Does anyone on Capitol Hill send their kid to an elementary in upper NW?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Exactly. We lived on the hill for years and adapted our lives to avoiding all the safety risks to the point that it seemed normal. A couple of years away, after a move, we are shaking our heads that we ever put up with that BS as “normal”. It is just dumb. There are plenty of places to live where on a dcps day off - like tomorrow- you can let your kids roam free in the neighborhood with nothing more than instructions to be home for dinner. And the neighborhood has all the same amenities within walking distance- parks, ice cream shops, bagels, etc. Plus yea- Charles Allen thinks the schools are fine and buys into the trope that if a kid comes from a nice family they will be fine. Perhaps, but some of us hope for more than fine, which apparently is a racist thing to say. So you will get nowhere with you our rep on council or f you actually want safety or schools where kids are challenged academically.

Yeah … I just don’t believe you have “all the same amenities.” I can easily walk to 4 grocery stores, tens of restaurants, multiple coffee shops, 8 playgrounds, two libraries, the doctor, the orthodontist, three pharmacies, two metro stations, etc etc etc. You don’t have that. Not even close.

Completely agree that Charles Allen sucks, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly. We lived on the hill for years and adapted our lives to avoiding all the safety risks to the point that it seemed normal. A couple of years away, after a move, we are shaking our heads that we ever put up with that BS as “normal”. It is just dumb. There are plenty of places to live where on a dcps day off - like tomorrow- you can let your kids roam free in the neighborhood with nothing more than instructions to be home for dinner. And the neighborhood has all the same amenities within walking distance- parks, ice cream shops, bagels, etc. Plus yea- Charles Allen thinks the schools are fine and buys into the trope that if a kid comes from a nice family they will be fine. Perhaps, but some of us hope for more than fine, which apparently is a racist thing to say. So you will get nowhere with you our rep on council or f you actually want safety or schools where kids are challenged academically.

Yeah … I just don’t believe you have “all the same amenities.” I can easily walk to 4 grocery stores, tens of restaurants, multiple coffee shops, 8 playgrounds, two libraries, the doctor, the orthodontist, three pharmacies, two metro stations, etc etc etc. You don’t have that. Not even close.

Completely agree that Charles Allen sucks, though.

Good point. Starbucks is only a 10 minute drive though.

[Anonymous]

Shrug. I don’t know. You might have 5 coffee shops whereas I have 2. Who cares. I assure you I spend roughly the same amount of time in the car as a ward 3 resident as I did a ward 6. But I can walk around my neighborhood after dark or before sunrise without fear. The parks don’t reek of pot smoke. When I park my car on the street I don’t look around for car-jackers. And my kids can walk to school (a public school with great test scores that we didn’t need to lottery into) and I don’t need to worry about them encountering sketchy dudes on the way or being hit by a car. I truly don’t get the hill smugness having lived both sides of it. Yes my commute downtown was easier from the hill but now I have a lot more WFH flexibility so it totally balances out.

I mean- live there if it makes sense economically for your family. And make it work. It will be hard and stressful but possible, and kudos to you. If it is not making economic sense then just move. It is not serving your kids if they are above average students, that is for sure.

[Anonymous]

Also. Capitol Hill is not DuPont circle etc. it has a lot of mediocre stuff, reallly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound new. Charles Allen is just one council member among 18 and has never shown much interest in ed reform (though he certainly talks the talk).

In your shoes, I'd try to lottery into Brent, Maury and Ludlow every year until I succeeded with one of them. I'd try for Latin 1, Latin Cooper, BASIS and Inspired Teaching for middle school.

I wouldn't bother lobbying Charles Allen or lobbying pols. We did that for years with fellow Brent parents and achieved nothing, other than launching an 60 million $ renovation of not-so-great Jefferson Academy (5 years later, still half empty).

Current parent of a Jefferson seventh grader here. While I strongly disagree with your view of the school (I believe it is, in fact, great) you are entitled to you opinion.

But what I want to know is where did you hear that Jefferson is "half empty." If that were true, then why did 37 of the 98 kids who were waitlisted for the current school year never receive an offer? And why did 65 of the 82 kids who were waitlisted for last year not receive an offer?

Fact is, Jefferson still enrolls fewer than 400 students in a building renovated to accommodate at least 800 six or seven years ago. DCPS keeps numbers down, but the space is there for double the current study body. So, yes, still half empty, and still majority at-risk students and less than half in-boundary enrollment at that. At Brent, marvelous administration at Jefferson is no secret. We also know that the roughly the same percentage of Brent 4th graders peel off to the Washington Latins and BASIS as six years ago. Brent buy-in for Jefferson still isn't strong or growing substantially. Wish things were different.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You “roll with it” no matter where you live. It’s just that in some areas, more things will roll the way you like it than in other areas. It’s up to you to figure out which area fits you best. If you are wanting to send your kid to an elementary in NW, my guess is that you probably should be living there in the first place.

This. Some areas there is much more certainty and guarantee for a good school feed. Also, frankly it’s a pain in the ass to take your kid to far extracurriculars because no really good offerings or demand far exceeds supply and you can’t get what you want.

Everyone has to roll with it but life is just much easier in some places than others. And it’s a pain in the neck applying to privates or playing the lottery for middle and high school. It’s not just simply ranking schools in the lottery, you need plan A, B, and C. The private school application is a whole other bear from parents who went thru it.

I won’t even touch on the supplementing which is another huge bear.

It’s not as easy or simple as the Swarthmore PP makes it seem. It’s a lot of time, energy, resources, and money.

NP. You are projecting. They in no way said it was "easy or simple". They explained their process and reasoning and said for them it wasn't a big deal. Why is it that people like you think it is fine to impose your value system on others but anyone who even explains what they do or why, without judging what you do, is somehow attacking you or encroaching on your freedoms?

They didn't judge you or suggest your choices were wrong. You and a bunch of other DCUM fragiles told her that her choices were wrong and that she should be making teh same choice you made. Fragile white people.

This is the problem that I see all of the Hill discourse about schools/kids. People give you a carefully curated explanation about why "XYZ is really no big deal, it's great for our family!" while they leave out TONS of relevant information. It's all fine and well for different people to do different things, but there is a (seemingly calculated at times) effort to paint a rosy picturel. If you don't start to learn how to interpret these statements, then you can make the wrong decisions for yourself. It don't really care about PP's choice to schlep to MoCo for orchestra; I do care about the misrepresentation about it being no big deal, as well as the failure to understand how much easier it can be if you actually just live closer to where the amenities for kids exist. Like, public middle schools where the orchestra is so good your kid doesn't need it to be an extracurricular!

Yes, life closer where amenities for kids exist, like the public library one block from our house on Capitol Hill and the swim center that's half a mile away. How about the 2 Metro stations (serving 4 lines between them) within a 15-min walk, and the National Mall, where one of my kids volunteers at a museum he reaches on his bike. My kids mostly get to their own extra curriculars by Metro, along with their orthodontist in VA. We have beloved neighbors of 20 years (their houses are attached to ours) with keys to our place in case kids get locked out or need help. Any wonder that some of us choose to stay put in our pretty walkable historic neighborhood?

It's great for you that your kids don't have any needs or preferences that can't be served on the Hill, and that you have kids who you trust on Metro. Let's not even talk about the atmosphere in the public libraries ...

I'm at the SE library on a regular basis and it's fine?

Would you let your 10 year old walk alone to the SE library and hang out there?

I did do exactly that. He used take the metro home from BASIS by himself and do homework at the SE library until I got off work to pick him up. We never had any problems? What are you worried about exactly?

PP thinks the SE libary is sketchy. We live 3 blocks from that library and hang out there regularly, but I guess we don't see the issue either, probably because we live in a "sketchy" area.

Yeah you don’t see it because you don’t want to, just like the dad whose kids witnessed that murder in the Petworth library. The SE library and Eastern Market Plaza and 700 block of Pennsylvania Ave are not safe. They just are not. You can chose to ignore it and allow your kids to take that risk, but you don’t get to pretend that the facts are different from what they are.

I've lived on the 800 block of D street for 13 years. I think I know what the "facts" are pretty well. That entire area is fine, especially now that the park area has been renovated.

lol! have you not been in that park?

NP but I have been in the park hundreds of time.

You don’t have a clue. Where do you live?

I am in Eastern Market many times a week. The playground side is nice. The metro side is full of sketchy loiterers. All up the 700 block of Penn Ave is sketchy loiterers. Granted it is actually better since the methadone clinic closed. Fewer ODs & extremely high folks.

You didn’t answer the question: where do you live?

Crickets....Also, why would they be in Eastern Market several times per week if there's nothing there? Confused. Why are they visiting playgrounds if they don't have kids with them. Sketchy.

I am freaked out by isolation. I don't understand why anyone would want to live on 10 acres (or 3 acres) of land. I don't hunt. I don't fish. I don't camp. I don't have to. I understand that some people enjoy tat environment and that's ok. It continues to confuse and confound why so many people are so invested in convincing other people that their choices are "wrong" or "bad".

(This is the part where DCUM does that thing where pointing out that other people are invested in telling CH families their choices are wring and they aren't actually happy is turned on its head and becomes "boosters" or "sanctimonious". It's ok for them to tell you your choices and opinions are invalid, but pointing this out and repeating to them that you are in fact quite happy is somehow an attack on them.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. I don’t know. You might have 5 coffee shops whereas I have 2. Who cares. I assure you I spend roughly the same amount of time in the car as a ward 3 resident as I did a ward 6. But I can walk around my neighborhood after dark or before sunrise without fear. The parks don’t reek of pot smoke. When I park my car on the street I don’t look around for car-jackers. And my kids can walk to school (a public school with great test scores that we didn’t need to lottery into) and I don’t need to worry about them encountering sketchy dudes on the way or being hit by a car. I truly don’t get the hill smugness having lived both sides of it. Yes my commute downtown was easier from the hill but now I have a lot more WFH flexibility so it totally balances out.

I mean- live there if it makes sense economically for your family. And make it work. It will be hard and stressful but possible, and kudos to you. If it is not making economic sense then just move. It is not serving your kids if they are above average students, that is for sure.

the truth is, Ward 3 is much more expensive than Ward 6, and it’s hard to find houses. Many Ward 6 families would only be able to afford condos, and there are few 3 bedroom condos. So yeah it comes down to money: house in Ward 6 and deal with the rest; cram into a condo; or burbs. AFAIK there is only one neighborhood in MoCo that provides some walkability, good home prices, and an excellent MS/HS - and I’m not divulging the name!! At a certain point, unprooting yourself to move to Silver Spring and the DCC schools seems hard to picture because you’re not gaining that much on the school front. But I do think that as the crime worsens, more Hill families will do it. Of course mortgage rates make it harder too.

TL;DR: money is a big factor keeping people on the Hill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also. Capitol Hill is not DuPont circle etc. it has a lot of mediocre stuff, reallly.

It is getting better though (and I’m the Hill Hater).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound new. Charles Allen is just one council member among 18 and has never shown much interest in ed reform (though he certainly talks the talk).

In your shoes, I'd try to lottery into Brent, Maury and Ludlow every year until I succeeded with one of them. I'd try for Latin 1, Latin Cooper, BASIS and Inspired Teaching for middle school.

I wouldn't bother lobbying Charles Allen or lobbying pols. We did that for years with fellow Brent parents and achieved nothing, other than launching an 60 million $ renovation of not-so-great Jefferson Academy (5 years later, still half empty).

Current parent of a Jefferson seventh grader here. While I strongly disagree with your view of the school (I believe it is, in fact, great) you are entitled to you opinion.

But what I want to know is where did you hear that Jefferson is "half empty." If that were true, then why did 37 of the 98 kids who were waitlisted for the current school year never receive an offer? And why did 65 of the 82 kids who were waitlisted for last year not receive an offer?

Fact is, Jefferson still enrolls fewer than 400 students in a building renovated to accommodate at least 800 six or seven years ago. DCPS keeps numbers down, but the space is there for double the current study body. So, yes, still half empty, and still majority at-risk students and less than half in-boundary enrollment at that. At Brent, marvelous administration at Jefferson is no secret. We also know that the roughly the same percentage of Brent 4th graders peel off to the Washington Latins and BASIS as six years ago. Brent buy-in for Jefferson still isn't strong or growing substantially. Wish things were different.

Same for Eliot-Hine. They really ought to combine the two schools.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You “roll with it” no matter where you live. It’s just that in some areas, more things will roll the way you like it than in other areas. It’s up to you to figure out which area fits you best. If you are wanting to send your kid to an elementary in NW, my guess is that you probably should be living there in the first place.

This. Some areas there is much more certainty and guarantee for a good school feed. Also, frankly it’s a pain in the ass to take your kid to far extracurriculars because no really good offerings or demand far exceeds supply and you can’t get what you want.

Everyone has to roll with it but life is just much easier in some places than others. And it’s a pain in the neck applying to privates or playing the lottery for middle and high school. It’s not just simply ranking schools in the lottery, you need plan A, B, and C. The private school application is a whole other bear from parents who went thru it.

I won’t even touch on the supplementing which is another huge bear.

It’s not as easy or simple as the Swarthmore PP makes it seem. It’s a lot of time, energy, resources, and money.

NP. You are projecting. They in no way said it was "easy or simple". They explained their process and reasoning and said for them it wasn't a big deal. Why is it that people like you think it is fine to impose your value system on others but anyone who even explains what they do or why, without judging what you do, is somehow attacking you or encroaching on your freedoms?

They didn't judge you or suggest your choices were wrong. You and a bunch of other DCUM fragiles told her that her choices were wrong and that she should be making teh same choice you made. Fragile white people.

This is the problem that I see all of the Hill discourse about schools/kids. People give you a carefully curated explanation about why "XYZ is really no big deal, it's great for our family!" while they leave out TONS of relevant information. It's all fine and well for different people to do different things, but there is a (seemingly calculated at times) effort to paint a rosy picturel. If you don't start to learn how to interpret these statements, then you can make the wrong decisions for yourself. It don't really care about PP's choice to schlep to MoCo for orchestra; I do care about the misrepresentation about it being no big deal, as well as the failure to understand how much easier it can be if you actually just live closer to where the amenities for kids exist. Like, public middle schools where the orchestra is so good your kid doesn't need it to be an extracurricular!

Yes, life closer where amenities for kids exist, like the public library one block from our house on Capitol Hill and the swim center that's half a mile away. How about the 2 Metro stations (serving 4 lines between them) within a 15-min walk, and the National Mall, where one of my kids volunteers at a museum he reaches on his bike. My kids mostly get to their own extra curriculars by Metro, along with their orthodontist in VA. We have beloved neighbors of 20 years (their houses are attached to ours) with keys to our place in case kids get locked out or need help. Any wonder that some of us choose to stay put in our pretty walkable historic neighborhood?

It's great for you that your kids don't have any needs or preferences that can't be served on the Hill, and that you have kids who you trust on Metro. Let's not even talk about the atmosphere in the public libraries ...

I'm at the SE library on a regular basis and it's fine?

Would you let your 10 year old walk alone to the SE library and hang out there?

I did do exactly that. He used take the metro home from BASIS by himself and do homework at the SE library until I got off work to pick him up. We never had any problems? What are you worried about exactly?

PP thinks the SE libary is sketchy. We live 3 blocks from that library and hang out there regularly, but I guess we don't see the issue either, probably because we live in a "sketchy" area.

Yeah you don’t see it because you don’t want to, just like the dad whose kids witnessed that murder in the Petworth library. The SE library and Eastern Market Plaza and 700 block of Pennsylvania Ave are not safe. They just are not. You can chose to ignore it and allow your kids to take that risk, but you don’t get to pretend that the facts are different from what they are.

I've lived on the 800 block of D street for 13 years. I think I know what the "facts" are pretty well. That entire area is fine, especially now that the park area has been renovated.

lol! have you not been in that park?

NP but I have been in the park hundreds of time.

You don’t have a clue. Where do you live?

I am in Eastern Market many times a week. The playground side is nice. The metro side is full of sketchy loiterers. All up the 700 block of Penn Ave is sketchy loiterers. Granted it is actually better since the methadone clinic closed. Fewer ODs & extremely high folks.

You didn’t answer the question: where do you live?

Crickets....Also, why would they be in Eastern Market several times per week if there's nothing there? Confused. Why are they visiting playgrounds if they don't have kids with them. Sketchy.

I am freaked out by isolation. I don't understand why anyone would want to live on 10 acres (or 3 acres) of land. I don't hunt. I don't fish. I don't camp. I don't have to. I understand that some people enjoy tat environment and that's ok. It continues to confuse and confound why so many people are so invested in convincing other people that their choices are "wrong" or "bad".

(This is the part where DCUM does that thing where pointing out that other people are invested in telling CH families their choices are wring and they aren't actually happy is turned on its head and becomes "boosters" or "sanctimonious". It's ok for them to tell you your choices and opinions are invalid, but pointing this out and repeating to them that you are in fact quite happy is somehow an attack on them.)

Do you actually think I’m lying about going to Eastern Market? That’s where the freakin’ metro is. How absurd that you’d go to such lengths to deny what anyone who goes there can see. I’m just waiting for the drug/prostitution tent to come back, although MPD seemed to do an unusually good job dealing with that one.

For the millionth time I do not GAS about your “choices.” I don’t want to move to the burbs either. But that doesn’t mean you get to claim that the crime and problems are nonexistent. Just that you personally accept them. If you want to let your 9 year old hang out in a library full of homeless people next to the CVS where someone got stabbed in the neck in broad daylight and a block full of aggressive panhandlers, go ahead! Probably your kid will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. I don’t know. You might have 5 coffee shops whereas I have 2. Who cares. I assure you I spend roughly the same amount of time in the car as a ward 3 resident as I did a ward 6. But I can walk around my neighborhood after dark or before sunrise without fear. The parks don’t reek of pot smoke. When I park my car on the street I don’t look around for car-jackers. And my kids can walk to school (a public school with great test scores that we didn’t need to lottery into) and I don’t need to worry about them encountering sketchy dudes on the way or being hit by a car. I truly don’t get the hill smugness having lived both sides of it. Yes my commute downtown was easier from the hill but now I have a lot more WFH flexibility so it totally balances out.

I mean- live there if it makes sense economically for your family. And make it work. It will be hard and stressful but possible, and kudos to you. If it is not making economic sense then just move. It is not serving your kids if they are above average students, that is for sure.

the truth is, Ward 3 is much more expensive than Ward 6, and it’s hard to find houses. Many Ward 6 families would only be able to afford condos, and there are few 3 bedroom condos. So yeah it comes down to money: house in Ward 6 and deal with the rest; cram into a condo; or burbs. AFAIK there is only one neighborhood in MoCo that provides some walkability, good home prices, and an excellent MS/HS - and I’m not divulging the name!! At a certain point, unprooting yourself to move to Silver Spring and the DCC schools seems hard to picture because you’re not gaining that much on the school front. But I do think that as the crime worsens, more Hill families will do it. Of course mortgage rates make it harder too.

TL;DR: money is a big factor keeping people on the Hill.

Crime is spiking in Silver Spring too. Maybe not to the same degree, but if you’re looking for walkability, I don’t think there’s any escaping the crime issue in major metro areas these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound new. Charles Allen is just one council member among 18 and has never shown much interest in ed reform (though he certainly talks the talk).

In your shoes, I'd try to lottery into Brent, Maury and Ludlow every year until I succeeded with one of them. I'd try for Latin 1, Latin Cooper, BASIS and Inspired Teaching for middle school.

I wouldn't bother lobbying Charles Allen or lobbying pols. We did that for years with fellow Brent parents and achieved nothing, other than launching an 60 million $ renovation of not-so-great Jefferson Academy (5 years later, still half empty).

Current parent of a Jefferson seventh grader here. While I strongly disagree with your view of the school (I believe it is, in fact, great) you are entitled to you opinion.

But what I want to know is where did you hear that Jefferson is "half empty." If that were true, then why did 37 of the 98 kids who were waitlisted for the current school year never receive an offer? And why did 65 of the 82 kids who were waitlisted for last year not receive an offer?

Fact is, Jefferson still enrolls fewer than 400 students in a building renovated to accommodate at least 800 six or seven years ago. DCPS keeps numbers down, but the space is there for double the current study body. So, yes, still half empty, and still majority at-risk students and less than half in-boundary enrollment at that. At Brent, marvelous administration at Jefferson is no secret. We also know that the roughly the same percentage of Brent 4th graders peel off to the Washington Latins and BASIS as six years ago. Brent buy-in for Jefferson still isn't strong or growing substantially. Wish things were different.

Okay, so if you're correct, the number of students at Jefferson is a result of an intentional DCPS decision to keep the numbers down -- not a lack of demand. There is clearly demand for the school. In fact, judging by the length of the waitlist, it is one of the more popular DCPS middle schools. It also has the highest in-bound enrollment percentage of the three Ward 6 DCPS middle schools.

I also expect that the in-bound enrollment will increase over the coming years. The first couple graduating classes from Van Ness sent groups of kids there, and that will likely continue. And in the immediate neighborhood, kids from the surrounding townhouses are staying at Amidon into the upper grades and may be likely to attend Jefferson due to the major convenience factor.

In other words, "Brent buy-in" is not the end-all-be-all.

[Anonymous]

Whatever. Incremental change at Jefferson is only so relevant to those of us with kids in the upper ES grades in Ward 6 DCPS schools. You can have Jefferson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound new. Charles Allen is just one council member among 18 and has never shown much interest in ed reform (though he certainly talks the talk).

In your shoes, I'd try to lottery into Brent, Maury and Ludlow every year until I succeeded with one of them. I'd try for Latin 1, Latin Cooper, BASIS and Inspired Teaching for middle school.

I wouldn't bother lobbying Charles Allen or lobbying pols. We did that for years with fellow Brent parents and achieved nothing, other than launching an 60 million $ renovation of not-so-great Jefferson Academy (5 years later, still half empty).

Current parent of a Jefferson seventh grader here. While I strongly disagree with your view of the school (I believe it is, in fact, great) you are entitled to you opinion.

But what I want to know is where did you hear that Jefferson is "half empty." If that were true, then why did 37 of the 98 kids who were waitlisted for the current school year never receive an offer? And why did 65 of the 82 kids who were waitlisted for last year not receive an offer?

Fact is, Jefferson still enrolls fewer than 400 students in a building renovated to accommodate at least 800 six or seven years ago. DCPS keeps numbers down, but the space is there for double the current study body. So, yes, still half empty, and still majority at-risk students and less than half in-boundary enrollment at that. At Brent, marvelous administration at Jefferson is no secret. We also know that the roughly the same percentage of Brent 4th graders peel off to the Washington Latins and BASIS as six years ago. Brent buy-in for Jefferson still isn't strong or growing substantially. Wish things were different.

Okay, so if you're correct, the number of students at Jefferson is a result of an intentional DCPS decision to keep the numbers down -- not a lack of demand. There is clearly demand for the school. In fact, judging by the length of the waitlist, it is one of the more popular DCPS middle schools. It also has the highest in-bound enrollment percentage of the three Ward 6 DCPS middle schools.

I also expect that the in-bound enrollment will increase over the coming years. The first couple graduating classes from Van Ness sent groups of kids there, and that will likely continue. And in the immediate neighborhood, kids from the surrounding townhouses are staying at Amidon into the upper grades and may be likely to attend Jefferson due to the major convenience factor.

In other words, "Brent buy-in" is not the end-all-be-all.

+1 Well-stated. Thank you for writing this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You sound new. Charles Allen is just one council member among 18 and has never shown much interest in ed reform (though he certainly talks the talk).

In your shoes, I'd try to lottery into Brent, Maury and Ludlow every year until I succeeded with one of them. I'd try for Latin 1, Latin Cooper, BASIS and Inspired Teaching for middle school.

I wouldn't bother lobbying Charles Allen or lobbying pols. We did that for years with fellow Brent parents and achieved nothing, other than launching an 60 million $ renovation of not-so-great Jefferson Academy (5 years later, still half empty).

Current parent of a Jefferson seventh grader here. While I strongly disagree with your view of the school (I believe it is, in fact, great) you are entitled to you opinion.

But what I want to know is where did you hear that Jefferson is "half empty." If that were true, then why did 37 of the 98 kids who were waitlisted for the current school year never receive an offer? And why did 65 of the 82 kids who were waitlisted for last year not receive an offer?

Fact is, Jefferson still enrolls fewer than 400 students in a building renovated to accommodate at least 800 six or seven years ago. DCPS keeps numbers down, but the space is there for double the current study body. So, yes, still half empty, and still majority at-risk students and less than half in-boundary enrollment at that. At Brent, marvelous administration at Jefferson is no secret. We also know that the roughly the same percentage of Brent 4th graders peel off to the Washington Latins and BASIS as six years ago. Brent buy-in for Jefferson still isn't strong or growing substantially. Wish things were different.

Okay, so if you're correct, the number of students at Jefferson is a result of an intentional DCPS decision to keep the numbers down -- not a lack of demand. There is clearly demand for the school. In fact, judging by the length of the waitlist, it is one of the more popular DCPS middle schools. It also has the highest in-bound enrollment percentage of the three Ward 6 DCPS middle schools.

I also expect that the in-bound enrollment will increase over the coming years. The first couple graduating classes from Van Ness sent groups of kids there, and that will likely continue. And in the immediate neighborhood, kids from the surrounding townhouses are staying at Amidon into the upper grades and may be likely to attend Jefferson due to the major convenience factor.

In other words, "Brent buy-in" is not the end-all-be-all.

I wonder if Eliot-Hine will be in a similar situation in the next few years with more in-boundary families staying at Payne in the upper grades.