Public school says program that they never gave information about is full…

Posted this in Parenting sub but wondering what Education sub might say. This is in USA.

We enrolled our 2nd born child for kindergarten to start in the fall. Our oldest goes to the same school but has special needs (with IEP). We called mid-Spring and asked about kindergarten enrollment the office and registrar did not know when enrollment would open because no one had even asked yet. When we got the information we marked our calendar and enrolled on the first day it opened and RSVP’d for a kindergarten roundup event they did in May. We took her to that and they checked off that we had submitted needed paperwork and asked her a few questions I guess just to see level at with numbers and alphabet etc.

Just recently I learned from a neighbor that the school has a dual language program where the kids are taught in another language common in our area 50/50 with English. Different from bilingual which is for kids who don’t know/need help learning English. We had never heard of this program despite having an older child already at the school and enrolling our 2nd child right at enrollment and taking attending the kindergarten event. It was never mentioned or flyers given out or anything. The neighbor who told me has two older children in the program and she is very involved in the school’s PTO so I’m not sure if only PTO parents get told maybe to get first dibs which leads me to..

We inquired about the program and while the district website says the application deadline has not yet passed, they said the school we are zoned to is at capacity and there is a waitlist. But it’s not advertised.
Kids can also only join as entering kindergarteners so we can’t just apply for next year. When we emailed the program coordinator listed online we got no reply until we emailed again with some other people CC’d (principal, registrar) which I only did because my husband wrote the first email and didn’t even include what school we are zoned to and the program director is for the entire district so I fwd it and did “forwarding to add A and B” etc. Then we got a reply within a few hours saying unfortunately it’s full.

This is a public school so the taxes we pay are funding this program that they are saying our child can’t join because it’s full despite them not telling people about it when they register their kids for kindergarten even though kids can only join it when they’re entering kindergarten. Does anyone have any advice about how we can escalate this because even if they legitimately don’t have space I feel like it’s not right that they don’t tell families enrolling like it’s some need to know program when the information should be given to everyone. Also the fact we were never told about it for our older child who has special needs but IS in general education classes so technically we could have at least applied to see if he could do it. And then no information this time either.

Can we argue this or do something to make sure this doesn’t keep happening to other families?

Submitted July 13, 2022 at 07:12PM by anongamer554 https://ift.tt/QcTvB2I