DC Begins School Boundary Study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there any guidance on what can actually happen after boundaries are re-drawn? We bought our house on the Hill partly because we really like the local elementary but we are on the edge of the boundary. The other options we could be redrawn to are not something we would be interested in past ECE. We are awaiting PK3 results right now but were not sure we would enroll this year as we get a sibling preference at a hard to get into daycare for our second. Since we are guaranteed our great local for K, we were considering not enrolling (if we even get in) and waiting to try again for PK4 or even wait until K. Now I am a bit panicked because if we don't enroll for PK3 we could get rezoned. Or could it be even worse and even if we start in PK3 could we get kicked out? Would love to know if there is anything practical or if we are just going to have to wait and find out.

If it's similar to last boundary review, there was quite a bit of phase-in for students already attending a school. I think you'd likely be okay even if you were about to start K. Last time, I don't think they kicked anyone out of a school they were already attending.


https://dme.dc.gov/boundaries2023

The final report of recommendations from the DC Advisory Committee on Student Assignment will be submitted to the Mayor in winter 2023-24. Changes from adopted recommendations may begin to take effect no sooner than SY2025-26, starting in August of 2025. New policies will be clear in advance of the common lottery process that begins in December 2024. However, to support a smooth transition, “phase-in” provisions may buffer the immediate impact on many current students and their families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always amused by y’all trying to kick Shepherd out in the name of overcrowding. Shepherd is such a tiny school.

Shepherd + 1/2 Lafayette would create a stronger cohort at Wells/Coolidge. I am always amused by the entitled Chevy Chase and Shepherd Park families who think it's too challenging to take Military/Piney Branch in the morning, and then want to restrict equity access at OOB at Deal/J-R. We see you.

UMC Takoma Elem family here. I support Shepard being zoned to Wells because I thing it makes sense geographically but I hate the narrative that we need students from other schools to come to Well’s to save us. I have been paying close attention to Wells and am looking forward to send my kid there without any new boundaries needed. I’m far more curious to see how many kids wind up in the new Walter reed developments and where they wind up.

Cool story. Not sending my (non-white, minority religion) DD to Wells unless the number of IB students goes up. Have toured school, met principal (seems great), but MS is fairly universally the worst time in a kid's life, and unless we improve Coolidge (which has been bad for 20+ years and where a kid was stabbed last week) you will not get IB participation in large numbers for Wells. Ward 4 is the most diverse ward in the city - so increasing IB buy-in will keep the school diverse by most metrics - but getting a critical cohort of Lafayette/Shepherd families is going to save Coolidge which will ensure Well's future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always amused by y’all trying to kick Shepherd out in the name of overcrowding. Shepherd is such a tiny school.

Shepherd + 1/2 Lafayette would create a stronger cohort at Wells/Coolidge. I am always amused by the entitled Chevy Chase and Shepherd Park families who think it's too challenging to take Military/Piney Branch in the morning, and then want to restrict equity access at OOB at Deal/J-R. We see you.

UMC Takoma Elem family here. I support Shepard being zoned to Wells because I thing it makes sense geographically but I hate the narrative that we need students from other schools to come to Well’s to save us. I have been paying close attention to Wells and am looking forward to send my kid there without any new boundaries needed. I’m far more curious to see how many kids wind up in the new Walter reed developments and where they wind up.

Cool story. Not sending my (non-white, minority religion) DD to Wells unless the number of IB students goes up. Have toured school, met principal (seems great), but MS is fairly universally the worst time in a kid's life, and unless we improve Coolidge (which has been bad for 20+ years and where a kid was stabbed last week) you will not get IB participation in large numbers for Wells. Ward 4 is the most diverse ward in the city - so increasing IB buy-in will keep the school diverse by most metrics - but getting a critical cohort of Lafayette/Shepherd families is going to save Coolidge which will ensure Well's future.

There are plenty of UMC families IB for Wells/Coolidge who could probably contribute to the improvement of the school if they actually chose to send their kids there. They don’t though. Why would additional UMC families from Lafayette and Shepherd be different?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Leaving Lafayette in its current feeder pattern and just moving Shepherd makes sense in that it would give Deal and Wells equal number of feeder schools, and not require Lafayette kids to cross the park. But I think it's politically infeasible to remove only Bancroft and Shepherd from the Deal/JR feeder patterns because those schools have the highest populations of Black and Hispanic students.

Two things that would make the boundary reassignments more palatable would be a commitment to working with DDOT and WMATA on the buses required to get kids where they need to go, and a promise to offer honors English and math...the 6th grade classes would be for kids who score 4s and 5s on the 5th grade PARCC, and 7th and 8th would be based on the previous year's performance and teacher recommendations.

putting bancroft and marie reed into the Macfarland feeder makes sense. Mac Farland is the DCPS bilingual middle school for the other DCPS bilingual schools like Bruce Monroe and Powell. Adding bancrfot and marie reed might help Bancroft get better in the long run

Marie Reed already feeds to MacFarland for dual language. Rather than Adams which is block away.....

no it doesnt

[Anonymous]

MR feeds to Columbia Heights Education Campus

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m always amused by y’all trying to kick Shepherd out in the name of overcrowding. Shepherd is such a tiny school.

Shepherd + 1/2 Lafayette would create a stronger cohort at Wells/Coolidge. I am always amused by the entitled Chevy Chase and Shepherd Park families who think it's too challenging to take Military/Piney Branch in the morning, and then want to restrict equity access at OOB at Deal/J-R. We see you.

And so what? It’s not my responsibility to sacrifice what’s best for my kids — which I already have — for some vague lofty goals that were copy/pasted from Twitter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They should absolutely get rid of OOB feeder rights. There's no reason lottering into a school in K should give you an automatic path to that school's feeders till 12th.


I disagree. The bonds formed in cohorts and communities are valuable and it would be harmful to pull a child out of their cohort and community once established. If feeder rights were removed, there would be mass exodus from DCPS.

and there is a faction of DCPS who would not mind that. DCPS only cares about "equity" and "achievement gaps". They do not care about creating and sustaining a school system that is used by the vast majority of the school age population of the District of Columbia like in Arlington, Fairfax or Montgomery County. Their version of "let them eat cake" is "let them pay for private". Close to 50% of the DCPS population is "at risk" while less than 25% of school age children in the District are. That statistic means that there is extremely large number of families (and not all of them wealthy, or white) who do not believe that DCPS will do a good job educating their children. The first priority in boundary/feeder patters should be to try to create another feeder pattern that is deemed rigorous enough by middle class families. The best way to do that would be to have all the Hill ES feed to one middle school, and to install a principal at Eastern who is dedicated to creating another JR in the eastern end of the city.

It it not like JR is that great but it will take more than a new principal to turn Eastern into a JR.

Just look at the PARCC results. These are the proficiency percentages:

Eastern:

ELA 14.96%
Math 2.79%

JR:

ELA 54.43%
Math 18.37%

For comparison, here are the same results for 9-12th grade at BASIS and Latin:

BASIS:

ELA 85.34%
Math 59.63%

Latin:

ELA 57.87%
Math 29.00%

WTG Basis on counseling out all the at risk kids. Public School and all.

If scores are low, that's bad.
If scores are too high, that's also bad?

Tell me, PP, what's the right level of mediocrity to check your faux equity boxes?

The previous previous PP posted BASIS scores and said “by comparison.” But it’s apples to oranges. You can’t compare a DCPS that takes all comers every year at any time to BASIS which doesn’t.

BASIS is 100% lottery.

Maybe you are thinking of Walls or Banneker, which are selective high schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They should absolutely get rid of OOB feeder rights. There's no reason lottering into a school in K should give you an automatic path to that school's feeders till 12th.


I disagree. The bonds formed in cohorts and communities are valuable and it would be harmful to pull a child out of their cohort and community once established. If feeder rights were removed, there would be mass exodus from DCPS.

and there is a faction of DCPS who would not mind that. DCPS only cares about "equity" and "achievement gaps". They do not care about creating and sustaining a school system that is used by the vast majority of the school age population of the District of Columbia like in Arlington, Fairfax or Montgomery County. Their version of "let them eat cake" is "let them pay for private". Close to 50% of the DCPS population is "at risk" while less than 25% of school age children in the District are. That statistic means that there is extremely large number of families (and not all of them wealthy, or white) who do not believe that DCPS will do a good job educating their children. The first priority in boundary/feeder patters should be to try to create another feeder pattern that is deemed rigorous enough by middle class families. The best way to do that would be to have all the Hill ES feed to one middle school, and to install a principal at Eastern who is dedicated to creating another JR in the eastern end of the city.

It it not like JR is that great but it will take more than a new principal to turn Eastern into a JR.

Just look at the PARCC results. These are the proficiency percentages:

Eastern:

ELA 14.96%
Math 2.79%

JR:

ELA 54.43%
Math 18.37%

For comparison, here are the same results for 9-12th grade at BASIS and Latin:

BASIS:

ELA 85.34%
Math 59.63%

Latin:

ELA 57.87%
Math 29.00%

WTG Basis on counseling out all the at risk kids. Public School and all.

If scores are low, that's bad.
If scores are too high, that's also bad?

Tell me, PP, what's the right level of mediocrity to check your faux equity boxes?

The previous previous PP posted BASIS scores and said “by comparison.” But it’s apples to oranges. You can’t compare a DCPS that takes all comers every year at any time to BASIS which doesn’t.

BASIS is 100% lottery.

Maybe you are thinking of Walls or Banneker, which are selective high schools?

No, they mean BASIS only takes kids in 5th, almost never anyone for any other grades. Because it's sooooooo hard and soooooooo disruptive to do what most other schools do routinely. Sorry BASIS teachers just aren't up to the challenge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MR feeds to Columbia Heights Education Campus

And MacFarland for dual language. https://www.myschooldc.org/sites/default/files/dc/sites/myschooldc/page/attachments/SY21-22%20Feeder%20Patterns%20%28DCPS_ENG%29.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MR feeds to Columbia Heights Education Campus

And MacFarland for dual language. https://www.myschooldc.org/sites/default/files/dc/sites/myschooldc/page/attachments/SY21-22%20Feeder%20Patterns%20%28DCPS_ENG%29.pdf

MR feeds to both, all of the dual language schools except OA have the option to feed to either CHEC or MacFarland for middle school. It's p. 3 of this document: https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/page_content/attachments/SY23-24%20School%20Feeder%20Patterns.pdf

It makes logical sense to put Cleveland, Marie Reed, and Bancroft in the same feeder pattern since they are the Ward 1 bilingual schools. Bancroft is also gentrifying rapidly and will not bring the same diversity to Deal/JR in another 5-10 years. Geographically it also makes sense to move Shepherd into Wells, but as others have said it brings much needed diversity to Deal/JR and is a MUCH different political fight than pretty much anywhere else in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of this thread is very interesting, but the city isn't doing any of it. It will do the things it has to and no more. Even small changes are absolutely toxic politically. It is cute that anyone thinks that they will do big things.

I think this is the right answer but there will be endless bickering until the review is completed

[Anonymous]

I think people are naive to believe that there won’t be majorly disruptive proposals on the table. “Equity” is a prime consideration, and so I think we can expect things like city-wide lotteries and major changes to feeder patterns.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I think people are naive to believe that there won’t be majorly disruptive proposals on the table. “Equity” is a prime consideration, and so I think we can expect things like city-wide lotteries and major changes to feeder patterns.

I was very involved in the last boundary review and there were proposals such as citywide lotteries. However, they were soundly rejected by the population at large, much to the surprise of those leading the process. I would not be surprised if similar proposals come up again, but I fully expect that they will be similarly rejected. I agree with those who think nothing beyond minor tweaks are likely to come out of this process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people are naive to believe that there won’t be majorly disruptive proposals on the table. “Equity” is a prime consideration, and so I think we can expect things like city-wide lotteries and major changes to feeder patterns.

“ We can absolutely center equity as the priority and look at the ways where when we have a vision of our public school system in the city where every child is getting absolutely what they need [and] has the range of opportunities that we know every child deserves,” said Abigail Smith, the former DC Deputy Mayor for Education, at DC Policy Center’s recent launch of its report on school boundaries. “We can use student assignment policies to help us get there.””

translation: major disruptions will be proposed for schools with high IB participation rates.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are naive to believe that there won’t be majorly disruptive proposals on the table. “Equity” is a prime consideration, and so I think we can expect things like city-wide lotteries and major changes to feeder patterns.

I was very involved in the last boundary review and there were proposals such as citywide lotteries. However, they were soundly rejected by the population at large, much to the surprise of those leading the process. I would not be surprised if similar proposals come up again, but I fully expect that they will be similarly rejected. I agree with those who think nothing beyond minor tweaks are likely to come out of this process.

that was 2014, before equity became gospel.