With just four school days before our annual Spring Break, it feels like school is taking less of everyone's time than vacation planning. With a significant number of 8th graders heading off on international trips, and the rest of us looking to travel or rest on our own, the day-to-day cadence of school is difficult to maintain. This week is also the beginning of the fourth advisory and the slow transformation of 6th to 7th, 7th to 8th, and 8th to high school begins in earnest. Somewhere around many corners are 5th graders - at Janney, Murch, Eaton, Hearst, Shepherd, Bancroft, and Lafayette - who will start becoming Vikings in mid-August. The trick to maintaining our attention at the real tasks at hand is to not let ourselves get distracted. Let's see how that goes.

April 1 is a big day across the city - the first day for registration in your child's next grade. What this means for our Deal students is that 5th graders need to register here, 6th and 7th graders need to register here, and 8th graders need to register wherever they are going. Registration is similar this year to last year; documentation expectations are on the DCPS website and families will be receiving packets with further information. 

How does this affect you if you are already planning to register for the coming year? I need you to register as soon as you can. The process is pretty quick and as effortless as we can make it. But we need it to happen. With our 1,300+ students, there are a lot of papers to process. The front office needs to check each one, recheck them, and then enter them online. As you know, we have a small but hard-working front office. If we don't have a steady stream of registrations before June, our summer backlog will be immense. 

Feel free to come by any day to take care of this. On Thursdays (after April 23) we will have extended office hours - as long as we can. When there is a big evening event, we will keep the office open (in case you want to mix the Guys and Dolls with registration). For our 5th graders, we will work with each of their schools to host Deal registration days on site - what could be easier? 

What difference does it make if your child is registered tomorrow or in early August? A big difference. We need to know who is coming so we can tell what they will be taking. This allows us to plan strategically - keeping class sizes down has been a priority for us for years. We are designing and manipulating our schedule based on who is registered in our database, not on who we expect to register. While I believe I have the best registration team in DCPS, miracles are a lot harder to come by in late August!

Families often will ask what they can do to support Deal. An early response to this bureaucratic need is a pretty significant step. If nothing else, think of how tough this is for our front office staff as we get closer to August. They do this work so that we can have the school we need. If there is anything else you think we should be doing to help you come on in and register your child for another great year, please let me know.

James Albright