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HSA Statement about the School Selection Process
Earlier this month, the School District announced revisions to the school selection process. It includes some welcome news for the Masterman community: a pathway from eighth to ninth grade within the school has been created.
The same will be true for all five of the schools across the district that, like ours, combine middle and high school. Current eighth-graders who meet the criteria for admission to 9th grade at their own schools will be provided spots there. At the same time, they will have the opportunity to enter the lottery for other schools if they wish, and students across the city will be able to apply for open spots at these schools.
We want to congratulate and thank Superintendent Dr. Watlington and his staff, along with our team of principals, Dr. Payne, Ms. Lennon, and Ms. Harrison, for recognizing and addressing the need for this policy shift, affecting multiple school communities. It is a change that the Masterman HSA advocated heartily for over the past nine months, and one where we enjoyed full agreement and partnership within our own walls. We are extremely pleased that district leaders and their external consultants arrived at the same conclusion.
Our students and those at the other “pathway” schools have good reason to celebrate this decision: it will provide much-needed security for our students, eliminating stress and uncertainty that distracts from the learning and growth of students. Perhaps even more important in the long run is that this continuity will strengthen our community and school culture. It will allow long-term bonds of mutual commitment to flourish among students, families, teachers, and staff; and will create circumstances where the school’s unique offerings can grow ever stronger, given the opportunity to step up in a natural progression each year over a long period of time.
We hope new students will be given the opportunity to join the Masterman community at the high school level as well, both for the effects of a healthy amount of change on a school’s social and academic atmosphere, and to aid our school in better representing the diversity of the school district as a whole.
There is more to appreciate in the district’s announcement, as well. It is a relief to see that the district is also focused on fixing the part of the process that led to heartbreaking scenarios at a number of district schools last year: they say they are committed to finding ways to fill vacant seats at under-enrolled schools, as well as to place students who qualified for criteria-based schools but were not assigned seats, after the selection period is over. Dr. Watlington’s straightforward acknowledgement of past difficulties with communication and logistics, and his prioritization of improvement in these areas, reflect a welcome attention to the experience of students, families, and staff through the process.
The announcement also included a statement of intention to explore new operational resources that would allow the district to make further improvements to the school selection process next year, notably including ranked-choice in the application system–a component that would truly enable students to match with their best-fit schools.
Many questions remain about how exactly this new policy will be implemented at Masterman. One thing we do know is that open spots will continue to be filled via the lottery system, from among students who meet criteria, with preference given to zip codes that have been underrepresented among the school’s entering students in recent years. We truly hope that with carefully set criteria and the improved communication and support promised by the district, this system will begin to yield its intended results in terms of student diversity and academic achievement.
Most pressing is what exactly the new criteria for admission will be. It is our understanding that district staff are meeting next week to make determinations about this. The announcement stated that they are providing opportunities for principals and union leadership to provide input on the criteria. We respectfully suggest that families who currently attend criteria-based schools should be given a chance to review options and weigh in as well, before final decisions are made, as admissions policies have such a large effect on the experience inside a school–both in the immediate and over the course of time. HSAs, SACs (School Advisory Councils), and SGAs (Student Government Associations) have a constructive role to play here.
At Masterman, there is also the question of how to expand or reallocate space in the school to allow for a larger ninth grade (and hence, over time, larger grades across the high school). Currently, each high school grade at Masterman is significantly smaller than each middle school grade–a ratio that will have to flip if Masterman stays in the same building and every eighth grader who meets the school’s admission criteria is able to return, alongside a cohort of new students.
We don’t yet know the process or what proposals are being considered for implementation. We will keep the community posted as we learn more. For now, we thank everyone in our community for supporting the school’s students, staff, and mission, and look ahead to its increasingly bright future.
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