Committee on overcrowding in the Wilson feeder pattern

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Bought your house in reliance on Wilson access" is not a property right. Even if it was, I want it taken away for the good of the rest of us. Move if you want. I want those kids in Ward 1 or 4 schools, or if (when, right PP!?!) you move away, to have your replacements put their kids there.

You realize this same mentality applies to kids at Lafayette, right? You want "those kids" gone but you think your feeder rights are sacrosanct.

Exactly - for some reason it was easy for some to suggest that eotp kids don't belong (despite their neighborhoods having long been zoned for Deal and Wilson - which, by the way IS in ward 4), but the idea of Lafayette families giving up Wilson is unthinkable.... Um, and I never said it was a "property right" (however that matters).

What's ok for 16th street heights, crestwood, etc, ought to be ok for those families in Chevy Chase DC too.

Hold on there. It was PP at 14:31 who suggested the Lafayette kids be moved but that families who bought EOTP would keep their rights to Deal/Wilson. How is that any more fair than the other way around?

Because the PP at 14:31 brought that up specifically because it would shift a big enough cohort of high-SES kids at once to create a viable high-achieving second DCPS feeder pattern. Just kicking out the grandfathered kids in the Gold Coast and erasing Shepherd feeder rights would be a much smaller cohort and would not move the needle in the same way -- and that's not why DCUM always reverts to kicking out "those kids." If you want to talk about fairness at least compare apples to oranges. 14:31 was trying to come up with a politically disastrous idea that would theoretically result in an additional good school for kids to attend. The "get rid of all those EOTP kids" people are not at all interested in improving outcomes for "those kids."

If that was what 14:31 was saying, he/she should not have made the fairness argument in the first sentence and negated later in the post. Make the argument about moving a large co-hort but don’t pretend it is fair. At least be honest.

What are you talking about? The entirety of the post is about how that plan would create another school that could retain high-SES families. The whole post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. there are 1700 kids at Wilson. My high school had 2500. Just expand the building...

Very hard to do at this site, unless Wilson wants to give up its track and field.

It would be better to reopen Western High School at the Duke Ellington site instead of expanding Wilson further. Move Ellington to a more central location near a Metro stop, as its students come from around the city. A new WOTP high school could move right into the building with very little reconfiguration.

That ship has sailed.

One solution to the over crowding at Wilson is to stop Oyster Adams middle school from feeding to Wilson. This school is in Kalorama/Dupont. Can they feed go to Mcfarland?

Adams is a drop in the bucket of kids going to Wilson- like 10 kids the year DS finished there. Most went to Walls, DE or privates. Roosevelt makes more sense anyway with its international program option, but the reality is simply that kids will choose private or move rather than attending a non-Wilson option, which would wreck one of the best performing middle schools in the city in order to prevent 15 kids from attending Wilson. Yay!

Another analysis of these kids not following the feeder patterns is that we can shift the feeder to Roosevelt and change expectations with minimal actual loss to the grieving homeowners, I mean, families.

[Anonymous]

It's ideologically consistent for all DCPS bilingual elementaries to feed to a single middle and high school (MacFarland/Roosevelt). The fact that shifting Bancroft and Adams takes a few dozen kids out of the Wilson feeder pattern is an added benefit, but the real benefit will accrue to MacFarland and Roosevelt, to younger families IB for Oyster if Adams becomes additional elementary space (thus allowing for another few PK classrooms), and to families living outside the Oyster boundary who might stand a chance of getting in to a bilingual program through the lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's ideologically consistent for all DCPS bilingual elementaries to feed to a single middle and high school (MacFarland/Roosevelt). The fact that shifting Bancroft and Adams takes a few dozen kids out of the Wilson feeder pattern is an added benefit, but the real benefit will accrue to MacFarland and Roosevelt, to younger families IB for Oyster if Adams becomes additional elementary space (thus allowing for another few PK classrooms), and to families living outside the Oyster boundary who might stand a chance of getting in to a bilingual program through the lottery.

It is indeed ideologically consistent for Oyster and Bancroft to feed into a bi-lingual middle school. But if we're making a wish list here, it is more ideologically consistent for these to be specialty schools rather than neighborhood ones. You get access to bilingual education (or conversely it is forced upon you) because of your address?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's ideologically consistent for all DCPS bilingual elementaries to feed to a single middle and high school (MacFarland/Roosevelt). The fact that shifting Bancroft and Adams takes a few dozen kids out of the Wilson feeder pattern is an added benefit, but the real benefit will accrue to MacFarland and Roosevelt, to younger families IB for Oyster if Adams becomes additional elementary space (thus allowing for another few PK classrooms), and to families living outside the Oyster boundary who might stand a chance of getting in to a bilingual program through the lottery.

It is indeed ideologically consistent for Oyster and Bancroft to feed into a bi-lingual middle school. But if we're making a wish list here, it is more ideologically consistent for these to be specialty schools rather than neighborhood ones. You get access to bilingual education (or conversely it is forced upon you) because of your address?

Hear hear!

Dual language programs should be determined by city-wide lotteries, and distributed as evenly as possible in every Ward of the city. Expand the boundaries of neighborhood schools to absorb those who wouldn't want to travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Bought your house in reliance on Wilson access" is not a property right. Even if it was, I want it taken away for the good of the rest of us. Move if you want. I want those kids in Ward 1 or 4 schools, or if (when, right PP!?!) you move away, to have your replacements put their kids there.

You realize this same mentality applies to kids at Lafayette, right? You want "those kids" gone but you think your feeder rights are sacrosanct.

Exactly - for some reason it was easy for some to suggest that eotp kids don't belong (despite their neighborhoods having long been zoned for Deal and Wilson - which, by the way IS in ward 4), but the idea of Lafayette families giving up Wilson is unthinkable.... Um, and I never said it was a "property right" (however that matters).

What's ok for 16th street heights, crestwood, etc, ought to be ok for those families in Chevy Chase DC too.

Hold on there. It was PP at 14:31 who suggested the Lafayette kids be moved but that families who bought EOTP would keep their rights to Deal/Wilson. How is that any more fair than the other way around?

Because the PP at 14:31 brought that up specifically because it would shift a big enough cohort of high-SES kids at once to create a viable high-achieving second DCPS feeder pattern. Just kicking out the grandfathered kids in the Gold Coast and erasing Shepherd feeder rights would be a much smaller cohort and would not move the needle in the same way -- and that's not why DCUM always reverts to kicking out "those kids." If you want to talk about fairness at least compare apples to oranges. 14:31 was trying to come up with a politically disastrous idea that would theoretically result in an additional good school for kids to attend. The "get rid of all those EOTP kids" people are not at all interested in improving outcomes for "those kids."

If that was what 14:31 was saying, he/she should not have made the fairness argument in the first sentence and negated later in the post. Make the argument about moving a large co-hort but don’t pretend it is fair. At least be honest.

What are you talking about? The entirety of the post is about how that plan would create another school that could retain high-SES families. The whole post.

Yes, creating that school by shifting Lafayette out of Deal/Wilson rather than by shifting the EOTP students because it would be unfair to shift one but not unfair to shift the other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The elementary schools in Ward 3 are not overcrowded - they are large and some people may not like that but they are not overcrowded.

Then why is DCPS planning on spending $40 million to add capacity at Key and Stoddert?

Anonymous wrote:

And with the shift of Eaton to Hardy there should be enough middle school seats WOTP for the foreseeable future too.

Deal currently has 12 trailers. A few Eaton kids either way isn't going to make a difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Um, I'm not sticking up for Lafayette.

Basically - set up the zoning based on proximity and capacity. Overfilled Wilson and underfilled Coolidge and Roosevelt are part of one system.

The reason that Deal and Wilson are over-crowded is that more kids have the right to attend than the schools can hold. Nobody is admitted through the lottery to either. So the solution is simple: reduce the number of kids who have the right to attend. There are two ways that you can get the right to attend: either live in-boundary, or attend a feeder school. You can reduce the number of kids who attend by-right either by shrinking the boundaries or by restricting feeder school rights. (You could also reduce the number of kids in the feeder schools either by shrinking their boundaries or by moving schools out of the feeder pattern, but that will take longer to have an impact). The problem is that nobody wants to be the one who loses out, as the discussion on this thread indicates.

Until DCPS can offer alternatives that are as-good or even almost-as-good they're not going to be able to take anyone out of either school.

[Anonymous]

2 Deal made 2 offers to 6th graders on its wait list this year.

Last year by October they had made 26 calls to 6th graders on the WL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what are the actual Wilson numbers?
Current numbers and number projected/estimated in 3 and 5 years?
Does anyone know?

DCPS doesn't do projections. They'd rather not know.

I'm only joking a little. There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in surfacing problems before they reach crisis level.

Perhaps Mayor Bow-Wow can replicate her "Alice Deal for All"platitude by promising "Woodrow Wilson for All." Then simply rename the schools as Woodrow Wilson HS (x campus), etc. Presto! Problem solved.

Please stop referring to her as a dog. It is utterly disrespectful to call a woman, a black woman especially, a dog. We are better than this.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what are the actual Wilson numbers?
Current numbers and number projected/estimated in 3 and 5 years?
Does anyone know?

DCPS doesn't do projections. They'd rather not know.

I'm only joking a little. There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in surfacing problems before they reach crisis level.

Perhaps Mayor Bow-Wow can replicate her "Alice Deal for All"platitude by promising "Woodrow Wilson for All." Then simply rename the schools as Woodrow Wilson HS (x campus), etc. Presto! Problem solved.

Please stop referring to her as a dog. It is utterly disrespectful to call a woman, a black woman especially, a dog. We are better than this.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you. I’m a black Roman and no fan of the Mayor, but I’m respectful. It makes me pretty much disregard anything else a PP is saying when they use this nickname (usually, the “else” is nothing of substance, anyway).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what are the actual Wilson numbers?
Current numbers and number projected/estimated in 3 and 5 years?
Does anyone know?

DCPS doesn't do projections. They'd rather not know.

I'm only joking a little. There doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in surfacing problems before they reach crisis level.

Perhaps Mayor Bow-Wow can replicate her "Alice Deal for All"platitude by promising "Woodrow Wilson for All." Then simply rename the schools as Woodrow Wilson HS (x campus), etc. Presto! Problem solved.

Please stop referring to her as a dog. It is utterly disrespectful to call a woman, a black woman especially, a dog. We are better than this.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you. I’m a black Roman and no fan of the Mayor, but I’m respectful. It makes me pretty much disregard anything else a PP is saying when they use this nickname (usually, the “else” is nothing of substance, anyway).

Ahem, that should be black woman, although I’d love to meet a black Roman, lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's ideologically consistent for all DCPS bilingual elementaries to feed to a single middle and high school (MacFarland/Roosevelt). The fact that shifting Bancroft and Adams takes a few dozen kids out of the Wilson feeder pattern is an added benefit, but the real benefit will accrue to MacFarland and Roosevelt, to younger families IB for Oyster if Adams becomes additional elementary space (thus allowing for another few PK classrooms), and to families living outside the Oyster boundary who might stand a chance of getting in to a bilingual program through the lottery.

It is indeed ideologically consistent for Oyster and Bancroft to feed into a bi-lingual middle school. But if we're making a wish list here, it is more ideologically consistent for these to be specialty schools rather than neighborhood ones. You get access to bilingual education (or conversely it is forced upon you) because of your address?

Definitely agree! I'd be glad for all the bilingual schools to lose their boundaries. I'd suggest they allow in kids in later grades if they can demonstrate Spanish proficiency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:2 Deal made 2 offers to 6th graders on its wait list this year.

Last year by October they had made 26 calls to 6th graders on the WL.

Meanwhile the Wilson problem will hit crisis mode next fall when Deal will send many/most of its 545 8th graders to Wilson meaning 9th grade alone could be close to 700 kids. There appears to be no plan for how to have enough classrooms or teachers for those kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 Deal made 2 offers to 6th graders on its wait list this year.

Last year by October they had made 26 calls to 6th graders on the WL.

Meanwhile the Wilson problem will hit crisis mode next fall when Deal will send many/most of its 545 8th graders to Wilson meaning 9th grade alone could be close to 700 kids. There appears to be no plan for how to have enough classrooms or teachers for those kids.

Plus Hardy is experiencing strong growth.