Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:56     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:here we go...
We live in Mt. Pleasant. Besides the list below, we also have the option of an immersion charter in a language we care about (though not a high-demand like Spanish or Chinese), which involves either a commute in the opposite direction from our jobs or a parent-organized bus. We know parents there, but there's no good feeder option.

All the options on this list involve a bus or commute, but at least they'd be in the direction of our (federal worker) jobs, and tbh in neighborhoods we'd be happy to move to someday, assuming our incomes and future interest rates agree (for now, we're golden handcuffed to MtP via a prepandemic rate). fwiw, looking at the lottery history, a few - Hyde-Addison, Murch, etc - accepted more from the wait list last year than our current wait list number. Not sure we currently know any parents at any of them. But some of them feed to Deal (forgive my ignorance, does that apply to lottery kids too?)

The closest/easiest option for us in terms of commute...also not on this list...is actually a private school which has offered very generous financial aid, where we know several parents - but of course, the annual tuition would still exceed five figures, once you add in aftercare. And this is just kid 1 of 2.

Honest questions, if anyone has thoughts:
What is the likelihood that any of the schools on this list might come through - and if they do, are they worth the commitment over the relatively known quantities (to us) of an immersion charter that comes with a few asterisks, or a private that comes with a non-zero price tag?

And while I guess it's sort of a pointless exercise to ask "what would you do?" - since everyone has different calculations and different weights they give various factors, and also we're not including some pertinent (to us) details here - I am curious anyway!

--


1 Ross Elementary School Waitlisted - #22

2 Oyster-Adams Bilingual School (Oyster) - English Dominant Waitlisted - #47

3 Hearst Elementary School Waitlisted - #27

4 Murch Elementary School Waitlisted - #16

5 Stoddert Elementary School Waitlisted - #33

6 Hyde-Addison Elementary School Waitlisted - #23

7 Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB) PCS Waitlisted - #22

8 Key Elementary School Match (enrollment pending)


We are at Key (in bounds) and I think something like 90%+ are IB. It's a great school (echoing another comment that it basically feels like a private school) but be ready that it's going to be tricky for playdates etc. My daughter only has one friend who is OOB and it's a real PITA to get to them for a playdate. Also Mt. Pleasant to Key in the afternoon is going to be a super long and annoying drive.


Honest question: is there any parent-pooled bus from Key to other neighborhoods, as some other schools have? I'm guessing that if 90+% are IB the answer is no...but all it takes is, like, 10 kids and the math works out fairly well. Even a few hundred dollars a month in transportation costs is still a bargain for a "private school" experience...


Key parent here and I haven't seen this. A lot of the kids do various activities after school (including the excellent Key provided one that is for a nominal fee) and so kids seem to be going every which direction after school. I don't know how a private bus would be feasible.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:53     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Matched at Tubman (our inbound) for prek4. Deciding if we want to leave John Francis (leaning yes, the commute is killing me, though still hesitant about giving up a "better" school with a pretty good middle school by all accounts).
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:52     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Last year Inspired 2nd grade had 2 lottery seats and 46 on the waitlist. Only 1 offer had been made by August. Then 29 offers by October!

The parents of 27 kids had ranked Inspired higher than the school the kid ultimately attended, and they still didn't move the kid.

What does that say? Preference for stability? Or they liked the school they got more than they thought they did?

Irrelevant detail: we moved our kid in the last week of September in PK-3, and it made her very happy.

Now she's #15 at inspired 2nd grade, which is a September or later offer, if at all.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:41     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:We were matched at AppleTree - Lincoln Park for PreK3. All other lottery numbers are 100+, which I assume we won’t get. Any feedback on this school?


Great choice! Most kids end up at Maury afterward. It's a small school with only 3 classrooms. Popular choice on the Hill.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:41     Subject: DC Lottery Results
My kid's waitlist number at Ludlow-Taylor is 12 and the second grade has had 6 open seats filled no pref each of the last 4 years, what do you think the odds are of getting in before September?

Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:41     Subject: Re:DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We are in feeder and DS and all his friends got into DCI. Everyone is so ecstatic and excited.


Please, DCI is just OK. There hasn't been nearly enough challenge in the middle school for my kid, other than for math, and many of the mostly young teachers have poor classroom management skills. We hear that high school is better, but not enough challenge there either. We can up through YuYing and are moving to VA for HS.

PS. If you got in on the Chinese track, be prepared for a program where 1 or 2 students in the entire middle school program mainly speak Chinese at home, more likely zero. So ridiculous that excitement is a stretch or at least should be.


And here I was thinking the excitement was refreshing.


Much easier to be excited when you haven't been at DCI for a few years than if you have. A kid who pulled out a taser in my kid's homeroom class in7th grade was never punished despite parents' complaints. It's IB for all, not a suburban test-in IB program.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:36     Subject: Re:DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:Under 5 on the WL for Latin Cooper for 6th grade. No idea if there is even a shot, as it looks like only 2 offers last year. Very curious if all of the employment upheaval will mean more enrollment upheaval, but who knows.
. We are in the same boat. Does your kid have a sibling there?
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:31     Subject: Re:DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:We are in feeder and DS and all his friends got into DCI. Everyone is so ecstatic and excited.


Please, DCI is just OK. There hasn't been nearly enough challenge in the middle school for my kid, other than for math, and many of the mostly young teachers have poor classroom management skills. We hear that high school is better, but not enough challenge there either. We can up through YuYing and are moving to VA for HS.

PS. If you got in on the Chinese track, be prepared for a program where 1 or 2 students in the entire middle school program mainly speak Chinese at home, more likely zero. So ridiculous that excitement is a stretch or at least should be.


And here I was thinking the excitement was refreshing.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:28     Subject: Re:DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:We are in feeder and DS and all his friends got into DCI. Everyone is so ecstatic and excited.


Please, DCI is just OK. There hasn't been nearly enough challenge in the middle school for my kid, other than for math, and many of the mostly young teachers have poor classroom management skills. We hear that high school is better, but not enough challenge there either. We can up through YuYing and are moving to VA for HS.

PS. If you got in on the Chinese track, be prepared for a program where 1 or 2 students in the entire middle school program mainly speak Chinese at home, more likely zero. So ridiculous that excitement is a stretch or at least should be.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 15:04     Subject: DC Lottery Results
We were matched at AppleTree - Lincoln Park for PreK3. All other lottery numbers are 100+, which I assume we won’t get. Any feedback on this school?
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 14:47     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:Got into one of the DCPS bilingual programs, any idea when the Spanish dominance test is or how we’ll be contacted about it?



How Average? 3 in CAPE? I would only recommend BASIS to kids who have 4s and 5s in CAPE in 4th.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 14:43     Subject: Re:DC Lottery Results
We are in feeder and DS and all his friends got into DCI. Everyone is so ecstatic and excited.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 14:42     Subject: DC Lottery Results
My child got accepted into Watkins…the other schools we got waitlisted in. Trying to decide if we want to enroll her or keep her at her Montessori school
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 14:41     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:here we go...
We live in Mt. Pleasant. Besides the list below, we also have the option of an immersion charter in a language we care about (though not a high-demand like Spanish or Chinese), which involves either a commute in the opposite direction from our jobs or a parent-organized bus. We know parents there, but there's no good feeder option.

All the options on this list involve a bus or commute, but at least they'd be in the direction of our (federal worker) jobs, and tbh in neighborhoods we'd be happy to move to someday, assuming our incomes and future interest rates agree (for now, we're golden handcuffed to MtP via a prepandemic rate). fwiw, looking at the lottery history, a few - Hyde-Addison, Murch, etc - accepted more from the wait list last year than our current wait list number. Not sure we currently know any parents at any of them. But some of them feed to Deal (forgive my ignorance, does that apply to lottery kids too?)

The closest/easiest option for us in terms of commute...also not on this list...is actually a private school which has offered very generous financial aid, where we know several parents - but of course, the annual tuition would still exceed five figures, once you add in aftercare. And this is just kid 1 of 2.

Honest questions, if anyone has thoughts:
What is the likelihood that any of the schools on this list might come through - and if they do, are they worth the commitment over the relatively known quantities (to us) of an immersion charter that comes with a few asterisks, or a private that comes with a non-zero price tag?

And while I guess it's sort of a pointless exercise to ask "what would you do?" - since everyone has different calculations and different weights they give various factors, and also we're not including some pertinent (to us) details here - I am curious anyway!

--


1 Ross Elementary School Waitlisted - #22

2 Oyster-Adams Bilingual School (Oyster) - English Dominant Waitlisted - #47

3 Hearst Elementary School Waitlisted - #27

4 Murch Elementary School Waitlisted - #16

5 Stoddert Elementary School Waitlisted - #33

6 Hyde-Addison Elementary School Waitlisted - #23

7 Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB) PCS Waitlisted - #22

8 Key Elementary School Match (enrollment pending)


We are at Key (in bounds) and I think something like 90%+ are IB. It's a great school (echoing another comment that it basically feels like a private school) but be ready that it's going to be tricky for playdates etc. My daughter only has one friend who is OOB and it's a real PITA to get to them for a playdate. Also Mt. Pleasant to Key in the afternoon is going to be a super long and annoying drive.


Honest question: is there any parent-pooled bus from Key to other neighborhoods, as some other schools have? I'm guessing that if 90+% are IB the answer is no...but all it takes is, like, 10 kids and the math works out fairly well. Even a few hundred dollars a month in transportation costs is still a bargain for a "private school" experience...



This is hilarious. You are not getting any private school experience in DCPS, far from it.
Anonymous
Post 03/28/2025 14:35     Subject: DC Lottery Results
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:PK3 - got into Creative Minds. #3 on our list although I was hoping for an immersion school. Bethune was #4 and it’s marked as “Not waitlisted”. It’s more of a drive but Spanish immersion. Curious if Bethune 16th St (moving to Takoma) might be a better fit? I couldn’t decide on application day where to place these two but understood CMI is harder to get into than Bethune.


Can I ask why CMI is a top choice? They have been notoriously bad and getting worse. Lots of kids have dropped since the beginning of the school year and it’s because academics just aren’t a priority. There isn’t any accountability and the leadership just let go a huge number of staff members for next year.


1. Proximity - walking distance, only a block away 2. Great outdoor space with lots of play time (very important priority for us) 3. Language exposure - while not immersion, we wanted some language exposure to Spanish and Mandarin is a bonus. I had also heard things improved a lot the past year and a lot of the problems didn’t matter to younger grades (we will likely go to our IB, Bruce Monroe for K). We’d likely have different priorities for Kindergarten and up.