DME Kicks Off DCPS Boundary Review; Changes Expected for 2015-16 School Year

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-kicks-off-school-boundary-overhaul/2013/10/28/5ec66b94-4006-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html

Another note on this article: Does Emma Brown know any DCPS parents other than Chris Sondreal? Why would she discuss school boundaries with a parent of an application-only school student? She may has well have talked to a charter school parent.

I am confused--isn't he a Francis-Stevens PK parent? That is not application only.

I guess I was reading too fast. It says something about his kid's classmates at School Without Walls at Francis Stevens and I read that as School Without Wall which is application only. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what School Without Walls at Francis Stevens is.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-kicks-off-school-boundary-overhaul/2013/10/28/5ec66b94-4006-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html

Another note on this article: Does Emma Brown know any DCPS parents other than Chris Sondreal? Why would she discuss school boundaries with a parent of an application-only school student? She may has well have talked to a charter school parent.

I am confused--isn't he a Francis-Stevens PK parent? That is not application only.

I guess I was reading too fast. It says something about his kid's classmates at School Without Walls at Francis Stevens and I read that as School Without Wall which is application only. Now that I think about it, I have no idea what School Without Walls at Francis Stevens is.


Francis-Stevens and SWW merged last year. But they are separate schools. SWW is still application-only, and F-S is a regular PK-8 DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Dr. Bonner!! Happy to see her up there as a Wilson Tiger alum

[Anonymous]

All this going into an election year is a political hot button no one wants to touch. Not Gray nor the new mayor if he doesn't stay. More DCPS dysfunction at the expense of parents who are starting to stay in the city longer and invest in the future of school.

[Anonymous]

I want to know census tract by tract how many people put their kids in DCPS now. It would be very informative to this process.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let the fun begin! Who chimes in first, Lafayette or Brent?

Or, "we need to stay IB for Deal" from the Bancroft and Sheperd addresses

That's why I won't buy in the Shepherd Park, or Crestwood neighborhoods right now. Too unpredictable.

I would agree that Crestwood is on the chopping block.

are there any DCPS families there?

There are DCPS families in Crestwood. We are one of them. Obviously, I have no idea what will happen and you may be right that Crestwood is on the chopping block. But, from a political vantage point, that makes no sense. Cutting Crestwood out of Deal and Wilson saves very few seats. On the other hand, it will piss off 1,000 some fairly wealthy and politically active families that will worry about their property values. So, politically, the cost benefit analysis doesn't make sense. Which of course, probably means nothing.

Powell or West?

I assume neither.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
There are DCPS families in Crestwood. We are one of them. Obviously, I have no idea what will happen and you may be right that Crestwood is on the chopping block. But, from a political vantage point, that makes no sense. Cutting Crestwood out of Deal and Wilson saves very few seats. On the other hand, it will piss off 1,000 some fairly wealthy and politically active families that will worry about their property values. So, politically, the cost benefit analysis doesn't make sense. Which of course, probably means nothing.

Powell or West?

I assume neither.

Our child that attends a DCPS school attends the school for which he is inbounds.

[Anonymous]

I know I'm personalizing this but you popped up as the Crestwood DCPS parent. I assume that before Deal/Wilson your child did not follow the DCPS feeder pattern. So few do, by either opting out of DCPS or going west for a Deal feeder, I feel like no accommodation should be made for Crestwood at all.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I know I'm personalizing this but you popped up as the Crestwood DCPS parent. I assume that before Deal/Wilson your child did not follow the DCPS feeder pattern. So few do, by either opting out of DCPS or going west for a Deal feeder, I feel like no accommodation should be made for Crestwood at all.

I don't follow your logic. Are you suggesting that parents that don't send their kids to their in-boundary elementary schools should be punished by being redistricted out of their current middle and high schools? Can you further explain your position?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know I'm personalizing this but you popped up as the Crestwood DCPS parent. I assume that before Deal/Wilson your child did not follow the DCPS feeder pattern. So few do, by either opting out of DCPS or going west for a Deal feeder, I feel like no accommodation should be made for Crestwood at all.

I don't follow your logic. Are you suggesting that parents that don't send their kids to their in-boundary elementary schools should be punished by being redistricted out of their current middle and high schools? Can you further explain your position?

Sure. Parents who don't put their kids in DCPS or follow the student assignment and feeder patterns should be given less weight in the student assignment and feeder pattern process.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know I'm personalizing this but you popped up as the Crestwood DCPS parent. I assume that before Deal/Wilson your child did not follow the DCPS feeder pattern. So few do, by either opting out of DCPS or going west for a Deal feeder, I feel like no accommodation should be made for Crestwood at all.

I don't follow your logic. Are you suggesting that parents that don't send their kids to their in-boundary elementary schools should be punished by being redistricted out of their current middle and high schools? Can you further explain your position?

Sure. Parents who don't put their kids in DCPS or follow the student assignment and feeder patterns should be given less weight in the student assignment and feeder pattern process.

What would be the goal and end result of such a policy? As I understand it, redistricting is supposed to solve the problem of overcrowding. If you change Crestwood's middle and high school boundaries, you would have almost no impact on overcrowding. Additional changes with more impact would still have to be made.

Not only is Crestwood a relatively small neighborhood that sends few students to Deal or Wilson, it's in-boundary elementary schools don't feed to either of those schools. So, you can't even add out-of-boundary students at those schools to the mix. In contrast, feeder elementaries channel OOB students in addition to those living inbounds.

Therefore, it's not like there would be a choice between redistricting either Shepherd Park or Crestwood or a choice between Eaton or Crestwood. The choice would more likely be Shepherd Park or Eaton. Crestwood would serve no purpose toward resolving overcrowding. Your argument rests entirely on vindictiveness resulting from the fact that our local elementary schools are not as good as the feeder schools. That hardly seems like the basis of good policy-making.

[Anonymous]

If they remove the OOB right to feed to Deal and Wilson, will that be enough to reduce the crowding? Seems like that's a relatively easy fix, and I think that was the pre-2009 rule anyway.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

What would be the goal and end result of such a policy? As I understand it, redistricting is supposed to solve the problem of overcrowding. If you change Crestwood's middle and high school boundaries, you would have almost no impact on overcrowding. Additional changes with more impact would still have to be made.

Terrible argument. Every bit helps. And, moreover, policy is made at the margins.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

What would be the goal and end result of such a policy? As I understand it, redistricting is supposed to solve the problem of overcrowding. If you change Crestwood's middle and high school boundaries, you would have almost no impact on overcrowding. Additional changes with more impact would still have to be made.

Terrible argument. Every bit helps. And, moreover, policy is made at the margins.

Those are platitudes. Hopefully, those responsible for policy will be interested in solutions rather than trite statements.

[Anonymous]

If they remove the OOB right to feed to Deal and Wilson - how would they treat kids who are say in 4th or 5th grade in 2015, as an OOB student at a WOTP feeder school? Could they just yank Deal that easily? Or is it more likely that those kids would get grandfathered in? I know that it is hard to guess - but am curious what peoples thoughts are on this issue?