Melissa Kim is leaving Deal

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Put a new MS in ward 3 and dcps can boast of another good option. Make it big enough to accommodate oob families and more dc kids will have a shot at a good education.

Put one in another ward and it will fail because motivated ib families will continue to game the system to attend deal, or stay in charters.

Seems like a no-brainer.

If you built a large middle school in Ward 3 and enrolled a large number of OOB students, you would have a Ward 3 version of Hardy. Plus, the proponents of a new middle school in Ward 3 proposed a small school in Palisades. That doesn't sound like something geared toward OOB students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Put a new MS in ward 3 and dcps can boast of another good option. Make it big enough to accommodate oob families and more dc kids will have a shot at a good education.

Put one in another ward and it will fail because motivated ib families will continue to game the system to attend deal, or stay in charters.

Seems like a no-brainer.

I beg to differ. Put a Deal-like middle school in Ward Six and we will make it soar.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put a new MS in ward 3 and dcps can boast of another good option. Make it big enough to accommodate oob families and more dc kids will have a shot at a good education.

Put one in another ward and it will fail because motivated ib families will continue to game the system to attend deal, or stay in charters.

Seems like a no-brainer.

If you built a large middle school in Ward 3 and enrolled a large number of OOB students, you would have a Ward 3 version of Hardy. Plus, the proponents of a new middle school in Ward 3 proposed a small school in Palisades. That doesn't sound like something geared toward OOB students.

That would be a charter school, no?. Ward 3 already has a middle school. Until it's maxed out on capacity like Deal, it doesn't seem feasible to divert the funds that would be needed to update and staff a new school in time to alleviate Deal crowding.

We're in a Ward 3 elementary and are feeling like it would be faster to build up Hardy to a high quality IB option than start all over in Palisades. Supposedly schools like Ross, Deal and other have been "turned around" in a couple of years and good charters have been built in 3.

How does one participate at Hardy as non-parent?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put a new MS in ward 3 and dcps can boast of another good option. Make it big enough to accommodate oob families and more dc kids will have a shot at a good education.

Put one in another ward and it will fail because motivated ib families will continue to game the system to attend deal, or stay in charters.

Seems like a no-brainer.

If you built a large middle school in Ward 3 and enrolled a large number of OOB students, you would have a Ward 3 version of Hardy. Plus, the proponents of a new middle school in Ward 3 proposed a small school in Palisades. That doesn't sound like something geared toward OOB students.

[Anonymous]

Deal=Room 222

It is a really great school and I hope they can get the great principal that the students and parents deserve. I have heard that parents don't contribute to the PTA as much--I hope that will change with each passing year. Parents and kids have to keep up the pressure! Be the light! as Dr. Kim says...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put a new MS in ward 3 and dcps can boast of another good option. Make it big enough to accommodate oob families and more dc kids will have a shot at a good education.

Put one in another ward and it will fail because motivated ib families will continue to game the system to attend deal, or stay in charters.

Seems like a no-brainer.

If you built a large middle school in Ward 3 and enrolled a large number of OOB students, you would have a Ward 3 version of Hardy. Plus, the proponents of a new middle school in Ward 3 proposed a small school in Palisades. That doesn't sound like something geared toward OOB students.

That would be a charter school, no?. Ward 3 already has a middle school. Until it's maxed out on capacity like Deal, it doesn't seem feasible to divert the funds that would be needed to update and staff a new school in time to alleviate Deal crowding.

We're in a Ward 3 elementary and are feeling like it would be faster to build up Hardy to a high quality IB option than start all over in Palisades. Supposedly schools like Ross, Deal and other have been "turned around" in a couple of years and good charters have been built in 3.

How does one participate at Hardy as non-parent?

Hardy will never max out like Deal. Compare: Deal has an official capacity of 980. It has eight feeder schools -- Eaton, Hearst, Janney, Oyster, Bancroft, Lafayette, Shepherd -- that had a combined population of 3837 in 2010-2011. That's almost four students in the feeder schools for each slot in the middle school. Hardy has official capacity of 540 and four feeder schools -- Key, Mann, Stoddert and Hyde-Addison -- with a combined population of 911 -- about 1.7 kids in the feeder school for each space in middle school. There is no room for growth in the feeder schools -- Key was 14% over capacity last year, Stoddert 8% and Mann 30%. Unless boundaries are redrawn Hardy will always be majority OOB.

The logical thing would be to take some territory away from Deal, with its terrible crowding, and move it to Hardy. That will never happen. Deal parents like Jeff -- who insists that Hardy is fine the way it is, and decries as racists any parents who seek to change it -- would never send their own children there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: It has eight feeder schools -- Eaton, Hearst, Janney, Oyster, Bancroft, Lafayette, Shepherd

I meant to include Murch too.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
The logical thing would be to take some territory away from Deal, with its terrible crowding, and move it to Hardy. That will never happen. Deal parents like Jeff -- who insists that Hardy is fine the way it is, and decries as racists any parents who seek to change it -- would never send their own children there.

Your post was very interesting and even enlightening until you decided to speak for me. I haven't really thought about sending our kids to Hardy simply because they would be OOB kids like those previously compared to ticks and fleas in this forum. But, if our neighborhood were rezoned for Hardy, the primary hurdle would be logistics, not academics. It would simply be very difficult to get to Hardy from where we live in a timely manner. But, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in these discussions, students in our racial and social-economic bracket do just as well at Hardy as they do at Deal.

BTW, just so my position on changing Deal's boundaries is reported correctly, I obviously don't think that any change would be racist. I think that any boundaries that are deliberately drawn to leave out minority areas and create a 95% white school would be racist. I also think that such a move would not only be detrimental to minorities, but to the white students as well.

[Anonymous]

I feel a little bit queasy when people call out one person who is not known as "Anonymous" on this forum and refer to their children. Please, Ms. or Mr. Anonymous, unless you want to out your own family name, and in turn your children's, please keep Steele's children and their home boundary out of the discussion. Ick.

[Anonymous]

I agree with 21:03. Why is Steel's kid coming up on this forum? Steel lives where he lives and his choices as a parent and a parent that is IB should not be in question. Many other city leaders make that choice as OOB parents and we do not/ should not involve those kids either. Ick is right!

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

BTW, just so my position on changing Deal's boundaries is reported correctly, I obviously don't think that any change would be racist. I think that any boundaries that are deliberately drawn to leave out minority areas and create a 95% white school would be racist. I also think that such a move would not only be detrimental to minorities, but to the white students as well.

OK, you talk about two things: "deliberately drawn to leave out minority areas" and "create a 95% white school."

Let's look at the second one first since it's simpler. SY 2010-11, from the DCPS website:

Deal Feeders:
Bancroft 7% white
Eaton 39% white
Hearst 22% white
Janney 69% white
Lafayette 71% white
Murch 63% white
Oyster-Adams 28% white
Shepherd 6% white

Hardy Feeders:
Key 68% white
Mann 73% white
Stoddert 58% white
Hyde 55% white

No combination of those gives you a student body that's anywhere close to 95% white.

To the first point: look at a map. Here's a good one: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/SCHOOLS/Boundary%20Maps%20-%202009/DCPS-Attendance-Zones-Elementary-Grades-September-2009.pdf

There are no middle schools to the west or north of Deal. If you were to shrink it's boundaries -- deliberately leaving out minorities, or not -- your choices are to shrink from the east or from the south. Deal is 39% white. Only three of its feeder schools are whiter than the school as a whole -- Murch, Janney and Lafayette -- and they are all to the north or west. Any shrinking of the Deal boundaries is going to result in a whiter feeder school population, regardless of the motivation of the person drawing the map.

What's interesting is that DCPS is trying to transition Eaton from Deal to Hardy. If that happens, Deal will have a discontinous attendance boundary, with students from Oyster and Bancroft not connected to the rest of the area, and having to travel through the Hardy zone to get to school.

Of course this is all dreaming. DCPS has nowhere near the political skill to deal with redistricting, nobody's boundaries are moving. For the foreseeable future we should assume that Deal will be overcrowded and Hardy won't have enough in-boundary kids to make an impact.

[Anonymous]

Oyster is not a feeder to Deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oyster is not a feeder to Deal.

Families that live in the Oyster boundaries have the choice between Deal and Adams. OOB students at Oyster-Adams only have the right to attend Adams. So, not technically a feeder. . . . but homes are in bounds.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Deal Feeders:
Bancroft 7% white
Eaton 39% white
Hearst 22% white
Janney 69% white
Lafayette 71% white
Murch 63% white
Oyster-Adams 28% white
Shepherd 6% white

Most of those schools only have diversity as a result of OOB enrollment. As the current OOB students graduate, the west of the park Deal feeders will become less diverse. In fact, were it not for the pre-K lottery, these schools already would have almost no OOB students and -- given the make-up of the inbound neighborhoods, would be almost entirely white.

The schools with inbound diversity -- Bancroft, Shepherd and Oyster-Adams -- are precisely the schools that would be zoned out if Deal's boundaries were consolidated within Ward 3. The same is true for areas included within the Deal boundaries that are zoned for elementary schools that are not Deal feeders. For instance, Crestwood is zoned for West and Powell for elementary, but Deal for middle school. If you eliminate the non-Ward 3 areas, you are left with schools whose inbound enrollment is almost entirely white. I believe that you and I agree on this point. But, you seem to be counting on the pre-K lottery to continue to provide diversity. Something I am not sure will always be true.

I agree with you that the political situation in DC -- not just DCPC -- is such that we shouldn't expect anything more than a disastrous solution. As a result, no change is greatly preferable.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:
But, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in these discussions, students in our racial and social-economic bracket do just as well at Hardy as they do at Deal.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I am disappointed that the moderator stated as fact what has been shown to be untrue.

Fact: The fraction of white students scoring 'advanced' on the DC-CAS is much lower at Hardy than at Deal.

Why? Hard to tell. It could be:

1) Fewer students who have the ability to score 'advanced' on the DC-CAS choose to attend Hardy, or:

2) Students who previously had the ability to score 'advanced' on the DC-CAS lose it when they attend Hardy.


So as a parent of a child who scored 'advanced' on both reading and math, do I send my child to Hardy knowing that:

1) they will have very few academic peers and

2) they could fall behind peers who go to Deal.

No, I will not risk my child's education because of an arbitrary boundary line.