The Waitlist

The lottery determined her daughter’s future in eleven seconds. A random number generator. The same technology casinos use.

The school is public. Free. Funded by the same tax dollars that fund the school her daughter will attend instead. The difference is the test scores, the teacher retention, the building without a leak in the science lab. Both schools are public. One of them works.

Three thousand families applied. Eight hundred got in. The selection was random because the alternative — selecting by merit, by address, by income — would require the system to admit that the schools are not equal. The lottery preserves the fiction. Every child has the same chance. The chance is twenty-seven percent.

Her daughter didn’t get in. Waitlist position: 412. The waitlist doesn’t move. It exists so the institution can say there’s a process. The process is: wait. Hope someone leaves. Nobody leaves the school that works.

The neighborhood school has forty-one students per class. The teacher has been there two years. The last one left for the lottery school. So did the one before that. The building was built in 1967 and last renovated in 2004. The science lab has a leak. The counselor covers three schools.

The parent who can afford to move will move. The zip code determines the school. The school determines the opportunity. The opportunity determines the outcome. The outcome determines the zip code the child’s children will live in. The loop is closed. The lottery is the system’s way of pretending the loop is open.

She could try again next year. The odds don’t improve. The waitlist doesn’t carry over. Every year is a new lottery for the same twenty-seven percent chance at the school that works.

Her daughter is seven.