The My School DC lottery deadline countdown is ticking away to the March 1st deadline for middle schools! To make sure our parents are as informed as possible about options for dual language middle school, we’ll be out at our feeder schools and in the community throughout the month of February to talk about MacFarland Middle School’s 6th grade Dual Language Program, opening this August 2016.

Interested parents and students are invited to join us at any of the times below:

• Thursday, February 4th – Powell Elementary School table at drop-off – 8 to 9am
• Thursday, February 11th – Ward 4 Education Alliance meeting at Takoma EC – 6:30 to 8:30pm
• Thursday, February 11th – Information Session at Bancroft ES – 6 to 7pm
• Wednesday, February 17th – Marie Reed ES tabling session – 8 to 9am
• Tuesday, February 23rd – Bruce Monroe information session with 5th grade students and parents – 8:30 to 9:30am
• Wednesday, February 24th – Information session at Tyler ES – 6 to 7pm
• Thursday, February 25th – General Information Session at the Petworth Library – 6 to 7pm
• Friday, February 26th – Bruce Monroe PTU Meeting – 9 to 10am

We’ll be updating this list with more dates and times to make sure we reach all of our feeder communities (Cleveland coming soon) and interested parents before the March 1st deadline. Please reach out to DCPS.Planning@dc.gov with any questions in the meantime.

 

We got this question at our meeting at Powell on Tuesday, 11/3 and wanted to follow up:

“How does the guarantee work for students in dual language programs at DCPS elementary schools? Are they guaranteed a spot regardless of where they rank MacFarland in the lottery? If they match with another school they rank higher, do they lose the guarantee?”

Answer:

The “guaranteed right” to MacFarland means students from dual language programs at DCPS elementary schools will be guaranteed a seat at MacFarland as long as they apply in Round 1, rank MacFarland as one of the schools on their application, and are not matched with a school they ranked higher. As is the case with all other applications, if they are matched at a school they ranked higher, they will not be waitlisted for MacFarland and will no longer have a guaranteed right to the school.

In other words, the surest way to secure the guaranteed seat is to rank MacFarland #1 on your first round lottery application. If you rank other schools above MacFarland, a match with any of those more highly ranked schools will forfeit the guaranteed seat at MacFarland.

Questions? Contact DCPS.Planning@dc.gov.

Katarina Brito (top, purple) and Rosanna de Mammos (right) from DCPS’ Language Acquisition Division discuss MacFarland’s Dual Language Program with parents at Powell Elementary School on Tuesday, 11/3.