Would You Camp Out for 3 Nights to Secure a Kindergarten Spot? These Parents Did.
Kindergarten Camping
Living in California, I know how crazy competitive and difficult it is to secure a spot in a decent elementary school. Parents will do almost anything to get their kid into the right school. They will lie, they will cheat – and in this far less devious, yet still desperate, case – they will camp out for three nights to get a spot for their kindergartener.
Lincoln Crossing Elementary School, a public school northeast of Sacramento, has a total of 105 seats available for incoming kindergarteners, with half of those seats are reserved for kids whose older brothers and sisters already go to the school. Enrollment for the remaining spots is “first come, first served,” so parents took it upon themselves to camp out for days to get one of the seats in the class. “It is frustrating when I am paying tax dollars, especially living in this community, to not be able to have my kid immediately go to this school,” a father told told local station CBS13. With budget cuts and school closings, it is harder and harder for parents to secure a spot in a school for their children that is both convenient and well-regarded.
But this isn’t just a California problem — the Huffington Post mentioned an instance of parents camping out for elementary school spots in Washington as well.
Would you camp out to try to get a spot in a good school for your kid?
Image: ABC10
People camp out for 4-5 days for the new Ipad and iPhone. Over 24 hours on Black Friday.
This, in its own odd way sounds sane. Your kids’ educations are LOT more important than a good price on Chinese-made crap.
Of course not. You live in the district, you send your kid to the school.
Joseph: It’s not that easy. I live in California. In many cases, there are too many kids in one school district or zone to go to the school that is actually closest to them. If parents want spots at the school that their child really is supposed to go to, it’s first-come, first-served. Those who don’t get in will be sent to the school that’s the next closest, assuming it’s not overcrowded too.
My son won the charter school lottery, so we were were fortunate. We didn’t have to send him to a failing public school. However, about 700 parents weren’t so fortunate. There were 800 kids in the lottery for fewer than 50 openings.
It seems like the schools need to go to some sort of lottery system before having people camping out. That’s what our school has always done.
I would do it if I had do, but I don’t think “first come, first served” is a very fair option for schools to use. I don’t know many parents who would have the time to be able to camp out – most of us have to work!
I would prefer if schools use a lottery type system – give everyone a fair chance to get in on the lottery, then draw.
We live in the city of Cincinnati, and parents camped out for over a week (10 nights I believe) to get kindergarten and preschool children into several of the best performing magnet schools. We camped out for around 36 hours a few years ago to get into one. At the time I told myself that if people do it for the latest video game system or pre-Xmas shopping, I’m certainly willing to stand outside a bit for a good public school. The year we did it, there were many single parents and economically disadvantaged families who managed to find ways to camp for one night — and lots of people from the community came forward to offer all kinds of support (shared tents, food, portable heaters) — so it did not feel overly a question of privilege, but over a week is another story… the sad thing is that these amazing schools were created because of a court mandated desegregation plan. Spots used to be reserved for different populations and enrollment was very orderly, with none of this camping out problem. And the school was excellent. It’s only in the wake of the Court’s dismantling of Affirmative Action for school admissions that this crazy free for all has ensued.
Here in Vancouver, this was a regular problem for special programmes (such a language immersion programmes), and at what the regular elementary school in what sed to be our catchment (that’s another story…). Last year, just in time for us to find a kindergarten spot for our eldest, the school board switched to a lottery for over-subscribed schools/programmes, specifically because parents had taken to camping out in an attempt to secure a spot.
If they hadn’t switched to a lottery system, I almost certainly would have camped out. Getting a kindergarten spot for my son ended up being more stressful and uncertain than it was for me in getting in to a PhD programme.
Our school has a lottery. It’s a lot less stressful. It seems to me that a first-come-first-served policy discriminates against poor and single-parent families.
They do this in parts of Louisiana as well. I live in Central Louisiana, and what we do works well for everyone. Kindergarten takes the kids that are zoned for that school, and they take everyone. Pre K you test for. If you have a sibling there you have a better chance but not gauranteed. If you don’t get a spot you can register at other schools who have room. However PreK is not required so if you don’t get in, you aren’t stuck trying to find another school. You can if you choose, or you just don’t send them that year. Which is bad if you were depending on that as an alternative to paying for daycare.