Choice #1 — DHSP. 
City-run preschools — through the Department of Human Services Programs (DHSP)

While the City’s DHSP preschools are mostly located in public school buildings, but they are run by the City, separate from the schools. 

There are six DHSP preschool locations: 

• Alewife (430 Rindge Ave, in North Cambridge)
• Windsor (119 Windsor St, in the Port, near Central)
• King Open (101 Willow St, in Wellington-Harrington)
• Martin Luther King (100 Putnam Ave, in Riverside bt. Harvard and Central)
• Morse (40 Granite St, in Cambridgeport)
• Tobin (227 Vassal Lane, in West Cambridge)

Pros/cons --

• 🥳 More coverage: DHSP preschools run full-day, year-long programs.
  • Note that the extra hours are mandatory in DHSP. If you need more flexibility (ex: your child will be somewhere else in summer), you may not want this placement.
• K lottery: Your child won't have an advantage getting into any particular Cambridge public school. You'll have to enter the regular Kindergarten lottery the January before that school year to be placed. 
• ​🥳 Inexpensive: While DHSP preschool costs vary by income [scroll below to see charts], it's a good deal for most families.
  • Some attend for free (those under 65% of HUD AMI - see chart).
  • Others pay sliding-scale tuition to cover the extended hours and summer, which maxes out at $400 per month.
  • Top earner note: if you're in the top income bracket, DHSP may or may not be a good deal compared to the private preschool you're most interested in. It's worth doing your homework in that case to see what the savings might (or might not) be.
  • 3-year-old rates are higher: Note that the rates for 3-year-olds are considerably higher (except for the lowest-income category, for whom it's still free). 

Source of greatest confusion — Going to DHSP at a school does NOT get you into that school for Kindergarten. (This was our most asked question at a recent preschool fair event.)

• ​Example: If you choose DHSP Tobin (located in the Tobin school), your child has no advantage in trying to get into Tobin for kindergarten (which is extremely difficult). (If you get in via the CPS Tobin placement - see directly below - then your child is indeed guaranteed Tobin thereafter.)
• DHSP at a school does not help your child get into that school's kindergarten!

 
Choice #2 — CPS. 
Cambridge Public School preschool classes 

CPS houses preschool classes within each of its 11 elementary schools. These follow the CPS school schedule and calendar.

Main Takeaway — CPS placements are binding for Kindergarten placements (whereas DHSP or private preschools put you back in the K lottery). You need to really want to go to the particular public school if you rank it on your form. Here are the details on the three schools we believe (without access to data as yet!) are most popular:

• The MLK Mandarin Immersion program has 1 CPP class and 1 Kindergarten class, so your odds seem better entering via a CPP placement, since most of the K seats will be filled with CPP graduates.
• The Amigos Spanish Immersion program has 1 CPP class and 2 Kindergarten classes, so the CPP advantage is lesser. 
• Tobin Montessori operates by its own rules — the typical age of entry is 3 years old, with only a few seats becoming available for older children. So apply when your child is eligible for the 3 year old lottery; after that, you should apply only knowing that your chance of gettin in is low. 

CPS placement Pros/cons --

• ☹️ Less coverage: CPS placements do not offer summer coverage.
• ☹️ No afterschool: CPP students attending CPS programs are not eligible for City-run afterschool.
  • However, CPS preschool students can still apply to private nonprofit programs for afterschool. 
  • One example is the CPP Peabody placement — Two parents told us that Cedar Childcare next door has set up a program where they will pick up the 3- and 4-year olds and walk them a block away to their school. 
  • Another is that Cambridge Montessori (private nonprofit preschool) will take CPP students from Tobin CPS.  
    
• 🥳 Guaranteed K: CPS preschoolers stay at the same school for K and do not need to re-enter the lottery. Thus, CPP is a chance to access to the most popular CPS schools that are harder to enter through the Kindergarten lottery. The City hasn't yet released a breakdown of how many kids went to each CPS preschool, but our understanding (based on the K lottery data and anecdotally) would be that these preschools likely fill up first:
  • Tobin Montessori (where most kids enter via the 3yo lottery!)
  • Amigos (Spanish immersion elementary/middle school)
  • Martin Luther King (Mandarin immersion elementary school)
• 🥳 Transportation: Bus transport is provided to eligible 4-year-olds (not 3-year-olds).
• Special needs: These programs include the city’s Special Start program which provides special education services and programs for children with a wide range of disabilities.
• Note on transferring: ​if you're assigned a CPS placement that's not your first choice, email Living Treasure Kathy Sampson (at the Student Registration Center) to get added to the waitlist for another CPS program. (A parent gave us this tip; it seems it's not well publicized.)

Popularity note: Except for the very popular programs (such as Tobin/immersion programs), the CPS placements tend to be least-chosen. Which makes sense given the significant coverage issue. 

 
Choice #3 — Community-based Partner Programs

CPP also contracts with private preschools. Hours, enrollment criteria and fees to cover extended hours vary from school to school. Some programs cater to families with particular employer or academic affiliations. Explore options with CPP’s useful search tool.

• Priority to those already enrolled: CPP seats at these programs are offered to eligible families currently enrolled before they are opened to the CPP lottery. Employer or academic affiliated programs offer seats to families with those affiliation first.
• More coverage: Many of these preschools offer families after hours and summer coverage for a fee.
• K lottery: Families must enter the K lottery for kindergarten placements.

 
CPP decisions tree — which of type of program should you choose?

1.) Is your child eligible for or already enrolled in an employer or institutionally-affiliated preschool that's part of CPP?

• If yes, and you want to enroll or stay there, contact the program directly. Confirm with your program director that you are CPP-eligible and that you don’t need to submit a CPP lottery application. 🥳 Congrats — you’re done!
• If no, continue to #2.

2.) Does your child have special education needs?

• If yes, determine if you need a Special Start placement through CPS .
• If no, continue to #3.

3.) Do I need a program with extended hours and summer coverage?

• If yes, buckle up. Here are things to consider for each program type:
  • 🥳 DHSP: These programs offer extended hours and year-round (summer included) programming free or on a sliding scale, depending on income. DHSP placements also lead to guaranteed placements at some DHSP afterschool programs once your child enters Kindergarten. (This is a big benefit, given that the City doesn't have enough afterschool for all families who want it.)
  • ☹️ CPS: The City does not offer afterschool for students in CPS preschools. Some private programs may offer afterschool programs for some schools. For example, Cambridge Montessori’s afterschool Passport program currently accepts students only from Tobin. But it's unclear whether the same rule will apply this coming school year. We suggest starting with the school's family liaison to see what options you may have.
  • Community-partner programs: Many, but not all, of these programs offer extended hours. Check individual programs for hours and rates.

Again, please email us with questions, or to correct or improve this post. 
Also email us with policy concerns, as we will follow up with a post focused on how the City could do even better with this program. 

• Eugenia - schraa@gmail.com
• Jill - jill.linnell@gmail.com

See DHSP preschool costs below. 

You have 2 "proximity" schools based on your address — your child will be virtually guaranteed admission to these schools. 

Look up your two priority schools here. (I was half-way through the process before I realized there were only 2, not 3. It's just not super clear.)

These two schools are generally the ones nearest you. (Double check them early in the process, though. I know of a family with a strange address that found out half-way through the process that they had different proximity schools than they thought. )

Note: some schools you may want your child to attend are not "proximity" schools. These are:

• The 3 language "immersion" schools: Amigos (Spanish), MLK-immersion (Mandarin Chinese), King Open Olà (Portuguese). (More on these below.)
• The much-coveted Tobin Montessori, which accepts most of its students via CPS's 3-year-old lottery. 

FACTOR #2: LOTTERY CHANCES
This one really matters! Let's go over the lottery rules together. 

#1 — Why do they keep talking about lunch? (Balancing schools by socioeconomic status). 

The aim: CPS wants its classrooms to be socioeconomically balanced. Good goal!
Unfortunately, the state data (see #9 below) indicates they don't really nail it. 

The method: The way CPS approaches the balancing is by using whether parents identify as requiring "free/reduced lunch" (proxy for low-income) or "paid lunch" (proxy for mid- to high-income). They try to keep these two groups in balance — you can read the details on pp. 1-2 -- but the gist is this year they're aiming for 67% of each school being Paid (ie: higher-income) + 33% Free/Reduced (ie: lower income).

Unhelpful rant you can skip: For the past two years, Massachusetts has made lunch free for all students, so there's no lunch-related incentive to do this paperwork to show you qualify for free/reduced lunch. Worse, this paperwork burden falls only on low-income families, to prove they qualify. That, combined with the fact that it appears not to work great, seems to indicate CPS might want to look into finding a better solution. But that's not what this post is about, so let's move on. 

Bottom line — If you think you might qualify for free/reduced lunch, take the time to do the paperwork. It will give you a considerable lottery preference. You can see this most clearly in Table 3 of the lottery stats. (Which we'll also discuss in the next section.) 

#2 — Besides lunch-payment-status, what factors MOST effect your lottery chances?

• Sibling (likely doesn't apply to you if you're reading this) — younger siblings are highly likely to get into their older sibling's school = 2M bonus points!
• Proximity (covered above) — you're highly likely to get into your proximity schools = 1M bonus points.
• Language for immersion schools — This gets a little complex, so I'm addressing it separately in the section below on the 3 immersion schools. 

#3 — If I don't have a statistics degree, how do I make sense of the recent lottery data?
It's great that CPS publishes their lottery data. It's a gold mine of valuable info. Unfortunately, you've got to do the mining yourself. I hope this guide will make it easier for you. 

The data is in 4 tables:

• Tables 1 & 2 — estimated number of seats per school (Table 1 = non-immersion schools; Table 2 = the 3 immersion schools). 
• Table 3 — A breakdown of the 1st, 2nd & 3rd rankings for each school (by free/reduced lunch and paid lunch).  
• Table 4 — an overview of how the lottery has worked out for the last 6 years. 

Let's start with Table 4.
​What's interesting is that it shows the overall trends are in your favor:

As you can see above, last year CPS had 145 fewer JK/K lottery applicants than in 2017 (481 last year vs. 626 in 2017). 

That means your chances of getting into any school have become easier than in recent years, partly due to the pandemic (which might reverse), but I'm guessing also due to Cambridge's deeper trends (ie: being totally unaffordable - some data here). 

​In 2017, only 86% of families got one of their top 3 choices initially (ie: in March). Last year, 94% did. (This is how my son got into the historically-tough Baldwin.)
​
This trend is great in that you don't have to stress as much about 'gaming the system' (a bad idea anyway) and just rank your actual 1-3 favorites. (I'll still walk you through how to 'game' just so you can see it. Again, not a good idea.)

Next, let's look at Table 1.
(Table 2 is the same as Table 1 but just for the 3 immersion schools; we'll study it next, in the immersion section.) 

This puppy is great!

For your proximity schools, look at column E (# of proximity students who applied last year), to make sure your proximity chances are strong. The ones that look tight are:

• Graham & Parks (no seats leftover after proximity kids accommodated), 
• MLK called King-Regular (ie: non-immersion) here, to confuse everybody (also no seats left after proximity kids accommodated), and
• Peabody (4 seats left over).  

Proximity applicants still have a strong chance at all of the schools, but those 3 are the places where you might not get your first choice proximity initially. (But you'll have a strong chance of getting in off the waitlist if you can hold fast — more on that below.)

For your non-proximity schools, look at the last column. This number is how many seats available to the likes of you and your family. Here, that means these schools are extremely unlikely to let your non-proximity kid in: 

• G&P
• ​MLK-regular 
• Peabody
• Tobin.

For the rest, you have a good-to-okay chance. 

Table 1 is really the most important to understand your lottery chances (for non-immersion schools). But for a little more color, especially with the lunch factor, you can hop over to Table 3:​

Note: I've removed the immersion school data from the version above of Table 3, so that it's easier to read for our purposes. (We'll look at the immersion data in Table 3 in the immersion section below.) 

In addition, this version shows only the "first choice" section, as I think understanding how first choices play out is most important when ranking your choices. 

What does Table 3 shows us?

First, for most schools, ALL kids who rank that school #1 get in:

• Cambridgeport
• FMA
• Haggerty
• K-Lo
• King Open
• MLK-regular* (referred to as "King School" in this table, b/c CPS thinks its fun to switch up how they refer to the same school while they make you wade through complex data!)
• Morse

Note that MLK ("King School") had 42 #1 applicants — much higher than the others on the list above. So even though every #1-ranking applicant got in last year, it was tighter than at the other schools. (Morse is second with 39 #1s, but it has a capacity of 80 (see Table 1), whereas MLK only has a capacity of 60, so chances are much better there.)

One school let in almost all #1s initially:

• Baldwin: 74 applied; all low-income got in (9); 62/65 high-income got in (3 did not).

Finally, these schools were the 💔 heart-breakers:

• G&P — 20/54 didn't get in initially (4 low-income; 16 high-income).
• Peabody — 15/56 didn't get in initially (1 low-income; 14 high-income).
• Tobin JK — 8/12 didn't get in(!) initially (3 low-income; 5 high-income).
• Tobin K — 5/11 didn't get in initially (0 low-income; 6 high-income).

What's not recorded in this Table 3 data are the percentages of proximity kids getting in vs. non-proximity. In every instance, we know from Table 1 and the lottery's logic that proximity kids have a much better chance. Table 3 sheds a little more light on things, while also demonstrating the power of having free/reduced lunch standing. 

So that's your overview of the recent data (except for the immersion schools, which we cover below). The missing piece, which is hard to glean from the lottery data, is how much does the waitlist move?  

FACTOR #3: WAITLIST CHANCES (and Mandatory Assignment)

The waitlist rules are complex, taking up from pp. 5-13 of CPS's lottery rules. But the most important part is that:

• update: Waitlist's tippy top is for "hardship appeals" (see below + thx to parent who wrote in on this).
• After hardship students, the top of each school's waitlist is reserved for applicants who ranked that school #1. 
• Of all the students on the school's waitlist who ranked that school #1, those who got into no other schools go to the top; then those who only got into their 3rd choice; then those who got into their 2nd choice.
• (Of course, students are still ranked within each tranche by their lottery points, so proximity/sibling points are still making a difference.)
• (And also, the socioeconomic balancing still applies, so free/reduced lunch kids continue to do better, in practice.)

Do you see where the GAMING comes in? 
→ If you're dead-set on getting into a coveted school, such as G&P, your best chance is to rank 2 other schools you have little chance of getting into #2 + #3. This way, you know your child will be at the tip-top of G&P's waiting pool, and likely get in. 
Ex:

• G&P #1 — your top choice
• Tobin #2 — not a serious choice
• Peabody #3 — not a serious choice.

What's the risk? 
Mandatory assignment will happen to you if this doesn't work out. It just means your student will be assigned to a school not on their ranked list. (Note: my friend said that when her child didn't initially get any of their 3 choices, CPS called and gave them a few options. This is a bit better than what the rules say.)

Because of mandatory assignment, gamesmanship may be more appealing to families who can afford to put their child in a private school if the #1 school doesn't work out. A family committed to CPS has more to lose.

My biggest concern with mandatory assignment would be getting an inconvenient school, rather than a "bad" one. I think gaming the system is too stressful for your family + because of what it does to everyone else. So I just advise to be "lame" and avoid it all together. You'll be happier and the system will be better off.

Back to our guiding question: How much does the waitlist move?

Feedback alert: One parent told me that I should complain more that CPS doesn't publish much wailtist movement data. Agreed! It's really important to assessing your chances, but they don't give you much. You have to ask around for this.

I'm pretty sure that it was the Baldwin family liaison who told me that if you're willing to wait out the school year all the way until October 1 of the new school year, you had a great chance of getting into Baldwin, even in the past when it was more coveted.

While I can't find data to back this up, you can get a sense of some of the movement by looking back at Table 4. The bottom row (row 9) shows that 100% of kids last year got one of their 3 ranked schools by 10/01. 

In the first month of school, the schools discover who is really showing up and who maybe moved or decided on a private school. So I believe this is a time that a really dedicated family can take advantage of at coveted schools, if they're willing to move their kid at the start of the school year. 

Hardship appeal update: I have now heard from a parent one example how the hardship appeal can work: This parent's younger child go into Amigos + so they petitioned CPS to ask if their older child could get in, too — which CPS granted as part of the hardship appeal.

[Working to get a link or more info on this process. For now, if you think you have a "hardship" story, I'd say contact the family liaison, Kathy Sampson + maybe parent friends.]

Bottom line: how much the waitlist moves at that school is a good question to ask your 1-2 top schools. Ask:

• family liaisons at the schools you're interested in (and/or the principal) and
• Kathy Sampson who deals with the lottery.

I've heard great things about Kathy, though I myself didn't work with her last year. (feedback from a friend: "nice but eventually she got super sick of [our] questions.") Still, once you have a sense of your preferences, it's a great idea to ask her about your list + about expected waitlist movement at 1-2 of the schools you're most interested in. 
→ 617-349-6067 or ksampson@cpsd.us. 

Knowing your waitlist number: According to a friend, the only way to know where you are on the waitlist (if you end up on one) is to constantly call Kathy. This friend suggested that a better system would be to have this info online somewhere. Agree! (We didn't get waitlisted, so didn't know about this.)

FACTOR #4: IMMERSION Schools & the lottery
Let's talk about whether CPS can make your child bilingual.

Three schools offer language immersion, which means ~50% instruction in that language:

• Amigos (Spanish),
• MLK-immersion (Mandarin Chinese),
• King Open-Olà (Portuguese).

Anecdotal immersion issues: I heard from other parents and also from school liaisons that non-bilingual students do tend to transfer out of Amigos in higher grades (2nd-3rd) because the language aspect gets too hard. I wish I had actual data on this. 
Update on MLK: A parent wrote in to tell me that MLK's Chinese immersion does a pretty great job for non-Chinese speakers and doesn't have this issue. Something to follow-up on, but great to know. 

For me, the Amigos-kids-often-transfer-out thing was enough for me to take immersion schools off my list. (Oops! Maybe should have left MLK on!) Personally, I grew up going to school only in French and speaking English at home. I'm so sad I can't share this with my kids. But my concern is that that level of nearly full immersion is what's actually needed to learn to speak a language fluently. 

If you can't support your child at home in the immersion language (whether from family members or paid help), I would approach immersion cautiously — ask families who've been through it for more on their experiences. 

IMMERSION & THE LOTTERY: 
Here are the rules:

• If your child tests* as a speaker of the language, they get 1M bonus points in the lottery. 
• In addition, the socioeconomic balancing continues, so that's an extra complication, as well.

*To get your child tested as a "program language speaker:"

• "All tests for grades JK-2 are done by appointment at the time of registration at the Student Registration Center."
• Do it early in January because "the appointment times may fill up." 

To get a sense of how the lottery rules play out, let's finally look at the immersion lottery tables, starting with #2:

​Table 2 simply replaces the "proximity" applicants from Table 1 with "language bonus" applicants in column E. The last column thus shows how many seats are left for a child without language bonus points. 

What jumps out immediately is the MLK Chinese Immersion program is really hard to get into — though this chart is misleading in that it makes it seem that having language points is a clear winner, which isn't true. We need to turn back to Table 3 to see what the actual chances are both at MLK-immersion and Amigos. 

Here's Table 3 again, this time, I've doctored it so that only the immersion school data is visible:

In this table, N = non-bilingual; B = bilingual. (Confusing? Yes. Tell CPS.) 

What this means is that, for Amigos:

• 8 "non-bilingual" students who chose Amigos #1 didn't get in initially (all those who didn't get in were "paid lunch"). 
• ​All "bilingual" (Spanish-speaking) students who chose Amigos #1 got in initially, whether paid lunch or not. 
• → There's a real advantage to having the Spanish language points. 

For MLK immersion ("King School"):

• 6 "non-bilingual" students who chose MLK immersion #1 didn't get in initially (all those who didn't get in where "paid lunch."). 
• 8 "bilingual" students who chose MLK immersion #1 didn't get in initially (also all in the paid lunch category). 
• → It was actually slightly easier to get in if you didn't have Mandarin language points. 

For King Open immersion:

• Every kid got in, in both language categories.  
• I'd ask the family liaison and principal questions about how big the program is and how many students actually speak it fluently, just based on these numbers. I don't have a sense of those things to share here, sadly.

Update: Thank you to a parent who wrote in I'd initially made a mistake describing how the lottery works for immersion:

• After the lottery, the immersion programs aim for a 50%-50% "fluent" to "non-fluent" mix. (I had wrongly said this was during the lottery - not true.)
• So, in the waitlist process — if a program has 50% or more fluent speakers, then the next available seats will be offered to non-fluent speakers until the percentages of each reaches 50% (pg. 9).

Thus, this is an issue that will affect your waitlist chances. I'm now confused at how the MLK immersion language bonus points play out. Maybe someone else will write and explain: schraa@gmail.com!

Bottom line: 

• Getting into Olà is easy | getting into MLK is hard | Amigos is much easier with Spanish-language points.
• For the testing, sign up for it early so it's not stressing you out (whether or not you end up ranking the immersion school).
• Go into any of these 3 schools asking a lot of questions of the school itself (family liaison, principal) and of parents who've had experience there. 

FACTOR #5: LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION AT NON-IMMERSION SCHOOLS
Let's stick with language for a minute. 

Surprisingly, only 4 schools offer any language at all (this is from pp. 13-14 of my Schools at a Glance booklet from last year - I can't find an online source):

• Spanish — FMA, Morse, Peabody
• Mandarin Chinese — MLK (fyi, this program is called Ni Hao)

Except for immersion, the other schools have no language instruction.

Personal note - no language could be good: I ended up, sadly, thinking this was a "plus" (our 5yo is at Baldwin with no language) because I'd rather him have extra music and art than sit around "learning" a language at a meaningless level. That is a gut-feeling, so please take with a grain of salt — or show me why I'm wrong: schraa@gmail.com.  

Weird thing — I welcome insight on this, but, in researching this section, I noticed something odd about the 3 Spanish-teaching schools:

• Morse & Peabody only have 1 Spanish-language teacher in their staff directory — and it's the same person (so I'm assuming the directory is out of date). 
• Peabody update​: A Peabody parent wrote in to tell me Spanish classes only start in 4th and 5th grades. 
• FMA has no Spanish-lanugage teachers in the staff directory. My neighbor says she knows the Spanish speaker there well and that he is great, so I assume this is also an out-of-date issue, but it's still weird.

By contrast, 

• MLK has 3 Chinese-language teachers (regular, not immersion). This seems more like what I might have expected.

If you're wondering why I was looking this up in the schools' staff directories, it's because Morse and Peabody don't mention the language aspect in their marketing materials, which I found a little odd. 

Bottom line: If language matters to you, ask questions of the family liaison/principal and other parents at the school.  

[Random: Cambridge has a private French bilingual school, The International School of Boston, that will really, really teach your non-French-speaking child to be fluent in French (even if they enter later than K). Also, for some reason, unlike the other private schools, they are on the CPS bus system, so your kid can bus to school there (I think they have to pay, though).]

FACTOR #6: DISTANCE + BUS
How long is the commute + would your child be bus-eligible? 

Agh! I hate that this factor is so low on my list. This is a *hugely important* factor. Do not make your list without understanding how busing works. 

For elementary school, your child is eligible for the bus if:
- their school is 1 mile or more from their home OR
- they must cross

• ​Mass. Ave,
• Fresh Pond Parkway,
• McGrath Highway,
• Alewife Brook Parkway or
• the railroad tracks at Sherman Street. 

Knowing your bus eligibility is critical for choosing your school. I wish I'd integrated this into my process earlier. What it means, weirdly, is that the best schools, convenience-wise, are the ones that are either:

• super close (obviously) or
• kind of far (not obviously).

The worst schools (again, this is just convenience-wise) are the ones:

• in between!

For us, this was King Open — a good ~15 minute walk from us. But it's within 1 mile and doesn't involve crossing any of the streets above. Thus, pretty inconvenient. By contrast, Baldwin is 2 miles away, but made convenient because of the bus (~10 min-drive/bike ride). (Nonetheless, some schools, like Graham & Parks, were so far from us that I didn't consider them seriously.)

Afterschool note: the bus will also transport your child to afterschools that have the same distance criteria as your home. Ex: my 5yo takes the bus from Baldwin to the YMCA afterschool, because it's over 1 mile away. 

[There is more to say on this topic, so please email me if you have questions schraa@gmail.com. But that's the gist.]

FACTOR #7: START TIME
Start times vary tremendously by school — are you an early riser?
When my friend mentioned "start time" as a factor, I laughed. Who cares about start time? Right? Compared to teacher quality? Or learning or ... anything?

But it *is* a factor. Probably nobody's *biggest* factor, but a factor nonetheless. 
Note when your school starts, particularly the 5 early ones:

• 7:45am at FMA,
• 7:55am at MLK, Haggerty, K-Lo, Tobin.

Think realistically about how such an early start time might affect your mornings every day for the next 6-7 years. 

FACTOR #8: EXTENDED DAY
Let's now single out two schools for special praise: FMA & MLK (that includes the immersion side). These commendable schools have extended hours every day but Wednesdays:

• FMA - 7:45a - 3:45a (except W: ends at 2p)
• MLK - 7:55a - 3:55a (except W: ends at 1:55p)

This is great stuff, especially in a City where afterschool is so scarce. By the way, for DHSP afterschools (if your child gets in), you'll pay slightly less at these schools because of the shorter hours. 

Note, King Open also has a great "King Open Extended Day" program, integrating afterschool with regular school for some King Open students. 

FACTOR #9: DIVERSITY 
Demographic information for each school is publicly available on the state education website.

CPS doesn't share this information, but it's worth considering, especially if you'd like your child exposed to racial and socio-economic diversity. 

Tech note: to check stats at each particular school — see illustration below --

• go to the MA education site,
• click "school" (not "district"), top right,
• then choose the school from the scroll-down menu + 
• don't forget the teeny-tiny orange arrow (like I usually do)!

As you'll see if you play around in the site, CPS elementary schools vary quite a bit by racial and socio-economic diversity. (That's despite the fact that CPS' "controlled choice" lottery system aims to created socio-economic balance, as I mentioned (ranted about) above.)

​Also of note, some schools have a particular demographic bent, which might be particularly attractive to your family. For example:

• FMA is 53% Black
• Amigos is 48% Hispanic
• MLK is 32% Asian

​Below — Demographic information for the entire Cambridge district, K-12.

FACTOR #10: TEST SCORES 
Student test results are also publicly available on the state education website.

CPS also doesn't share this information, but it's available right there with the demographics. 

Test scores are politically contentious. You might note that schools with lower test scores are schools with higher proportions of low-income students — thus, those lower scores don't translate directly into "quality of teaching." 

One way to use test scores is as a source of questions to ask the family liaison during an in-person visit (or follow-up email), or directly to the principal. The school should have good answers about their test scores and what they're doing to improve learning, while also providing a fun, healthy, and balanced environment for kids. 

For example — during my search last year, Cambridgeport's overall score was then "requiring assistance or intervention (focused/targeted support)." (It isn't anymore.) I asked the Family Liaison who directed me to the principal. (Note: I didn't love how The Liaison handled this, so that was one thing I noted.) The principal wrote me back a solid explanation, which I took as a good sign not just about the test results, but also about her leadership. 

Below — Cambridge's District-wide test results for ELA and Math in grades 3 - 8 (in orange), as compared to all Massachusetts students (blue). 

FACTOR #11:  MIDDLE SCHOOL
Except for Amigos which goes through 8th grade, each elementary school funnels into one of four "upper schools" — confusingly, these are actually middle schools (grades 6-8). They are:

• Putnam Ave. Upper School — K-Lo, MLK, Morse
• Rindge Ave. Upper School — Baldwin, Peabody
• Vassal Lane Upper School — Tobin, G&P, Haggerty
• Cambridge St. Upper School — FMA, Cambridgeport, King Open

Things to consider:

• Anecdotally, I've gathered that some of these schools have not-great reputations.
• Another issue is location from your house — the elementary school could be doable, but the upper school could be too far. (That's kind of my case, actually. Oh well.)
• BTW, this system (a big part of the Innovation Agenda) is now 10 years old — CPS created the 4 "upper schools" to see if smaller schools would produce better educational outcomes, especially for lower-income and BIPOC students. Query: Did it?

Apparently, CPS gets pretty grumpy when comes time for your student to move on to upper school and you don't want them to for whatever reason. But I don't know what the rules around this are. 

Fessing up ... I decided that this was really one factor too many for me to go deep on. I figured, anything could change 6 years from when I applied, so I couldn't work up the effort to care about it. And I didn't, really.

Please email schraa@gmail.com if you have insight into how to better handle this factor. 

FACTOR #12: HODGE-PODGE, MISC, & RANDOM STUFF
Here are some random things that might make it on to your list of considerations. In no particular order:

• Family Liaison quality — so far, I've noticed you'll interact with this person a lot. So your sense of them on an in-person tour does matter. 
• Building aesthetics — I had a friend who explicitly considered how nice she found the buildings in making her list. This was hard for me as we did virtual tours last year, but you might consider it.
• Uniform — FMA requires a uniform. I think it's the only one. You might love this (like my neighbor does) or hate it, but it's good to know.
• more — please let me know what smaller, other factors I should include in this list schraa@gmail.com. 

FACTOR #13: PRINCIPAL — The #1 most important factor
Except for chances of getting in + location, this was what ended up being my most important factor. 

Problem: it's not easy to assess principal quality. 
Here are some ways to try:

• Read their notes: Most (all?) of the principals have short note on their school website. It might give you a sense of them. I put Baldwin #1 in part b/c I loved this note by its principal — especially: "Research shows that the most important way to support your child’s learning is to ask them to tell you about what they are learning." Wow! Citing research? I like it. 
• Write the principal an email with a question (maybe on test scores, see above). Do they answer at all? Do you like their answer? 
• Find a parent at the school and ask them how they like the principal. Ask them why? Why not? Their reason for disliking the principal could be your reason for *liking* them. 
• Ask the liaison about the principal. You might get a sense of them. You might also learn that the school is in the midst of a search for a new leader, or that they're retiring soon. Those could be red flags.  🚩 🚩 (I mean that the school will be going through transition & experience a learning curve, not that it's a bad sign about the school per se.)

Current highly incomplete info - please email schraa@gmail.com with more. 

• FMA is beginning a new principal search. 🚩 So I would ask A LOT of questions if interested in FMA.
• One of the reasons I didn't put Cambridgeport on my list (despite its being nearby + many happy families I know there) is that I learned at the Zoom visit that almost all the teachers were only there 2 years — further digging revealed that a lot of teachers had quit en masse when the prior principal left. 🚩 Red flag for me. 
• Principals I've heard great things about: Baldwin's Heidi Cook, MLK's Gerald Yung, Morse's Chad Leith. I've heard mixed things about the principals at Amigos and Cambridgeport. There is no assessing this objectively. So just do as much as you can to figure this out yourself. Feel free to email me schraa@gmail.com and I can share my incomplete knowledge. 

What else?
If I haven't asked enough, please email me with what I got wrong, what I should add, and any other suggestions.

Bonus — here's my spreadsheet from last year. 
I ended up ranking #1 Baldwin, #2 MLK + #3 FMA (a proximity school; my other was Cambridgeport - we live near Central). Please take it all with a grain of salt. It was a messy process & I'm leaving it pretty much as-is.

So far, I'm a big fan of Baldwin. Its "cons" were the low diversity and distance. Its "pros" were a great principal, liaison, academics, and atmosphere. Part of me wishes we'd ended up at FMA (except the night owl in me), as it's sad not to see the kids and teachers every morning/ afternoon, but this is where we landed.

As you can see from our June takeaways, one of our main frustrations is DHSP's lack of transparency. This is problematic for many reasons:

• It chills parent speech — you can’t know that your advocacy won’t hurt your child’s lottery chances.
• It makes it harder for families to figure out their options — in particular, because DHSP doesn’t reveal a child’s waitlist status to families. 
• Generally, it’s a major obstacle to building trust.  

But the good news is that the answer to our FOIA request for public records does contain insightful data on the program and lottery for the 2022-23 academic year. 

(Our table of the likelihoods of getting into any afterschool is in #2 below.)
​
Here are our main takeaways (again, you can look at their full data here):

This is a serious concern because:

• First — we’ve heard parents say that nobody moved off the waitlist at some DHSP after schools, even as seats opened up. (Referring to FMA Afterschool.) We can’t validate if this is true or mere rumor, but the lack of records here is concerning.
• Second — parents need to know how many kids moved off waitlists last year so that they can have a sense of their kids’ likelihood of moving off this year. Not sharing this information shows a lack of respect for parents’ genuine concerns. 
• Third — understanding how many students moved off the waitlist would give an indication of how much (if any) effort DHSP made to hire more/expand programming in 2021-22.

DHSP needs to start releasing this data so parents can make better planning decisions. 

#4 — Applicants don’t know if they’ll have “priority” status or not as they’re applying
​
For reference, last year, DHSP had three income categories: under $70k, between $70k and $130k, and over $130k (see screenshot from DHSP October 2021 report):

• [1] The "all families who need it" order:
  • "That the City Manager be and hereby is requested to present a plan, which includes funding, and the findings of any feasibility study of any DHSP and any other city department providing children and/or city youth programs, for rapidly expanding out of school time in the city to create enough slots for all families who need it."
• [2] The Caregiver Advisory Council order: 
  • "That the City Manager be and hereby is requested to convene a Caregiver Advisory Council that is overly represented by high priority families in partnership with DHSP that engages key stakeholders that includes, but is not limited to, the Agenda for Children, current and former out of school time staff and leadership, and out of school time community benefit organizations. Such a council will receive reports as ordered by Policy Order 2021 #201 that describe who applied and were enrolled, capacity, staffing, and outreach efforts."
  • Note: "high priority" I think means "low-income" or maybe also low-income and POC. Not defined in the ordinance. 
• [3] The "Neighborhood Councils" order:
  • "That the City Manager be and hereby is requested to re-establish the Community School Neighborhood Councils, and to report back to the City Council on this effort before the close of this calendar year."

You might notice all 3 ordinances "request" the City Manager to do stuff. Emphasis on "request," because, as I've written before, the City Manager largely runs the show in Cambridge - not City Council. (Really!) 

Upshot: it seems like Louis DePasquale (our current, but soon-to-be retired City Manager) did not agree to take these up. At least, little seems to have happened. 

Digression to bash on DHSP just a little more: (So sorry DHSP), but what better place to share that, this March, City Council also unanimously passed this ordinance "requesting" (oh, damn! there's that word again) the City Manager to 

• "consult with the Assistant City Manager for the Department of Human Service Programs [Ellen Semenoff] and the head of DHSP Preschools [Meghan White]" when they 
• "make changes that can have undue impacts upon the families they serve."

I know about this because I worked with City Councilor Denise Simmons to get it passed and am only now understanding how useless it really was, but ... it felt good at the time. I guess.

[Back to actually relevant info.]

Part II: DHSP's City Councilor said that we should pressure Ellen Semenoff but kind of also need to wait for (and pressure) the new City Manager

Last Tuesday, May 3rd, City Councilor and liaison for DHSP Marc McGovern met with me and 4-5 parents who I recruited with some others mostly off of Facebook. A group of ~12 had informally gathered via email. Please email me schraa@gmail.com if you want to be in on any more shenanigans we get up to. This is a fully open group, if pretty inchoate. (Bias note: I know Marc from other work and am a big fan of him.)

[Take-away #1]: Marc will ask DHSP Head for information

• Marc agreed to follow up with Ellen Semenoff on the "all families who need it" policy order and get a sense of the numbers they'll accommodate in 2022-2023. 

[Take-away #2]: Marc will arrange a public meeting with DHSP Head

• Marc also agreed to arrange a public parent meeting with Semenoff, likely during the workday, likely in June. I'll share that once I know. 

Other thoughts:

• DHSP is a big department ... maybe too big. It might be right to push for Preschool/AfterSchool being split from unrelated departments like homelessness, veterans services, adult programing and more.  
• Keeping up pressure on new City Manager will matter for advocacy. (See more below, though). 
• However, Marc also shared that the City Manager will step down in Late June, but it's unknown when the new one will come in. Also, many department heads are expected to retire within the first year of the new City Manager, and it's implied that Ellen Semenoff is in that category. 

Part III: The City Budget implied expanding AfterSchool is not top priority

In this part, I paraphrase the recent Budget's page 42, aka "Key Initiatives: Out of School Time:"

• Para 1 - blame Covid: "DHSP programs lost approximately 40% of its staff during the 15-month [Covid] closure, which greatly impacted the ability to operate programs at the same capacity." [Note: silent on why they can't be rehired. Or have they been? It's unclear.]

• Para 2 - maybe we made mistakes?: "Prior to the pandemic, DHSP had begun to take a closer look at practices that may [no, definitely!] have led to inequitable enrollment patterns in many of its programs." [This sentence makes me so angry. Please read my advocacy post for more on how heads should have rolled for what DHSP did in the very recent past.]

• Para 3 - numbers: 

- It's not us! Massachusetts only serves 25% of families needing afterschool care [source not provided]. 
- "In Cambridge, City-operated and community-operated OST programs have capacity for approximately 40% of the JK-5th grade Cambridge Public Schools population."
- CPS has ~3,600 elementary students. 
- Before 2021-22, City programs had 1,100 afterschool seats + nonprofit programs had ~350. [Total of ~1,450.] [Does not say how many seats are available today.]
- "The pandemic seemed to increase the demand for afterschool programs." [But DHSP's report indicates that demand didn't so much increase as low-income families were fully shut-out of services they wanted - see that advocacy post I keep talking about.]
- Award for best use of passive voice: "The cost of programming and knowledge of programming options are often barriers to access for families. Additionally, staffing and space are major challenges that need to be solved."
- More editorializing: please say more on staffing and space, as we can solve this thing for everyone if we figure out these 2 pieces!

• Para 4 - We are punting this for at least another year: 

- "Providing additional afterschool programming requires a collective effort to determine a path forward." [Why does it require a "collective" effort? Just hire teachers and find spaces! Oh no! The second "stakeholders" they mention are "families/caregivers." But IMO caregivers should not have to work to solve this problem. People collecting City salaries should solve this probably all by themselves.]
- "AFCOST will lead this effort over the next fiscal year and work closely [obnoxiously pointing out a typo: missing "with"] stakeholders to map out a process to examine OST expansion opportunities for Cambridge." [This sounds like it's going to take a year to create a process to look at expansion + then another year to actually expand? It does not sound urgent.]

• Para 5 - We're doing a study 

- "The effort will require a capacity study to determine how many OST providers, programs, slots, and opportunities currently exist, and where there may be room for growth and expansion." [Don't we have this already?]
- "It will also involve input and feedback from families and caregivers about their needs for afterschool, as well as input about access and equity - with a focus on centering voices of the most traditionally marginalized residents." [Just guessing that families want quality childcare they can afford.]

Apologies for all the editorializing.

At any rate, it seems clear that speed is not the top priority in the City's budget. It seems like they're taking a year to study the issue. I don't think that's the same as a year to *solve* the issue, but I hope I'm wrong.

In terms of the upcoming meeting with Ellen Semenoff, I think focusing on this page of the City Budget will be important. Why does it seem like this is being punted for a year of study? Why can't we solve it sooner? Or are am I just misinterpreting?

Part III: New City Manager isn't coming for a while

My feeling on all of this is that things won't change until the new City Manager takes the job and replaces Ellen Semenoff with someone more attuned to the needs of families, particularly low-income ones.

Unfortunately, a Crimson article today on the City Manager search states that it's possible that "the selected candidate might not be ready to take over by June [when DePasquale is set to retire]" and so “We’ll have to make some kind of decision as to who’s running the show,” according to Marc McGovern. “Do we keep Louis on for a couple months? Do we appoint somebody else? That’s a whole other ball of wax we have to consider and think about.”

I think that's more bad news for getting this afterschool situation resolved sooner rather than later. 

Thoughts? Corrections? Suggestions? Please email me at schraa@gmail.com. 

History: Last spring or summer (of 2021), almost 200 parents and sets of parents signed a letter to a hodge-podge of City leaders, including:

1. the Head of DHSP (Ellen Semenoff)
2. the former CPSD Superintendent (Kenneth Salim)
3. the six-member School Committee
4. the nine-member City Council
5. an assistant principal at the CRLS high school , and 
6. the COO of CPSD (James Maloney). 
7. [note: not to the City Manager.]

I just mention this because it shows how hard it is to put pressure on the "person in charge" when it comes to city-run after-school options, since it's not really clear who that person is. 

The parents were concerned that DHSP-run after-school programs wouldn't offer space to all CPS elementary and middle school students in Fall 2021. (This turned out to be true.)

The letter's tl;dr was to request:

• that the DHSP after-school program option be available to "everyone who needs it,"
• that the city tell parents about start dates and "any enrollment changes" by early July 2021;
• that the city tell parents whose kids were enrolled in after-schools at the start of the pandemic on their status + tell all parents how to enroll new kids; and 
• that the city commit to "restoring these programs at full capacity."

Seemingly in response to this letter, DHSP released an 11-page report in October 2021, "DHSP Community Schools 2021-2022: Program Changes, Data and Outcomes, and Key Learnings." They seem not to have posted it online. (A parent forwarded me a copy.)

In the "Introduction," the report said it would explain "why we made changes to our Community Schools registration, enrollment, and tuition" for 2021-2022. 

As I read it, the report shows that DHSP is failing at 4 major issues all at once:

• Equity issues — the main thrust of the report is that the Community Schools used to be horrendously unfair to low-income families, and are now just pretty unfair.
• Inadequate service issues — DHSP doesn't have enough seats for kids generally, and it's obviously a major source of stress and financial risk for most Cambridge families.
• Timing - pre-pandemic, DHSP used to tell parents if they had a spot in a Community School in mid-September, but that's pretty dreadful for planning purposes. Last year, they improved that to August 31 - progress, but still dreadful. Good news is that this seems like the one problem that DHSP can, and likely will, improve for Fall 2022. 
• Extremely poor communication — This blog exists because of how poor DHSP is at communicating what it is doing. That's before you realize that what it's doing is inadequate. The report at least shows that DHSP recognizes some of that failure.* Sadly, many months have passed since the report, and communications is still abysmal.

In terms of the data, the report says 1147 kids applied to the 2021-2022 Community Schools Lottery for 688 spots. That means 459 kids didn't get a spot. 

• 27% of applicants were low-income — 80% of these kids got a spot. 
• 19% moderate
• 54% high-income — only 50% of these kids got a spot. 

DHSP now reserves 30% of its slots for low-income kids, which explains why they have better representation. However, since this means that just 42 low-income kids were waitlisted (see graph below from pg. 6), this system seems weirdly skimpy. Why be so half-assed about it? DHSP should definitely admit all low-income kids who apply, since options for their families are so much more limited than for the rest of us. ​

In their letter, the parents asked that DHSP restore its after-school program to pre-pandemic levels. However, that apparently did happen in Fall 2021 -- in 2019, they had 691 spots, ie: about the same. 

The issue, according to this report, is that pre-pandemic, the DHSP Community School system pretty much excluded all low-income kids. Quoting: "Most Community Schools did not have waitlists for their programs, as the families who did not apply in person or were unable to afford the program fees were not in the applicant pool." Holy crap!

And that's why it seemed to many affluent parents that DHSP provided a seat for any CPS child who wanted one. It was definitely not true. This is totally a real scandal that I don't get why it didn't provoke more outrage when it got made public, but moving on. 

Pre-pandemic, the report says that 12% of its kids were low-income, compared to 36% of its kids in 2021-2022.

The tl;dr here is that ~450 kids aren't going to get into a DHSP after-school program next academic year either, unless staff and capacity goes up drastically. (In the chart above, it would be helpful to know how many applicants were "declined" and how many were "ineligible," but it's unclear.)

The good news is that the report identifies 3 programs that used to have higher capacity than they do currently: Amigos, MLK, and Morse (chart from pg. 7). 

The bad news is that by my very calculations based on this graph, there's only a generous 70 or so new spaces that might be added through this mechanism, bringing the gap down to 370 kids who will still need spaces. Also, it's not clear that they will add space. 

One parent has anecdotally noted that some schools are limiting after school options because they don't want to share space with them. A City Councilor points to the same issue in his blog post, discussed directly below. 

What has happened since the October 2021 report, then?

I'm really not sure, as there seems to be very little available online. My only guidance comes from an October 2021 blog post by City Councilor Quinton Zondervan, "​Expanding Out-of-School Time Options," which he seems to have written in response to the DHSP report and especially the parent outrage that preceded it. 

Zondervan has made two requests to the City Manager Louis DePasquale on this.

• Request #1 — present a plan (including funding) for expanding OST options.
• Request #2 — establish a Caregiver Advisory Council for engaging key stakeholders around the issue.

(Aside: Cambridge's City Council (including the Mayor) has much less power than the City Manager. The parents didn't send their letter to DePasquale. But he is retiring, and a new person will take the job by summer. So it'll be worth elevating these issues to that person, and asking where they are on Zondervan's 2 requests.)

Zondervan's tl;drs are:

• "Staffing, not space" is the major constraint on after-school capacity, "and that is resolved with a deeper investment." (But he doesn't give any numbers on this.) Anecdotally, I've heard that Brookline, Arlington, and Somerville all have sufficient after-school coverage. Don't know if that's true, but it seems like this should be a solve-able issue, especially as the more slots open up the more parents will pay, given the current priority for low-income kids. 
• More schools should have a King Open-style expanded day program, which apparently worked great for his kids. DHSP currently lists this program not as one of their Community Schools (King Open also has one of those, they say), but as a DHSP school, though one that seems to be an outlier, since it's only for King Open students. Zondervan says, "This program functions as a more natural extension of the school day, [what does that mean?] offering social and academic enrichment in a classroom setting. It works in synergy with the Community Schools program [what does this mean?], and both of my kids benefited greatly from having both options available to them at King Open." I don't really get how it's different, but apparently its great. 
• Expanding Youth Center coverage, including on Saturdays. (This is probably great. I just think with things as they stand, the priority should be on coverage for little kids over older kids, as little kids are a bigger burden to working parents.)
• A parent advisory council with well-represented low-income families. I don't think anything's happened so far on this front. 

* On DHSP's poor communications. My favorite part is at the bottom of page 10: "Although we talked at the June 30 City Council Human Services and Veterans Committee meeting about there not being enough capacity in the system for all the families who want programs and about the need to engage a broader community process to look at program expansion, many families did not assume that this would impact them."

This is hilarious! DHSP is such a city bureaucracy baby that they're surprised that holding one committee meeting with an obscure name isn't enough to make families understand that they may be losing their jobs come the fall due to child care issues. Ha ha ha! (Impressed they were honest about it, though.)

Ok. Just one more (top of pg. 9): "Many families wrote us to clarify the notifications they received or, in some cases, share that they had applied but had not received any update about enrollment. We devoted our resources to confirming enrollment status for families. As we focused on these details, families who inquired about their status in the waiting pool or wrote with concerns and questions about the lottery process sometimes went unanswered, and we know that this lack of communication compounded families’ distress and frustration."

I am so, so glad I didn't have to live through this. Sounds like a total nightmare. I love how honest DHSP is in describing it, though. 

Obvious, but worth saying: Your #1 consideration should be how to get the child home
As you know, the CPS busing system will bring your child home OR to an afterschool program if their school is over 1 mile from your home or crosses Mass Ave (link). What I didn’t initially realize is that the government goodies end there. That is, you must pick your child up from after school yourself. (Makes sense.)

Therefore, be sure that you pick an after school that’s convenient to your home or commute from work. Basic, but realizing this radically changed how I approached filtering the otherwise Overwhelming List we referenced up top.
​
[1/3] DHSP After-Schools
These programs are in 5 CPS schools (FMA, MLK, King Open, Morse, Peabody). Below left is how DHSP presents them. It’s horribly confusing. Thus, I created the hopefully helpful table, below right.

Two big things here:

• (1) you can only apply to King Open’s Extended Day program if your child goes there;
• (2) FMA’s program doesn’t serve grades 4 or 5.

The other schools (MLK, Morse, Peabody) each have 2 programs , one for Kingergarten through grade 2, and one for grades 2–5.

5-day program: Unlike the Community Schools and many of the private options, you can’t choose certain days for your kid to attend. It’s a 5-day program.

Admissions will be a lottery, prioritizing DHSP Preschool grads. There are 7 DHSP Preschools. It seems unfair that parents lucky enough to get their kids into one of them also get a leg up on the DHSP After Schools, but that’s how it is. (I’m one such parent, but do find it unfair.)
Worse than that: Parents of DHSP Preschool kids don’t have to do anything to get on the list for DHSP After School admission. 

Update (4/6/22): Chandra's email to DHSP Preschool parents went out this morning. If you are a DHSP Preschool parent and didn't get this email, email Chandra immediately. Update (5/9/22): At the start of May, DHSP notified families in the program already they could re-apply.

Chandra Green, Head of DHSP enrollment, emailed one parent confirming that DHSP Preschool parents don’t have to submit application paperwork:

“[W]e will be notifying [DHSP] families around mid-April [2022],” and “[T]ransitioning children from our preschools will be prioritized for space. If we run out of space children remain prioritized until space comes available for the student.”

If you’re not a DHSP Preschool parent, email Chandra and/or apply now to get on the list. (Chandra is very responsive — cgreen@cambridgema.gov.)
​
A lottery will probably apply, but it’s best to be safe, as the rules are still obviously in flux. As compared to Community Schools, DHSP After Schools provide more coverage (see hopefully helpful table #1 above) and are of the same quality (I believe). That means, all things being equal, you’ll likely (slightly) prefer a DHSP program to a Community School.

[2/3] Community Schools
Good news: Eleven of the 12 CPS elementary schools have one (the exception is Baldwin). Admission is lottery-based (DHSP Preschool grads don’t have priority).
Bad news:

• They don’t provide quite as much coverage as DHSP After Schools (see top table).
• If your child is coming from an early-release school (ex: Baldwin), they’re ineligible for a late-release school’s Community School (that is, FMA or MLK).

3–5 day program. You can send your child every day or as few as 3 days/week.

Cost: More total unfairness — the City’s 2 extended-day schools (FMA and MLK) naturally have shorter after-school programs (since they start later). This is reflected in the price, which is $466/month (top rate) at FMA/MLK and $666/month (top rate) at the other schools.

See this very complicated chart for how much you’ll actually have to pay by income and by number of days you send your child.

Note on admissions timing. Thanks to a parent for sharing this that last year, they only found out whether or not they got their Community School slot “basically after school already started.”

She added, “Before Covid it seemed that if you wanted a Community School slot, you could have one (according to parents), and this year they waitlisted kids until they could hire enough staff.”

The MLK Community School Director wrote to another parent, “Everyone agreed that August was much too late for it to happen but the timing was unavoidable last year.”

[Update 5/9/22] Lottery TIMING: While it's still not up on DHSP's website (why not??), I got wind of an email stating that DHSP will open the lottery mid-May and notify parents in the last week of June. For more details, see post.
DHSP’s Chandra Green wrote to me recently that the Community School lottery will be “late Spring, early Summer” this year [see first table above]. The MLK official implied that parents will hear of the lottery, which DHSP runs, via their school’s email system. It seems from her email that you’ll be able to register your child, say which Community School you’re interested in, and the number of days you like.

Note on program quality (this is from the same parent referenced above):
“The programming is VERY different than before Covid and kind of felt hodgepodge but improved as the year progressed. I am looking forward to seeing if they start to try and get back to pre-Covid programming next year [2022–2023].” (Light edits.)

[2.5/3] Cambridge Youth Programs (for pre-teens/middle schoolers)
For students in grades 4–8, DHSP also runs 4 pre-teen after school.
These run every day from 2–6pm, at:

• Frisoli — near King Open in East Cambridge
• Gately—near Peabody in North Cambridge
• Moses—near-ish to Cambridgeport in the Port (near Central)
• Russell—near Fresh Pond golf course in West Cambridge

Cost: sliding scale for grades 4–6; free for grades 6–8. (Why??)
Admission: not sure as the link in the Overwhelming List is broken, but it lists the individual program directors, so reach out to them.
Program quality: A parent said, “It's a really great option, and is one of the cheapest.” Sounds good!
​
[3/3] Private After-Schools
There are 10 nonprofit and for-profit after-school programs in the City (see Overwhelming List’s very first page). But really, there are only 8, as I’ll show below.

Nonprofit status: Kiddie Academy is the only program that’s For Profit (not Nonprofit). From personal experience (I sent my kids to daycare there for a short time), I would not recommend Kiddie Academy. It’s badly run. Use as a stop-gap only.

Dragonfly is only for grades 4 - 5 + for Graham & Parks students only. Pretty much says it all. Unless, that’s you, this one’s not an option.

The 8 remaining programs are:

• Harvard Square + West Cambridge (2) — Agassiz Baldwin, Phillips Brooks House. (Also Dragonfly, see above.)
• Cambridgeport (1) — Cambridge Community Center.
• Central Square + The Port (4) — Community Art Center, Henry Buckner, Margaret Fuller, YMCA. (Also Kiddie Academy, see above.)
• East Cambridge (1) — East End House.

First, map them out. Remember that pick-up is on you. So your first order of business in sorting through these programs is figuring out where they are and if you can make pick-up work for you.

Then, do some quick research: The programs do vary in quality, so asking for a tour (in-person, virtual, or phone call) or to speak to other parents in the program is a great idea. At the very least, take a little stroll on their websites.
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Apply now: These programs are generally operating on a first-come, first-served basis. While they mostly aren’t making decisions until the summer, you want to be as high up on the waitlist as you can be.
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Updates/corrections/thoughts? Email me at schraa@gmail.com