Yu Ming Wait List

We were 150+ on the waitlist and got an offer in mid-September, about a month after school started.  After much hand wringing we decided not to take the spot.  (Note that you will have very little time to decide whether to go if you get off the waitlist -- or maybe that's only if school year had already started -- IIRC we had about 48 hours.) 

This was for the current school year, i.e., 2021-2022.  Not sure if there are any special circumstances that made the waitlist move so much.

This is not the news that you probably want to hear but I would not put lots of weight in your specific number on the YM waitlist. The reason for this is that, as part of the charter agreement, YM needs to maintain a certain % of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch (FRL). At kindergarten, they need to fill more of the class with FRL qualifying kids because attrition happens. When students leave, they need to find a replacement student with the equivalent Mandarin skills. At the upper grades, the only kids who qualify to fill these slots have been attending private schools like Shu Ren or sometimes from kids in SF immersion schools. YM does not have bus service so the chances of these kids being FRL qualifying is very small. So that is all to say, the waitlist skips around. However, if your kid qualifies for FRL then you very well maybe higher on the "waitlist" than your number indicates.

To answer your original question, my kid was on the waitlist years ago and we got a spot after school started.

Our child got off the wait list for kinder and we started off with a very high number (higher than 40). We had actually accepted enrollment at another school because we did not know of anyone with a number anywhere close to where we started being offered a spot. The YM school year had already started when we got the call that a spot had opened up.

It should be noted that this year a lot of kids far into the wait list were offered admission either immediately before and as far as one month into the school year. Most of those children ended up taking up spots for students withdrawn by parents who were dissatisfied that their children had been placed in the Yu Ming #2 campus which is co-located with a middle school in West Oakland.

I think there were quite a few families that got off the wait list at Yu Ming #2. Yu Ming is in the process of starting a second K-8 school (Yu Ming #2), but it doesn't have a campus to house these students. Half of the kindergarten class admitted in the 2021-2022 calendar year was assigned to Yu Ming #2 and as others have noted in the comments, Yu Ming #2, which is comprised of 3 kindergarten classes, is currently co-located with an unaffiliated middle school in West Oakland. Many families who were admitted as kindergarten students at Yu Ming #2 last year did not want to be co-located with a middle school so they left once they realized what being part of Yu Ming #2 means in practice.

The co-location with the middle school in West Oakland was a one-year arrangement so the administration is scrambling to find a campus for Yu Ming #2 for next year. Several families are leaving Yu Ming #2 given the uncertainty so there will likely be open spots in the 1st grade class next year. Since you are asking about kindergarten specifically, you probably have a high chance of getting into Yu Ming #2 because there will be families who will not want to be co-located with another school and/or because Yu Ming #2 could potentially be housed anywhere in Alameda county and in fact, the administration wanted to move Yu Ming #2 to San Leandro, but the move was denied by the Alameda County Board of Education.

If you get off the waitlist at Yu Ming #1 (meaning the campus on Alcatraz), you should definitely take it. If you get off the wait list at Yu Ming #2, you should strongly consider how flexible your family situation is considering: 1- that the school can move to another city in Alameda County (there is no commitment to staying Oakland for Yu Ming #2), 2- co-location and sharing a campus means that your kids will have limited access to the school facilities, and 3- that until the school is able to find a permanent campus, your kids will be nomads moving around different campuses. You should also know that the administration is focused on finding a permanent campus for Yu Ming #1 first so Yu Ming #2, as the name suggests, is #2.

Thanks everyone for your replies. Wanted to update for other ppl who may have had the same question as me. I was waitlisted in the mid-40s and received an offer recently. They haven't assigned schools yet so we dont know which campus we all be at until later.