Lots of Interest in Three Year Old Program at Hyde

While GM was away, the DC Public Schools released the results from the annual school lottery. As you may recall, next year will be the first year that Hyde offers a three year old program (“PK3”). And to attend, even neighborhood kids need to win a spot in the lottery (this is true for the four year old program too, but not Kindergarten and above).

And with a three year old, for the first time GM has a personal stake in this year’s lottery. He was not lucky though, getting a mid teens waitlist number. But it wasn’t clear until yesterday how many other local families entered the lottery.

With the release of the complete results by DCPS yesterday, GM has his answer: a lot (at least for Georgetown).

According to the data, 37 Georgetown families entered the lottery for PK3.

When it was first announced, GM frankly had no idea how many Georgetown families would be interested in a three year old program. Even parents that plan on sending their children to Hyde for Elementary school typically send their children to a nursery school that goes up to 5 years old.

The only reference point GM has is the historical numbers for the PK4 lottery. And those have been historically high, by Georgetown standards, over the past several years:

• 2011 – 21 children applied for Pre-k
• 2012 – 33
• 2013 – 30
• 2014 – 31

One reason the interest for next year might be even higher is that it is the first year after Burleith has been added to Hyde’s boundary.

GM will note, however, that the interest in PK4 took a small dip. Twenty-seven children applied for the 19 slots (which, again, is still on the high side for Georgetown historically).

Now it’s important to keep in mind that compared with other neighborhoods, for whatever reason the number of Georgetown families applying to Hyde are still not very high. For instance, Stoddert in Glover Park had 56 kids apply to the same number of PK4 slots as Hyde is offering. At Key in the Palisades, 65 kids applied for 39 spots (which suggests that maybe DCPS should have reassigned Foxhall Village to Hyde as it had originally proposed in the redistricting last year).

Maybe Georgetown just still has fewer families, or lots of families that go the private school route. It’s probably a mix of the two. Either way, it’s nice to see the local interest grow, and GM particularly is excited to join the other 36 families with a 3 year old, whenever he finally gets in…