Registering by Feb 2 gives you a better chance at getting a spot in your neighborhood school. Even thought you made that deadline, it still can take the administration a long time to let you know if you got a spot. First, they place all the sibliings. They also wait for all the choice lotteries to be completed, because that "removes" kids from neighborhood schools to choice schools. Then they see how many kids want into each school and the entire district--and this gives them some idea of whether they need to get more portables and/or create overflow classes. They do a lot of juggling. When I registered my first child several years ago, they said they would let us know around the middle of March, but I think it took longer than that.

The numbers keep shifting right up to the first day of school. New families arrive (they get leftover spots) and a number of families move across town, out of town, or to a private school.

Overflown? By an airplane? That's an interesting way of looking at the process and perhaps makes sense when you think about how they send kids across town and not just to the next school over. Try "overflowed" in the causative sense: the administration overflows students (makes student flow over the boundaries of one site to another site); these students are overflowed. No airplanes.

What I would like to see the way they prioritize the allocation of all the slots open:

Priority Example List:

1. Kids of neighborhood with siblings already enrolled
2. Kids of non-neighborhood with siblings already enrolled
3. Kids of Teachers irrespective of neighborhood
4. Kids of City Staff
5. Kids of the neighborhood
6. Kids of Non-neighborhood

Rest assured, you will not be able to get this kind of a list. You will get all sorts of answer, like "we dont know the new folks moving to the city, we dont know this, we dont know that".

In private enterprise it is called "hand waving".

I see no reason whatever of prioritising children of city staff or teachers in any lottery. Teachers who live outside Palo Alto do have the opportunity of getting their children into PAUSD and that is enough. As for city staff, they should be treated exactly the same as anyone else.

I am in favor of teachers' kids being placed at the school where the teachers work. It's an incentive to everyone on the school to serve kids the best they know how. Teachers/principals will hear from their own kids what goes on in that teacher's class. They'll see the results of that teacher's skills.

Reader

I do agree that teachers' kids being placed in the same school as the teachers work is a good idea for all sorts of reasons. However, I do not think that this should give them priority in a lottery, particularly for something like SI which is so tight to get in, particularly if you do not have something that will give you a priority. Having 3 spaces for non Spanish speaking students in this year's lottery (as I read somewhere in this forum) is bad enough without giving priority to any teacher's kid who may or may not be in the running. I also agree that if a teacher at Hoover or Ohlone has an incoming kinder, they may be given the same priority as siblings to those already there, but that should be the sum of it. I don't think that teachers in other elementary schools or in any middle or high schools should have any preference over any other student in Hoover or Ohlone.