Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current

[Anonymous]

There may be need for another HS but should one person be running all these different schools? It sounds like the proposal is for FS to now have a HS added to it, in addition to its merger with SWW HS. How does this make sense?

[Anonymous]

The irony is that DC will need a substantial number of new public schools over the next two decades based on population forecasts.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know what the potential student capacity will be at Ellington after the renovations are complete? I read they are expanding from 150,000 total square feet to almost 260,000 square feet. They currently have around 540 students. Trogish said in his article that the optimum attendance for a high school is 800 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the article:

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2005-07-2014.pdf

So just to be clear- he wants to run a preschool- 8 neighborhood school in one location, a HS in another location, and a magnet HS in yet another location? HAvent there been a lot of problems with him trying to run just FS and SWW HS? Talk about hubris!

I was thinking the same thing. That, and he's pushing his own agenda by getting his name in the NW Current. Of course, that's a publication with zero political clout and a not-exactly-powerful readership base. Because seriously, the NW Current is for lining the catbox.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is going to attend this new school? The same Ward 2 and Ward 3 families that are not attending Hardy Middle School now? What about this school is going to keep them in the feeer pipeline and draw them into DCPS beyond elementary school?

Many are not attending Hardy because, until recently, they could attend Deal with minor effort. That has changed.

You can make smarmy comments all you want, but the need is there. The statistics and forecasts bear this out. Your ignorance does not change these realities.

Wrong, it has not been a matter of minor effort for Key, Mann, Stoddert, and Hyde families to attend Deal. That was the reason for the ouster of Pope a few years ago - to make Hardy attractive to the neighborhood, but that has been very slow going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the article:

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2005-07-2014.pdf

So just to be clear- he wants to run a preschool- 8 neighborhood school in one location, a HS in another location, and a magnet HS in yet another location? HAvent there been a lot of problems with him trying to run just FS and SWW HS? Talk about hubris!

I was thinking the same thing. That, and he's pushing his own agenda by getting his name in the NW Current. Of course, that's a publication with zero political clout and a not-exactly-powerful readership base. Because seriously, the NW Current is for lining the catbox.

I don't think it's Hubris. The Walls parents are breathing down his neck with demands not to combine F-S with Walls; so he needs the F-S kids to go to another HS in order to take pressure off his duties at his main campus. Also, I've read nowhere that he actually enjoys dividing his duties between two schools -- I'll bet he'd be more than happy for a new principal to come in and take it off his hands. He's a high school teacher; he doesn't want to deal with PK and K kids, through 8th grade. There are differently qualified people out there to do that.

I think he's raising Ellington as a possibility because it's centrally located between F-S and Hardy, and therefore is a prime location to draw students from those two schools. No one else has publicly suggested a possible NEIGHBORHOOD space for a new high school for Hardy & F-S to feed into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is going to attend this new school? The same Ward 2 and Ward 3 families that are not attending Hardy Middle School now? What about this school is going to keep them in the feeer pipeline and draw them into DCPS beyond elementary school?

Many are not attending Hardy because, until recently, they could attend Deal with minor effort. That has changed.

You can make smarmy comments all you want, but the need is there. The statistics and forecasts bear this out. Your ignorance does not change these realities.

Wrong, it has not been a matter of minor effort for Key, Mann, Stoddert, and Hyde families to attend Deal. That was the reason for the ouster of Pope a few years ago - to make Hardy attractive to the neighborhood, but that has been very slow going.

It depends what you mean by "recently." In 2008 I sat in the gym in my out-of-boundary-for-Deal elementary school while Deal Principal Melissa Kim pitched the parents of fifth graders to consider Deal for sixth grade. What I remember in particular was that she said the school had recently been renovated and she had been tasked with getting the enrollment up to 800. (Which seems astonishing today). In 2009, every fifth grader from my school who wanted to go to Deal got in OOB. In 2010, none did. It was that sudden that Deal went from being essentially automatic to impossible. It is no coincidence that in 2009 feeder rights for OOB kids were introduced, they hadn't been needed up to that point, all of a sudden they were critical. It is no coincidence that in 2010 Michelle Rhee announced that Principal Pope was being reassigned at Hardy. Up to that point it hadn't really been an issue that Hardy wasn't a neighborhood school, because Deal was a de facto neighborhood school for the Hardy kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the article:

http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2005-07-2014.pdf

So just to be clear- he wants to run a preschool- 8 neighborhood school in one location, a HS in another location, and a magnet HS in yet another location? HAvent there been a lot of problems with him trying to run just FS and SWW HS? Talk about hubris!

I was thinking the same thing. That, and he's pushing his own agenda by getting his name in the NW Current. Of course, that's a publication with zero political clout and a not-exactly-powerful readership base. Because seriously, the NW Current is for lining the catbox.

I don't think it's Hubris. The Walls parents are breathing down his neck with demands not to combine F-S with Walls; so he needs the F-S kids to go to another HS in order to take pressure off his duties at his main campus. Also, I've read nowhere that he actually enjoys dividing his duties between two schools -- I'll bet he'd be more than happy for a new principal to come in and take it off his hands. He's a high school teacher; he doesn't want to deal with PK and K kids, through 8th grade. There are differently qualified people out there to do that

I think he's raising Ellington as a possibility because it's centrally located between F-S and Hardy, and therefore is a prime location to draw students from

those two schools. No one else has publicly suggested a possible NEIGHBORHOOD space for a new high school for Hardy & F-S to feed into.

Right now FS and SWW HS are combined. He in no way wants to give up his duties at either school. He is a main force behind the whole merger. He is in opposition with the HS community about the merger. Right now he cannot just send FS students to the HS because it is application only. This new school he proposes would give their students a place to go. But don't think for one second he wants to give up running FS. He wants to run more schools, not the opposite.

[Anonymous]

One principal per school. Period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One principal per school. Period.

This. Being a HS Principal is not a part-time job. Which school is his wife at? They should be at different schools, that just looks bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is going to attend this new school? The same Ward 2 and Ward 3 families that are not attending Hardy Middle School now? What about this school is going to keep them in the feeer pipeline and draw them into DCPS beyond elementary school?

Many are not attending Hardy because, until recently, they could attend Deal with minor effort. That has changed.

You can make smarmy comments all you want, but the need is there. The statistics and forecasts bear this out. Your ignorance does not change these realities.

Sure, you could get by with only Wilson HS west of the park, by reducing its current IB area that stretches across Rock Creek and even as far as SW. Or by changing OOB elementary-to-middle-to-HS feeder rights. But that isn't going to happen politically. The result is that WOTP families who were assured places at Deal and Wilson are being told that their kids may have to go elsewhere. Hence the need for multiple, stronger local school options. The revived Western HS concept makes enormous sense/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is going to attend this new school? The same Ward 2 and Ward 3 families that are not attending Hardy Middle School now? What about this school is going to keep them in the feeer pipeline and draw them into DCPS beyond elementary school?

Many are not attending Hardy because, until recently, they could attend Deal with minor effort. That has changed.

You can make smarmy comments all you want, but the need is there. The statistics and forecasts bear this out. Your ignorance does not change these realities.

Sure, you could get by with only Wilson HS west of the park, by reducing its current IB area that stretches across Rock Creek and even as far as SW. Or by changing OOB elementary-to-middle-to-HS feeder rights. But that isn't going to happen politically. The result is that WOTP families who were assured places at Deal and Wilson are being told that their kids may have to go elsewhere. Hence the need for multiple, stronger local school options. The revived Western HS concept makes enormous sense/

It makes some sense, perhaps, but not enormous sense, unless you're of the school of thought that the only good hs education is wotp and should stay there.

[Anonymous]

Or of the opinion that trekking across the city (in either direction) for a viable eduction is a complete non-starter. Yeah, or that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One principal per school. Period.

This. Being a HS Principal is not a part-time job. Which school is his wife at? They should be at different schools, that just looks bad.

Weird that it would look bad since it is not something that is actually happening in real life. His wife is at Anne Beers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is going to attend this new school? The same Ward 2 and Ward 3 families that are not attending Hardy Middle School now? What about this school is going to keep them in the feeer pipeline and draw them into DCPS beyond elementary school?

Many are not attending Hardy because, until recently, they could attend Deal with minor effort. That has changed.

You can make smarmy comments all you want, but the need is there. The statistics and forecasts bear this out. Your ignorance does not change these realities.

The comment is neither smarmy nor ignorant. It reflect reality. The vast majority of Ward 2 and Ward 3 families choose not to attend Hardy. They either go charter or private, with some returning to Wilson or SWW in high school. Both Wlson and SWW are proven commodities.

If you suddenly create a new school, what would be the enticement for parents to stick with DCPS in Hardy and then continue on to this unproven commodity?

They are walking away now, despite having proven high school options. Why would they not walk if they are instead presented with an unproven high school option?