Greater Greater Washington story on school enrollment growth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

Nick here.

The article is my words and doesn't reflect any "official" GGW position. Please read what I wrote. I'm not advocating for an all-lottery system. Far from it. My intent in writing the article was to ring the alarm that if the city doesn't start going in a different direction from where it is currently headed, a neighborhood-based school system may not be sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.

Look, I haven't drilled down into the school sites and the enrollment projections like you have, but I know a little: There's going to be a new Banneker HS that will be pretty big. The vacant Banneker building will be available for a lot of kids, as a now-unspecified DCPS school. The Cardozo building is half vacant, and could be used in the future as a middle or high school, depending on how they want to zone it. (all of these buildings are large spaces, potentially thousands of seats) Some feeders into the Wilson HS location can be re-zoned. The Charter school sector exists for whatever services the politicians wish to enable. Ergo: I have a hard time seeing how the projected "overcrowding" problem cannot be solved with a bit of imagination and political will, within the framework of the system we already have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.

Are you taking into account the slowing economy/recession which a majority of economists are predicting? I am just far more skeptical that the growth the Office of Planning anticipates will continue, and as an arm of the mayor it is not in their interest to project stagnating growth.

Finally, poor residents, who have the most children in our public school system -- are being pushed out of the city as it gentrifies. That is actually happening in DC more than in any other city in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-the-district-gentrification-means-widespread-displacement-report-says/2019/04/26/950a0c00-6775-11e9-8985-4cf30147bdca_story.html?utm_term=.10a14bae91a8

IMO opinion, as an EOTP parent, before DC builds any more schools, it has to get to get a handle once and for all on how many out of state -- not OOB DCPS students -- there actually are. I think the cases that have been discovered are a drop in the bucket and even if it just 5%, that represents a significant amount of capacity that would be available to DC students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

1) They lie. You cannot believe what they say. Maybe they have a plan but they will announce it when they are ready, not just tell you because you called up and asked.

Nothing in my conversations with anyone indicates they have a plan, secret or otherwise.

Many, many people in education administration in DC are short-timers. They do the job here just long enough to rack up some numbers and move onto their next gig. You get to know someone, then *poof*, they're off to Seattle or Atlanta or Philadelphia. They don't care about ten years down the road, they'll be five jobs removed from DC by then.

Anonymous wrote:
2) Saying no new schools does not mean they can't reopen old schools. Outside of Ward 3 there are numerous buildings that, with boundary revisions, could take the pressure off. This is a Ward 3 problem and you are pretending it is a problem everywhere. It is not.

What's been true for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Anonymous wrote:

3) Kicking some schools out of Wilson is hard politically, but going all-lottery is hard too because then everyone loses their right to Wilson, and potentially matches somewhere even worse than Coolidge. So why is all-lottery inevitable but kicking out a few schools is not? You have not explained your reasoning here.

The coming surge is not going to be about just Wilson nor is it going to be about moving just a few schools. It's going to be about moving the boundaries of every school in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.

Look, I haven't drilled down into the school sites and the enrollment projections like you have, but I know a little: There's going to be a new Banneker HS that will be pretty big. The vacant Banneker building will be available for a lot of kids, as a now-unspecified DCPS school. The Cardozo building is half vacant, and could be used in the future as a middle or high school, depending on how they want to zone it. (all of these buildings are large spaces, potentially thousands of seats) Some feeders into the Wilson HS location can be re-zoned. The Charter school sector exists for whatever services the politicians wish to enable. Ergo: I have a hard time seeing how the projected "overcrowding" problem cannot be solved with a bit of imagination and political will, within the framework of the system we already have.

The Titanic had lots of lifeboats. Every passenger could walk around the deck and point to a lifeboat and say, "if I need to, I'll use that one." Yet when the time came the numbers didn't add up, there simply weren't enough seats for everyone. Same with DCPS. It's easy to look at all the excess capacity today -- 13,000 empty seats! -- and say we'll always have room. But the numbers don't add up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.

Are you taking into account the slowing economy/recession which a majority of economists are predicting? I am just far more skeptical that the growth the Office of Planning anticipates will continue, and as an arm of the mayor it is not in their interest to project stagnating growth.

Finally, poor residents, who have the most children in our public school system -- are being pushed out of the city as it gentrifies. That is actually happening in DC more than in any other city in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-the-district-gentrification-means-widespread-displacement-report-says/2019/04/26/950a0c00-6775-11e9-8985-4cf30147bdca_story.html?utm_term=.10a14bae91a8

IMO opinion, as an EOTP parent, before DC builds any more schools, it has to get to get a handle once and for all on how many out of state -- not OOB DCPS students -- there actually are. I think the cases that have been discovered are a drop in the bucket and even if it just 5%, that represents a significant amount of capacity that would be available to DC students.

The Mayor's office has been pressuring the OP to downplay their projections for school-age children, because they are so inconvenient.

There are lots of reasons to believe the numbers are conservative. First, the OP has consistently under-estimated youth growth over the past ten years. Second, while the OP has youth population growing at 26%, the DME numbers have DCPS growing at 19%, charters at 26%, and non-public growing at a whopping 62%. A cynical person could say that they tamped down DCPS growth to the level they needed to say DCPS needs no new facilities. It certainly is convenient that enrollment exactly matches capacity in 2027. What if DCPS actually grows at the rate of the city, 26%? It would then needed several thousand more seats.

There's lots of reasons to believe that charters and non-publics are not going to be able to grow to keep up with population growth. DCPS is the school system of last resort.

[Anonymous]

So, in the end, even though there are practical solutions to the problem, the conclusion is that DCPS is staffed with a bunch of incompetent boobs, who are revolving-door replaced with new incompetent boobs, who won't do anything to solve the problem. Are you saying this should surprise any parent who's been around for a year or two? Or is this a warning to gentrifying young people to get out of dodge while you can, before you have school-age kids?

Now THAT's a strategy to relieve overcrowding that might work!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

1) They lie. You cannot believe what they say. Maybe they have a plan but they will announce it when they are ready, not just tell you because you called up and asked.

Nothing in my conversations with anyone indicates they have a plan, secret or otherwise.

Many, many people in education administration in DC are short-timers. They do the job here just long enough to rack up some numbers and move onto their next gig. You get to know someone, then *poof*, they're off to Seattle or Atlanta or Philadelphia. They don't care about ten years down the road, they'll be five jobs removed from DC by then.

Anonymous wrote:
2) Saying no new schools does not mean they can't reopen old schools. Outside of Ward 3 there are numerous buildings that, with boundary revisions, could take the pressure off. This is a Ward 3 problem and you are pretending it is a problem everywhere. It is not.

What's been true for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Anonymous wrote:

3) Kicking some schools out of Wilson is hard politically, but going all-lottery is hard too because then everyone loses their right to Wilson, and potentially matches somewhere even worse than Coolidge. So why is all-lottery inevitable but kicking out a few schools is not? You have not explained your reasoning here.

The coming surge is not going to be about just Wilson nor is it going to be about moving just a few schools. It's going to be about moving the boundaries of every school in the city.

So why is it exactly that they cannot or will not reopen old buildings, as they have been doing recently? There are many. You have not provided a persuasive rationale.

Nor have you explained why an all-lottery system is politically feasible and kicking schoola out of Wilson is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

Nick here.

The article is my words and doesn't reflect any "official" GGW position. Please read what I wrote. I'm not advocating for an all-lottery system. Far from it. My intent in writing the article was to ring the alarm that if the city doesn't start going in a different direction from where it is currently headed, a neighborhood-based school system may not be sustainable.

Um, but DC already doesn't have a neighborhood-based system. It seems like the quasi-free market we have here with charter schools will solve the issue. Also, you may be underestimating the degree to which parents are willing to pack into schools they consider "good" (eg Lafayette and Deal). It's pretty clear what parents' revealed preferences are: they value whiter, higher SES schools more than they value class size.

If parents *truly* prioritized class size/overcrowding, then they'd be jumping up to fight for re-districting. But we all know why they aren't, and we all know why they aren't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

Nick here.

The article is my words and doesn't reflect any "official" GGW position. Please read what I wrote. I'm not advocating for an all-lottery system. Far from it. My intent in writing the article was to ring the alarm that if the city doesn't start going in a different direction from where it is currently headed, a neighborhood-based school system may not be sustainable.

Um, but DC already doesn't have a neighborhood-based system. It seems like the quasi-free market we have here with charter schools will solve the issue. Also, you may be underestimating the degree to which parents are willing to pack into schools they consider "good" (eg Lafayette and Deal). It's pretty clear what parents' revealed preferences are: they value whiter, higher SES schools more than they value class size.

If parents *truly* prioritized class size/overcrowding, then they'd be jumping up to fight for re-districting. But we all know why they aren't, and we all know why they aren't.

And yet those same parents are embracing Hardy. But why? It can't be because they are as racist as you say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

Nick here.

The article is my words and doesn't reflect any "official" GGW position. Please read what I wrote. I'm not advocating for an all-lottery system. Far from it. My intent in writing the article was to ring the alarm that if the city doesn't start going in a different direction from where it is currently headed, a neighborhood-based school system may not be sustainable.

Um, but DC already doesn't have a neighborhood-based system. It seems like the quasi-free market we have here with charter schools will solve the issue. Also, you may be underestimating the degree to which parents are willing to pack into schools they consider "good" (eg Lafayette and Deal). It's pretty clear what parents' revealed preferences are: they value whiter, higher SES schools more than they value class size.

If parents *truly* prioritized class size/overcrowding, then they'd be jumping up to fight for re-districting. But we all know why they aren't, and we all know why they aren't.

And yet those same parents are embracing Hardy. But why? It can't be because they are as racist as you say.

Is it really "those same parents" though? I mean, you can't have it both ways: Cassandra about overcrowding, yet claim that there is some reason (other than racism) that people just REFUSE to consider redistricting. Put up or shut up: if you refuse to consider moving your kid to an underenrolled school, then you can't complain about overcrowding. So to the extend that Hardy parents were willing to put their money where their mouths were -- good for them. more people should do the same.

[Anonymous]

What is truly egregious is that DCPS expensively renovated a bunch of schools in areas where there is little to no demand for the seats. All in the name of politics to show that the city "cares" about anyone but Ward 3 and 2 residents.

Meanwhile, the child age population in booming in places where DC doesn't have enough seats. All of this feels like a long-term experiment to make kids travel clear across the city and essentially break-up the community in existing neighborhoods.

The level of stupidity at DCPS, OSSE, and Mayor's office is just flabbergasting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is truly egregious is that DCPS expensively renovated a bunch of schools in areas where there is little to no demand for the seats. All in the name of politics to show that the city "cares" about anyone but Ward 3 and 2 residents.

Meanwhile, the child age population in booming in places where DC doesn't have enough seats. All of this feels like a long-term experiment to make kids travel clear across the city and essentially break-up the community in existing neighborhoods.

The level of stupidity at DCPS, OSSE, and Mayor's office is just flabbergasting.

False. Query why Miner has a projected UNDERCAPACITY and all the other Hill schools have an overcapacity ... and what do you think happened when a Miner cluster was floated? Chaos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

Nick here.

The article is my words and doesn't reflect any "official" GGW position. Please read what I wrote. I'm not advocating for an all-lottery system. Far from it. My intent in writing the article was to ring the alarm that if the city doesn't start going in a different direction from where it is currently headed, a neighborhood-based school system may not be sustainable.

Um, but DC already doesn't have a neighborhood-based system. It seems like the quasi-free market we have here with charter schools will solve the issue. Also, you may be underestimating the degree to which parents are willing to pack into schools they consider "good" (eg Lafayette and Deal). It's pretty clear what parents' revealed preferences are: they value whiter, higher SES schools more than they value class size.

If parents *truly* prioritized class size/overcrowding, then they'd be jumping up to fight for re-districting. But we all know why they aren't, and we all know why they aren't.

And yet those same parents are embracing Hardy. But why? It can't be because they are as racist as you say.

Is it really "those same parents" though? I mean, you can't have it both ways: Cassandra about overcrowding, yet claim that there is some reason (other than racism) that people just REFUSE to consider redistricting. Put up or shut up: if you refuse to consider moving your kid to an underenrolled school, then you can't complain about overcrowding. So to the extend that Hardy parents were willing to put their money where their mouths were -- good for them. more people should do the same.

Let's say a kid live in Kent or Palisades. You really think that kid should have to travel to Ward 6 to attend HS? We have to remember that many parts of this city have essentially very limited public transportation, especially in the western half of the city. A kid in the Palisades needs to take a bus to Foggy Bottom and then take two train lines to attend Eastern or Dunbar? That's nuts.

The fact of the matter is that the west side of DC needs another HS. The Mayor won't even entertain it due to racial optics and political pandering, which is a completely irrational policy position. Sending a kid from the west side of DC to fill the empty seats at Ballou, Anacostia, or Woodson is not the solution. It's the pinnacle of insanity.