Does anyone know if they are likely to have ANY spots in kindergarten for non-siblings?

Anonymous wrote:So parents have one week to decide to accept if they get a spot via the lottery? So maybe we can see some WL movement before the May 1st DCPS deadline?

This is from the YY website under FAQ: "Parents are given one week deadline to bring enrollment paperwork to the front office, unless they provide an acceptable excuse for sending paperwork via e-mail or fax is established. As school begins, parents are given 24 hours to provide enrollment paperwork."

Yes, they move the waitlist quickly. We were in the first batch of families called off the waitlist; it was April 15 last year.

So parents have one week to decide to accept if they get a spot via the lottery? So maybe we can see some WL movement before the May 1st DCPS deadline?

This is from the YY website under FAQ: "Parents are given one week deadline to bring enrollment paperwork to the front office, unless they provide an acceptable excuse for sending paperwork via e-mail or fax is established. As school begins, parents are given 24 hours to provide enrollment paperwork."

Since shutout from all lotteries thus far, including common lottery, interested to see if YY somehow randomly comes through? last chance!

PP here who noted dearth of native speakers--when the teacher sent home Chinese names for kids I noticed 4-5 children in the class already had character names. However, they could be of Korean or Japanese descent, which can use mandarin characters in their names. My impression is that there are maybe 2-3 kids in my DCs PK class who have some prior exposure (nanny, grandparent maybe speaking halting Chinese from one parent who is barely proficient but certainly not fluent (our case)) but they don't speak it fluently or have a parent who is a native speaker.

Hoping that the unified lottery actually helps this a lot and that YuYing eventually joins, because that will mean that parents who really care about Mandarin will put the school first, something they're unable to do now other than signal by getting up to wait in the middle of the night, but the Chinese language speaking families may not be as familiar with the (crazy) system that is the DC lottery.

Good luck!

Hope you waited in line. I honestly had not even considered paying someone to stand in line. If they keep the time stamp next year, I bet people will be paying others to wait for days. So crazy.

Will they call people that night?

Anonymous wrote:We are in PK at Yu Ying as well and my child is the only one in the class that speaks Mandarin at home (mixed couple) and far exceeds that of classmates. The teachers do a great job of teaching my child at a higher level and it's been an amazing experience. Wish more native speakers could attend.

As a native speaker, how would you rate the fluency in Chinese of the kids in the higher grades?

Can´t personally wait until 7 pm Thursday. YY is our top choice...

After tomorrow, we will know if YY is the last hope! (and Stokes I guess...)

We are in PK at Yu Ying as well and my child is the only one in the class that speaks Mandarin at home (mixed couple) and far exceeds that of classmates. The teachers do a great job of teaching my child at a higher level and it's been an amazing experience. Wish more native speakers could attend.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian can mean japanese, korean, indian, etc. Asia is a large continent. Also, just b/c someone is of Chinese or mixed Chinese descent does not mean the person speaks or knows any Mandarin.

Yu Ying like all charters cannot screen/test-in for language or anything else.

Yes, thanks for the explanation of US census categories. That's why I wrote "in this context". Doubt there are too many Indians seeking YY enrollment, but who knows.

Is there a YY parent who can guesstimate the % of YY kids who speak chinese at home with at least one native speaker?

There are Indians, Koreans, Japanese, Malay, etc. Asians value Mandarin, good schools in general, and there are not any immersion schools around here that are Japanese, Korean, Hindi, etc.

My kid is one of the Asian/White kids there and the Asian is not Chinese... and I am a native speaker and born in another country.

I would estimate lots of mixed Chinese kids at YY but most of their parents are NOT native speakers and are English dominant. Maybe there are 1 or 2 kids per grade at most with a native Mandarin speaker parents but from the ones I know, these kids are not any better in Mandarin than their classmates whose parents don't know any Mandarin.

We're in PreK at YY, and without trying hard I can think of 7 children of at least one native Chinese-speaking parent (in the grade, not just our class). It's also not true that their Mandarin is no better than their classmates. Many of them (the ones in our class) walked in understanding Mandarin way way better obviously than all the students who'd never heard it. And 2 of them could speak it before YY but didn't as much, and now can carry on every conversation in either Mandarin or English just as well as the other language. So at least in PreK, it's much more than 1 or 2 of native speaking parents.

Thanks! That's good to hear. The # of native speaker parents are nearly nonexistent in the higher grades so it's good to hear there are more in the younger grades.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian can mean japanese, korean, indian, etc. Asia is a large continent. Also, just b/c someone is of Chinese or mixed Chinese descent does not mean the person speaks or knows any Mandarin.

Yu Ying like all charters cannot screen/test-in for language or anything else.

Yes, thanks for the explanation of US census categories. That's why I wrote "in this context". Doubt there are too many Indians seeking YY enrollment, but who knows.

Is there a YY parent who can guesstimate the % of YY kids who speak chinese at home with at least one native speaker?

There are Indians, Koreans, Japanese, Malay, etc. Asians value Mandarin, good schools in general, and there are not any immersion schools around here that are Japanese, Korean, Hindi, etc.

My kid is one of the Asian/White kids there and the Asian is not Chinese... and I am a native speaker and born in another country.

I would estimate lots of mixed Chinese kids at YY but most of their parents are NOT native speakers and are English dominant. Maybe there are 1 or 2 kids per grade at most with a native Mandarin speaker parents but from the ones I know, these kids are not any better in Mandarin than their classmates whose parents don't know any Mandarin.

We're in PreK at YY, and without trying hard I can think of 7 children of at least one native Chinese-speaking parent (in the grade, not just our class). It's also not true that their Mandarin is no better than their classmates. Many of them (the ones in our class) walked in understanding Mandarin way way better obviously than all the students who'd never heard it. And 2 of them could speak it before YY but didn't as much, and now can carry on every conversation in either Mandarin or English just as well as the other language. So at least in PreK, it's much more than 1 or 2 of native speaking parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian can mean japanese, korean, indian, etc. Asia is a large continent. Also, just b/c someone is of Chinese or mixed Chinese descent does not mean the person speaks or knows any Mandarin.

Yu Ying like all charters cannot screen/test-in for language or anything else.

Yes, thanks for the explanation of US census categories. That's why I wrote "in this context". Doubt there are too many Indians seeking YY enrollment, but who knows.

Is there a YY parent who can guesstimate the % of YY kids who speak chinese at home with at least one native speaker?

Just checked the demographics - it is 72% black, white and hispanic, and the rest asian or "two or more races". So it would appear that 72% do not speak chinese at home, and maybe some of the remaining 28% do...

Actually, there are a few white families that are fluent in Mandarin.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian can mean japanese, korean, indian, etc. Asia is a large continent. Also, just b/c someone is of Chinese or mixed Chinese descent does not mean the person speaks or knows any Mandarin.

Yu Ying like all charters cannot screen/test-in for language or anything else.

Yes, thanks for the explanation of US census categories. That's why I wrote "in this context". Doubt there are too many Indians seeking YY enrollment, but who knows.

Is there a YY parent who can guesstimate the % of YY kids who speak chinese at home with at least one native speaker?

There are Indians, Koreans, Japanese, Malay, etc. Asians value Mandarin, good schools in general, and there are not any immersion schools around here that are Japanese, Korean, Hindi, etc.

My kid is one of the Asian/White kids there and the Asian is not Chinese... and I am a native speaker and born in another country.

I would estimate lots of mixed Chinese kids at YY but most of their parents are NOT native speakers and are English dominant. Maybe there are 1 or 2 kids per grade at most with a native Mandarin speaker parents but from the ones I know, these kids are not any better in Mandarin than their classmates whose parents don't know any Mandarin.

I did camp out starting at 2am and there are still several schools I'd prefer over YY. I talked to the parent ahead of me in line and he had an even longer list of schools he'd prefer to YY. Of course all those more preferred schools are also hard to get into. But still just because people waited in line doesn't mean they will 100% take the YY slot.