Zoning Lafayette out of Deal/Wilson - is this real?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since everyone is just making stuff up with absolutely no grounds whatsoever (or shamelessly advancing solutions that benefit them), I figured why not. So here is how I think DCPS will "solve" overcrowding. Not what I think they should do, or even what makes sense, but what they might do.

Unlikely that Bowser will screw Ward 4. Either she is running, in which case why. Or she is not, in which case she still won't screw over her allies. Either way Shepherd and Lafayette sleep soundly.

She wouldn't screw Jack Evans either, but he is likely toast now, so what the hell. And Hyde has already been shoved off to Meyer for swing space. And who in the city will weep for Georgetown. So Hyde loses gets sent to SWWFS and Cardozo. And out of spite to the Save Old Hardy folks, she redraws the boundaries to put them in Hyde too. Old Hardy stays with Lab.

Brianne Nadeau isn't an ally of the mayor either so Bancroft goes to MacFarland and Roosevelt.

Even with Bancroft gone, Deal needs a big school to leave. One that can take 100 kids a year out. Cheh isn't exactly a supporter of the Mayor so Janney is off to Hardy. Yes Janney. Janney moms lose their minds and scream, but in the boundary review look so clueless and out of touch with the rest of the city that they undermine themselves.

OOB feeder policy doesn't get changed. But it doesn't matter because OOB has been squeezed out at the elementary level and will be at middle and high soon. Why take flack for changing the policy when demographics will do the job for you?

But none of this solves the elementary school problem. So PK is gone in Ward 3. Again not an official policy, but DCPS just lets it happen because they don't do anything. Class sizes rise to 30 kids. Gardens and bee hives get trailers on top of them. Art, music, science, and foreign languages are taught out of a cart. Parents start turning to other options (private, move). Add to this minor tweaks to the elementary school boundaries to move kids across the park. It doesn't do much, but it makes the rest of the city feel better. Again, Ward 3 and 4 parents who are affected flip out, but DCPS conducts lots of focus groups, surveys, and listening sessions, and then declares victory.

Also barely solved is overcrowding at Wilson (Bancroft and Hyde do a little but not much). For that we have expanded citywide schools. Duke Ellington, a newly-renovated Banneker (sorry Save Shaw), and maybe even McKinley Tech expand their seats. DCPS tries desperately to convince white parents to send their kids to them. They fail, and post anonymously on DCUM that it would have worked if parents weren't racist (which might very well be true in most cases).

I don’t think most Janney parents would actually have a problem with this outcome. When you combine their cohort with that of Key, Eaton, and a handful from Mann, it’s a pretty attractive package. At a much smaller size than the Frankenschool that Deal has become.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Given how well Hardy is progressing, moving Eaton to Hardy seems like the right move, in retrospect. Hearst could be moved to Hardy, next, and while parents would squawk, they'd still have access to a good school.

I think it makes little sense, given logistics of the map, to move Lafayette away from Deal. Janney, LaFayette, and Murch are the most logical schools to go to Deal because of their proximity. But it makes even LESS sense for Bancroft and Shepherd to go there, as they're even farther away. Obviously, the only reasons Bancroft and Shepherd go there are for purposes of equity and politics.

The most elegant solution would be to send Hearst to Hardy and Bancroft and Shepherd to the new Hines. But that won't happen except for Hearst, so the next best solution to the Deal/Wilson overcrowding problem would be to send the expanded Hardy to a new High School, which would also take on Francis-Stevens. But where's the real estate for it?

The old Duke Ellington track on Reservoir Road. It's still owned by DCPS and the site is actually bigger than the block DESA is currently located.

Unfortunately, I think this Mayor has firmly put her foot down against any new by-right schools opening in Ward 3 and western parts of Ward 2. Her constituency won't stand for it, due to the racial optics and equity arguments. She has said in community meetings that she wants to focus on opening more all-city application schools. I think this is the only type of new school you will WoTP.

Still, your proposal is an interesting one. There would definitely be a strong cohort for Hardy to feed to a brand new high school, if they included Hearst and Francis Stevens. However, the Hardy site is very small without much room at all for expansion. It's way smaller than Deal. I believe projections show that Hardy will hit their capacity in the next 2-3 years. So including any other elementary schools would require an expansion to Hardy. They could cannibalize the tennis courts with a couple trailers, but that's about it.

-Burleith Family

The Mayor has a tedancy to put her food down without thinking it through and it comes back to bite her often. She needs to learn the policital art of giving herself wiggle room.

If that's the case, then they're going to have to end OOB slots and OOB feeder rights, period. There's no more room, folks.

Anyone inbounds is totally fine with that.

I know this has been discussed a lot, but isn't ending OOB feeder rights the most victimless / politically tenable approach to this? Since OOB is basically the luck of the draw anyway, it's hard to identify specific constituents who would organize and fight for it?

You'd think, but in the last boundary process DME Smith was adamantly opposed to ending or even phasing out OOB feeder rights. I think part of the issue is there are a lot of long-term DC residents who are politically active and who send their kids to OOB schools. They feel like they have a right to the destination schools.

If they are long term residents, why aren't the fighting for the things that will make more DC schools better? Why would you fight to make your kdis commute across town?

OOB has deep symbolic importance in DC. When Brown vs. Board of Education came down, white Washington resisted it every way they could think of. (White America for that matter). One of the ways they resisted it was by drawing boundaries for schools that reflected the existing residential racial segregation, and saying that everyone had to attend their in-boundary school. It took 20 years of litigation, home rule, and the election of a majority-black school board to get the overtly racist policies out of DCPS (DCPS is still starkly segregated, it's just not official policy and more). One of the fights in that battle was getting DCPS to establish a policy that if a school had empty seats, students from anywhere in the city could enroll in those seats.

The political issue isn't with families who have kids today, it's with people who lived through that struggle and don't want to go backwards.

I fully expect that the OOB system will stop working very soon due to rising enrollment. When it does, I won't be surprised if DCPS finds it politically easier to abolish in-boundary schools altogether and go to all-lottery. Already, there quarters of the public school students in the city attend schools determined by lottery. For those families, eliminating boundaries would add a lot more seats at desirable schools to the lottery. The families that would lose out -- those who live in-boundary for desirable schools -- clearly aren't a constituency Bowser cares about anyway.

[Anonymous]

Agree with 22:24. And the OOb feeder rights Rhee put in place only codifies what was happening already because each school did its own things re registration and ‘wait list.’ You knew someone at that school - you got in or got to stay.

Someone earlier mentioned the old DMe Smith being adamantly against ending OOB. She was reflecting the views of her boss, Vince Gray. Gray represents a whole different part of DC and on this his view is the same as Bowser, and Fenty before that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I fully expect that the OOB system will stop working very soon due to rising enrollment. When it does, I won't be surprised if DCPS finds it politically easier to abolish in-boundary schools altogether and go to all-lottery. Already, there quarters of the public school students in the city attend schools determined by lottery. For those families, eliminating boundaries would add a lot more seats at desirable schools to the lottery. The families that would lose out -- those who live in-boundary for desirable schools -- clearly aren't a constituency Bowser cares about anyway.

Three quarters! It's my money point and I garbled it with a typo!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Given how well Hardy is progressing, moving Eaton to Hardy seems like the right move, in retrospect. Hearst could be moved to Hardy, next, and while parents would squawk, they'd still have access to a good school.

I think it makes little sense, given logistics of the map, to move Lafayette away from Deal. Janney, LaFayette, and Murch are the most logical schools to go to Deal because of their proximity. But it makes even LESS sense for Bancroft and Shepherd to go there, as they're even farther away. Obviously, the only reasons Bancroft and Shepherd go there are for purposes of equity and politics.

The most elegant solution would be to send Hearst to Hardy and Bancroft and Shepherd to the new Hines. But that won't happen except for Hearst, so the next best solution to the Deal/Wilson overcrowding problem would be to send the expanded Hardy to a new High School, which would also take on Francis-Stevens. But where's the real estate for it?

The old Duke Ellington track on Reservoir Road. It's still owned by DCPS and the site is actually bigger than the block DESA is currently located.

Unfortunately, I think this Mayor has firmly put her foot down against any new by-right schools opening in Ward 3 and western parts of Ward 2. Her constituency won't stand for it, due to the racial optics and equity arguments. She has said in community meetings that she wants to focus on opening more all-city application schools. I think this is the only type of new school you will WoTP.

Still, your proposal is an interesting one. There would definitely be a strong cohort for Hardy to feed to a brand new high school, if they included Hearst and Francis Stevens. However, the Hardy site is very small without much room at all for expansion. It's way smaller than Deal. I believe projections show that Hardy will hit their capacity in the next 2-3 years. So including any other elementary schools would require an expansion to Hardy. They could cannibalize the tennis courts with a couple trailers, but that's about it.

-Burleith Family

The Mayor has a tedancy to put her food down without thinking it through and it comes back to bite her often. She needs to learn the policital art of giving herself wiggle room.

If that's the case, then they're going to have to end OOB slots and OOB feeder rights, period. There's no more room, folks.

Anyone inbounds is totally fine with that.

I know this has been discussed a lot, but isn't ending OOB feeder rights the most victimless / politically tenable approach to this? Since OOB is basically the luck of the draw anyway, it's hard to identify specific constituents who would organize and fight for it?

You'd think, but in the last boundary process DME Smith was adamantly opposed to ending or even phasing out OOB feeder rights. I think part of the issue is there are a lot of long-term DC residents who are politically active and who send their kids to OOB schools. They feel like they have a right to the destination schools.

If they are long term residents, why aren't the fighting for the things that will make more DC schools better? Why would you fight to make your kdis commute across town?

OOB has deep symbolic importance in DC. When Brown vs. Board of Education came down, white Washington resisted it every way they could think of. (White America for that matter). One of the ways they resisted it was by drawing boundaries for schools that reflected the existing residential racial segregation, and saying that everyone had to attend their in-boundary school. It took 20 years of litigation, home rule, and the election of a majority-black school board to get the overtly racist policies out of DCPS (DCPS is still starkly segregated, it's just not official policy and more). One of the fights in that battle was getting DCPS to establish a policy that if a school had empty seats, students from anywhere in the city could enroll in those seats.

The political issue isn't with families who have kids today, it's with people who lived through that struggle and don't want to go backwards.

I fully expect that the OOB system will stop working very soon due to rising enrollment. When it does, I won't be surprised if DCPS finds it politically easier to abolish in-boundary schools altogether and go to all-lottery. Already, there quarters of the public school students in the city attend schools determined by lottery. For those families, eliminating boundaries would add a lot more seats at desirable schools to the lottery. The families that would lose out -- those who live in-boundary for desirable schools -- clearly aren't a constituency Bowser cares about anyway.

Uncomfortable question: Are the schools in Ward 7 and 8 better, worse, or unchanged in the 40+ years DC has had home rule? I think at best unchanged and in some cases worse. So who answers for that? Not the folks in Ward 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Uncomfortable question: Are the schools in Ward 7 and 8 better, worse, or unchanged in the 40+ years DC has had home rule? I think at best unchanged and in some cases worse. So who answers for that? Not the folks in Ward 3.

The kids who get to go to charter schools or OOB in the rest of the city are a lot better off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since everyone is just making stuff up with absolutely no grounds whatsoever (or shamelessly advancing solutions that benefit them), I figured why not. So here is how I think DCPS will "solve" overcrowding. Not what I think they should do, or even what makes sense, but what they might do.

Unlikely that Bowser will screw Ward 4. Either she is running, in which case why. Or she is not, in which case she still won't screw over her allies. Either way Shepherd and Lafayette sleep soundly.

She wouldn't screw Jack Evans either, but he is likely toast now, so what the hell. And Hyde has already been shoved off to Meyer for swing space. And who in the city will weep for Georgetown. So Hyde loses gets sent to SWWFS and Cardozo. And out of spite to the Save Old Hardy folks, she redraws the boundaries to put them in Hyde too. Old Hardy stays with Lab.

Brianne Nadeau isn't an ally of the mayor either so Bancroft goes to MacFarland and Roosevelt.

Even with Bancroft gone, Deal needs a big school to leave. One that can take 100 kids a year out. Cheh isn't exactly a supporter of the Mayor so Janney is off to Hardy. Yes Janney. Janney moms lose their minds and scream, but in the boundary review look so clueless and out of touch with the rest of the city that they undermine themselves.

OOB feeder policy doesn't get changed. But it doesn't matter because OOB has been squeezed out at the elementary level and will be at middle and high soon. Why take flack for changing the policy when demographics will do the job for you?

But none of this solves the elementary school problem. So PK is gone in Ward 3. Again not an official policy, but DCPS just lets it happen because they don't do anything. Class sizes rise to 30 kids. Gardens and bee hives get trailers on top of them. Art, music, science, and foreign languages are taught out of a cart. Parents start turning to other options (private, move). Add to this minor tweaks to the elementary school boundaries to move kids across the park. It doesn't do much, but it makes the rest of the city feel better. Again, Ward 3 and 4 parents who are affected flip out, but DCPS conducts lots of focus groups, surveys, and listening sessions, and then declares victory.

Also barely solved is overcrowding at Wilson (Bancroft and Hyde do a little but not much). For that we have expanded citywide schools. Duke Ellington, a newly-renovated Banneker (sorry Save Shaw), and maybe even McKinley Tech expand their seats. DCPS tries desperately to convince white parents to send their kids to them. They fail, and post anonymously on DCUM that it would have worked if parents weren't racist (which might very well be true in most cases).

I don’t think most Janney parents would actually have a problem with this outcome. When you combine their cohort with that of Key, Eaton, and a handful from Mann, it’s a pretty attractive package. At a much smaller size than the Frankenschool that Deal has become.

I'm a Janney parent as well and would be happy to have our kids at Hardy with it smaller size and don't mind the uniforms at all.

But it it is nuts to take a population of kids who can walk to their neighborhood school and send them to Hardy while the Lafayette kids, almost none of whom can walk to Deal, don't get moved to a middle school that is a shorter distance away and a faster trip than the trip to Hardy is.

Do all of the supposed Lafayette parents on here actually know how chaotic and diverse Deal is and that this years 6th grade class is the first majority white class? I read some of the comments on here and it sounds like some of these families think that Deal=Sidwell and that they have the same false over inflated expectations about Wilson. Deal is a large and diverse and chaotic and definitely imperfect school - we've been happy overall (and think the diversity is important) but parents need to be realistic about what the school is really like and if you can get to a place where you have a realistic baseline about what Deal is like then going to a new school EOTP isn't the radical social experiment on your child that you act like it is.

Do they know that just 10 years ago few WOTP parents wanted to send their kids to Deal? Do they know that Roosevelt was a majority white HS until the mid 1960's? Do they know there are many middle and upper middle class families (some of color) living in Crestwood, 16th Street Heights, Shepherd Park & Takoma Park? Duplicating the ethnic and economic mix at Deal really won't be that hard so long as DCPS is bold enough to move a large cohort from a school like Lafayette.

A significant cohort of kids needs to be moved out of Deal & Wilson and it needs to happen asap (and not in 4-5 years) as this years 6th grade class could potentially have a freshman class of 800 at Wilson in just 2.5 years which is double what the school is designed for.

I've stared at the map of DC Public schools many times and Lafayette is the WOTP school that makes the most sense to move - the commute across the park on Military Road takes about as long as the trip to Deal takes especially for those East of Connecticut and north of Military which is most of the schools area.

Again - some significant number of kids need to be moved from Deal/Wilson - if some of the apparently smarter Lafayette parents have a more logical idea of who that should be then please share it but I'd be surprised if they can come up with a better proposal because to date no one else has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since everyone is just making stuff up with absolutely no grounds whatsoever (or shamelessly advancing solutions that benefit them), I figured why not. So here is how I think DCPS will "solve" overcrowding. Not what I think they should do, or even what makes sense, but what they might do.

Unlikely that Bowser will screw Ward 4. Either she is running, in which case why. Or she is not, in which case she still won't screw over her allies. Either way Shepherd and Lafayette sleep soundly.

She wouldn't screw Jack Evans either, but he is likely toast now, so what the hell. And Hyde has already been shoved off to Meyer for swing space. And who in the city will weep for Georgetown. So Hyde loses gets sent to SWWFS and Cardozo. And out of spite to the Save Old Hardy folks, she redraws the boundaries to put them in Hyde too. Old Hardy stays with Lab.

Brianne Nadeau isn't an ally of the mayor either so Bancroft goes to MacFarland and Roosevelt.

Even with Bancroft gone, Deal needs a big school to leave. One that can take 100 kids a year out. Cheh isn't exactly a supporter of the Mayor so Janney is off to Hardy. Yes Janney. Janney moms lose their minds and scream, but in the boundary review look so clueless and out of touch with the rest of the city that they undermine themselves.

OOB feeder policy doesn't get changed. But it doesn't matter because OOB has been squeezed out at the elementary level and will be at middle and high soon. Why take flack for changing the policy when demographics will do the job for you?

But none of this solves the elementary school problem. So PK is gone in Ward 3. Again not an official policy, but DCPS just lets it happen because they don't do anything. Class sizes rise to 30 kids. Gardens and bee hives get trailers on top of them. Art, music, science, and foreign languages are taught out of a cart. Parents start turning to other options (private, move). Add to this minor tweaks to the elementary school boundaries to move kids across the park. It doesn't do much, but it makes the rest of the city feel better. Again, Ward 3 and 4 parents who are affected flip out, but DCPS conducts lots of focus groups, surveys, and listening sessions, and then declares victory.

Also barely solved is overcrowding at Wilson (Bancroft and Hyde do a little but not much). For that we have expanded citywide schools. Duke Ellington, a newly-renovated Banneker (sorry Save Shaw), and maybe even McKinley Tech expand their seats. DCPS tries desperately to convince white parents to send their kids to them. They fail, and post anonymously on DCUM that it would have worked if parents weren't racist (which might very well be true in most cases).

Hyde-Addison won’t go anywhere. It has the highest OOB percentage of any elementary WOTP - that’s a plus in the eyes of the Mayor and her equity goals. Plus, it’s a 5 block walk to Hardy from H-A. Hardy is actually smack dab in the middle of the H-A boundary. It would be utterly bizarre for a kid who lives across the street from Hardy to shlep to SWWFS.

If the Mayor was smart, she would build a new high school WOTP that would feed from Hardy. This placates WOTP parents and also her constituencies in other Wards that want OOB seats in good schools and are willing to travel to them. Win-win, Bowser looks like a genius.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since everyone is just making stuff up with absolutely no grounds whatsoever (or shamelessly advancing solutions that benefit them), I figured why not. So here is how I think DCPS will "solve" overcrowding. Not what I think they should do, or even what makes sense, but what they might do.

Unlikely that Bowser will screw Ward 4. Either she is running, in which case why. Or she is not, in which case she still won't screw over her allies. Either way Shepherd and Lafayette sleep soundly.

She wouldn't screw Jack Evans either, but he is likely toast now, so what the hell. And Hyde has already been shoved off to Meyer for swing space. And who in the city will weep for Georgetown. So Hyde loses gets sent to SWWFS and Cardozo. And out of spite to the Save Old Hardy folks, she redraws the boundaries to put them in Hyde too. Old Hardy stays with Lab.

Brianne Nadeau isn't an ally of the mayor either so Bancroft goes to MacFarland and Roosevelt.

Even with Bancroft gone, Deal needs a big school to leave. One that can take 100 kids a year out. Cheh isn't exactly a supporter of the Mayor so Janney is off to Hardy. Yes Janney. Janney moms lose their minds and scream, but in the boundary review look so clueless and out of touch with the rest of the city that they undermine themselves.

OOB feeder policy doesn't get changed. But it doesn't matter because OOB has been squeezed out at the elementary level and will be at middle and high soon. Why take flack for changing the policy when demographics will do the job for you?

But none of this solves the elementary school problem. So PK is gone in Ward 3. Again not an official policy, but DCPS just lets it happen because they don't do anything. Class sizes rise to 30 kids. Gardens and bee hives get trailers on top of them. Art, music, science, and foreign languages are taught out of a cart. Parents start turning to other options (private, move). Add to this minor tweaks to the elementary school boundaries to move kids across the park. It doesn't do much, but it makes the rest of the city feel better. Again, Ward 3 and 4 parents who are affected flip out, but DCPS conducts lots of focus groups, surveys, and listening sessions, and then declares victory.

Also barely solved is overcrowding at Wilson (Bancroft and Hyde do a little but not much). For that we have expanded citywide schools. Duke Ellington, a newly-renovated Banneker (sorry Save Shaw), and maybe even McKinley Tech expand their seats. DCPS tries desperately to convince white parents to send their kids to them. They fail, and post anonymously on DCUM that it would have worked if parents weren't racist (which might very well be true in most cases).

You had me at "Since everyone is just making stuff up ... "

[Anonymous]

21:08 again. What all of you don't get is that this isn't about what makes sense. DCPS and the Mayor don't care about geography or logic or whatever sensible thing you are trying to argue. This is politics. So that fact that H-A or Janney are a few blocks from wherever you want to go doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:21:08 again. What all of you don't get is that this isn't about what makes sense. DCPS and the Mayor don't care about geography or logic or whatever sensible thing you are trying to argue. This is politics. So that fact that H-A or Janney are a few blocks from wherever you want to go doesn't matter.

Building a new high school WOTP would only fly if 30-30% of WOTP seats were for OOB and/or at-risk kids, because this is a political problem. Which would, obviously, defeat the purpose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Uncomfortable question: Are the schools in Ward 7 and 8 better, worse, or unchanged in the 40+ years DC has had home rule? I think at best unchanged and in some cases worse. So who answers for that? Not the folks in Ward 3.

The kids who get to go to charter schools or OOB in the rest of the city are a lot better off.

The charters and OOB policy have hurt Ward 7 and 8 schools as much as the segregation policies from 60 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21:08 again. What all of you don't get is that this isn't about what makes sense. DCPS and the Mayor don't care about geography or logic or whatever sensible thing you are trying to argue. This is politics. So that fact that H-A or Janney are a few blocks from wherever you want to go doesn't matter.

Building a new high school WOTP would only fly if 30-30% of WOTP seats were for OOB and/or at-risk kids, because this is a political problem. Which would, obviously, defeat the purpose.

30% fams or at risk would not defeat any purpose. That is actually a statistically great number for integration that benefits all. I would be 100% on board and would chose it before a school with 5% at risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21:08 again. What all of you don't get is that this isn't about what makes sense. DCPS and the Mayor don't care about geography or logic or whatever sensible thing you are trying to argue. This is politics. So that fact that H-A or Janney are a few blocks from wherever you want to go doesn't matter.

Building a new high school WOTP would only fly if 30-30% of WOTP seats were for OOB and/or at-risk kids, because this is a political problem. Which would, obviously, defeat the purpose.

30% fams or at risk would not defeat any purpose. That is actually a statistically great number for integration that benefits all. I would be 100% on board and would chose it before a school with 5% at risk.

The problem is the overcrowding would remain. The deal would have to be ~30% in the whole feeder path, how it was.

[Anonymous]

21:08 Building a high school won't fly because is a huge amount of money to spend on a bunch of wealthy white families and besides that there is absolutely no place to put it that wouldn't cost even MORE money. Ain't happening.