Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It is patently false and unfair to keep stating either as fact or repeating a rumor that CM did not have public lotteries until this year. I applied to the school in 2012 and still have an email from them stating when and where the lottery would be held and that families were invited to attend but not required to do so.

I absolutely do not believe this. You say you have it, then copy and paste it here. You can take out your name and email addy, but copy and paste the whole message or it didn't happen. And I'm another who called the school that year by the way to ask when/where the lottery would be and was told there wasn't a public lottery.

Post the email.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I do not think "absolute fact" means what you think it means.

From the application confirmation email I received when I applied in 2012:

"Dear parent/guardian,

I am writing to confirm that we received your application to enroll your child at Creative Minds International Public Charter School. Thank you for your interest in our program.

We will be in touch with you after the enrollment period closes (after April 9, 2012, or if there is a lottery, after April 17, 2012) to let you know if your child was accepted for the 2012-2013 school year. If accepted, you have until May 14, 2012 to complete and return your child’s enrollment information to save his/her space. If we do not receive the enrollment packet by May 14, 2012, the space will be offered to the next student on our waitlist.

To learn more information about our program or the admissions process, please check our website at www.creativemindspcs.org, or attend an open house.

Open Houses at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010;

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Lottery

The Enrollment Lottery will be held at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010 on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. Families are invited but not required to attend."

(Corrected below post - I was not told there would be no lottery; I was told there'd be no public lottery.)

I applied for this exact same school year. I did not receive this email, and when I called the school to ask about attending the lottery, I was told there was not a public lottery. You did not paste sender info from this message, but giving you the benefit of the doubt that this is an actual copy of an email, my experience was still of being told explicitly that there would be no lottery that I could attend as a member of the public. I was also on DCUM then, and there was discussion of the lack of a public lottery, and NO ONE mentioned having been given a time/date/location for a public one or of actually attending the CM lottery that year. And there were many people like me who had contacted the school directly and been told what I was. Honestly, the school itself doesn't claim to have had a public lottery that year. So it didn't happen, regardless of this possibly legit email.

Not to be rude, but which is more likely - the fact that you are the only one that didn't receive this email (when others obviously did) or that you just missed the email?

Many people contacted the school? Which is more likely, that this is getting exaggerated or like the year before - they had a public lottery and no one showed up?

This is the same year that I applied and I didn't go to the lottery (I think I got a postcard with my waitlist number).

You are missing the 2 main points: 1) You don't get to decide whether to do a public lottery or not based on whether anyone shows up. The lottery (if not a common lottery) has to be public, and if no one shows up, oh well. 2) If you want to know how many people reported contacting the school that year, search the archives for threads. I think multiple people at the time reporting being told there was no public lottery vs. one person listing an email they got trumps, but you are of course free to value whatever you want to value.

At the end of the day, CM did at least 2 years with no public lottery, it shot them in the foot with many in terms of credibility re: their admissions process, and that is just the way it is. Now they're in the common lottery, a lot of parents love the school, and they are moving and seem to be doing fine, so soon it probably will be considered ancient history. It was a shady decision, but it seems like they've moved past it and I wish any school educating DC children the best if they are doing their best to serve DC children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It is patently false and unfair to keep stating either as fact or repeating a rumor that CM did not have public lotteries until this year. I applied to the school in 2012 and still have an email from them stating when and where the lottery would be held and that families were invited to attend but not required to do so.

I absolutely do not believe this. You say you have it, then copy and paste it here. You can take out your name and email addy, but copy and paste the whole message or it didn't happen. And I'm another who called the school that year by the way to ask when/where the lottery would be and was told there wasn't a public lottery.

Post the email.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I do not think "absolute fact" means what you think it means.

From the application confirmation email I received when I applied in 2012:

"Dear parent/guardian,

I am writing to confirm that we received your application to enroll your child at Creative Minds International Public Charter School. Thank you for your interest in our program.

We will be in touch with you after the enrollment period closes (after April 9, 2012, or if there is a lottery, after April 17, 2012) to let you know if your child was accepted for the 2012-2013 school year. If accepted, you have until May 14, 2012 to complete and return your child’s enrollment information to save his/her space. If we do not receive the enrollment packet by May 14, 2012, the space will be offered to the next student on our waitlist.

To learn more information about our program or the admissions process, please check our website at www.creativemindspcs.org, or attend an open house.

Open Houses at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010;

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Lottery

The Enrollment Lottery will be held at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010 on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. Families are invited but not required to attend."

(Corrected below post - I was not told there would be no lottery; I was told there'd be no public lottery.)

I applied for this exact same school year. I did not receive this email, and when I called the school to ask about attending the lottery, I was told there was not a public lottery. You did not paste sender info from this message, but giving you the benefit of the doubt that this is an actual copy of an email, my experience was still of being told explicitly that there would be no lottery that I could attend as a member of the public. I was also on DCUM then, and there was discussion of the lack of a public lottery, and NO ONE mentioned having been given a time/date/location for a public one or of actually attending the CM lottery that year. And there were many people like me who had contacted the school directly and been told what I was. Honestly, the school itself doesn't claim to have had a public lottery that year. So it didn't happen, regardless of this possibly legit email.

Not to be rude, but which is more likely - the fact that you are the only one that didn't receive this email (when others obviously did) or that you just missed the email?

Many people contacted the school? Which is more likely, that this is getting exaggerated or like the year before - they had a public lottery and no one showed up?

This is the same year that I applied and I didn't go to the lottery (I think I got a postcard with my waitlist number).

Anonymous wrote:

It is patently false and unfair to keep stating either as fact or repeating a rumor that CM did not have public lotteries until this year. I applied to the school in 2012 and still have an email from them stating when and where the lottery would be held and that families were invited to attend but not required to do so.

I absolutely do not believe this. You say you have it, then copy and paste it here. You can take out your name and email addy, but copy and paste the whole message or it didn't happen. And I'm another who called the school that year by the way to ask when/where the lottery would be and was told there wasn't a public lottery.

Post the email.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I do not think "absolute fact" means what you think it means.

From the application confirmation email I received when I applied in 2012:

"Dear parent/guardian,

I am writing to confirm that we received your application to enroll your child at Creative Minds International Public Charter School. Thank you for your interest in our program.

We will be in touch with you after the enrollment period closes (after April 9, 2012, or if there is a lottery, after April 17, 2012) to let you know if your child was accepted for the 2012-2013 school year. If accepted, you have until May 14, 2012 to complete and return your child’s enrollment information to save his/her space. If we do not receive the enrollment packet by May 14, 2012, the space will be offered to the next student on our waitlist.

To learn more information about our program or the admissions process, please check our website at www.creativemindspcs.org, or attend an open house.

Open Houses at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010;

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Lottery

The Enrollment Lottery will be held at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010 on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. Families are invited but not required to attend."

(Corrected below post - I was not told there would be no lottery; I was told there'd be no public lottery.)

I applied for this exact same school year. I did not receive this email, and when I called the school to ask about attending the lottery, I was told there was not a public lottery. You did not paste sender info from this message, but giving you the benefit of the doubt that this is an actual copy of an email, my experience was still of being told explicitly that there would be no lottery that I could attend as a member of the public. I was also on DCUM then, and there was discussion of the lack of a public lottery, and NO ONE mentioned having been given a time/date/location for a public one or of actually attending the CM lottery that year. And there were many people like me who had contacted the school directly and been told what I was. Honestly, the school itself doesn't claim to have had a public lottery that year. So it didn't happen, regardless of this possibly legit email.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way, note that the current MySchoolDC lottery is by no means public. As far as I know, we can't go and observe the person typing into the computer and running the algorithim and watch the applicants names appear along with where they were placed, which is essentially what happened at CMI's 2014 lottery. Why is no one complaining about this?

Exactly. Where are all the posters bitching about going to see the computer lottery at my school DC? CMI used a 3rd party to run their lottery (exactly as my school DC).

You're both joking right? Or are you really that... interesting... that you don't understand the difference between a school holding its own non-public lottery, and a central agency that is at least as far as we know independent of DCPS or any specific charter, running a common lottery...? Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'll assume you're joking.

Anonymous wrote:

It is patently false and unfair to keep stating either as fact or repeating a rumor that CM did not have public lotteries until this year. I applied to the school in 2012 and still have an email from them stating when and where the lottery would be held and that families were invited to attend but not required to do so.

I absolutely do not believe this. You say you have it, then copy and paste it here. You can take out your name and email addy, but copy and paste the whole message or it didn't happen. And I'm another who called the school that year by the way to ask when/where the lottery would be and was told there wasn't a public lottery.

Post the email.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I do not think "absolute fact" means what you think it means.

From the application confirmation email I received when I applied in 2012:

"Dear parent/guardian,

I am writing to confirm that we received your application to enroll your child at Creative Minds International Public Charter School. Thank you for your interest in our program.

We will be in touch with you after the enrollment period closes (after April 9, 2012, or if there is a lottery, after April 17, 2012) to let you know if your child was accepted for the 2012-2013 school year. If accepted, you have until May 14, 2012 to complete and return your child’s enrollment information to save his/her space. If we do not receive the enrollment packet by May 14, 2012, the space will be offered to the next student on our waitlist.

To learn more information about our program or the admissions process, please check our website at www.creativemindspcs.org, or attend an open house.

Open Houses at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010;

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 from 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Lottery

The Enrollment Lottery will be held at 3224 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20010 on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. Families are invited but not required to attend."

I applied for this exact same school year. I did not receive this email, and when I called the school to ask about attending the lottery, I was told there was not a public lottery. You did not paste sender info from this message, but giving you the benefit of the doubt that this is an actual copy of an email, my experience was still of being told explicitly that there would be no lottery. I was also on DCUM then, and there was discussion of the lack of a public lottery, and NO ONE mentioned having been given a time/date/location for a public one or of actually attending the CM lottery that year. And there were many people like me who had contacted the school directly and been told what I was. Honestly, the school itself doesn't claim to have had a public lottery that year. So it didn't happen, regardless of this possibly legit email.

Just because Latin middle has low FARMS doesn't mean it's full of rich kids. There is a fine line between qualifying for FARMS and being of Deal income. Based on the profile of most of our friends that attend Latin it is very middle income. I am fine with that. It is probably 20% low income 60% middle and 20% high. I would say that is pretty diverse. I don't think a school has to be majority low income to be considered diverse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would disagree that CM is diverse, despite what others think. White population is disproportionately high (suspiciously so, some would say) - unless your comparison is the Ward 3 schools. Anyway, proves my point that DCUMers continue to look down on majority AA schools that are tier 1 - or climbing (like IT) yet consider schools without any real record to be highly regarded. Is this because of their demographics, one has to wonder? Personally, I want ALL of the schools to be successful because different kids need different things. I do not believe that just because, for example, YY is considered a HRCS that it is the right place for all kids. And, I think YY has a great program but it would not be the right place for my kids.

What a bizarre and untrue. GGW listed the top 10 diverse charter schools in the city. CM was 5th. Use facts not rumors from DCUM.

Diverse in this case did not mean "representative of the city" but the opposite, which is why CM is being dinged.

Based on many of the conversations around here as well as the recent Erich Martel WaPo article, some people seem to want to think "diverse" is strictly about racial minority majority and in some cases go even further to suggest more specifically that it means majority-AA and AA run. They think a school that is 25% white is "too white" and "not diverse" enough.

Martel is crazy and his stats were wrong from the get go about almost everything. In terms of charters, you have to also think about the almost completely AA charters (KIPPs etc) who are subtracting from the available AA public school population, and then you have to think about people like us, who would have moved out of the city had we not gotten into the charter of our choice which goes through high school, and the not so small number of white parents who are now putting their kids in charters instead of private schools.

Only 87% of eligible IB students attend Deal. Where are the rest? In private or in charters. What I am saying is that there are a lot of shifts going on he did not take into account and to start from the premise that a school can be "too white" "too Latino" or "too AA" is ridiculous. How many white kids go to Roots? The thing I think he should have been focused on is the charters that have very few poor kids - but even that may just be a function of the random lottery. Nevertheless, if I were to focus on something suspicious it would be how Latin has almost 40% FARMS in the high school and less than 20% in their middle school. But even there, the high school part can be explained by the fact that many parents traditionally have pulled their kids to go to Walls or privates at Latin after MS. I do find the MS FARMS rate astonishing though - it is lower than Deal, and lower than any school except for the Deal ES feeders and Mann and Key. The only way that can happen (and I would never accuse Latin of doing their lottery unfairly) is through a huge number of high SES applicants and sibling preference for high SES families who already have a child there.

Anyway, part of the entire point of charters was that they were not designed to serve the entire community. But it does make me kind of sad when I see less poor AA kids having the opportunity to go to Latin - but then less kids period (in terms of the number of applicants) have the opportunity to go there now than even three years ago.

But trust me, Martel is a wacko, he was apparently a crappy teacher at Wilson (one of his students posted), and Matthews should have been fired for being able to hide behind Martel's "statistics" which meant he did not have to check that any of them were accurate. If you read the comments after these articles people refute every single point he tried to make, and Matthews has worked for the Post for over 40 years and lives in California.... garbage in garbage out, except a lot of the comments in response to the articles were extremely educational.

I'm the poster who wondered if the people who always bring this up and say it is against the law wanted to pursue jail time for the administrators.

It was my first post in this thread and I am not a CM parent, but it seems this whole things is overblown anyway.

Anonymous wrote:By the way, note that the current MySchoolDC lottery is by no means public. As far as I know, we can't go and observe the person typing into the computer and running the algorithim and watch the applicants names appear along with where they were placed, which is essentially what happened at CMI's 2014 lottery. Why is no one complaining about this?

Exactly. Where are all the posters bitching about going to see the computer lottery at my school DC? CMI used a 3rd party to run their lottery (exactly as my school DC).

By the way, note that the current MySchoolDC lottery is by no means public. As far as I know, we can't go and observe the person typing into the computer and running the algorithim and watch the applicants names appear along with where they were placed, which is essentially what happened at CMI's 2014 lottery. Why is no one complaining about this?

Thanks for taking the time to do this, PP!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A skim noted that this was a rumor and then someone said they were told no public lottery. If this had really happened I am sure the general public would have heard about the PCSB investigating and/or reprimanding the school.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I am the poster you are quoting. I personally attended the lottery in 2014 and it was open to anyone who wanted to attend. As a previous poster wrote, the kids that are in the upper grade at CMI are not the kids you would envision a school cherry picking. They appear to be great kids, but are not who you would assume a school would cherry pick. I did extensive research on all schools I applied to, looking at the annual reports and DCPCSB assessments and I never came across any information regarding this failure to conduct a public lottery. If it had occurred AND if it was not permissible, it would be documented.

What kind of kids would they not want to cherry pick?

Loaded question. A previous poster described her child and noted that her child is the example of one they would not want to cherry pick.

I want to put an end to the CMI suspect lottery discussion.

The law in question, which became effective in 2007, does not require charter schools to have public lotteries:

DC Code Sec 38-1802.06 (c) Random selection. -- If there are more applications to enroll in a public charter school from students who are residents of the District of Columbia than there are spaces available, students shall be admitted using a random selection process, except that a preference in admission may be given to an applicant who is a sibling of a student already attending or selected for admission to the public charter school in which the applicant is seeking enrollment, or an applicant who is a child of a member of the public charter school's founding board, so long as enrollment of founders' children is limited to no more than 10% of the school's total enrollment or to 20 students, whichever is less.

The District's Regulations, which govern how the law is to be implemented, also do not require a public lottery:

D.C. Mun. Regs. Subt. 5-E, § 915.3: If a public charter school has more applications to enroll in the school from students who are residents of the District of Columbia than there are available spaces, students shall be admitted using a random selection process. The documentation and results of the random selection process and a list of students on the waiting list as a result of such shall be available for review by the Board. The public charter school may give priority to the siblings of students enrolled in the school.

So, based on the law and reg, CMI was not required to have a public lottery, nor did it have to publish the wait list, etc. for public consumption. Consequently if CMI indeed did NOT have a public lottery in 2012 and 2013 and did NOT publish the lists, they broke no law because they were not required to do so. There is therefore no legal basis to assert that the administration did something illegal or suspect. You can say you don't like the policy and would have done things differently (if in fact they did not have the public lottery in 2012 or 2013), but you cannot say they did something illegal.

Anonymous wrote:Here is an email I received in 2013:

Dear parent / guardian,

I am writing to confirm we received the application(s) you sent to us via our website for the upcoming school year beginning fall 2013 - thank you for your interest in our program.

Our application period runs from January 5th - March 15th. If we receive more applications that spaces available we will hold our lottery on March 22nd. Parents/guardians will be notified of the results of the lottery by email / USPS mail thereafter.

Sincerely,

James.

Hmm, that's interesting. Maybe they planned a public lottery for 2012 and nobody came, so they decided not to do one in 2013? That might explain why PPs got the "there was no interest" answer when they called.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A skim noted that this was a rumor and then someone said they were told no public lottery. If this had really happened I am sure the general public would have heard about the PCSB investigating and/or reprimanding the school.

You're funny! Hmmm, wonder why they went ahead and joined the public lottery? Do you really think they didn't get heat from PCSB? But it is absolute fact that at least in 2012 and 2013 it was NOT public. I think they may have done a public one earlier this year for the current school year. Can anyone confirm whether the one held in early 2014 was public or not?

I am the poster you are quoting. I personally attended the lottery in 2014 and it was open to anyone who wanted to attend. As a previous poster wrote, the kids that are in the upper grade at CMI are not the kids you would envision a school cherry picking. They appear to be great kids, but are not who you would assume a school would cherry pick. I did extensive research on all schools I applied to, looking at the annual reports and DCPCSB assessments and I never came across any information regarding this failure to conduct a public lottery. If it had occurred AND if it was not permissible, it would be documented.

What kind of kids would they not want to cherry pick?

Here is an email I received in 2013:

Dear parent / guardian,

I am writing to confirm we received the application(s) you sent to us via our website for the upcoming school year beginning fall 2013 - thank you for your interest in our program.

Our application period runs from January 5th - March 15th. If we receive more applications that spaces available we will hold our lottery on March 22nd. Parents/guardians will be notified of the results of the lottery by email / USPS mail thereafter.

Sincerely,

James.