Reply to Lottery Etiquette

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Lottery Etiquette"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For elementary school school lottery, we only told a few friends of the lottery results, no one at our existing IB school.  Told friends at IB school in the weeks leading up to the new school year.  Told our kids the week before school started.  
For middle school, we told our kid that night, and discretely told friends in the weeks after, mainly trying to figure out who would be joining at the new school (BASIS).  But don't do what some of the 4th grade parents did on our school's WhatsApp group - broadcast to the whole grade who got into Latin or how high their kid's spot was on the waitlist.  [/quote]

I’m the PP who opted for honesty - I think it’s crappy to not tell the other elementary families until August. What is your rationale for that?[/quote]

Because there is/was a cohort of families who are judgmental of families who lottery out of the school. I didn't want to deal with that drama when we still had to see them every school day (it's a small school community).  [/quote]

PP here. I mean, I guess I can understand this, especially if you've seen other people leave and get treated poorly (people saying "oh, that's a bummer, I wish they would have stayed," if that's the kind of judgment you're talking about, I don't think that counts, but really rudeness or exclusion, that would be bad). And other posters are correct that you don't "owe" anyone that information. But let's be real then - you are the drama. Saying, "yeah, we do like IB School, but we have decided to try the lottery this year" and then answer follow up questions diplomatically, like "we're a bit worried about academics in the upper grades. But we've had a great experience at School, and if the lottery works out for us, I'm really going to miss seeing you so often - I hope we can stay in touch" and dealing with a few frowny faces is way less drama than suddenly declaring you're out in August.

Maybe it's different at our school, where people are kind and not particularly judgmental, but the reactions to people planning to leave have been "Oh! Too bad, we'll miss you!" and some disappointment. But people have absolutely been hurt with the last minute announcements (or lack thereof - one person just literally didn't show up on the first day, didn't tell anyone), and I think that's uncalled for.

Look, when there's a small cohort of advanced kids in a school, one or two kid leaving in a grade can dramatically change the experience for the remaining kids. When we decided to lottery out (with a variety of schools, so yes, we're likely to leave) we let folks know, quietly and diplomatically, before lottery apps were due. I didn't want anyone to be blindsided, and this way they had all the information when deciding what schools to apply to for their kids. Are some folks disappointed? Yes. But that's life, and I've been able to maintain good relationships with the neighborhood families. [/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