All you have to do to hear a unified groan from every parent pushing a swing in a San Francisco playground is mention one word: "lottery" — shorthand for the only-in-San Francisco system of ranking your top choice public schools, and then letting a computer and a host of "tiebreakers" sort out where your kid will go.

I remember hearing: "It's impossible!" "It makes no sense!" "Your kid will never get into any of your choices!" It was enough to make certain nervous parents head for the hills — of Marin.

At one point, I just gave up making "mom friends" at the playground, because it seemed like any time I met someone with kids around my 4-year-old's age, they were about two weeks away from moving out of town.

A lot of the exodus had to do with the great difficulty in finding a home for a young family here. But equally as appealing as more affordable housing was the idea that your home's location would give you some certainty in your child's elementary school education.

My husband and I were certain we wanted to stay in San Francisco and we were certain — both philosophically and economically — that we wanted to send our kids to public school. We were also certain that our first choice was our neighborhood school, a smaller, arts-focused K-5 that is on the same street as our house. Because we lived in a certain proximity to the school, we had priority over most families from outside the area. We also ranked it first on our application. We crossed our fingers, went down to the district offices in person with our proof of residency (as all parents are mandated to do for their first child in the SFUSD) and we turned it in.

We didn't get in. In fact, we didn't get in to any of the 17 schools on our list. But we didn't give up. We stayed in the lottery. Month after month. And that, for us, was the key to getting into our first-choice school a mere two days before school began.

Waiting Is Not Easy

I will be honest. It was excruciating. We had just had our second child and the idea of not knowing where our son would be going to kindergarten while also trying to settle into our new life with our new family was nerve-wracking to say the least.

At one point, I went to the district office and, trying to hold back tears, had a wonderfully patient staffer there explain to me how it could be that we were still, after all these months, not getting into a school walking distance from our house.

First, he said, siblings were taking up about half of the kindergarten spots. Unless those families decided to leave the city over the summer, chances were they'd still be there in the fall.

That made sense to me. But what about my supposed neighborhood priority? Well, it turns out other people with the same tiebreaker also put the school on their lists, in numbers far greater than the number of non-sibling spots that remained. I looked at those numbers and I finally got it. The chances were slim of getting into our first choice.

And what of our preschool friends who lived outside the neighborhood zone, but were trying to get into the same school? It seemed at the time that they had no hope at all.

Rather than giving up on public school (or San Francisco), we started thinking more seriously about the school my son had gotten into. It wasn't within walking distance, but it wasn't that far from the house. It had some interesting programs that the neighborhood school didn't have. And when we attended kindergarten orientation, the parent community seemed welcoming and organized.

Still, it had an early start and we are a late-rising family. Uniforms are required and my son thinks sweat pants are the height of formality. Plus, I couldn't give up the dream that our children would grow up going to school with the kids who lived in our neighborhood. When I finally got the call that we had gotten into our neighborhood school, I very happily accepted and promptly returned all the khaki pants and polo shirts to Target.

On the first day of school, we walked alongside many others in our neighborhood and over the last four years we have taken part in the growing sense of community that I had always hoped for. (Our friends from outside the neighborhood ended up getting in, too, albeit in the second week of school.)

Last month, my son started third grade, and my daughter is already so excited to join her big brother next fall. Now when I talk to parents at the playground and the dreaded "L" word comes up, I offer this counsel: "Just stick with it and you will, probably, eventually, get in."

My anecdotal evidence is buoyed by SFUSD data showing 67.5 percent of kindergarten applicants got into their first- or second-choice school in the first round in 2019, meaning even more got one of their top choices by the end of the enrollment process.

As Elephant and Piggie so wisely put it, "Waiting Is Not Easy!" But it is a whole lot better than paying for private school.

Emily Landes has two kids and too many bake sales.