CHICAGO (CBS) — About 100 families said they were overjoyed to hear their children were accepted into the Chicago Public Schools’ highly competitive preschool programs.
But they only found out later that the offers had been sent by mistake.
Leslie and Tim Arnold applied for their daughter to start kindergarten at CPS’ Drummond Montessori Magnet School in Bucktown.
“We applied and Drummond was our first choice,” Leslie Arnold said.
Drummond Montessori, 1845 W. Cortland St., was described by the Chicago Tribune in 2008 as “harder to get to than Harvard.”
Families are registered for the coveted school through a lottery system.
“We had received notification that we had been accepted into Drummond – we were very, very excited,” said Leslie Arnold.
Their daughter was there – or so they thought.
“They had sent out a notice that the offers had actually been rescinded because they had made a mistake,” Tim Arnold said.
CPS said a system error incorrectly offered about 100 spots. The error affected both Drummond and Suder Montessori Magnet School, at 2022 W. Washington Blvd. on the Near West Side.
“Obviously I was crying,” Leslie Arnold said. “To get that news after being so excited – and just to be dropped.”
CPS apologized for the error, saying in part: “A manual step was missed for the final stage of the admissions process (the point at which the system makes/shares live offers), which incorrectly showed empty seats while the seats were actually full, which prompted our system to make the additional offers to students.”
“What’s more frustrating is the lack of transparency throughout the system, and them not actually trying to correct this,” Tim Arnold said. “They just took everyone back through the funnel and said, ‘Well, you can try again.'”
The Arnolds were placed back on the waiting list for Drummond and encouraged to apply to other schools with openings.
“Those 100 families should have been their first priority, but they weren’t,” said Leslie Arnold.
If space becomes available at Drummond or Suder Montessori, CPS said it will prioritize all affected families for seating.
The Arnold family said they didn’t make it into their top five school choices for next year.
