Advocate to Solve Ward 3 School Overcrowding
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Anonymous
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I would like to thank the residents of Ward 3 for believing in me and supporting me to be the next Ward 3 representative on the DC State Board of Education. Today, I would ask you to take five minutes to advocate for important Ward 3 priorities.
Mayor Bowser has created a transition team, called Together, DC. The transition team has a website that is collecting “big ideas” from DC residents. If we are going to solve the challenge of Ward 3 school overcrowding, and other challenges facing Ward 3 and our city, then we need to make our voices heard. Please take a moment to go to the website and alert your friends and neighbors to this opportunity. There are only three substantive questions, and it only takes about five minutes. 1. Go to https://together.dc.gov/ 2. Click on the red button that says Share Your Ideas. 3. You will answer three basic introductory demographic questions. 4. The fourth question is: What do you think is the most important area the Bowser Administration should focus on for the next four years? You will be directed to a screen that gives you six choices: (A) More Democracy, (B) Fight for the Middle Class, (C) End Gun Violence, (D) Reimagine the Downtown, (E) Create Pathways for Success for All Students, and (F) DC’s Future (use this category to submit ideas not listed above). 5. The fifth question will ask you for the “big ideas” you have based upon the topic you picked. 6. The sixth question will be “What are some other big ideas you think Mayor Bowser should consider?” This provides an opportunity to cover everything else that is important to you. And that’s all it takes. I would ask you to consider including the following two education priorities in your answer to either the fifth question (if you select education) or the sixth question. We will be far more likely to achieve these two priorities in next year’s budget if many Ward 3 residents alert the Mayor that there is an urgent need to solve Ward 3 school overcrowding: (1) Solve Ward 3 school overcrowding and ensure by-right Pre-K for all three-and-four-year-olds in Ward 3 neighborhood elementary schools. Ward 3 is the only Ward that has no pre-kindergarten or three-year-olds and less than half of Ward 3 four-year-olds can access Pre-K through the lottery. It is completely counterintuitive that DC government is talking about adding more housing to Ward 3, but it has ignored the need to expand Ward 3 school capacity. Ward 3 school overcrowding is creating untenable class sizes at Deal Middle School and Jackson Reed High School. (2) Purchase or lease the Whittle School Campus, build a third floor on Stoddert Elementary School, and obtain a parcel for a new elementary school near Friendship Heights. The site of the former Whittle School and Intelsat is beautiful school campus that is currently vacant and is built for around 2,400 students. In order to have any chance of solving Ward 3 school overcrowding, DC must purchase of the former Intelsat / Whittle School campus to open new transit accessible DCPS middle and high schools, and also possibly pre-k, at 4000 Connecticut Avenue NW, which will immediately eliminate school overcrowding at Deal Middle School and Jackson Reed High School. Stoddert Elementary School needs another floor added to its modernization to avoid splitting Glover Park’s tight-knit school community and to provide capacity for full Pre-K slots and future growth in student population. DC needs to add a new northwestern Ward 3 elementary school, in the near future, possibly in Friendship Heights, to solve the overcrowding currently seen at Janney, Murch, and Lafayette. My answers were as follows: Question 4: (E) Create Pathways for Success for All Students Question 5: “Solve Ward 3 school overcrowding and ensure by-right Pre-K for all three-and-four-year-olds in Ward 3 neighborhood elementary schools by: purchasing or leasing the Whittle School Campus, building a third floor on Stoddert Elementary School, and obtaining a parcel for a new elementary school near Friendship Heights.” Question 6: “(1) Provide free Out of School Time programming for all public school students until 6:00 p.m. and provide optional year-round school for all students with an enhanced summer experience that includes education, career, and experiential learning opportunities; (2) Avoid building on Hardy Park by locating the new Foxhall Elementary School on the former Georgetown Day School campus, if a better location can be found for a new high school through the Boundary Study; (3) Reduce crime by expanding community policing, hiring more officers, and supporting DC’s cadet program; (4) Repurpose vacant commercial office space downtown into residential workforce housing to create a vibrant, livable-walkable downtown, which will prevent a collapse of tax revenue from our downtown commercial area; and (5) Ensure all residents in buildings with housing vouchers are following the rules of the community living setting.” Please take a brief moment today to make your voices heard and enjoy your weekend. I will send a second post discussing opportunities to get involved with six Ward 3 education advisory groups. Eric Goulet State Board of Education, Ward 3 Member-Elect 5752 Sherier Place, NW |
Anonymous
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On November 7, you sent an email to the Palisades Listserv that said in part: “I got the inclusion of the logos approved by the Office of Campaign Finance ahead-of-time”.
However, OCF informed us yesterday that “the DCPS Office of the General Counsel confirmed that she had provided the same advice to Mr. Goulet and OCF followed up advising Mr. Goulet to comply with the advice provided by DCPS.” How do you reconcile your November 7 statement with the fact that you received prior guidance by OCF not to do what you were doing? |
Anonymous
| The only way school overcrowding will change is if boundaries are moved. Since the SBOE has no power to do that, leave it to the Mayor to deal with it. |
Anonymous
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A few ways to reduce school overcrowding in Ward 3:
Reduce OOB slots and end sibling preference for OOB. OOB students must have at least a B- average and a clean disciplinary record to advance to the next level (middle, high school). OOB slots are a scarce resource and should go to the students who work hard and aren’t troublemakers. Ferret out MD resident students who continue to be enrolled in DCPS. Our daughter graduated from former Wilson last year and said that it was common knowledge that a number of kids really lived in Maryland. Approval of large development projects should take account of school and other infrastructure capacity in the ward. This used to be a requirement in the DC Comprehensive Plan but our pro-development mayor eliminated it. The provision should be restored. Developments above a certain size should be assessed a special school building fee. |
Anonymous
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Make the intelsat space Jacskon Reed 9th and 10th grade
Make the old GDS building an elementary and middle school targeted at supporting children with language based learning differences and create a partnership (as opposed to adversarial relationship) with the Lab school. |
Anonymous
Lab started the adversarial relationship by deliberately screwing their neighbors. |
Anonymous
There is zero need for more middle school seats in the southern part of Ward 3. The seats need to be in the Deal boundaries. Hardy already has capacity. Creating more seats just creates more students who have rights to Jackson-Reed and makes the crowding worse there. More middle school seats solves nothing and makes the problem worse. |
Anonymous
I recommend this article that carefully dissects the Office of Planning demographic projections and how it relates to school capacity: https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge Short version: in a decade, every school west of the Anacostia is going to be at or above capacity, the schools west of Rock Creek will be a combined 2500 seats short. No amount of boundary-shifting increases the number of seats. In 2019 there was something called the Crowding Working Group that looked into this, they recommended a new high school, a new middle school, and two new elementary schools west of Rock Creek. |
Anonymous
The OOB system was created in response to a series of court cases dealing with racial segregation. What you are proposing would violate the settlements of those cases. |
Anonymous
A good place to start is to have some folks stand outside at the car lines and look for MD plates. Its very surprising the number of MD plates one sees driving to a DC school, day after day. |
Anonymous
Crickets. As expected. The Ward 3 overcrowding problem is being solved. MacArthur HS will open next August to relieve overcrowding in the J-R feeder pattern. ES overcrowding is being solved by the addition to Stoddert and Foxhall ES. There isn’t an issue with MS overcrowding as someone pointed out - just an issue with MS funding. But overcrowding and facilities don’t even fall within the SBOE purview. |
Anonymous
It’s hilarious that there are still folks in the neighborhood thinking that GDS will somehow not become a HS. That ship has sailed folks and is over the horizon. Move on, please. |
Anonymous
Thanks for sharing. A couple of interesting takeaways. DCPS schools are profoundly unequal in terms of their physical condition and amenities, the opportunities they offer students, and their outcomes. By allowing students to attend a school of their choosing rather than their in-boundary school, DCPS has been able to avoid addressing that inequality. The shear number of schools with projected undercapacity means that almost every school boundary will have to be redrawn. It may not be possible to draw boundaries for each school that include the school building. |
Anonymous
The Intelsat building isn't even for sale. It's a beautiful building, but it's even less set up to be a high school than the GDS site. It's probably ten years and half a billion dollars away from opening. Meanwhile, MacArthur HS will open in August. |
Anonymous
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And how will people get to the HS?
DDOT and DCPS are snoozing on this question. Anytime cycling advocates suggest bike lanes on the trolley trail and other streets, residents sneer that no one will use them. (Or NIMBYism) Well, there aren't many options and the opposition certainly doesn't have any alternate plans. And Goulet continues to throw out ideas already hashed instead of trying the rectify the situation staring him right in the face. Luckily he doesn't have any power. |