CPS Pre-K/K Lottery: The 13 factors to use in ranking your elementary school choices in Cambridge [Table Included]

I'm writing this post because I put in so many hours figuring this stuff out for myself last year (January 2022). And I know many other parents were duplicating the same efforts. Well, if this post has any say in the matter: no more! 

If you read (skim) through this, I promise you'll save much valuable time. Here's what I wish I'd known about 1 year ago (when I realized, belatedly, our proximity schools didn't thrill me). 
​
Update: A parent emailed me about a comprehensive, parent-created CPS Lottery resource from 2018, but still has a lot of helpful info. 

To-dos for making your CPS ranking:

1. Get a handle on all the "rules" and basics — reading this blog post should do that.
2. Get a handle on the main factors at play — again, this post should pretty much cover you.
3. Schedule in-person tours for all schools of interest. Do it as soon as you're interested in a school, as schools sometimes *stop* offering tours early. (Last year, Morse & Amigos did this.)
4. Make a spreadsheet (even just in pencil) of the schools + factors that matter to you. 
5. Email/text/call your parent-friends about their experiences. (Email me, too, if you want more info on my experience - schraa@gmail.com.)

LAST STEP: before submitting, make sure you (and your partner) can articulate why you've put each school on your list. This is important as it will:

• clarify your reasoning,
• allow both parents to feel comfortable with their choice, and
• if something should go wrong, knowing how you made your choice should also serve as a guide as to whether you need to think about changing schools. 

Caveat - I'm new & still learning: I have little CPS experience (my 5yo just started in September). And he is healthy with no learning disabilities or other issues so far. FWIW, our son ended up at Baldwin and goes by bus.  

Please email me with corrections/suggestions/questions: schraa@gmail.com. I'd love to add your insights to this post. 

And now --
THE RULES & FACTORS you should know before choosing your ranking 

FACTOR #1: PROXIMITY SCHOOLS

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.