How many students were included?

There were 1985 students included in the 2012-13 lottery. We have a total of 57 spots to fill.

If I have not received a call, does that mean I won't get in?

Not necessarily. In fact, we are often still making calls in the late summer! We do make a lot of calls on lottery day, however, usually we leave messages for about one-third. They have 24 hours to get back to us. And not everyone we call accepts the offer of a spot. So, we wait 24 hours, and make more calls based on how many offers have expired and then wait 24 hours and so on. People who accept have one week to register. If we don't receive registrations, we make more calls. And then through the spring and summer we lose some here and there (people move, etc), so we make more calls.

If I do not get in this year how does that affect my chances for future years?

If you do not receive an offer of enrollment for the 2012-2013 school year, then you will qualify for Weight B (included in a previous lottery and not offered a spot) for the next lottery, so your odds will be a little better.

How, exactly, does the lottery work?

The lottery is done using our online waitlist system (to give parents as much information as possible). As part of that system, we programmed the following set of procedures to be run on lottery day (this is what happens when we "push the button").

1. A database table was created (LotteryTable). The student information placed in the table was studentid and "in district" (true/false).

2. Every student is placed in the table (1984 entries).

3. Every student that qualified for Weight A (BRE/TTE Feeder Area) is entered into the table again (390 qualified for Weight A).

4. Every student that qualified for Weight B (in a previous AA lottery and not offered a spot) is entered into the table again (1270 qualified for Weight B).

5. Every student that qualified for Weight C (in the original AA charter application and never offered a spot) is entered into the table again (5 qualified for Weight C).

6. Each row receives a computer-generated random number between 0 and 1.

7. All out-of-district kids have a 1 added to the random number.

8. The table is sorted with the smallest random number on top and the largest at the bottom.

9. The rows are assigned a lottery number in ascending order (so, the top row with the smallest random number receives a 1, next row a 2 and so on down to the last row with the largest random number).

10. Finally, the smallest lottery number for each student from the LotteryTable is assigned to the student on the waitlist (calls will be made, by grade, in lottery number order).