What's to double- and triple- check? Most of the lotteries were like 10 am and noon on Friday. All you need is one person pulling the names, a second person putting them into an excel spreadsheet, and by the time the lottery is over you're about 3 minutes from having it posted on the web.

Cap City is on line

http://www.ccpcs.org/enrollment/

DC Bilingual now has results up on-line.

To the original poster ......
..... you may also consider that the school is doing it's best with less resources than allocated to DCPS to educate children.

If they put less resources into te administrative funcion of calling families real time after the lottery and more into educating the children, I am OK with this choice.

Anonymous wrote:The common dates were optional and not all schools chose to follow them. Stokes and Basis are two of the ones I know not following common dates.

And please keep in mind that BASIS did not have to hold a lottery for 5th grade and is still accepting students for fifth next year...
6th has a waitlist, and I'm not sure they accept beyond that
but if you do not get in to Latin for fifth, come join us! (Your child will have to take Latin for the first two years here as well)

The common dates were optional and not all schools chose to follow them. Stokes and Basis are two of the ones I know not following common dates.

^ If they all have a common date for the lottery, why is Stokes in April?

Anonymous wrote:^No. Each charter ran their own lottery with no centralization whatsoever.

The improvements this year were the common deadlines, lottery dates, and "must accept by" dates. Other than that they still are a long way from a centralized system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it beyond ridiculous that in 2013, there are schools running lotteries by picking slips of paper out of a hat. By volunteers! WTF?

some school guidelines say school administration can not pick. who else was to do it?


it is suppose to be transparent - the old picking pieces of paper is a simple method that supports transparency. Do you have a proposed solution? As a volunteer that picked names, I would love to hear it!

Have you heard of these newfangled gadgets called "computers"?

NP. Yeah, I have heard of computers. I voted on one for President in November and was terrified the whole time that no matter which buttons people pushed all over the US, somehow the results would be rigged. Can you imagine the openings for allegations of tampering or favoritism if kids of vocal cheerleaders or politicians get in through computers to the hot schools?? I know some charter lotteries and DCPS are electronic, and I've also already heard allegations leveled for this year's DCPS and who knows what will come after the charters post results.

Give me cards and a spinning cage and an audience and several people checking each pull any day.

(Btw, for the record, I was relieved with the Presidential results. Not so with my lottery results!)

^No. Each charter ran their own lottery with no centralization whatsoever.

Wasn't there a common application this year? Some sort of coordinated response from all the charters? To avoid people registering at multiple schools because they can't decide and holding multiple spots at the same time.

Chill out crazy lady! Grab some wine and enjoy the weekend with your kid. I hope you didn't apply to my charter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it beyond ridiculous that in 2013, there are schools running lotteries by picking slips of paper out of a hat. By volunteers! WTF?

some school guidelines say school administration can not pick. who else was to do it?


it is suppose to be transparent - the old picking pieces of paper is a simple method that supports transparency. Do you have a proposed solution? As a volunteer that picked names, I would love to hear it!

Have you heard of these newfangled gadgets called "computers"?

I'm the person who posted about parent volunteers. I never said parents pick the numbers, but they do help at some of the lotteries by welcoming families, etc.

Anonymous wrote:For all the raves about charter schools, and for all the desperate parents hoping to get their DC in, not a single charter school, so far as I can tell (at least of those offering PS3), cares enough about their future families to post their lottery results online or notified parents by email of their waitlist numbers. What gives?

My understanding is that AppleTree did notify families.

Chances are you were shut out from the 45 PreS 3 spots available that every other family you know was competing for.