Thank you both. So why is there a requirement to tell the school within 3 days when you exit the boundary but stay in DC? Should I fear an audit or a request for anything more than my paystub that I provided when we enrolled? Again we will still be in close walking distance to the school (no car) assuming we can get out of this terrible condo.

Anonymous wrote:What happens if you move OOB within a week of the first day of school?

My partner was just told by a ward 3 elementary school that we have to be IB for 6 months (??) before they will let you finish the year there even if you move within DC. Seems arbitrary and there's nothing in writing about that.

I want to move out of our home asap (we literally just want to move to a neighborhood that's a 10 min walk) but we want our kid in this school.

I’d get them to put that in writing then forward it up the line. I don’t think they can require that, and would back down if challenged.

Anonymous wrote:What happens if you move OOB within a week of the first day of school?

My partner was just told by a ward 3 elementary school that we have to be IB for 6 months (??) before they will let you finish the year there even if you move within DC. Seems arbitrary and there's nothing in writing about that.

I want to move out of our home asap (we literally just want to move to a neighborhood that's a 10 min walk) but we want our kid in this school.

I don't think what you were told is the actual policy but as a practical matter, there's no real way for the school to know this anyway. They verify residence upon (re)enrollment each year, there is no additional verification during the school year. I suppose something might get mailed to your old address and then forwarded but even this wouldn't really be an issue, and everything is also sent via email anyway. There is a very inefficient process for investigating residency fraud (meaning people who don't live in DC), there is no process for investigating boundary fraud,

What happens if you move OOB within a week of the first day of school?

My partner was just told by a ward 3 elementary school that we have to be IB for 6 months (??) before they will let you finish the year there even if you move within DC. Seems arbitrary and there's nothing in writing about that.

I want to move out of our home asap (we literally just want to move to a neighborhood that's a 10 min walk) but we want our kid in this school.

Anonymous wrote:for most kids, if they have been at a school for several years, its where feasible probably best for them to stay at the same school. for highly mobile families, its best to try to minimize school transitions (i.e., if you recently changed schools not change again the next year). this board exhibits a weird bias against oob students.

They’re not OOB students. They’re making it harder for OOB students (who probably cannot afford to game the system) to get a legitimate spot through the lottery.

for most kids, if they have been at a school for several years, its where feasible probably best for them to stay at the same school. for highly mobile families, its best to try to minimize school transitions (i.e., if you recently changed schools not change again the next year). this board exhibits a weird bias against oob students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it’s the policy and it is stupid. But that’s CO for you.

Bonus that it advantages people with more money.

It actually advantages housing unstable children that may be moving multiple times a year, every year. If those kids can have one less disruption acts destabilizing event in their lives, then the policy is accomplishing it’s goal. It’s a right instead of principal discretion so that administrators can’t push out the higher needs kids in schools very far away from Ward 3.

You could easily link the policy to at-risk eligibility to account for these situations. But thinking things through is beyond the abilities of DCPS central office.

Homeless children have other legal rights defined in the enrollment handbook (homeless is somewhat broadly defined). Kids in those circumstances would not be governed by the policy OP is trying to game; they are governed by a more flexible policy.

At risk =\= homeless =\= housing unstable. Tell me you’re from upper NW without telling me you’re from upper NW

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it’s the policy and it is stupid. But that’s CO for you.

Bonus that it advantages people with more money.

It actually advantages housing unstable children that may be moving multiple times a year, every year. If those kids can have one less disruption acts destabilizing event in their lives, then the policy is accomplishing it’s goal. It’s a right instead of principal discretion so that administrators can’t push out the higher needs kids in schools very far away from Ward 3.

You could easily link the policy to at-risk eligibility to account for these situations. But thinking things through is beyond the abilities of DCPS central office.

Homeless children have other legal rights defined in the enrollment handbook (homeless is somewhat broadly defined). Kids in those circumstances would not be governed by the policy OP is trying to game; they are governed by a more flexible policy.

Wow, in my city this policy was de facto but not de jure, and now it is being challenged, though I still know tons of families who use old/fake/grandma's address to get into a "preferred" elementary school. I'm surprised that D.C. will allow someone who lived in a kindergarten zone for one minute to remain through fifth grade, but I also understand that they are dealing with human psychology and they've decided that making allowances for would-be white-flighters keeps some middle class families in the system, at least for longer.

I've learned that "word of mouth" about good and bad schools is often based on hearsay and old/bad information. Visit the schools yourself. Get over the logical fallacy that a school can't be good if people you know have rejected it. They may have rejected it just because everyone else they know did too. It creates a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing segregation.

We were zoned out of a preferred school and into a non-preferred school. What was puzzling is that the new school had nearly identical scores and is fully accredited, but when all the (mainly white, mainly affluent) parents from my neighborhood visited the school, the principal had to keep saying "Yes we ARE accredited" like a broken record because that was the word on the street, and why would the school's actual principal know better than my neighbor who rejected the school 12 years ago?

If you are angling to get into a preferred school, please do your due diligence to see what's what with your actual zoned school. You may be surprised at all the good things that are going on there that aren't being reported to you. People who spend the money for private or go to the trouble to rent a property elsewhere just for kindergarten admittance are unlikely to be reliable narrators about the actual conditions of the local school. How do schools "get better" anyway? Because somebody connected to you took the time to check them out, enrolled their kid, and then reported back. I guarantee you the people who've been attending the school for a long time already knew it was a good school. (Case in point: during a rezoning meeting, a mom from our now-zoned school stood up and said, "I don't know why you keep saying it's not a good school; it IS a good school!" and parents from our original school booed her. BOOED her. In front of children. For saying a school that had nearly identical test scores, just a higher poverty rate and a much smaller white population, was a good school. I mean, when you think about it, wouldn't the test scores being only a couple of points lower yet with a much higher poverty rate means it's the SUPERIOR school?) Don't be those booers who think a school is only good if their friends already go there.