Low In Boundary at Hearst?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a ward 3 parent I am getting a bit tired of hearing I can see it from my house/ it is two blocks from my house arguments. There is a larger picture of education needs in this city than just your family.

Providing feeder rights is a way to ensure that children that have benefited from the OOB lottery continue on a strong educational path with their elementary school peers. We need this in this city. It is equally compelling to me to providing sibling entrance to schools families have been zoned out of a particular school.

I am not an oyster parent/family, but I find the idea of their changed feeder to Cardozo much more disturbing because it it's academic achievement is so far below Wilson. THAT is unacceptable even though they cannot "see" Wilson from their front yards.

This is the kind of myopic thinking that makes the rest of the city dismiss ward 3 as completely self interested twits.

Except that the self interested twits pay the lion's share of the tax bills while other spend their time smoking crack

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a ward 3 parent I am getting a bit tired of hearing I can see it from my house/ it is two blocks from my house arguments. There is a larger picture of education needs in this city than just your family.

Providing feeder rights is a way to ensure that children that have benefited from the OOB lottery continue on a strong educational path with their elementary school peers. We need this in this city. It is equally compelling to me to providing sibling entrance to schools families have been zoned out of a particular school.

I am not an oyster parent/family, but I find the idea of their changed feeder to Cardozo much more disturbing because it it's academic achievement is so far below Wilson. THAT is unacceptable even though they cannot "see" Wilson from their front yards.

This is the kind of myopic thinking that makes the rest of the city dismiss ward 3 as completely self interested twits.

Except that the self interested twits pay the lion's share of the tax bills while other spend their time smoking crack

You are myopic ignorant and verging on RACIST except you probably do not even know that Oyster is full of high achieving Hispanic students that now feed into Deal/Wilson and will not under proposition B, the most palatable proposal to Ward 3 parents. Those parents (Oyster) are in our cub scout den, they are Hispanic, but please tell me how a pediatrician who is an Eagle Scout with 3 kids who has been practicing here for who knows how many years and is someone these Ward 3 parents would trust with our kids has been "spend[ing] [his] time smoking crack" you idiot. Way to contribute to the discussion and stoke the divide and conquer fires...........

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a ward 3 parent I am getting a bit tired of hearing I can see it from my house/ it is two blocks from my house arguments. There is a larger picture of education needs in this city than just your family.

Providing feeder rights is a way to ensure that children that have benefited from the OOB lottery continue on a strong educational path with their elementary school peers. We need this in this city. It is equally compelling to me to providing sibling entrance to schools families have been zoned out of a particular school.

I am not an oyster parent/family, but I find the idea of their changed feeder to Cardozo much more disturbing because it it's academic achievement is so far below Wilson. THAT is unacceptable even though they cannot "see" Wilson from their front yards.

This is the kind of myopic thinking that makes the rest of the city dismiss ward 3 as completely self interested twits.

Except that the self interested twits pay the lion's share of the tax bills while other spend their time smoking crack

Just go ahead and move to the burbs already. Seriously, I don't want to be neighbors with someone as small minded as you.

The small minded twit position I identified was worrying about a great v great in 2 years school that would apply to families with children not yet in school (because families with children in school will not be moved). DC has to make decisions for the good of the city. I completely agree that no child should be moved to a lesser performing school, but whining about the importance of walking to school when there are children that trek across the city daily to get access to a decent school (and count themselves lucky to be able to do so) just doesn't get my sympathy and I doubt it will get the sympathy of the majority of voters that, newsflash, do not reside in ward 3.

Worst case scenario for my family is that my kids may have to go to Hardy and if they cannot get into a magnet may have to go private if we lose the Wilson lottery (or Wilson is not worth attending in 5 years because of stupid decisions by the city). I am more concerned with actually focusing on what can improve DC schools for more children and less on the fact that a few families may have to walk 8 blocks instead of 3 for elementary school.

[Anonymous]

19:13 again because I did not mean to imply a negative position on Hardy. I think Hardy will be great in a few years so I don't actually think if my kids go to Hardy that is a fate worse than death.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a ward 3 parent I am getting a bit tired of hearing I can see it from my house/ it is two blocks from my house arguments. There is a larger picture of education needs in this city than just your family.

Providing feeder rights is a way to ensure that children that have benefited from the OOB lottery continue on a strong educational path with their elementary school peers. We need this in this city. It is equally compelling to me to providing sibling entrance to schools families have been zoned out of a particular school.

I am not an oyster parent/family, but I find the idea of their changed feeder to Cardozo much more disturbing because it it's academic achievement is so far below Wilson. THAT is unacceptable even though they cannot "see" Wilson from their front yards.

This is the kind of myopic thinking that makes the rest of the city dismiss ward 3 as completely self interested twits.

Except that the self interested twits pay the lion's share of the tax bills while other spend their time smoking crack

Just go ahead and move to the burbs already. Seriously, I don't want to be neighbors with someone as small minded as you.

The small minded twit position I identified was worrying about a great v great in 2 years school that would apply to families with children not yet in school (because families with children in school will not be moved). DC has to make decisions for the good of the city. I completely agree that no child should be moved to a lesser performing school, but whining about the importance of walking to school when there are children that trek across the city daily to get access to a decent school (and count themselves lucky to be able to do so) just doesn't get my sympathy and I doubt it will get the sympathy of the majority of voters that, newsflash, do not reside in ward 3.

Worst case scenario for my family is that my kids may have to go to Hardy and if they cannot get into a magnet may have to go private if we lose the Wilson lottery (or Wilson is not worth attending in 5 years because of stupid decisions by the city). I am more concerned with actually focusing on what can improve DC schools for more children and less on the fact that a few families may have to walk 8 blocks instead of 3 for elementary school.

Well, I'm guessing it won't be productive to try to reason with a name-caller ("twit!") but here's a try: (a) what is working and sensible in Ward 3 may not be the right thing for other parts of the city, and that's OK - if I lived in a neighborhood with a really unacceptable neighborhood school I would drive to the moon to do better for my child - but I don't have to, luckily. The point is to find a solution that helps both (probably the x% OOB set asides, given that DCPS has given up on the hard to fix schools) but (b) the boundary shifts for Janney Murch Hearst are NOT going to alleviate overcrowding. As we saw with the Deal and Wilson renovations, a nice new building will attract even more families then the DCPS planners plan for. So for Murch you will zone out not just "a few families" as you say but 4 or 5 large rental and condo buildings plus dozens of single family houses, and then you will still have crowded schools in 5 years (and the same car-jams at drop off because the drivers will still drive). Moreover, the rentals, condos, and smaller houses on Alton, etc. are for many of the families that moved here the only affordable place that could guarantee our kids a path to a good set of schools: we moved because of walking to Murch/Deal/Wilson. Which leads me to (c): you want Ward 3 to think about the rest of the city and the big picture, but the boundary shifts in Ward 3 are so minimal that we can suspect that they are SYMBOLIC: they exist only to placate parents in NE and SE etc. who would complain resentfully "why aren't you also moving boundaries in NW?" And, sorry, but I will complain if I am trying to be be forced to do something that doesn't make sense and doesn't achieve any good for narrow-minded me nor for the larger, more serious problems that DCPS faces in other parts of the city.

[Anonymous]

Good luck with your argument PP! It was hard to follow, but seemed to ignore overcrowding at Murch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good luck with your argument PP! It was hard to follow, but seemed to ignore overcrowding at Murch.

Ha! Argument is that this boundary shift will remove some people from Murch, but then you will renovate Murch and the new Murch building will bring in more people then you anticipate (like Deal renovated for 900 and got 1200). So Murch will still be crowded in 5 years and what are you going to do? Tighten the boundary again?

The solution is build another K-5 or even just a PK-2 school between Lafayette and Murch. That is long term thinking.

But we won't get it because the politics of this DME thing are back to the bad old days of Barry-style resentment: "We can't renovate Deal because we are graduating illiterates in the rest of the city". As if 2 wrongs made anything right....

[Anonymous]

I think that the boundaries will quite likely be tightened again in the near future if the OOB set-asides go through, because they are not factored in to the currently proposed boundary adjustments. The DME alluded to this at the first working group meeting at Coolidge.

[Anonymous]

Next time they tighten the boundary, they will have to draw Murch out of Murch!

[Anonymous]

I think a discussion of the whether boundary adjustments are necessary for an identified purpose or will make a difference is a good discussion. I also think discussing whether the boundary adjustments (or other changes in NWDC where schools are performing well) are necessary at all or are just being considered to treat the whole city "fairly" is a good discussion.

I don't think "I pay more taxes than you so don't mess with my right to my school" is particularly persuasive and I find it offensive.

Also, the first time I used the phrase myopic it was refer to how ward 3 parents look when all we talk about is a few block shift in school assignment as if that is the end of the world because walking to school is the most important issue. It is important to some, but I honestly do not think it should (or can) carry the day given the geography and school distribution in this city.

That said, I would be surprised if a number of the zone changes are not revisited based in the feedback that has been provided. But no, I do not think the "walkers" are more important members than any other members of an existing school community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a discussion of the whether boundary adjustments are necessary for an identified purpose or will make a difference is a good discussion. I also think discussing whether the boundary adjustments (or other changes in NWDC where schools are performing well) are necessary at all or are just being considered to treat the whole city "fairly" is a good discussion.

I don't think "I pay more taxes than you so don't mess with my right to my school" is particularly persuasive and I find it offensive.

Also, the first time I used the phrase myopic it was refer to how ward 3 parents look when all we talk about is a few block shift in school assignment as if that is the end of the world because walking to school is the most important issue. It is important to some, but I honestly do not think it should (or can) carry the day given the geography and school distribution in this city.

That said, I would be surprised if a number of the zone changes are not revisited based in the feedback that has been provided. But no, I do not think the "walkers" are more important members than any other members of an existing school community.

i wouldn't phrase it as "more important." However, the explicit policy priority of the city's planning office and transportation department is to encourage walkable neighborhoods, where more residents walk or bike to businesses and schools. So, as a matter of policy -- planning, transportation and educational, good schools within walking distance of their students, that serve as neighborhood anchors, should be preferred. The DME proposals not only do not serve this priority, in fact they undercut it.