes IB/sib, IB, OOB/sib, OOB/at risk, OOB/proximity, OOB.  Therefore, this is the order that the spots are filled and the wait list is generated.  So, they have to set aside AT LEAST 10% of seats for at risk, but they also have to fill the seats in the preference order.  Therefore, all the at risk kids fill the seats first, even if there are more than 10% of seats available, and then everyone else gets in line in their lottery order.  At a citywide school, there is no IB population, so the seats fill OOB/sib, OOB at risk, OOB proximity, OOB.  There is no language that indicates that the OOB/at risk will be LIMITED to 10%. If there are enough students who fit that criteria in the city (and let's face it, there are), a school would have to fill all of its OOB seats with at risk kids first. There is unlikely to be any seats left at city-wide schools (or any other schools for that matter) for OOB/proximity, and OOB.

I am sort of surprised that this isn't of more concern to people in this thread since a lot of people bank on getting in somewhere either OOB or to a city-wide school, both of which are pretty much off the table unless you are OOB/at risk.

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My read is the same as yours--my middle-class kid will have to get into a charter by luck or go to our IB failing school. Or we will have to move to a place we can afford that also has good schools. [/quote]

Is this really so different than the current reality?

My impression is that all of the schools that would be affected by this proposal already have zero open spots.

I don't know how the 10% would work. Is it 10% per grade level? Overall? Will they have to add 10% to their student population?

Yes. [/quote]

It would definitely be different for the two city-wide lottery schools, which would have to take all at risk kids. And I do think that there would be enough kids city-wide to fill up the spots at these schools. I also think that there may be few boundary schools affected right now, but also schools, especially in Ward 6 and parts of Ward 5, that will flip to qualifying schools in just a few years, so more schools will be covered that now are not. The 30% threshold for a school is really pretty low once you consider that many of these school are starting to retain all non-at risk populations through 1st or 2nd grade.

So, a school that is a middle performer, but might be better than your IB school, that you thought you might just OOB into because they always have some seats in the lottery, you would then have to get behind all of the at risk students in the city who rank that school as one of their picks in the lottery. There still might be some seats at these schools if the at-risk population turns out to be a fairly limited category, but there will still be fewer seats than most of you now have a chance at in the OOB lottery, especially if you take the two city-wide schools and any new city-wide schools out of contention. 
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