Anonymous wrote:Hi all. We're moving to the area this March/April and I'm a little overwhelmed trying to figure out how DCPS and the lottery work. Our older child is almost 4 and would be old enough for PK4 in the fall. I would love to get some help thinking through some of the moving parts.

- Can we/should we apply for the March 1 lottery deadline even if we don't have a DC address yet? Our current thinking is that we will find a short-term rental starting maybe late March and look to buy asap, so our address may change multiple times but I hope it's settled by summer.

- Any advice on targeting schools if we haven't pinpointed our exact location yet? So far we have been liking houses in Petworth, Sixteenth Street Heights, Columbia Heights (or thereabouts).

- Obviously not much we can do about this, but are we at a lottery disadvantage coming in at PK4 instead of PK3?

- Any general thoughts on charter schools in DC? We are coming from the Boston area and I have to admit I have a little bit of an anti-charter school bias, but I'm not sure if that point of view translates as well to DC or if there are special considerations for the area.

Of the areas that you've listed- I'd focus on houses that feed into John Lewis Elementary in Sixteenth Street Heights. Lovely neighborhood and IB school but admittedly not cheap. You could probably get a spot at either Dorothy Height or Military Road for PK4 in the meantime as they are both non boundary schools, and then have a great IB school lined up for K.

Shepherd Elementary has let in all in-bounds kids for the PK4 lottery the last two years. Not entirely unlike Medford in terms of proximity to the more downtown area of the city.

DC is also full parents attending DCPS elementaries who make various (true) critiques of having charter schools, but at the same time they know they will definitely, definitely not be attending their zoned middle or high schools. Somehow their views only take them so far.

OP, be careful that you're getting a perspective from parents of upper elementary children. Parents of preschoolers are usually pretty satisfied and often unaware of their school's issues, but every school has issues. Upper elementary parents often have more experience to share. But the parents of much-older kids may have out-of-date information-- DC schools are gentrifying fast but (I believe) also making real improvements, and people who stopped doing the lottery 10 years ago probably aren't up to date.

I would say that, while DC has a unique history w/r/t charters, your biases aren't completely misplaced here either. On the one hand, charters are a way that kids in underserved school boundaries can get into schools that have different offerings than their neighborhood schools, thereby theoretically chipping away at real estate segregation and offering more unique programming (e.g., early college, immersion, etc.). HOWEVER, in practice, a lot of the charters are actually popular with wealthier parents, who opt out of their neighborhoods to self-select into wealthier (and whiter) cohorts. And look, that sounds harsh, but I get it, if cohorts matter and people are focused on making sure their kid has similar peers, then it might make sense for that family. BUT it drains a lot of DCPS schools of upper middle class families and creates its own inequities. Which is all to say, if you want to send your kid to a neighborhood elementary school, there are lots of great options in DC (and no, you don't have to self-select into living in the west of the park neighborhoods to do so). The schools in the Petworth/Mount Pleasant area are good. The schools in Shaw (Garrison, Seaton) and Bloomingdale/Eckington are (Langley) are good. The schools on Capitol Hill are good. This list is not exclusive at all, just the ones where I know happy families All these areas have lots of families with kids, too. Welcome to DC!!

Anonymous wrote:I would look at Bloomingdale, Eckington, and Edgewood. That way you'll have a nice in-boundary school where you're likely to get a spot even if you get the address a little later. It's a delightful neighborhood for small kids-- many parks and a pool, tons of families.

As for charters, try to understand that DCPS was once one of the lowest-performing school districts in the country, far worse than Boston ever was, and that charters are part of how it recovers. Many people are living in the city and attending sort-of-okay DCPS schools because they know they have the option of charters for middle and high school. Otherwise they'd just move to the burbs. If you think it through and decide to stick with non-charters for philosophical reasons, great, but the standard critique of that is that you're exercising "school choice by real estate".

Agreed!

Petworth

Anonymous wrote:Coming from a similar Boston suburb (I attended public school in MA myself too), I think you might want to spend a couple years renting and just figuring out if this is really what you want.

I am not familiar with the feel of schools west of rock creek park, so maybe they are more like attending an elementary school in Sudbury. But even then, there is always talk of other options, moving for a different school, lotterying for a different school etc. And the charters and schools east of the park feel very different. I LOVE the difference in some ways and hate how much harder everything feels in other ways (some colored by the pandemic, I'm sure).

I would take a little time to figure out your most likely neighborhood (personally, I feel safe in most DC neighborhoods) and put the area charters and city wide preKs at the top of the list. Then just see what happens.

I taught in Tewksbury MA and it was pretty close to what west of the park schools are like, just gotta sprinkle in the DCPS dysfunction. No idea how Tewksbury compares to other MA towns though. Much less of the small town everyone is a townie feel than what I experienced in MA though.

in addition to the neighborhoods you mentioned, i like capitol hill/navy yard a lot

K is potentially easier because you can attend your in-bound dcps elementary school guaranteed. a lot of people are very happy with their in-bound dcps. but this option/route might mean a charter or community provider with space for next year before attending the in-bound school.

Coming from a similar Boston suburb (I attended public school in MA myself too), I think you might want to spend a couple years renting and just figuring out if this is really what you want.

I am not familiar with the feel of schools west of rock creek park, so maybe they are more like attending an elementary school in Sudbury. But even then, there is always talk of other options, moving for a different school, lotterying for a different school etc. And the charters and schools east of the park feel very different. I LOVE the difference in some ways and hate how much harder everything feels in other ways (some colored by the pandemic, I'm sure).

I would take a little time to figure out your most likely neighborhood (personally, I feel safe in most DC neighborhoods) and put the area charters and city wide preKs at the top of the list. Then just see what happens.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:it's hard without knowing precisely where you will live. PK4 is a lot harder than K and PK3. could you rent for a full-year and line the place/address up by 3/1? it can take time to get situated in dc.

after the initial lottery, you can in the post-lottery period still add yourself to any school with a short waitlist: https://www.myschooldc.org/short-waitlists . this might be one option just for PreK4 where you could then move as your right to your eventual in-bound school for K.

Do you say K is easier because the in-bound school is guaranteed, or is it also an easier entry point if you end up out of bounds? I have wondered about that, if we look at one of the private options for PK4 and figure out K later.

It's both. The allowed class size goes up between PK4 and K, so many schools are looking to add more kids.

Some schools in the more expensive neighborhoods don't offer enough PK4 to serve all the in-boundary kids, so those kids might be going to a PK4 at a charter or somewhere near their parents' work. But for K they'll likely switch to their in-boundary school, creating a vacancy that someone else can use.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are you coming from? If by Boston area you mean Roxbury I'll frame my advice one way and if you mean Natick another

There are plenty of prek4 spots and you can move schools for Kinder. It will be fine. But, what are you looking for in a school? In a neighborhood? What about traditional public schools appeals to you over public charter schools?

Ha. We're in Medford, MA, now. Not like amazing public schools but perfectly fine -- although Massachusetts public schools are great in general.

My impressions of charter schools have been that they tend to overwork and churn young teachers and drain resources out of the traditional public schools. But I'm trying to be open minded about it since in DC it seems like the charter schools are very popular, and the whole public school system seems so different from what I'm used to (and I also don't have direct experience in an urban public school system.

I am generally a believer in public schools (I had a public school experience myself), and I guess I want to make sure my kids are in a school that is generally okay and with access to opportunities for enrichment and extracurriculars, etc. I think a bilingual school would be interesting to us but it's not a must. My husband is the one who is really committed to living in the city instead of the suburbs (I grew up in northern Virginia myself). Access to public transit is important. But we also have a young family and are hoping to find a neighborhood where we will feel safe.

For the safety issue if you aren’t familiar with the neighborhoods you mentioned looking at, you might want to hop over to the real estate or dc politics page to read up. People have very strong opinions both ways, so you should just be aware of what the issues are and decide if that’s ok for you.

Anonymous wrote:it's hard without knowing precisely where you will live. PK4 is a lot harder than K and PK3. could you rent for a full-year and line the place/address up by 3/1? it can take time to get situated in dc.

after the initial lottery, you can in the post-lottery period still add yourself to any school with a short waitlist: https://www.myschooldc.org/short-waitlists . this might be one option just for PreK4 where you could then move as your right to your eventual in-bound school for K.

Do you say K is easier because the in-bound school is guaranteed, or is it also an easier entry point if you end up out of bounds? I have wondered about that, if we look at one of the private options for PK4 and figure out K later.

Anonymous wrote:Where are you coming from? If by Boston area you mean Roxbury I'll frame my advice one way and if you mean Natick another

There are plenty of prek4 spots and you can move schools for Kinder. It will be fine. But, what are you looking for in a school? In a neighborhood? What about traditional public schools appeals to you over public charter schools?

Ha. We're in Medford, MA, now. Not like amazing public schools but perfectly fine -- although Massachusetts public schools are great in general.

My impressions of charter schools have been that they tend to overwork and churn young teachers and drain resources out of the traditional public schools. But I'm trying to be open minded about it since in DC it seems like the charter schools are very popular, and the whole public school system seems so different from what I'm used to (and I also don't have direct experience in an urban public school system.

I am generally a believer in public schools (I had a public school experience myself), and I guess I want to make sure my kids are in a school that is generally okay and with access to opportunities for enrichment and extracurriculars, etc. I think a bilingual school would be interesting to us but it's not a must. My husband is the one who is really committed to living in the city instead of the suburbs (I grew up in northern Virginia myself). Access to public transit is important. But we also have a young family and are hoping to find a neighborhood where we will feel safe.