DME Kicks Off DCPS Boundary Review; Changes Expected for 2015-16 School Year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that current WofTP families that are east of Connecticur Ave, could get zoned into EofTP elementary schools?

Are you suggesting it or scared of it?

[Anonymous]

Scared. But not really. We will just move to Montgomery County and be done with it.

[Anonymous]

As an OOB parent for Powell because I didn't make the cut for LAMB or MV, I can see the fight of the Crestwood families. Powell is highly populated with FARM families and I don't think this will change due to the apartment housing in the neighborhood. Early education is great to make changes going forward, but the parents have to be involved as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it possible that current WofTP families that are east of Connecticur Ave, could get zoned into EofTP elementary schools?

Are you suggesting it or scared of it?

Not going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Moving to DC and staying are two different things. White flight happened the first time and affected the NE/SE corridors if this boundary issue go in the wrong direction then the NW/SW area will see the U-haul trucks.

Remember Metro offers free transportation to ALL DCPS students so this walkable school zone is laughable. So Shaw residents be prepared to the metro bus to Eliot-Hine and so on.

White residents and black voters...you're not going to make both of happy simultaneously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:White kids have their own peer influence problems. I, for one, would worry about the type of peer influences that can be found in privates where you have highly privileged teens (mostly white) with a lot of money and not a lot of parental supervision because the dual income BigLaw partner parents are too busy working to notice that Trip and his buddies are getting high in the rec room of the 6,000 sf Spring Valley mansion.

But it is willful blindness to ignore the fact that AA kids from HIH/highly educated households aren't subject to a different set of temptations/pressures in the typical DCPS school as opposed to white kid in DCPS. White kids may be bullied because of their race, the AA kids are bullied for being "bougie" (sp?).

Being bullied for "acting bourgeois" is what happened to me when I attended DCPS along with the racist taunts about being biracial. The best decision that my mother ever made was to enroll me into a private school. I was able to thrive and to excel in a supportive learning environment. I didn't have to worry about the sexually aggressive boys bothering me, students disrupting classes, students disrespecting the teachers, and the anti-intellectual crowd harassing students who didn't have that street mentality. Some students would actually get upset at me because I was excelling and they were failing. It's like they wanted me to fail along with them. There are plenty of negative pressures and a great level of disdain towards AA students from HIH from the lower socio-economic AA's in DC. I'm not sure where this attitude comes from, but it's not just in DCPS either. It's heavily present in the DC culture as well. There is a deep provincial attitude that is difficult to break within DCPS and within DC period.

[Anonymous]

My main issue is that the boundary changes don't address a BIG issue with DCPS...the preS-8 model is not evenly applied to all regions of the city. Are only low SES schools (other than OA) subjected to this model? Has any formal study been done to show if the middle-schoolers have higher scores in these schools than previously?

I like the suggestion for a middle school at the bightwood school; reallocate kids to neighboring schools and re-establish a middle school in the mixed-SES area around military and 14th street.
I am a parent whose inbound school is Brightwood. % blocks north of me, kids are zoned for shepherd and deal, 5 blocks south is also zoned for deal, yet I'm sitting in the middle, zoned for McFarland....I guess my block lacked political pull

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White kids have their own peer influence problems. I, for one, would worry about the type of peer influences that can be found in privates where you have highly privileged teens (mostly white) with a lot of money and not a lot of parental supervision because the dual income BigLaw partner parents are too busy working to notice that Trip and his buddies are getting high in the rec room of the 6,000 sf Spring Valley mansion.

But it is willful blindness to ignore the fact that AA kids from HIH/highly educated households aren't subject to a different set of temptations/pressures in the typical DCPS school as opposed to white kid in DCPS. White kids may be bullied because of their race, the AA kids are bullied for being "bougie" (sp?).

Being bullied for "acting bourgeois" is what happened to me when I attended DCPS along with the racist taunts about being biracial. The best decision that my mother ever made was to enroll me into a private school. I was able to thrive and to excel in a supportive learning environment. I didn't have to worry about the sexually aggressive boys bothering me, students disrupting classes, students disrespecting the teachers, and the anti-intellectual crowd harassing students who didn't have that street mentality. Some students would actually get upset at me because I was excelling and they were failing. It's like they wanted me to fail along with them. There are plenty of negative pressures and a great level of disdain towards AA students from HIH from the lower socio-economic AA's in DC. I'm not sure where this attitude comes from, but it's not just in DCPS either. It's heavily present in the DC culture as well. There is a deep provincial attitude that is difficult to break within DCPS and within DC period.

This hits the nail right on the head. Very, painful and true.

[Anonymous]

I was glad to see in the announcement from DME that the boundary review seems to be pretty broadly defined and that it includes the role of charters, feeder patterns, etc.

From the press release...

•To clarify what rights and responsibilities families and schools have regarding access to public schools;
•To update feeder relationships between schools to ensure that schools are aligned to provide a robust pipeline of students into the middle and high schools;
•To ensure that the boundaries align to the DCPS facility capacity and projected population of students;
•To explore opportunities to bridge student-assignment and choice policies across DCPS and charter schools.

However, I was less convinced that the advisory committee will be able to come to a fair solution based on input they receive. Quickly looking over a few of their backgrounds suggests that many are coming to the process with strong priors as to how to fix DCPS/DCPCS.

[Anonymous]

I believe the committee should base it on the mileage of getting to one school versus the next. For instance Shepherd, the distance for getting to Takoma is shorter than getting to DEAL. I’m on the other side of Ga. ave with a child at Shepherd, I would love for my child to enroll in DEAL which I think she will if we are grandfathered in, but with a child on the way who knows what will happen when he gets of age. DC and other “cities” have neighborhood schools which should be walkable.

[Anonymous]

I think the proximity bonus in the lottery is something valuable in the right context. Travel from one cluster to the next gets you a better lottery slot than travel across 2 clusters. It could limit some of the craziest movement, but it's definitely not good enough on its own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if Hardy isn't good enough by the time our children reach relevant age, we'll go private.

I feel like the experience of too many people has been of broadly middle class suburban schools that have high levels of success. However, I just don't think that is necessary. Hardy has proficient-testing kids, advanced-testing kids and everyone with parents who aren't clueless does fine. People have the idea that they need to segregate their kids away from any child who is not high-performing or else they will turn out dumb.

It just isn't true. Rich kids at mixed income schools don't get dragged down.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "dragged down." My daughter is at a well-regarded charter that has a significant FARM population (which, in my opinion, is the most important factor, not race). She's bright and inquisitive, and is ahead of the benchmarks set by the school (not dramaticaly ahead, but ahead). But (i) the benchmarks are lower than those set in other schools, and (ii) she isn't challenged or pushed to excel at all. The attitude seems to be that if a kid is at or above where s/he is expected to be, s/he is allowed to tread water because the teachers have so many other kids to deal with who aren't there yet. I've got no issues with that - it's an admirable goal. But it doesn't mean that it's the right school for my daughter. We're thinking of leaving in a year or two, and when we tell people that, they think we're crazy - it's a charter that has thousands on the wait list, at all grade levels.

Short version - there's no need to segregate from "any child who is not high performing." But at some point, there's a critical mass of kids who need significant assistance to even reach proficient that is detrimental to high-performing kids.

I know this has nothing to do with DCPS boundaries, but I wanted to address two specific points: (i) comparatively rich kids at mixed income schools can get "dragged down" if the mix gets too far out of balance, and (ii) families with options will absolutely move, or go private, if they feel the need.

[Anonymous]

In the 2010 democratic primary, 80% of Ward 3 Ds voted for Adrian Fenty. You think a lot of these folks would tolerate any attempt to water down their rights to Deal/Wilson with some sort of open boundary scheme?

[Anonymous]

I think DCPS needs to create some kind of magnet or citywide middle and high school that is going to attract high SES parents and compete with the charters. Either international baccalaureate or STEM, but with real, honest-to-God advanced offerings. It has to be new and not a rebranded neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

The press release implies that they are going to look at options for charters, such as creating a neighborhood preference. Would they be able to do this given that the charter law is a federal law? Wouldn't that require action by congress?

I think it would be great if language immersion charters could reserve a certain portion of the seats to true native household speakers (as opposed to, say, a child who goes to a bilingual daycare but speaks English at home), verified by a written and/or oral test. (My child would not benefit from this directly, as we are an English-speaking family, but I think it would make the language immersion schools much better for everyone.)