Phantom children

[LBRB Forum Webmaster]

For very popular classes in high demand, parents often create phantom children for whom they will reserve slots in several classes at the same time, so as to bypass the conflict prevention mechanism.  Once they've later decided which class they "really" want, they will drop the unwanted class(es) or simply let their reservation(s) expire.

There seems to be three reasons for this:  First, is to grab class slots before their child has decided which class he or she really wants.  Second, is that there are outside scheduling issues that haven't been resolved when enrollment opens, and the best classes fill up quickly.  Third, they're trying to coordinate classes with one or more of their child's friends.  In this last case, several families have reserved what will become unwanted slots.

The down side to this behavior is that class slots become unavailable to others, when those others have made a good faith effort to enroll.  Yes, this is unfair, and ultimately punishes the children who would really like to attend a particular class, but the only answer is to discourage the behavior.  Registrars can remove any child from any class, especially children with non-creative names such as:  Jason2 or Sarah2.

Dorsey