When there are more kids than spots in a popular school, how do you decide which kids get in?

CPS has tried to answer this question several times. In the 1990s, families enrolled in magnet programs via Super Saturday. CPS kept the enrollment locations (CPS schools) secret until the early morning on the last Saturday in January. After announcing the locations, lines formed quickly and schools accepted kids on a first-come, first-serve basis. Parents enlisted family and friends to patrol the city in cars so that the closest car could dash to the signup once revealed. Cars were manned in pairs, so that the passenger could get out and get in line without hunting for a parking spot. They communicated via pagers, walkie-talkies, and cellphones if they were lucky. There was more than a few fender benders in the process. Some families tried to guess the system, staking out schools for signs of “activity”, like building lights and cars.

Super Saturday ended sometime around 2000. For several years, parents enrolled their kids by taking a tour of the school and submitting a waiting list application up to 12 months before the first day of school. Your spot was not guaranteed however, and students were accepted partially on the basis of race and gender. Parents usually knew their result by December. Interestingly, this method was simple, straightforward and did not require waiting in line. However, due to demand from parents who wanted more control over their kids’ futures, as well as court decisions that outlawed the demographic basis of enrollment, CPS went to a first-come, first-serve enrollment around 2007. That first year, parents camped out in line for 24 hours.

To address the inherent unfairness in a totally first-come, first-serve enrollment method, CPS went to a hybrid system. Since 2011, 30% of open spots went to winners of a lottery system, with the rest still allocated via line. Families were eligible for the lottery only if their neighborhood school was underperforming.

“The Rules”

The Line started on the Monday after Halloween around 7:30am. I was at home getting our kids out the door when my wife called about all the Facebook messages pouring in: some asshole had started the Line. She literally had just pulled in at work, before pulling right out and heading to Fairview. She got in line around 8:30am. We were #8.

By noon, the Line was in the twenties. By dinnertime, nearly 50 families had signed up.

Everyone was anxiously awaiting the Rules. The Rules dictate what you have to do in order to keep your place in line. For example, we had two daily roll calls. Missing a roll call was a strike. Three strikes, and you’re back to the end of the Line.

Without the rules, we could not begin formation of plans for the next 16 days. Traditionally, the first person in line set the Rules. This year, the first five families were on the Rules Committee. Around 4pm, they announced the rules.

The Rules. Every person in line got a badge with a number. When you checked out, you left your badge in a green binder. You reclaimed your badge when you returned.

Some numbers: after sibling enrollment, there were 71 available kindergarten spots; of those, 22 were designated as lottery spots. The theory was that lottery winners were likely to already be in line, so there would be no net loss of the 71 available spots after the lottery. If a family received a lottery spot and was not in line, then the Line for camping families just got one spot shorter.

On the 2nd day, which was Election Day, the question circulated: “If there are only 50 families in line so far, and there are 71 open spots, then everyone gets a spot. If everyone gets a spot, then why the hell are we standing out here?”

The Rules Lobbying was on.

That afternoon, a special meeting convened to discuss alternatives to the rules. Ultimately, the following changes were made:

Move morning roll call from 10am to 6:30am so people could get to work. Allow line-goers to sit in car (not on school property) during inclement weather. Expand break time to a total of 10 hours/day — UNTIL the line is full.

Expanding break durations to 10 hours/day was huge. One could feasibly settle on a “normal” routine with 10 hours of break per day. So that’s what I did.

My voting sticker. The 2nd day in line was Election Day. Since I was camping outdoors in essence to support public education, I felt especially compelled to exercise my civic duty.

Day-to-Day

Every weekday morning, I awoke at 6:30am for roll call (roll call on weekends were 10am). Since I am not a morning person, waking up at 6:30am just to stand around outside in the dark would have driven me crazy. So I always left after roll-call, and usually went to work for 5 hours until 11:30am. Then I returned to the Line, picking up lunch on the way, and spent the rest of the afternoon in line. I worked a little. I read a little. I watched TV and shows on my phone as much as I could. I socialized with the other families when I was in the mood. We all kept the camp tidy since, really, there wasn’t much else to do. But mostly, I just sat in my chair, staring at the street traffic.

Around 5pm, I went home to eat dinner, and tuck the kids in bed. I think I showered a couple times. Around 9pm, I returned to the Line for evening roll-call.

On weeknights, I slept in my car. See, the real kick-in-the-pants with the campout line is that it’s not actually a campout. When you camp out, you make a temporary home for yourself. You set it up when you arrive, and you tear it down when you leave. In the Line, we had to take down our tents every weekday morning before students arrived. I heard that they didn’t want the little ones to question why a shanty-town had popped up in front of their school. With my car as a shelter option — a comfy one at that — I had no desire to tear down my tent every morning at 6:30am.