School-Shoppers Told: See For Yourself

Jairo Acevedo is looking to buy a house near a good public school for his son. He searched online for information and found he didn’t trust it.

He was among 60 school-shopping parents who showed up to a forum Thursday night seeking guidance as they negotiate a confusing and rattling annual rite in New Haven.

In seeking to decide which of the city’s 49 public schools are right for your kid, don’t look at just test scores, college-going rates or application numbers, the parents were told at the event, which took place in Hill Regional Career High School’s cafeteria.

Instead, ask about the curricular themes, the after-school programs, the bell schedule and the dress code. Go to the school choice expo, drop by the open house and send your student to shadow. In other words, make the decision for yourself, officials said.

This year, families can rank up to six choices in the school choice lottery, which will accept applications from Feb. 2 through Mar. 2.

Unlike in years past, the nearly 7,000 families who send in applications are discouraged from ranking schools by which they think will be hardest to get in. Under a new sorting algorithm, any advantages they have for living in the neighborhood or having siblings in a school will bump close to the top of the list, even if it’s lower in their ranking.

Acevedo, who manages a communications system for Yale-New Haven Hospital, currently lives in Beaver Hills. He has turned to sites like GreatSchools that grade city schools, but ended up feeling like they contradicted each other, with some schools getting Bs and Ds from different sites.

He wanted to look at the raw standardized test scores for himself, but he wasn’t sure what measure was more important, whether he wanted his son at a school where kids start on grade level or where they catch up more quickly.

Acevedo said he did know one thing. He wanted his son to start kindergarten at a school with a play-based curriculum. He said he’d heard that they were rolling it out at Barack Obama Magnet University School, but he didn’t know which other four schools are experimenting with it.

“It’s very confusing,” he said. ​“Really, what is the correct place to verify?”

“Parents are often making the selection based on what someone else said. It may be a fit for their particular student, but yours might get in and be miserable,” said Nijija-Ife Waters, the City-Wide Parent Team president who organized the parent forum. ​“There’s no limit on how many schools a student can visit as a shadow. That child will know, because they’re the best judge of the environment.”

How To Narrow Down

Still, figuring out that order isn’t easy.

At the start of Thursday evening’s meeting, parents traded tips on their elementary schools, saying what they’d like and what they’d want to improve. For instance, they said they like the music program at Edgewood School, but they wanted more consistency in filling vacancies.

Meanwhile, eighth-graders like Melanie Hernandez flipped through the district’s catalog, asking questions about what the high schools are known for, which taught medical science and which had the most fights.

Wait a second, said a dad whose eighth-grade son at Nathan Hale School is trying to figure out what’s next. Isn’t there another way to narrow it down? Does he have to visit every single high school?

Possibly, officials said.

“We had some families at [Engineering & Science University Magnet School], which is really popular, decide that they don’t want to go, because they think it will be too difficult for their child. They just put it down because they heard it’s a good school,” said Marquelle Middleton, the district’s school choice and enrollment director.

“I think a lot of parents do that. We hear that schools are good or safe, but there’s no better way to know than coming to visit, shadowing and doing your research.”

“Each school’s page has info to contact them and ask questions,” he added. ​“They’re waiting for you to call.”

No Seats Down The Street

Even if parents do all that work of identifying the right school, there’s still no guarantee that they’ll get in. Even if, like Acevedo, they’ve moved right down the block, several parents warned.

Anetra and Alione Kotey, for example, did what district officials recommended. They asked their coworkers and friends for tips, but they also toured elementary schools themselves. They wanted to get their 3‑year-old son a spot in Davis Academy for Arts & Design Innovation Interdistrict Magnet’s pre-kindergarten.

Even though they live three blocks away, they couldn’t get in. They were waitlisted at all four of their top choices. The Koteys said they wished that the waitlists carried over in some way, with a preference for someone who keeps trying to get their kid in. They’re going to try for Davis’s pre-kindergarten class again this year.

Lakeisha Singleton, another neighborhood resident, said she’d also applied for her son to go to Davis — for years, right up until he entered eighth grade last year. Now he’s preparing to apply for high schools, and Singleton worries it’ll turn out the same way.

As soon as Middleton said he could take parent questions, Singleton pressed him to explain why so many seats in the city’s schools are set aside for suburbanites.

“Why is it that we cannot get our kids into schools of choice but people out of town can get into the schools that they want?” she asked.

Middleton asked who agreed, sending hands up across the cafeteria. He said that accepting students from across the region is necessary to desegregate the city’s schools.

“The goals of these [inter-district magnet schools] are to reduce racial isolation, so that they’re not able to go to a class only with students who look like them. We always think we can learn across socioeconomics and race,” Middleton said. ​“To achieve those, we have mandates from the state: You have to open ​‘x’ for New Haven and ​‘x’ for the suburbs. Contrary to popular belief, more seats go to New Haven, but if they’re very popular, they become oversubscribed.”

Singleton later said that the question was prompted by her experience with a coworker at her law firm, a Hamden resident who was able to transfer between inter-district magnet schools when she decided she wanted her child to learn Spanish in John C. Daniels School of International Communication’s dual-language immersion program.

“We want to feel like we have a voice, because right now it feels like we don’t matter,” Singleton said. ​“It’s discouraging.”

Other parents questioned whether the lottery truly operates on chance. They pointed out that teachers often seem to enroll their kids in their school where they’re assigned. And they said it still seems like others still pull their connections to nab a spot at popular schools.

Singleton said she almost wished the district would go back to an analog lottery, where numbers are pulled in a public drawing, to make sure it’s transparent.

District officials said that, while the process can be confusing and frustrating, they hope it leads parents to find the right fit, rather than competing for what everyone else wants.

Schools are ​“more than numbers. They’re made up of people. They’re public. And we’re the ones that are going to make them as good as possible,” said Matt Wilcox, a Board of Education member. ​“While visiting these schools, I hope you do that, because sometimes the numbers hide a great community.”

Parents with further questions about the district’s lottery can contact the district’s Choice & Enrollment Office by phone at 475 – 220-1430 or by email at choiceenrollment@new-haven.k12.ct.us.