Stop, Drop and Roll

25 June 2007 | AUSD, Alameda Community | John Knox White

On January 28^th, 60-plus parents spent the night at Edison School, hoping to be some of the 60 out of 90 expected families to get their kids into kindergarten at Edison. As the West End shuts schools because of declining enrollment, the Edison district is bursting with kids!

On Tuesday night, the School Board will consider taking action that will make this a thing of the past.

The agenda item (#G-12) is helpfully entitled “Revision of Administrative Regulation 5116.1.” I kid you not. (Lovingly snarky aside: I’m not sure who is writing up the school board agendas, but either they don’t want anyone to turn out for this issue, or they should take a refresher course in “Writing for the non-school-bureaucratese speaking public (aka everyone not in the school administration).” And perhaps once they’ve passed this class, I’m hoping that someone at AUSD HQ thinks about posting future agenda packets on the interweb, so that people can have access to the information before the board before the meeting.)

Thankfully, Alameda has Boardmember Mike McMahon who not only collects school related information at his personal website but posts informative listings of what the agenda entails. It seems odd that one of the school boardmembers has to provide this service, but I’m seriously grateful that he does.

So what is “Administrative Regulation 5116.1?” A hint, it has nothing to do with robots or classes on the idea of an Orwellian Future. 5116 identifies the school boundaries for the entire district and 5116.1 explains how intradistrict Open Enrollement works, including the prioritization of how Kindergarten enrollment works.

The district is going to move to a “lottery” system, (which doesn’t mean that you get to giveaway your retirement savings in the hopes of receiving an ungodly pay-off. That’s college tuition which is about 13-years after this educational step). Having talked with a number of parents about this ever since I should up at school 3 years ago in order to ensure my sons spot in his neighborhood school, I know that there are a lot of parents who prefer the “wait in line” method, because they can control the outcome to a certain extent. Just show up early enough with a sleeping bag, lawn chair and the complete Harry Potter series and you can guarantee your progeny a spot.

That said, I have to favor the Lottery system, it seems to level the playing field and avoids “those not in the know” or “parents with night jobs” or “single parents with no sitter” from getting the shaft as they try and set their kids up in kindergarten. This proposed policy is a good one, and I hope the Board approves it on Tuesday.

If you’re thinking of going, Mike McM’s website spells out the proposed changes to the district kindergarten enrollment policy perfectly:

“If after the initial two week period there are more students than available spaces, first enrollment priority will be given to siblings of currently enrolled students living in the zone of attendance that have returned a completed application within the two week period. The remaining students will be assigned enrollment priority numbers through a random drawing. These students will be enrolled until all spaces are filled. The remaining students will also be provisionally enrolled, and given a notice that they may be placed at a different school. Depending on how many students a school is over capacity, the district may open an additional class at the school or divert these students to neighboring schools. This reassignment may take place at any time between may 1st and the 20th school day of the new school year.

Sibling Priority

Siblings of children already in attendance at the school will have their enrollment priority raised from seventh to third. “

If you’re like me, you’re wondering what the current priority list looks like. Unfortunately, (now don’t be surprised here), the school district doesn’t keep this information on line, so there’s no way to look it up without email Mike McMahon (or the administration, or one of the other boardmembers, etc.) and asking the question. To save you the time (and Mike from too many queries), the current list of priorities is:

Enrollment Priorities

Schools receiving requests for admission and intradistrict enrollment requests shall give priority for attendance in the following order:

First: Students residing in the school’s attendance area

Second: Students diverted from their resident attendance zone.

Third: Students placements requesting transfers from Title I schools identified for program improvement.

Fourth: Students requesting transfers who are victims of an on-campus violent crime or are attending a school identified as persistently dangerous.

Fifth: Students approved through the AUSD open enrollment program.

Sixth: Siblings of special education students whose IEP has placed them at that school.

Seventh: Siblings of children already in attendance at the school.

Eighth: Children of district employees applying under the Allen Bill.

Ninth: Students applying under the Allen Bill.

Tenth: Students applying under an interdistrict transfer.

All this makes college entrance hoop-jumping seem a little less daunting. We’ll be pros by the time we finally get there.