It’s a tense ritual that unfolds in the nation’s capital every year. About 25,000 families apply to secure a slot at public schools through the competitive school lottery system. Then, they wait for a randomly assigned number to decide where their children can attend.
Some families say a lucky lottery number is their only hope for a quality education. Others have guaranteed slots at well-regarded neighborhood schools but are hoping the lottery can win them access to specialized programs, including language immersion and Montessori schools.
Students from kindergarten on are guaranteed a slot in their assigned neighborhood school without participating in the lottery. Every family seeking to enroll in prekindergarten must apply through the lottery.
In the District, most families enter the lottery at least once during their child’s education. Only about 27 percent of the District’s students attend their neighborhood school.
Families have about 240 campuses to choose from. Fifty-two percent of the city’s nearly 100,000 public school students attend a campus in the traditional public school system. The remaining students attend charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated campuses in which families must use the lottery to enroll.
On Friday — as the District’s schools remained closed amid the coronavirus crisis — the city released lottery results, and families learned their fate for the 2020-2021 academic year.
As they awaited lottery results, eight D.C. families — one from each ward — explained what was driving their education decisions.
Ward 1 (Northwest Washington, including Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant and parts of Shaw and Adams Morgan)
Each month, Mabel Hernandez and Fabio Molinares put nearly $2,500 on their credit card to pay day-care fees for their 3-year-old twins. That’s $2,500 they can’t afford. And $2,500 that’s ballooning into a heap of debt that they are unsure how they will pay off.
So whatever happens with the lottery, the couple — who emigrated from Colombia two decades ago as young adults — are ready for the financial relief the city’s public prekindergarten program will bring.
“It’s been financial anguish,” said Molinares, a ramp agent at Reagan National Airport who attends night classes at an adult charter school and hopes to open a day care.
Hernandez and Molinares have been scouring the city for the perfect school since their twins, Salome and Esteban, were infants. They attended education fairs, squeezed in campus visits after work, and talked to co-workers and friends.
They want a Montessori and bilingual education so their children learn in English and Spanish. Their top choice: Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School, which has one of the longest waiting lists of students hoping to attend.
The couple said location is not a factor and are willing to drive from their apartment in Columbia Heights to any school in the city.
They also applied to other popular campuses in both sectors.
They know it will take a miraculous number to secure two slots but have friends with children in some of those schools, so they know luck is possible.
But if that’s not their fate, their bilingual day care, CentroNía, will be free next year through a city-funded program.
“We are approaching the lottery in a really calm way because of CentroNía,” said Hernandez, a nutritionist for Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia.
Lottery results: Esteban, Latin American Montessori Bilingual; Salome, first on the waiting list.
Ward 2 (Northwest Washington, including downtown, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown)
There is no school lottery in Rolla, Mo.
So when Cindy Hildebrand and her family relocated from the Midwestern town to the District last year for a temporary job opportunity, they were thrust into the city’s vortex of charter, neighborhood and selective public campuses. She secured her oldest a slot at a top selective public high school and enrolled her son Gunther Dawes at his neighborhood elementary school for fifth grade: Thomson Elementary in downtown Washington.
Now, it’s time for middle school, and Hildebrand has completed school tours and done her research. She wants rigorous academics and a campus close to the family of four’s apartment just north of downtown. Her top choice is BASIS DC Public Charter School. Every school they applied to is less than two miles from home.
“The first thing I look at is the number of stars,” said Hildebrand, referring to the city’s five-star system that ranks schools based on academics, discipline and other data. “I thought if it had five stars, it must be good.”
And if she doesn’t get a slot at BASIS DC or any of the other schools on her list, her son will enroll in his assigned neighborhood middle school — School Without Walls at Francis Stevens — where many of his elementary school friends plan to attend.
Hildebrand said she toured the neighborhood campus and was impressed. If she doesn’t find it’s rigorous enough, she will supply Gunther, an aspiring astrophysicist, with extra science and math work at home.
Lottery result: Capitol Hill Montessori or attend School Without Walls at Francis Stevens.
Ward 3 (Northwest Washington, including Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park and Friendship Heights)
Madeline Eibner-Gebhardt attended her neighborhood campus for elementary and middle school. But for high school, Eibner-Gebhardt family members want to venture out of their neighborhood and are considering three of the city’s top selective public high schools. While families must go through the lottery to attend a selective school, admission is decided through an application process. Madeline completed interviews, an audition, a standardized exam and essays as part of her applications.
If Madeline is not admitted or decides not to attend one of those schools, she will enroll in Woodrow Wilson High School, a coveted neighborhood school near her home.
“We are really fortunate,” said Jason Gebhardt, Madeline’s father. “We have so many opportunities here.”
Gebhardt, a stay-at-home parent, said his daughter has visited Duke Ellington School of the Arts, School Without Walls High School and Benjamin Banneker Academic High School. They liked all three.
They know School Without Walls will provide a robust education. Ellington would allow Madeline to focus on violin and music. And the family was impressed with the teachers and academics at Banneker but fears the long commute, which would require a walk and a Metro transfer.
All three schools share this: Madeline would attend school with teenagers from across the city, a plus, Gebhardt said.
Now, they wait to learn where she will be able to attend next year.
Lottery result: School Without Walls.
Ward 4 (Northwest and Northeast Washington, including Brightwood, Fort Totten, Petworth and Takoma)
When Shannon Sheridan walked the hallways of Marie Reed Elementary in Adams Morgan, she knew it was the school she wanted Sylvia, her 2-year-old daughter, to attend. The kids at the arts-focused bilingual campus in the traditional school system seemed joyful in the hallways, she said.
So Sheridan put that as her top choice for Sylvia in the lottery. Below that, she ranked 11 campuses in the traditional public and charter sectors on the lottery application. Her neighborhood elementary — which she is not guaranteed a slot in for prekindergarten — was included in her top five picks.
Sheridan said location drove many of her choices. She lives in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood and works as a hair stylist in Adams Morgan. Her husband is a video editor in Silver Spring, Md. The schools they picked are close to their home or their offices.
“One of the big worries — besides having a good education — is being able to pick her up in the evenings,” Sheridan said.
Sheridan attended six open houses and researched with friends which schools she should pick. A friend who works in education helped direct her to quality schools. If she does not get into any of the schools, she will consider sending her daughter to a parochial school, which is cheaper than her day care.
“I’m so nervous,” she said. “I really hope we get anywhere. I’m happy with any of the 12 schools.”
Lottery result: West Education Campus.
Ward 5 (Northwest and Northeast Washington, including Bloomingdale, Brookland, Ivy City, Trinidad and Woodridge)
Shareeda Jones has five daughters. Three are participating in the lottery. If all goes according to plan, Jones’s five children will attend five different schools next academic year.
“I am trying to find a school that will go the extra mile for my children’s education,” said Jones, who works part time for an education nonprofit.
Her eldest, a high school junior, is happily attending Dunbar High School, their neighborhood campus.
Her youngest three daughters attend Mary McLeod Bethune Day Academy Public Charter School — an elementary and middle school. She said one of those daughters would benefit from the structure of KIPP DC, the city’s largest charter network. And she said another, who struggles to focus in school, would succeed in the middle school at Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School.
But the lottery stakes are particularly high for her second-eldest child, Delonna. She has attended three schools in three years. As she plans to start high school next year, she is on the search for a fourth.
At the start of middle school, she attended the neighborhood campus. She ran into troubles there. Counselors’ advice: Go to a nearby arts-focused charter. Delonna loved the music courses, but the school was closed by education officials last year because of students’ low academic performance.
It was then that school counselors recommended Washington Metropolitan Opportunity Academy — an alternative middle and high school for students who struggle in mainstream campuses. Jones enrolled Delonna.
But city officials decided to close that school this year amid lackluster enrollment and low performance. With news of the pending closure, Jones returned her to the neighborhood middle school.
Now, she wants a high school where Delonna, a talented singer and dancer, can enjoy arts activities and have attentive teachers. She’s applying to the KIPP DC and Friendship charter networks.
Jones said her eldest two daughters take public transportation to school. And she and her husband, a construction worker, are able to take the other children to school from their Brentwood home.
Of the lottery, she says: “I know that it will work. But if for some reason it does not, I will have to take those measures when it comes up.”
Delonna’s lottery result: Friendship Collegiate Academy.
Ward 6 (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest Washington, including Capitol Hill and parts of Navy Yard and Shaw)
Each morning, Tanya Myers drives from her Capitol Hill home to drop her 7-year-old son off at school. Next, she drives back toward home and heads to her 4-year-old daughter’s school. And then, she ventures downtown to her D.C. government job.
Her goal for the next academic year: shave time off her morning and afternoon commutes and get her children in the same school.
“My lottery choices are bare-bone,” Myers said. “We want to be in the same building, same drop off, same pick up.”
When Myers’s son started school, they lived in the boundary for Maury Elementary — a popular school in the eastern part of Capitol Hill. Myers loved the school and became vice president of the parent-teacher association.
By the time her daughter started school, the family had moved out of Maury’s boundaries to another part of Capitol Hill.
They tried to get her a slot at Maury, but even with sibling preference — which gives children who have siblings at a school priority in the lottery after all in-boundary children are admitted — she didn’t get in. So Myers enrolled her daughter in their neighborhood school, Miner Elementary, for her first year of prekindergarten.
She likes her daughter’s teachers at Miner but has been unable to get involved in the school the way she has at Maury.
Myers is participating in the lottery hoping to get her daughter a slot at Maury. If that fails, she also applied to a well-regarded charter preschool in the neighborhood.
She realizes she has picked popular schools and her daughter may end up at Miner.
“I don’t know how good of a shot we have,” Myers said. “If she does not get into any of those schools, she will continue to go to Miner, and I am perfectly fine with that.”
Lottery result: Miner.
Ward 7 (Northeast and Southeast Washington, including Benning Ridge, Deanwood, Hillcrest and Kenilworth)
Shimeka Smith’s school search has lasted for as long as she has been a mother: three years and one month. She has visited eight schools and created one sprawling spreadsheet with details of the dozens of campuses she has considered.
The physical therapist picked four schools she would want her daughter to attend. All are in the traditional public school system, and none are in her Capitol View neighborhood in Southeast Washington. Her top choice: Payne Elementary, in the eastern portion of Capitol Hill.
Smith was impressed with the staff members to whom she spoke, and the relatively high teacher retention rate at Payne gave her confidence.
“You gotta go with your gut,” Smith said. “I picked it, and you don’t really know how it will go.”
Smith said she and her husband wanted to consider their neighborhood school but discovered students there had some of the city’s lowest test scores. Only 15 percent of elementary-age children assigned to the school attend it, according to city data. So Smith joined neighbors in searching for the right school.
Her criteria: low teacher turnover, small class sizes and arts. She wants the elementary school to feed into a strong middle school so her daughter and younger son can remain in the same feeder pattern for years.
She also wants the campus to have a large population of black students so her daughter can attend school with students who look like her. Payne, she says, has all of that.
“When you’re young, you build the foundation in terms of good self-esteem,” she said.
Smith applied to four schools through the lottery. The last one on her list is an elementary school not far from her neighborhood. Smith was impressed with the principal. It didn’t hurt that they also loved the playground.
“A lot of people don’t buy into the traditional public schools in our ward, and the schools suffer because of that,” Smith said. “Everyone is looking across the river, so the resources get pulled.”
Lottery result: Langdon Education Campus.
Ward 8 (Southeast Washington, including Anacostia, Congress Heights and Washington Highlands)
DaSean Jones hopes to find stability. His two middle children — sixth-grader Kaia and seventh-grader DaSean — attend Achievement Prep Public Charter School near their apartment in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of Southeast Washington. But the school has struggled academically, and a well-respected charter network, Friendship Public Charter Schools, is scheduled to take over operations next academic year.
Jones doesn’t want the uncertainty the transition may bring. He is participating in the lottery in hopes of never having to do it again. If he gets the right number, his children will attend Friendship Public Charter School-Technology Preparatory Academy Middle School, which is near their home and will enable his children to move on to a Friendship high school.
“I like consistency and normalcy,” said Jones, who works with the city’s Child and Family Services. “I like the idea of my children going to a school where there is a more-established culture.”
Jones’s four children attend three schools. His eldest, a high school sophomore, travels across the city to Columbia Heights Educational Campus in Northwest Washington. The youngest attends a charter elementary school in Southeast Washington.
If Kaia and DaSean do not get into Friendship Tech, their family put other middle schools in the traditional public school and charter sectors on the lottery application. Some are far from their home, but their father said he would make the trek for the right school.
“Some of them would be somewhat of a challenge,” Jones said. “But for the most part, I am willing to accept the extra time in the morning for the commute to make sure my children get a quality education.”
Jones lives blocks from the neighborhood middle school, which draws from some of the city’s low-income areas. He graduated from a neighborhood high school in Ward 8 but said he is not considering the same for his children. He says he doesn’t believe the academics are strong enough.
“I would love for them to go to the neighborhood school,” he said. “And I would love for them to not have to worry about being chosen through the lottery.”
Lottery result: Columbia Heights Educational Campus.