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Boston school assignments available today!
By Gareth on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 12:18pm
The wait is over.
The Family Resource Centers know your kids' school assignments. They haven't mailed the letters out yet, but you can call them to find out.
West Zone Family Resource Center: 617 635 8040.
Get the phones a'ringing!
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Comments
Since you posted about this
I assume you had a "ticket" for this lottery - I hope it was a winner for you!
You assume correctly
We had a ticket for the lottery, and it turned out to be a good one.
Our son is assigned to our #2 school choice, and he is number one on the waitlist for our #1 school choice.
The two schools are both very high in our estimation, and we'll be thrilled to have him go to either one of them. It's a load off my mind.
Yes, we consider ourselves lucky. The tales of woe (e.g. #111 on the waitlist) are starting to come in on the West Zone Parents' Group.
Helloooooo Newman, I mean Gareth
Gareth (and Adam if you're reading this might make an interesting poll for Boston parents) - question for parents - when you add up ALL the expenses on schools we spend over $22,000 per student in the city of Boston. Would parents prefer to continue to send their kids to BPS or should we just give everyone an education check for say $12,000 for Kindergarten, $15,000 for grades 1-5, $21,000 for middle school and $25,000 for high school. You get your pick of schools and you can allocate your check to your choice of school (Public, private, charter, pilot, whatever). That would still leave $100 million for special ed or savings. I have no kids - no skin in this game - just curious how parents would feel about having a check to allocate (and you can supplement it if you want to send your kids to a better school) rather than a choice of local public schools.
Oh, don't ask me
I'm an old liberal government-is-good type from back in the day.
You know what would happen: Well-educated people with time to spare for finding a good school (raises hand) would do just fine in our new lily-white progressive charterish schools. Poor people who actually have to struggle to make ends meet would not be able to invest the time into research and would get screwed by shady "school" operators.
Finding a good school?
Adam-
I don't quite get this statement about finding a good school. We reviewed our options, picked our choices carefully but our kid has been assigned to a poor school 4 miles from his house. Is there some secret handshake we were missing or isn't this largely luck of the draw with the current system? While I can see your larger point about some parents having more time and money to invest in their kids' schools, I don't see how that correlates to where the kids end up at all.
Two separate issues
One is the existing lottery (sorry to hear about your bad news; grr).
But what I was referring when talking about "finding a good school" was not the current system, but the above poster's idea of just giving every family in Boston X dollars and letting them use that to find a school. *If* we had a voucher system, then I'd be concerned about what would happen to people who don't have the time/education to find a good school for their kids.
But half a cup is better than none
Adam - but you seem to be making the argument that a random lottery for everyone is better than say at least half the parents with the time/education to do their homework getting their kids into the school of their choice (Gareth is happy - the other poster not so happy - a voucher system would make them both happy as they could allocate their money to the good school, the school could expand if necessary all is good). I look at it as the parents with the time/education get 100% satisfaction. Those without still have the same random shot at a good school they have today - no better or worse off (and maybe even better - word travels fast in parent circles - even those on the less fortunate side of the tracks). Again - I have no skin in the game other than having seen what happens to one of the kids you are worried about (through the big brother program). In my opinion the BPS abandoned that child long before I met him and a voucher system may have given him that shot he never had.
Here's two crazy ideas, without having studied the problem
1. Sets of parents (or guardians) can apply in "teams" representing up to 3 children. The children from a team all get assigned to the same school. The only formal team happens at time the application is submitted, so nobody is locked into a team if they find they can't agree, and they part with more information than when they started. This helps parents pool resources without pitting the members of an informal team against each other.
2. A crazier variation on this would be parents able to tie which school their child goes to, to some other family's child they specify, without the other family's involvement.
For an example of #2: if I couldn't figure out where to send my kid and how to get them accepted, I would take note of the (fictional) young family that drives a Subaru/Volvo with Brown University and peace stickers (Cambridge has several such vehicles), the mom is a pediatrician, and the dad is doing a Master's in Education and watches the kids in the afternoon. Then I would tell the government that I want my kid to get whatever that family picks for their kid. If we all got into a good school, I would bake that family cookies (using cruelty-free all-Organic ingredients, and free-range chocolate chips, or whatever I think those people eat).
No, that’s not a fun game
A fun game is making sock puppets to say the most ridiculous things I can imagine, to see if people who annoy me are dumb enough to agree with them.
That one really brings me yuks.
Newman!
Newman!