Somerville district conducts preschool lottery, posts wait list

A staff member from the Somerville Public School District conducted a preschool lottery to assign slots and establish a wait list for 3- and 4-year-old students and said final lists were posted to the district website.

The staff member described the district’s preschool classrooms as mixed-age, saying the arrangement helps younger children through peer modeling while older children build leadership and social-emotional skills. “You should have received an email with your child's assigned lottery number,” the staff member said.

The staff member said the district used a randomized “wheel” to assign seats and then continued to spin the wheel to establish the order of the 3-year-old wait list. In the recording, the staff member read a sequence of lottery numbers that will be used to offer openings and determine wait-list positions, including: 134, 106, 12, 114, 121, 46, 16, 82 and 125. Portions of the recording include long numeric strings that were unintelligible and may be audio artifacts or phone numbers; those strings are not reported as assigned lottery numbers.

The staff member also explained, as part of the procedures, that the revealed numbers will be added to the district’s posted lists and that families should check the district website for the final posted lists and their email for individual lottery numbers.

The lottery was presented as an administrative action to allocate seats and set a wait-list order; no formal vote or legislative action was recorded. Parents and guardians with questions were directed to consult the district’s published lottery results and contact district enrollment staff for follow-up.