Overcrowding and lack of space in Ward 3 Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's also important to acknowledge that a big part of the overcrowding problem in upper NW schools is that families bail on their inboundary schools and usually do it without reasonable notice. So upper middle class families will leave after 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade in order to claim a private school spot. That's fine. Do what's best for your child, right? But it leaves the DCPS holding the bag and a target enrollment number that the principal is obliged to try and reach. So he/she goes to the waitlist to fill up those classrooms that are now unexpectedly small in order to meet enrollment targets and justify the teacher salary. Making some sort of blanket statement that OOB practices should be halted is naive and doesn't take reality in to account. Rather than trying to eliminate OOB or middle and high school feeder rights (which I genuinely think are nonstarters), I think a better step would be to implement a "no new OOB students" policy for grades 3rd through 5th at upper NW "desirable" schools and have downtown give those schools a little break in not forcing them to fill those grades to capacity (because doing so grows the Deal and Wilson overcrowding problems as they inherit those kids). You can't blame OOB families for wanting to get their children into a feeder pattern that is attractive.

Not sure I understand your OOB views.

I think understand your point about principals wanting to meet enrollment targets, and then admitting OOB students from a waitlist when existing students (IB or OOB) leave unexpectedly. I suppose I don't have a problem with your suggestion in that situation of DCPS just cutting them some slack and allowing them to miss enrollment targets. But I also don't see much problem in letting them pull other students (presumably mostly OOB) from the waitlist in that situation. So for example (totally made-up numbers), if Deal is expecting 400 students in its 7th grade class, but 50 students leave for private or MoCo over the summer, what's the problem with adding 50 replacement students from the waitlist? The resulting class will still be only 400, so it won't change the total number of students in the feeder pipeline for that grade.

My suggestion would be to order access priority like this: IB, OOB feeder, OOB non-feeder. So when Deal is arranging its 6th grade class, the IB students get first priority for spots. If there are any open spots after the IB students are slotted, then they go by lottery to OOB students at Deal's elementary feeders. Then if there are any spots left after that, they go to OOB students who are not at Deal's elementary feeders. If students drop out of the Deal pool over the summer, then DCPS fills those spots in the same priority order: IB waitlist, OOB feeder waitlist, OOB non-feeder waitlist. It's not really "eliminating" OOB feeder rights entirely, but rather just saying their OOB feeder rights are subject to capacity limitations.

FWIW, I agree with you that we can't fault any parents for trying to get the best situation for their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's also important to acknowledge that a big part of the overcrowding problem in upper NW schools is that families bail on their inboundary schools and usually do it without reasonable notice. So upper middle class families will leave after 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade in order to claim a private school spot. That's fine. Do what's best for your child, right? But it leaves the DCPS holding the bag and a target enrollment number that the principal is obliged to try and reach. So he/she goes to the waitlist to fill up those classrooms that are now unexpectedly small in order to meet enrollment targets and justify the teacher salary. Making some sort of blanket statement that OOB practices should be halted is naive and doesn't take reality in to account. Rather than trying to eliminate OOB or middle and high school feeder rights (which I genuinely think are nonstarters), I think a better step would be to implement a "no new OOB students" policy for grades 3rd through 5th at upper NW "desirable" schools and have downtown give those schools a little break in not forcing them to fill those grades to capacity (because doing so grows the Deal and Wilson overcrowding problems as they inherit those kids). You can't blame OOB families for wanting to get their children into a feeder pattern that is attractive.

Not sure I understand your OOB views.

I think understand your point about principals wanting to meet enrollment targets, and then admitting OOB students from a waitlist when existing students (IB or OOB) leave unexpectedly. I suppose I don't have a problem with your suggestion in that situation of DCPS just cutting them some slack and allowing them to miss enrollment targets. But I also don't see much problem in letting them pull other students (presumably mostly OOB) from the waitlist in that situation. So for example (totally made-up numbers), if Deal is expecting 400 students in its 7th grade class, but 50 students leave for private or MoCo over the summer, what's the problem with adding 50 replacement students from the waitlist? The resulting class will still be only 400, so it won't change the total number of students in the feeder pipeline for that grade.

My suggestion would be to order access priority like this: IB, OOB feeder, OOB non-feeder. So when Deal is arranging its 6th grade class, the IB students get first priority for spots. If there are any open spots after the IB students are slotted, then they go by lottery to OOB students at Deal's elementary feeders. Then if there are any spots left after that, they go to OOB students who are not at Deal's elementary feeders. If students drop out of the Deal pool over the summer, then DCPS fills those spots in the same priority order: IB waitlist, OOB feeder waitlist, OOB non-feeder waitlist. It's not really "eliminating" OOB feeder rights entirely, but rather just saying their OOB feeder rights are subject to capacity limitations.

FWIW, I agree with you that we can't fault any parents for trying to get the best situation for their kids.

That is assuming that 400 is the optimal number (or whatever that number is) for a grade at Deal. I thought the big gripe is that Deal and Wilson are way over subscribed. So if you lose 50 kids, why replace them? Because other District families want those vacated spots? Yes, that is probably the answer. But if there is a goal to shrink the student body to get it back toward what the supposed official capacity is, then doing things like leaving vacated spots empty would be a reasonable thing to do. Beyond trying to make DC families/taxpayers happy, it is also a very challenging budgeting issue because each additional child that is enrolled means $ for the school.

[Anonymous]

ah ah ah

If Deal is expecting 400 students in its 7th grade class, but 50 students leave for private or MoCo over the summer, what's the problem with adding 50 replacement students from the waitlist? The resulting class will still be only 400, so it won't change the total number of students in the feeder pipeline for that grade.

Odd reasoning... it will indeed change the total number of students feeding, from 350 to 400. The resulting class will be 50 students more than in the absence of the fill-in practice.

If you do not fill in the 7th and 8th grade classes with OBs, you will have a lower number of 9th grade graduates moving up to Wilson.

[Anonymous]

12:32 again. Sorry if I created confusion with my example of 400 students in a Deal 7th grade class.

In my made-up example, I was using 400 students in the 7th grade class as an expected number with "right-sized" enrollment at Deal (i.e., 400 students in each of 3 grades for 1200 students total). In that perfect-world hypothetical, I don't see a problem with Deal going to the waitlist to replace students who drop out of the class.

If we're changing my hypothetical to something closer to the current real-world situation at Deal (i.e., overcrowded), then I would say that Deal should NOT replace the students who drop out. So for example, let's instead assume Deal is expecting 450 7th graders, and that's 50 more than Deal's capacity projections allow for 7th grade. If 50 of those rising 7th graders decide to leave Deal for private or MoCo over the summer, there's still no extra capacity, so Deal shouldn't add any replacement students.

I guess PP's point though was that Deal's principal and DCPS will be stuck in a pickle though, because they will have put resources in place for 450 students, even though only 400 are showing up. To that problem, I'd offer two suggestions:

(1) Deal predict how many students it will lose over the summer, and plan accordingly. I assume that has happened every year for the past couple decades, so I'd guess it's a pretty predictable number of students. Deal can assume that attrition when it plans resources for the coming school year.

(2) Deal can phase the attrition cuts into place. For example, if Deal currently expects a class of 450, but also expects to lose 50 students over the summer, then it can put resources in place for just 425. Whatever number of students it loses (50, 40, 30), it will replace only up to the 425 number where it has resources in place. In year 2, Deal can do the same thing to reduce from 425 to 400.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think understand your point about principals wanting to meet enrollment targets, and then admitting OOB students from a waitlist when existing students (IB or OOB) leave unexpectedly. I suppose I don't have a problem with your suggestion in that situation of DCPS just cutting them some slack and allowing them to miss enrollment targets. But I also don't see much problem in letting them pull other students (presumably mostly OOB) from the waitlist in that situation. So for example (totally made-up numbers), if Deal is expecting 400 students in its 7th grade class, but 50 students leave for private or MoCo over the summer, what's the problem with adding 50 replacement students from the waitlist? The resulting class will still be only 400, so it won't change the total number of students in the feeder pipeline for that grade.

The underlying problem is that the Deal feeders have more capacity than Deal does. If the feeders are full and everyone who attends goes on to Deal, you have a problem. If there is attrition, maybe there isn't a problem -- unless you admit more kids to make up for the attrition.

Anonymous wrote:
My suggestion would be to order access priority like this: IB, OOB feeder, OOB non-feeder. So when Deal is arranging its 6th grade class, the IB students get first priority for spots. If there are any open spots after the IB students are slotted, then they go by lottery to OOB students at Deal's elementary feeders. Then if there are any spots left after that, they go to OOB students who are not at Deal's elementary feeders. If students drop out of the Deal pool over the summer, then DCPS fills those spots in the same priority order: IB waitlist, OOB feeder waitlist, OOB non-feeder waitlist. It's not really "eliminating" OOB feeder rights entirely, but rather just saying their OOB feeder rights are subject to capacity limitations.

In other words, convert OOB feeder status from a right to a preference.

[Anonymous]

But Deal doesn't add students to replace departing students. Most kids don't depart Deal but more students are always moving in.

Deal rarely takes anyone from the waitlist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My suggestion would be to order access priority like this: IB, OOB feeder, OOB non-feeder. So when Deal is arranging its 6th grade class, the IB students get first priority for spots. If there are any open spots after the IB students are slotted, then they go by lottery to OOB students at Deal's elementary feeders. Then if there are any spots left after that, they go to OOB students who are not at Deal's elementary feeders. If students drop out of the Deal pool over the summer, then DCPS fills those spots in the same priority order: IB waitlist, OOB feeder waitlist, OOB non-feeder waitlist. It's not really "eliminating" OOB feeder rights entirely, but rather just saying their OOB feeder rights are subject to capacity limitations.

In other words, convert OOB feeder status from a right to a preference.

Correct. And quite frankly, I would suggest all admissions is a preference capped by capacity, even IB. In other words, if we somehow reach the point where there are 450 IB students vying for 400 spots at Deal, then I'd say those 450 IB students get put in a lottery, and the 50 IB students who lose the lottery may be forced to go somewhere else.

That might be pretty unpopular with the IB families, but I think capacity limits need to hold firm. If the neighborhood demographics suggest the IB enrollment will exceed capacity consistently over several years, then maybe that's a situation that calls for a boundary shift. I think if you start allowing some groups to exceed the capacity but not others, you're just asking for trouble.

[Anonymous]

This list serve is just a place where people can make suggestions that they "frankly" feel are needed or reasonable or fair or, or, or. But the truth is, people don't typically make recommendations for change that will affect themselves negatively. So if your suggested recommendation doesn't hurt you, you can offer it up (even though you know if it impacted your family negatively you wouldn't suggest it). I see these sorts of ideas thrown out all the darn time but the reason decision-makers won't ever embrace them is because they impact real families who will scream their bloody heads off. It is a ridiculous pipe dream, PP, to think you would EVER tell an inboundary family who has just bought into a $1.2 million mortgage that they suddenly no longer have access to their by-right middle school. You are ridiculous. How about adding a dose of reality to some of these ideas, people? Packing schools beyond capacity has been the practice for decades, if you want to dial it back it going to have to be incremental or it won't happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My suggestion would be to order access priority like this: IB, OOB feeder, OOB non-feeder. So when Deal is arranging its 6th grade class, the IB students get first priority for spots. If there are any open spots after the IB students are slotted, then they go by lottery to OOB students at Deal's elementary feeders. Then if there are any spots left after that, they go to OOB students who are not at Deal's elementary feeders. If students drop out of the Deal pool over the summer, then DCPS fills those spots in the same priority order: IB waitlist, OOB feeder waitlist, OOB non-feeder waitlist. It's not really "eliminating" OOB feeder rights entirely, but rather just saying their OOB feeder rights are subject to capacity limitations.

In other words, convert OOB feeder status from a right to a preference.

Correct. And quite frankly, I would suggest all admissions is a preference capped by capacity, even IB. In other words, if we somehow reach the point where there are 450 IB students vying for 400 spots at Deal, then I'd say those 450 IB students get put in a lottery, and the 50 IB students who lose the lottery may be forced to go somewhere else.

That might be pretty unpopular with the IB families, but I think capacity limits need to hold firm. If the neighborhood demographics suggest the IB enrollment will exceed capacity consistently over several years, then maybe that's a situation that calls for a boundary shift. I think if you start allowing some groups to exceed the capacity but not others, you're just asking for trouble.

Your proposal is intellectually consistent, which is not always a benefit in politics.

Look at the history of DCPS. DCPS went from around 150,000 students in 1968 to around 45,000 today, including a 40 year stretch from 1968 to 2008 where it lost students every single year. No one in DCPS today has professional experience in solving crowding problems, for half a century the solution to crowding was to ignore it and it went away. There certainly was no benefit in doing anything unpopular to address a problem that was going to solve itself anyway in time. Basically all DCPS policies are based on that premise.

If the demographic projections are to be believed, those days are over. Not only is the crowding we now see not going to fix itself, it's going to get worse and more widespread. Be very skeptical of anyone who speaks of "a bubble" or who says we just need to time for "things to work themselves out." That's not going to happen, and those are the words of someone who is not going to address the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But Deal doesn't add students to replace departing students. Most kids don't depart Deal but more students are always moving in.

Deal rarely takes anyone from the waitlist.

So is it that the projections that worked in years past are no longer as accurate? There is a relatively recent pattern of decreasing attrition from elementary to middle to high school in recent years? Is that it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This list serve is just a place where people can make suggestions that they "frankly" feel are needed or reasonable or fair or, or, or. But the truth is, people don't typically make recommendations for change that will affect themselves negatively. So if your suggested recommendation doesn't hurt you, you can offer it up (even though you know if it impacted your family negatively you wouldn't suggest it). I see these sorts of ideas thrown out all the darn time but the reason decision-makers won't ever embrace them is because they impact real families who will scream their bloody heads off. It is a ridiculous pipe dream, PP, to think you would EVER tell an inboundary family who has just bought into a $1.2 million mortgage that they suddenly no longer have access to their by-right middle school. You are ridiculous. How about adding a dose of reality to some of these ideas, people? Packing schools beyond capacity has been the practice for decades, if you want to dial it back it going to have to be incremental or it won't happen.

Maybe you're describing how you don't make suggestions that might hurt you, but that's not me. I live near the edge of a boundary for an overcrowded school. If the overcrowding gets solved by reducing the OOB population (which I suggested), I guess that benefits me. If the overcrowding gets solved by changing boundaries (which I also suggested), there's a good chance that hurts me. If IB students have to go through a lottery (which I suggested), there's a chance that hurts me too, depending on the lottery odds.

If you assume that no one will propose or support anything that might harm them, then we shouldn't bother having any discussion at all, because none of us will change our mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This list serve is just a place where people can make suggestions that they "frankly" feel are needed or reasonable or fair or, or, or. But the truth is, people don't typically make recommendations for change that will affect themselves negatively. So if your suggested recommendation doesn't hurt you, you can offer it up (even though you know if it impacted your family negatively you wouldn't suggest it). I see these sorts of ideas thrown out all the darn time but the reason decision-makers won't ever embrace them is because they impact real families who will scream their bloody heads off. It is a ridiculous pipe dream, PP, to think you would EVER tell an inboundary family who has just bought into a $1.2 million mortgage that they suddenly no longer have access to their by-right middle school. You are ridiculous. How about adding a dose of reality to some of these ideas, people? Packing schools beyond capacity has been the practice for decades, if you want to dial it back it going to have to be incremental or it won't happen.

Maybe you're describing how you don't make suggestions that might hurt you, but that's not me. I live near the edge of a boundary for an overcrowded school. If the overcrowding gets solved by reducing the OOB population (which I suggested), I guess that benefits me. If the overcrowding gets solved by changing boundaries (which I also suggested), there's a good chance that hurts me. If IB students have to go through a lottery (which I suggested), there's a chance that hurts me too, depending on the lottery odds.

If you assume that no one will propose or support anything that might harm them, then we shouldn't bother having any discussion at all, because none of us will change our mind.

What are you at risk from going from Janney to Murch? Not really "hurt" you right? You'd still keep Deal/Wilson. Like PP said, we are all selfish. That is all politics these days. How does this proposal help or hurt me?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This list serve is just a place where people can make suggestions that they "frankly" feel are needed or reasonable or fair or, or, or. But the truth is, people don't typically make recommendations for change that will affect themselves negatively. So if your suggested recommendation doesn't hurt you, you can offer it up (even though you know if it impacted your family negatively you wouldn't suggest it). I see these sorts of ideas thrown out all the darn time but the reason decision-makers won't ever embrace them is because they impact real families who will scream their bloody heads off. It is a ridiculous pipe dream, PP, to think you would EVER tell an inboundary family who has just bought into a $1.2 million mortgage that they suddenly no longer have access to their by-right middle school. You are ridiculous. How about adding a dose of reality to some of these ideas, people? Packing schools beyond capacity has been the practice for decades, if you want to dial it back it going to have to be incremental or it won't happen.

Maybe you're describing how you don't make suggestions that might hurt you, but that's not me. I live near the edge of a boundary for an overcrowded school. If the overcrowding gets solved by reducing the OOB population (which I suggested), I guess that benefits me. If the overcrowding gets solved by changing boundaries (which I also suggested), there's a good chance that hurts me. If IB students have to go through a lottery (which I suggested), there's a chance that hurts me too, depending on the lottery odds.

If you assume that no one will propose or support anything that might harm them, then we shouldn't bother having any discussion at all, because none of us will change our mind.

Next you'll be telling us that your suggestion of ending or curbing OOB potentially hurts your child by losing out on racial and economic diversity, buy gosh darn it, you're willing to make the sacrifice...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But Deal doesn't add students to replace departing students. Most kids don't depart Deal but more students are always moving in.

Deal rarely takes anyone from the waitlist.

So is it that the projections that worked in years past are no longer as accurate? There is a relatively recent pattern of decreasing attrition from elementary to middle to high school in recent years? Is that it?

First, there is growth generally, so the IB numbers at all schools have been steadily growing for about 10 years now. Plus, there is a lot of movement in and out of the neighborhoods feeding Deal. Some people move abroad temporarily, leaving a spot that gets filled by OOB, and then a year or two later they come home and rejoin the now-bigger class, along with the kids in the family they rented to who also are allowed to stay with principal discretion (so that is potentially three kids for what would have been projected as one seat filled by an IB household). There are a lot of apartments, so people move into the area at or just for middle school, and more apartments and condos are being developed all the time. Fewer feeder kids are leaving the system at any point. So the ES is getting bigger, and nearly everyone is staying and moving up, and then more move in for MS. Basically all indicators are growth indicators.

[Anonymous]

Speaking as a non-Ward 3er, I think one of DCPS's major failings has been the attempt to focus on making "A Deal for All" instead of making just one other Deal. Where is there a cluster of high performing elementary schools that could feed a good middle school? Ward 6. Add of all of the elementary schools together and they are in the ballpark of the Deal feeders. But instead of feeding into one crowded Middle School, they file into 3 schools, 2 of which are half filled and majority OOB.

Again it would require hard choices but I think 2 major IB MS in Ward 6 would be an attractive alternative for students currently going across the city to an over crowded school. I am hopeful that the MS in Ward 6 turn it around in the next few years but if not, I'll see all of you in 3 years.