Is sibling preference fair?
This week my husband and 5 year old daughter attended a lottery. The names drawn were given a spot in Spanish immersion kindergarten and guaranteed a place in the language program for the rest of his or her elementary school years.
One out of the 5 kindergarten classes at our suburban neighborhood school is a new full Spanish immersion class and those children will move on as a group to the established partial Spanish immersion classrooms in grades 1 through 5.
We were told there would be 24 children in the class. Twenty new families in the district applied, but only 6 children were accepted. We were told that was because the school decided to offer preference to children whose older brothers and sisters in the program.
Now I understand the logic of sibling preference when it comes to school lotteries. No family should have to have two school-aged children in two different schools. But for a sought-after classroom? Perhaps my judgment is clouded because our daughter lost out, but it just doesn’t seem fair.
If I was in charge, I could see holding 1/3 or even half of the classroom for siblings, but to guarantee them placement feels like nepotism, something that seems decidedly out of place in our public schools.
Category: School
Funny that you should write about sibling preference in public schools. I’m trying to help a friend navigate the Chicago Public School nightmare. She has twins who are each on waiting lists at different magnet schools. When she asked about getting them into the same school using the sibling preference rule, she was told, “It doesn’t apply to twins as they are not considered siblings.” Yep. In the Chicago Public School system, twins are not considered siblings. And, I’m not making that up. Even on my most twisted days I couldn’t come up with that kind of logic.
Twins are indeed siblings. Maybe a better way of taking your situation into account is referring to siblings who arrived at school EARLIER.
It is hard when you’re the one losing out but it sure is great when you’re the one winning the spot. We don’t have any great programs, and my kids attend a very subpar school. However we’ve had amazing teachers the last two years and after the first year with a great K teacher we were thrilled to find out that teachers keep with families so my second son would be unofficially promised a spot in her class. This wouldn’t have been AS huge of a deal if I hadn’t heard many awful things about the other K teacher!! This year, sadly the AMAZING first grade teachers son 1 had has stepped back into K so son 2 will not be having her. However thanks to teacher recommendations we once again got what we feel were the best teachers available in each grade!
The only rationale that I can see is if there is evidence that the Spanish immersion is more effective, i.e., the kids actually absorb more of the language, if multiple children in the same family are in the program.
The preschool we were originally putting our 3 year old into this year had the same rule. But it went as far as if a sibling had EVER attended this school, any future younger siblings immediately got a spot and all other available spots were filled with new students. It was a first come first serve registration, so since we were new, I got to registration at 3am that morning. FIVE hours before the school registration opened! I did indeed get a spot (that we later released since he wasn’t quite ready). But I guessI never thought of it the way you do. I just thought “okay, i have to fight for his spot at this school if i want it.” Obviously for you, there was no way you could have “fought” for a spot, you were just unlucky. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. Hopefully something even better will come of this. Good luck.
I am now an adult. I have seen somewhere on the internet that there can be reassurances given that other factors will be considered in addition to sibling preference, because of the disadvantage that results for firstborns, which is what I was. I took a high school entrance examination long ago and, having heard of sibling preference and knowing I was a firstborn and could not qualify for it, felt more pressure.