Revere Schools Announce Middle School Placement Lottery

At last week’s Revere School Committee meeting Revere School Assistant Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala announced that Revere will hold its annual Middle School placement lottery on Thursday, April 11 at 5 p.m. at Revere High School inside the Ferrante School Committee Room.

“As many people know we have a lottery system for our three middle schools, so our six elementary schools feed into our three middle schools,” said Dr. Vadala. “This lottery will be broadcast live on Channel 22 in Revere or parents may attend here in the school committee room. However, due to capacity issues students will not be able to attend.”

This year students from each 5th grade class from Revere’s elementary schools were able to take a tour of all three middle schools and then were asked to choose their first, second and third choice for middle school assignment.

“Each 5th grader had that opportunity this year and one third of each 5th grade class goes on to one of the three middle schools,” said Dr. Vadala.

Dr. Vadala said this year there will be eight lotteries for middle school placement. Dr. Vadala said the order of the lottery will start with the school with the ‘largest’ student population numbers first.

“The lottery will be organized first by the largest and the order this year will be the Whelan, Hill, Garfield, Lincoln, Paul Revere and then finally Beachmont, which is our smallest school,” said

The Middle School Lottery emerged some years ago after the schools began building new middle schools, starting with the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Middle School about 10 years ago. That followed with the new Rumney Marsh Academy (RMA) afterward. Those two new middle schools joined the existing Garfield Middle School, while the former Beachmont Middle School was discontinued.

The new middle school configuration sparked a controversy that, on an annual basis, had become contentious at the 5th grade middle school lottery. The basis for that was that many parents wanted their kids to go to the newer schools, or they wanted them to be closer to their homes on the west side of the city. Previously, both middle schools were on the east side of Revere.

The result was scores of children annually oversubscribing the two new middle schools – the SBA and RMA – while the Garfield Middle had excess seats. That required a lottery process where some got the school they wanted, and others were forced to go to the Garfield.

The breakdown of this year’s lottery is as follows:

Whelan School, two lotteries for the RMA and SBA. The RMA choice is over by 27 students and the SBA choice is over by 4 students.

The Hill, only one lottery for the SBA. The SBA choice is over by 24 students.

Garfield Elementary, only one lottery. The Garfield Middle choice is over by six student.

Lincoln, two lotteries for RMA and SBA. The RMA choice is over by 8 students and the SBA choice is over by 11 students.

Paul Revere, one lottery for RMA. The RMA choice is over by 22 students.

Beachmont, one lottery for GMS. The GMS choice is over by 4 students.

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