have DCPS demand and capacity growth ever been modeled out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS has no planning. David Catania is trying to get funding for an Office of Planning with DCPS included in this year's budget.

The facilities planning that DCPS does is hardly worthy of the name "planning." A decision is made about which schools to close and which schools to keep open (using methodology known only to a few insiders, certainly not using demographics or any other planning tools.) Once it is decided that a building is to remain open, all facilities decisions are made based on the building -- what does the building need? -- rather than what does the school need, what does the community need, what does the system need.

As for demographics informing boundary decisions, DCPS has not redrawn boundaries in over 40 years, there is no one in the system with expertise.

What you have to keep in mind is that DCPS has approximately one quarter the number of students it had 50 years ago. For the past 50 years, the system has done nothing but shed students and shutter buildings. It still has over 50% more space than it needs for its current enrollment. The enrollment growth and resultant crowding of the past five years is something that DCPS is institutionally unprepared to deal with.

+1 The bottom line is that facilities are run separately. Think of all the recent renovations that are out of sync with demographics. Wilson & Deal- modernized and bursting at the seams. Hearst being renovated for around 300 students for ES- isn't the model 400? Then you have Dunbar and Cardozo with beautiful new buildings and no students in them. It would be astounding if it was any other school system but DCPS to learn that they are running without an Office of Planning. Maybe if they had a planning office they would not need a Critical Response team to answer why they keep screwing up things. After 15 years of dealing with DCPS, it's hard to not be cynical. They system brings out the worst in everyone- just look at the threads on DCUM OP's question is spot on- there's just no one in DCPS capable of looking forward.

There are a couple of issues driving the problem here. One is that the building is out of the Bond plan that was about 10 years ago and had to politically spread money across the city to get passed. If you have looked at the Master Building Plan it is very much focused on spreading money across all the wards. The other thing is that the city is just not that big, it would seem that these buildings could be used magnet programming pulled in more kids. I just don't see a future of a lot of generalist high schools in the long term.