A friend of mine (who also lives in a major city) just told me that getting into their local public elementary school isn't guaranteed and is based on a lottery

A friend of mine (who also lives in a major city) just told me that getting into their local public elementary school isn't guaranteed and is based on a lottery system because of overcrowding. So their options are: 1) Take their child to the next closest and available school which is 30 minutes away 2) Pay for private school - which, as you can imagine, is expensive 3) Move They're ultimately choosing #1, but I can easily imagine them getting sick of that quickly. Oh well, I guess it's better than SF's system. Can't even imagine dealing with that.