Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Future Maury parents…the block is not happy about a cluster idea.

I'm a bit torn on how to think about this. Can you elaborate on why you are opposed?

DP. Because DCPS does a terrible job of supporting kids with behavioral needs. They’ll combine Maury and Miner resulting in higher needs kids at both schools, but provide zero support for behavioral challenges especially in the higher grades. Also it’s a long trek from the edge of the Maury zone to Miner. Like it or not, Maury is a stable school due to a decade + of high-touch parental involvement and combining it with Miner would basically throw that all away.

Come on now. Be honest. Your concern isn't an increase in higher needs at Miner, it is the inevitable increase in higher needs at Maury.

Be honest - your only concern is false accusations of racial bias and ensuring that white families get taken down a peg, not actually helping Miner kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Slides on boundary study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYFnqqgJR0XVf8foc3qXHwKvvLbGz-8f/view

Love how a majority of the ward-designated community members are from Wards 4, 7, and 8. There are 3 each from those 3 wards (9 people) plus 1 each from Wards 1,2,3,5, and 6 (5 people).

Very balanced.

LOL.

Let's see: Maury is in Ward 6 and Miner is in Ward 7....

I am sure that the one person representing Ward 6 (incidentally, the largest ward in DC and the only one that touches all four quadrants of the city) of the 15 ward-designated community members will be able to ensure the right decision for Maury.

It is on a slide somewhere, but the reason there are that number from various wards is because it corresponds to the percent of students in public and charter schools from each ward. Out of the entire city, I believe students who live in Ward 7 and 8 make up over half of the public school population, or something close to it. Ward 6 is physically big but proportionately the number of public school students in the whole city that live in that ward is not as high.

Let's say that they adjust the boundaries for Maury, which is in Ward 6, and those changes only affect Ward 6. That is a matter that directly and only involves Ward 6, and obviously affects a lot more people in Ward 6 than in Wards 7 and 8. In fact, it affects zero people in Wards 7 and 8.

Why does it matter that there are proportionally more kids in DCPS schools in Wards 7 and 8?

Another way to look at it is that there are 9 members of the D.C. State Board of Education: 1 for each ward and one at large. It is not like Wards 7 and 8 get more representation on the Board of Education because those wards have proportionately more kids in DCPS than other wards.

Fair is fair. Let's have equal representation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Slides on boundary study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYFnqqgJR0XVf8foc3qXHwKvvLbGz-8f/view

Love how a majority of the ward-designated community members are from Wards 4, 7, and 8. There are 3 each from those 3 wards (9 people) plus 1 each from Wards 1,2,3,5, and 6 (5 people).

Very balanced.

LOL.

Let's see: Maury is in Ward 6 and Miner is in Ward 7....

I am sure that the one person representing Ward 6 (incidentally, the largest ward in DC and the only one that touches all four quadrants of the city) of the 15 ward-designated community members will be able to ensure the right decision for Maury.

Yes, I also noticed there are two Watkins ES reps and one Payne ES rep. Wonder if they'll be touching their boundaries?

Also funny, because the Ward 6 rep was added after the fact after they realized they forgot to have one! I know because I was reached out to about it — after the rest of the committee was named — with exactly that explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Slides on boundary study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYFnqqgJR0XVf8foc3qXHwKvvLbGz-8f/view

Love how a majority of the ward-designated community members are from Wards 4, 7, and 8. There are 3 each from those 3 wards (9 people) plus 1 each from Wards 1,2,3,5, and 6 (5 people).

Very balanced.

LOL.

Let's see: Maury is in Ward 6 and Miner is in Ward 7....

I am sure that the one person representing Ward 6 (incidentally, the largest ward in DC and the only one that touches all four quadrants of the city) of the 15 ward-designated community members will be able to ensure the right decision for Maury.

Yes, I also noticed there are two Watkins ES reps and one Payne ES rep. Wonder if they'll be touching their boundaries?

Also funny, because the Ward 6 rep was added after the fact after they realized they forgot to have one! I know because I was reached out to about it — after the rest of the committee was named — with exactly that explanation.

Lovely.

[Anonymous]

The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Link?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

Miner and Maury are about a 10 minute walk along Maryland Avenue from each other (about half a mile along a shady and nicely streetscaped road with good traffic lights). I'm not advocating turning them into a cluster, but that would at least make more sense than Watkins/Peabody where the schools are about 25 minutes apart on foot and the boundary is drawn in an intentionally stretched way to encompass them both.

You would not need a bus between Miner and Maury, especially if you slightly staggered pick-up/drop-off times. A bigger question would be whether combining them would make that boundary unreasonably large so that more people would be that much further away from one of the schools, or whether that is even a smart utilization of those buildings or would serve the respective communities well. But in terms of commute between schools, Miner/Maury are a much more "natural fit" than Watkins/Peabody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

Miner and Maury are about a 10 minute walk along Maryland Avenue from each other (about half a mile along a shady and nicely streetscaped road with good traffic lights). I'm not advocating turning them into a cluster, but that would at least make more sense than Watkins/Peabody where the schools are about 25 minutes apart on foot and the boundary is drawn in an intentionally stretched way to encompass them both.

You would not need a bus between Miner and Maury, especially if you slightly staggered pick-up/drop-off times. A bigger question would be whether combining them would make that boundary unreasonably large so that more people would be that much further away from one of the schools, or whether that is even a smart utilization of those buildings or would serve the respective communities well. But in terms of commute between schools, Miner/Maury are a much more "natural fit" than Watkins/Peabody.

Maryland does not connect Maury and Miner. Got any other useful uniformed comments?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

Miner and Maury are about a 10 minute walk along Maryland Avenue from each other (about half a mile along a shady and nicely streetscaped road with good traffic lights). I'm not advocating turning them into a cluster, but that would at least make more sense than Watkins/Peabody where the schools are about 25 minutes apart on foot and the boundary is drawn in an intentionally stretched way to encompass them both.

You would not need a bus between Miner and Maury, especially if you slightly staggered pick-up/drop-off times. A bigger question would be whether combining them would make that boundary unreasonably large so that more people would be that much further away from one of the schools, or whether that is even a smart utilization of those buildings or would serve the respective communities well. But in terms of commute between schools, Miner/Maury are a much more "natural fit" than Watkins/Peabody.

Maryland does not connect Maury and Miner. Got any other useful uniformed comments?

Tennessee.

[Anonymous]

there are some people in the NE corner of the brent boundary who are close to 1/2 mile different directions from both peabody and watkins. short of unraveling the cluster, remaking the boundary makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there are some people in the NE corner of the brent boundary who are close to 1/2 mile different directions from both peabody and watkins. short of unraveling the cluster, remaking the boundary makes sense.

Nope.

Keep the current boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

Miner and Maury are about a 10 minute walk along Maryland Avenue from each other (about half a mile along a shady and nicely streetscaped road with good traffic lights). I'm not advocating turning them into a cluster, but that would at least make more sense than Watkins/Peabody where the schools are about 25 minutes apart on foot and the boundary is drawn in an intentionally stretched way to encompass them both.

You would not need a bus between Miner and Maury, especially if you slightly staggered pick-up/drop-off times. A bigger question would be whether combining them would make that boundary unreasonably large so that more people would be that much further away from one of the schools, or whether that is even a smart utilization of those buildings or would serve the respective communities well. But in terms of commute between schools, Miner/Maury are a much more "natural fit" than Watkins/Peabody.

Maryland does not connect Maury and Miner. Got any other useful uniformed comments?

Tennessee.

I would never make this walk. That's so far from what I consider Capitol Hill it might as well be Baltimore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The changes that they’re previewing in Ward 6 involve moving some of Brent into the Watkins boundary on the Southern edge of the Westwrn side of the Watkins boundary and moving the Eastern edge of the boundary inward and reassigning those kids to Payne.

Until they get rid of the failed cluster approach, no parent wants to be rezoned to Watkins. Same reason a Maury-Miner cluster won’t work. DCPS *does not provide buses*. They can’t expect people to walk 2 miles with their preschoolers or send the 3rd grader to walk alone while they drop off the 1st grader.

Miner and Maury are about a 10 minute walk along Maryland Avenue from each other (about half a mile along a shady and nicely streetscaped road with good traffic lights). I'm not advocating turning them into a cluster, but that would at least make more sense than Watkins/Peabody where the schools are about 25 minutes apart on foot and the boundary is drawn in an intentionally stretched way to encompass them both.

You would not need a bus between Miner and Maury, especially if you slightly staggered pick-up/drop-off times. A bigger question would be whether combining them would make that boundary unreasonably large so that more people would be that much further away from one of the schools, or whether that is even a smart utilization of those buildings or would serve the respective communities well. But in terms of commute between schools, Miner/Maury are a much more "natural fit" than Watkins/Peabody.

Maryland does not connect Maury and Miner. Got any other useful uniformed comments?

Tennessee.

I would never make this walk. That's so far from what I consider Capitol Hill it might as well be Baltimore.

A 10 minute walk is shorter than a 15 hour walk.

[Anonymous]

Can we please try to make schools better, not worse. Maury and Brent are functioning elementary schools. Let’s not screw this up.

Watkins has been a train wreck for 20+ years and consistently fails to get neighborhood buy-in. Fix that.