The DC public school lottery struggle is real!

I will paraphrase my mommy friend C when she said “we literally have spent hundreds of hours on this”.

We moved back to DC June 2015 and since then have spent hours and hours touring and talking about schools. My husband O and I are both products of public education - we know it has many challenges and limitations but we are both committed to having our son Zo in a public school that all children have access to. We were extremely blessed in North Carolina to find our outstanding Spanish-immersion daycare. We never ever ever worried about him while he was there. We hope things will work out with public school, but thankfully being a doctor-mom, private school is a viable option.

WHAT WE ARE WORKING WITH:

Flash forward to public school in DC and we have had issues with lack of supervision in the bathroom for the preschoolers, lack of vision, organization, and communication from the administration, teachers who rely too heavily on strict discipline and quiet, homework for preschoolers, and the disorganized and understaffed aftercare that we promptly pulled him out of. What we have loved about Zo’s school - that he really likes it, the Principal Mr. L (he is truly wonderful, so committed to the students and parents), meeting wonderful families and making new friends, the beautiful playground, being a Parent-Teacher Organization parent (I feel like I’m becoming my mom every time I attend a meeting), and the overwhelming majority of his teachers.

MOVING FORWARD:

In early April we find out the results of this year’s lottery. For those who don’t know about DC public schools - there are public schools and separate public charter schools. Some participate in the common lottery and others have separate application processes. All super confusing and overwhelming unless you live in an awesome neighborhood with in-bound preference which we don’t. We based our rankings on a private session with Educational Consultant EV Downey (I still shake my head writing this cuz’ who thought you’d need to pay someone to figure out where to send your kindergartener but I quickly realized there were way too many schools I didn’t know about and I am all about tapping into my resources so we went ahead and paid her and it was well worth it), hours and hours spent touring schools in our preferred neighborhoods, countless conversations with each other, friends, and school administrators. There are so many different schools. So many different neighborhoods (drop off process and location is of prime importance in DC), school buildings with very diverse architecture, philosophies, discipline plans, and aftercare programs. So many different “vibes”.

A few of my favorites (in alphabetic order):

- Capital City, a well-established charter school with the most perfect natural outdoor space and great reputation. Too far out of our preferred neighborhoods, but if I could it would have been in my top three

- DC Bilingual, a well-established Spanish-immersion charter school. In a really nice building, but they might have to find a new site next year. Ranked low for us as not knowing where the school building will be was a deal-breaker for us.

- Mundo Verde, a Spanish-immersion charter school focused on environmental justice and study of world cultures. We love their vision.

- Two Rivers, we preferred the Young Campus as its closer to our preferred neighborhoods and O really liked the Principal

- Tyler, a public school with a Spanish-immersion and arts program that O loved

- Van Ness, newly renovated and reopened public school in Navy Yard (prettiest public school I’ve ever seen though in need of a new playground; which I hear is in the works)