Which would lose their Deal feed first: Shepherd, Bancroft, or Lafayette?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To bring diversity maybe Murch and Key can be re-directed to McFarland so their is a equal mixture.

Makes good sense if the primary goal is to increase diversity everywhere and protect entitlement if Shepherd and Bancroft to Deal. Makes no sense if the goal is to support neighborhood schools and minimize transit burden. You'd essentially be transiting the biggest group of WOTP students east, and EOTP students west, which sounds like a silly approach.

On the plus side, zoning Murch and Key to MacFarland would certainly cause a huge jump in MacFarland test scores though, which may cause many EOTP families to want to send their children there.

Hello? Murch kids cross the street to get to Deal. This thread has jumped the shark.

I'm the PP you responded to. I agree with you that it would be poor planning to push Murch across the park rather than sending them across the street to Deal. I think the first poster is just being facetious and specifically trying to propose plans that make life hard for WOTP elementary schools. But I'm open-minded enough to acknowledge that if DCPS/DME decides that maximizing diversity and protecting Shepherd/Bancroft is the ultimate goal of school boundaries, then moving Murch across the park is the most obvious solution.

I hope the first poster is similarly open-minded enough to admit that if benefiting Shepherd/Bancroft is not the ultimate goal of boundary planning, then it makes the most sense for them to shift to MacFarland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There really is no point in this thread. It will be 25 pages long, but at end of the day everyone will get worked up about it for nothing. These threads did not influence the DME last time. Let's wait until 2022 to discuss.

I'm hopeful we can have changes in 2018. Bowser "tweaked" the plan on a whim, so a new mayor could just tweak it again.

She tweaked to grandfather what was already in place not to remove schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another option would be to get rid of the automatic right of OOB students at feeders to attend Deal.

Sadly, I am starting to come around to this conclusion. I was vehemently opposed to it before...but this does seem like the most viable option.

Someone's going to get their feelings hurt in this whole "deal." OOB feeder attendees are the most logical. Sucks to split everyone from their peer groups at a really hard time in adolescence. But the school transition from elementary to middle is as smart a time as any.

It would be interesting to see how that move alone would affect the numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You guys aren't getting it. If you only remove Shepherd and Bancroft, you're still left with an overcrowded middle school. Janney continues to grow, as does Hearst and Lafayette. You have either remove one more school or don't remove any and open another middle school.

I think you are mistaken. According to the DME material as from the boundary adjustment, Bancroft was supplying 11% of Deal students, and Shepherd was sending 7%. An 18% reduction in Deal's student body would put it well below the capacity max, which would leave room for the at-risk population DCPS was trying to mandate for each school, and potentially even leave room for future neighborhood growth.

Try the math using capacity at Deal and Janny and Lafayette's 3rd grade classes. Also, do you have link?

On phone, so link hard. The percentages sourced from each school are at the DME page of MS feeder data leading up to the boundary adjustments. Current enrollment of Deal is 1341, over a max capacity of 1200.

Current audited enrollment for 3rd grade class of J/M/L is 318. If you assume that many kids for 3 grades of middle school at Deal, that a total of 954, versus capacity of 1200. Hearst adds 42 per grade, Bancroft adds 73 per grade, and Shepherd adds 42 per grade. That brings us to 1425 total, which is way over the 1200 capacity. Cutting just Bancroft puts the total at 1206. Cutting Shepherd and Bancroft puts the total at 1080.

If what some people say about the OOB population at Hearst Bancroft and Shepherd is true, then the easier choice is to limit OOB rights if school is over capacity. If that is not an option, then may need to remove one or more of the feeders entirely.

OOB feeders account for 1/3 of Deal's population. That would allow OOB kids from all over to have access and put the capacity well below limits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lafayette is also in Ward 4, so obviously it would be on the move list. And whatever school it moved to would instantly have a critical mass of great scores.

Yes, that's an option. I think these are the steps to take, in order:

1. Limit OOB feeder rights. In-bounds feeder students get priority access, followed by OOB feeder students, followed by pure OOB students, up to whatever the max capacity of the school is. If that solves the overcrowding problem, no need to go further, but if more is needed, then go to step 2.

2. Shift Shepherd and/or Bancroft to MacFarland. Those are the two elementary schools closest to MacFarland, so if a further reduction in enrollment is necessary, that shift seems obvious. If that solves the overcrowding problem, no need to go further, but if more is needed, then go to step 3.

3. Shift Lafayette to MacFarland. The alternative option might be to shift Hearst to Hardy. That's a longer route to travel for each of them than the current arrangement, but if Deal is still overcrowded after taking steps 1 & 2, then these other shifts are the obvious next option.

I'm not a Lafayette parent, but it just doesn't seem to make sense to shift any school across the park. It's a large geographic barrier with limited options to cross it. I realize that there is a political desire to break the demographic barrier that the park has historically represented, but practically it just doesn't make sense. In the long run, the demographic division is going to be less and less pronounced anyway, and there will be a sizeable higher SES demographic to populate a quality middle school EOTP. I actually think that population is already there, they just need to have an option and turn it into the next Deal.

[Anonymous]

Lordy. This thread comes up every quarter or so. Everyone spouts off. "The way to fix it is so." "It's obvious what need to be done." "Of course X school needs to be cut out." OOB kids (many of whom have attended their OOB school since PK) must be kicked for the feeder path." "Something must be done." "I envision the solution that doesn't impact my snowflake." Blah, blah, freaking blah. Everyone on here has repeated the same crap for 10+ years on here. If you want to impact change in some way (or defend the current system) get off here and make your arguments to decision makers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lordy. This thread comes up every quarter or so. Everyone spouts off. "The way to fix it is so." "It's obvious what need to be done." "Of course X school needs to be cut out." OOB kids (many of whom have attended their OOB school since PK) must be kicked for the feeder path." "Something must be done." "I envision the solution that doesn't impact my snowflake." Blah, blah, freaking blah. Everyone on here has repeated the same crap for 10+ years on here. If you want to impact change in some way (or defend the current system) get off here and make your arguments to decision makers.

Hey, that's what internet forums are for: spouting off! You can slash a whole bunch of these forums with your line of argument.

[Anonymous]

It is tiring reading the same gripes year after year where people new to all this offer up their brilliant solution with an annoying smugness without realizing their "solution" has been suggested ad nauseum long before they discovered this forum or had kids in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Y'all can have our spot at deal. I think it sounds awful.

+1. All three of my kids are zoned there and we aren't choosing it. Grateful to have choice in this city.

[Anonymous]

Best...thread...EVER!!! Someone threw red meat into the JKLM, WOTP crowd and then stood back to watch. The same crew that are usually sitting back watching CH families sniping at each other are now scared and willing to devour each other whole whilst throwing the carcasses under the bus. Oh what fun!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lordy. This thread comes up every quarter or so. Everyone spouts off. "The way to fix it is so." "It's obvious what need to be done." "Of course X school needs to be cut out." OOB kids (many of whom have attended their OOB school since PK) must be kicked for the feeder path." "Something must be done." "I envision the solution that doesn't impact my snowflake." Blah, blah, freaking blah. Everyone on here has repeated the same crap for 10+ years on here. If you want to impact change in some way (or defend the current system) get off here and make your arguments to decision makers.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

P.S. You win for most ironic post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Best...thread...EVER!!! Someone threw red meat into the JKLM, WOTP crowd and then stood back to watch. The same crew that are usually sitting back watching CH families sniping at each other are now scared and willing to devour each other whole whilst throwing the carcasses under the bus. Oh what fun!

Last I checked Shepherd and Bancroft were EOTP, and they are arguably the most scared with regard to this discussion. But go and enjoy what you imagine as a WOTP brawl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Y'all can have our spot at deal. I think it sounds awful.

+1. All three of my kids are zoned there and we aren't choosing it. Grateful to have choice in this city.

Yes. Understood. But there in lies the rub--or at least part of it. Wotp families sometimes bail on their elementaries in order to get into a private (often at 3rd grade) or to join a charter (often at 5th) and don't communicate that decision early in the process and that becomes part of the problem. They leave and often don't let their school know and the school ends up with classes that aren't full (putting the Dcps-sanctioned enrollment target in jeopardy) so those schools go to the OOB waitlist. Suddenly there are 5 new OOB kids who join that Deal-feeding school. I think if Dcps wants to try and help Deal become less over crowded they should consider a policy where Deal feeders don't offer lottery spots after, say 2nd or 3rd grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An overcrowded school should lose Deal, if you truly want to affect overcrowding there. Shepherd is a small school with a small population attending Deal, so the effect would be negligible.

This is a really good point. And unless trends change dramatically and quickly, most of the diversity at Deal is still coming from Shepherd and Bancroft. DCPS does not want Deal to be majority white.

SY15/16 demographics aren't up yet. But my guess is it's already majority white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An overcrowded school should lose Deal, if you truly want to affect overcrowding there. Shepherd is a small school with a small population attending Deal, so the effect would be negligible.

This is a really good point. And unless trends change dramatically and quickly, most of the diversity at Deal is still coming from Shepherd and Bancroft. DCPS does not want Deal to be majority white.

SY15/16 demographics aren't up yet. But my guess is it's already majority white.

Which is perfectly fine, for a neighborhood school in a white majority neighborhood in a white majority country.

Some people love to create problems where there's none.