New DCPS school on former Georgetown Day site will be a high school

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Putting the high school in the Hardy building and moving Hardy to the GDS McArthur building would have made so much more sense. The Hardy building is a lot more accessible to the rest of the city.

Agreed. The Georgetown ANC was adamant that Hardy remain a middle school. Apparently Ellington was also opposed to a high school nearby.

If only they could move Ellington...

This is what I was shouting from the hilltop. Move Ellington to Palisades and restore the former Eastern High school to the new high school.

Not much better for transportation but you do gain the football field nearby.

The field has been transferred to DPR. They'll probably lease it to the Russians for one kopek a year before letting DCPS use it.

DPR runs hardy park too and yet they are going to build a new school on it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Putting the high school in the Hardy building and moving Hardy to the GDS McArthur building would have made so much more sense. The Hardy building is a lot more accessible to the rest of the city.

Agreed. The Georgetown ANC was adamant that Hardy remain a middle school. Apparently Ellington was also opposed to a high school nearby.

If only they could move Ellington...

This is what I was shouting from the hilltop. Move Ellington to Palisades and restore the former Eastern High school to the new high school.

Not much better for transportation but you do gain the football field nearby.

Much better for transportation with D2 from Dupont that takes 15 minutes

[Anonymous]

Students from Marie Reed and HD Cooke should be allowed to attend Hardy or Deal.

[Anonymous]

Good idea in theory but Hardy is already at capacity and soon to be overcrowded. Francis Stevens is overdue for renovation though. Its middle school option could perhaps be expanded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m glad that the decisions have finally been made but don’t understand why it took nine months of total inactivity on the part of DCPS (after the CWG had submitted its final recommendations) for the decisions to be made.

Prob because this was the last choice that became the default solution when all other options faced too much neighborhood resistance. GDS space was part of a negotiation about one new elementary school and one new high school but they couldn't make the elementary school work and they probably thought that moving the middle school to the GDS space would be politically fraught as well. They could have put the new elementary school at GDS. That's what the neighbors wanted, but that would not have addressed the worst overcrowding which is at the high school level.

[Anonymous]

Hardy's enrollment around 500 kids and growing. If most of those students go to the new high school, then that is more than 600 high school students. How will that work in a new school with 1000 seats and 500 reserved for at risk students? Will the number of OOB seats decline as Hardy's needs grow? Will Hardy students have rights to some other high school if they cannot get into MacArthur?

[Anonymous]

I guarantee that unless there is dedicated bus transportation from a central site downtown like union station, there will be little to no at risk kids attending. The set asides are for show.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hardy's enrollment around 500 kids and growing. If most of those students go to the new high school, then that is more than 600 high school students. How will that work in a new school with 1000 seats and 500 reserved for at risk students? Will the number of OOB seats decline as Hardy's needs grow? Will Hardy students have rights to some other high school if they cannot get into MacArthur?

I don’t see a scenario in which they would defer some Hardy students to another school all of a sudden. At least I don’t see one without the lawsuits.

[Anonymous]

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As a parent in Burleith, I’m very happy with the decisions DC has made.

Ps - FCCA can suck *IT*

I didn’t know what FCCA was, so I googled it, and woo boy. (Foxhall Community Citizens Association for those that don’t know.)

The Post article “Northwest DC NIMBYs fight proposal over new schools” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-northwest-schools-nimby/2021/08/05/bc5f8084-cebe-11eb-9b7e-e06f6cfdece8_story.html) came up.

Get a load of this quote from the FCCA President Robert Avery: “You have a bunch of stay-at-home moms in Spring Valley and their poor little kids worried about two shifts in the cafeteria.”

He said this. To a reporter. On the record. I cannot imagine what he says privately, let alone thinks. Swell people over there.

[Anonymous]

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So basically they are solving the 'by right' dc high school challenge by building a high ses school and having some opportunity for low ses to attend, and by default doing that at Wilson too. Its solving the wrong problems. And it's terrible to put a high school in such an inaccessible location. What happened to equity? This is akin to people sleeping out to get a spot at a charter school. You shouldn't be allowed to make something open for all and then build in barriers to make it not open for all.

The cynic in me says that this isn't so much about "having some opportunity for low SES to attend" as much as it is about creating another OOB lottery opportunity for higher income/higher educated households east of Rock Creek park. Back in the 1980s-1990s, when it was still possible to send 2 kids to Sidwell on a two fed salary, the residents of upper NW opted for privates instead of Wilson, leaving Wilson and Deal to be the OOB schools of choice for middle class families EOTP who wanted to escape their failing neighborhood schools. Over 30 years, the IB populations at the upper NW schools has ramped back up: first Deal, then Wilson, then Hardy. But there is still a desire to have an OOB safety valve for middle/higher income families east of the park, because there is not enough of a critical mass of them zoned for any particular middle/high school pyramid to cause the school to care about their concerns. The percentage of kids who attend DCPS MS and HS EOTP are disproportionately at-risk compared to the overall at-risk % of children in the city overall. That means that there is a middle class EOTP "drain" from DCPS MS and HS.

Thanks for this smart, fair-minded, accurate and succinct but thorough analysis.

Agreed that this is huge for UMC EOTP families because it will provide them a DCPS option other than Walls.

But there is Banneker, Ellington and how many other Magnet schools? 6 others? So UMC eotp, like myself, have plenty of options other than Walls. It makes trying to get kids into Cardozo a lost cause.

That was always a lost cause. DCPS is finally acknowledging that WOTP families will never send their kids to Cardozo. It’s just not gonna happen. They will move to MD and VA first.

EOTP parents don’t either.

[Anonymous]

I've got news for Robert Avery. He picked on the wrong target if he thought it was a good idea going after a bunch of rich, white stay-at-home-moms who no longer use their Ivy league law degrees. Spring Valley moms are vicious, and I mean that as a compliment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Students from Marie Reed and HD Cooke should be allowed to attend Hardy or Deal.

Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hardy's enrollment around 500 kids and growing. If most of those students go to the new high school, then that is more than 600 high school students. How will that work in a new school with 1000 seats and 500 reserved for at risk students? Will the number of OOB seats decline as Hardy's needs grow? Will Hardy students have rights to some other high school if they cannot get into MacArthur?

It’s probably going to be implemented in the form of the lottery preference for at-risk. The number of seats for OOB will certainly decline as more in boundary kids attend the new HS.

But, as someone else pointed out, it’s going to be very difficult for at-risk kids in other parts of the city to attend this HS without a dedicated and direct form of transportation. It’s all for show, imho.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Students from Marie Reed and HD Cooke should be allowed to attend Hardy or Deal.

Uh, ok?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardy's enrollment around 500 kids and growing. If most of those students go to the new high school, then that is more than 600 high school students. How will that work in a new school with 1000 seats and 500 reserved for at risk students? Will the number of OOB seats decline as Hardy's needs grow? Will Hardy students have rights to some other high school if they cannot get into MacArthur?

It’s probably going to be implemented in the form of the lottery preference for at-risk. The number of seats for OOB will certainly decline as more in boundary kids attend the new HS.

But, as someone else pointed out, it’s going to be very difficult for at-risk kids in other parts of the city to attend this HS without a dedicated and direct form of transportation. It’s all for show, imho.

They carefully in the public statements talk about reserving a 'set of seats' for at risk, and have some distance between that and the 500 or however many aren't filled by Hardy kid seats.