Janney third grade parents--what do you think of the giant class sizes?

[Anonymous]

This is my tiny violin playing a sad song for all of you Janney parents. I would give my left arm to have my kid there, no matter how many damn students in the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Janney is just a few blocks from Deal moving Janney to Hardy seems like a very unrealistic commute.

I really like the idea of Hearst being turned back into an Early Childhood Development Center for pre-k 4 - 2nd.

In my opinion the expectation of pre-k is what is causing enrollments to rise at several of the stronger schools. A grade has essentially been added to the schools with little planning.

Where would Hearst students go for 3rd-5th?

it would all be one school, like oyster Adams

[Anonymous]

Regardless of the particulars, Janney overcrowding is just another symptom of DCPS not planning ahead. Maybe Janney should buy St. Ann's and become a PK-12, similar to GDS and Sidwell's plans?

Oh right - it's a public school. How could I forget.

[Anonymous]

I know that some folks would like to see the city buy St. Ann's or use Hearst as the "Janney Annex" or even build another elementary school in upper NW. Realistically, none of these are going to happen. They are just not. That isn't a commentary on the pros or cons of any of these ideas, but the political, budgetary, etc. reality.

The reality is that Janney will grow until it grows so big that it becomes unattractive enough for more families to stop moving in. Sure, you can reduce the number of PK classrooms, but that only helps a little and the city is not going to let Janney eliminate PK at the school. Maybe you can convince Janney families to move the boundaries a little to shift some children to Mann or Hearst. But the families who get kicked out will fight like mad. Mann and Hearst are smaller schools with limited capacity to take huge numbers of students. Even then, a boundary shift will likely have grandfathering which will not help the school much now. And new families will just move into the now smaller border area.

Those who say that Janney made its own bed are not quite right. The main problem is that folks, especially in competitive and driven DC, want to send their kids to "the best" school. Whether you agree or not, many families perceive Janney as that best school, and so move into its boundaries so that their children can attend it. If the proposed boundary changes had gone through, it certainly wouldn't have changed the situation in 3rd grade right now (see grandfathering) and even once the shift worked its way up to 3rd grade, its effects would have been tiny. That is not to say that it shouldn't have happened, but one has to acknowledge that not going ahead with the boundary change is not the primary reason for overcrowding. The overcrowding was already there and the reasons for it are the desirability of the school. Only making the school relatively less desirable will stop that force. And let's be clear "making the school less desirable" is NOT an aim. Nobody *wants* that. But it is the outcome of the school becoming more and more overcrowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:why not make Janney the lower school, then all kids feed to Hardy?

I'm a Janney parent with a PK and 1st grader.

Part of me thinks this might be a great idea - the Janney parents are SO motivated and SO involved and I think that if we were going to Hardy along with Key, Mann, Stoddert... that maybe Hardy would become an "acceptable" school in the eyes of the WOTP people. I grew up in CCDC, and have seen the schools evolve. Eventually, this will happen to Hardy. Is it sooner, or is it later?

On the other hand, much of the Janney zone is so close to Deal that this might happen to another school. Maybe Layfayette to Unicorn Middle School (see DCUM lore) or Hearst?

Either way, I think something has got to give. You can't keep cramming more and more kids into "desirable" elementary and middle schools. It wasn't so long ago that these schools were not so desirable. It's not out of the question that there is more positive change on the horizon. I think Hearst is a great example of that.

And before you get on me, positive change doesn't mean EOTP vs WOTP, it means families who are really involved in the school and who are dedicated to their kid's educations.

EOTP
A tempting thought, but read the Hardy threads sometime. It's complicated. DCPS wants more IB kids there, but there are other views that are wary of IB newcomers wanting to change Hardy too much, or changing Hardy more to attract more Ward 3 kids. Hardy has been a safety valve for kids EOTP whose regular middle school options are not great. Not only do parents of these kids (who view Hardy as being a quite "good enough" school) get annoyed at Ward 3 parents who discount Hardy as being unequal to Deal's quality, but they fear that if too many IB kids enroll, it will effectively cut off access to Hardy for families like them. This tension makes me skeptical that change at Hardy will be anything other than very incremental.

I'm not a Hardy parent, but I don't think they're afraid of being cut off by an influx of IB - the school has capacity for a couple hundred more kids. What's annoying is the way people on DCUM want to cut off access to OOB kids. They will only find Hardy acceptable once OOB students have been diminished, even though there aren't enough IB kids to even get close to filling the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:why not make Janney the lower school, then all kids feed to Hardy?

I'm a Janney parent with a PK and 1st grader.

Part of me thinks this might be a great idea - the Janney parents are SO motivated and SO involved and I think that if we were going to Hardy along with Key, Mann, Stoddert... that maybe Hardy would become an "acceptable" school in the eyes of the WOTP people. I grew up in CCDC, and have seen the schools evolve. Eventually, this will happen to Hardy. Is it sooner, or is it later?

On the other hand, much of the Janney zone is so close to Deal that this might happen to another school. Maybe Layfayette to Unicorn Middle School (see DCUM lore) or Hearst?

Either way, I think something has got to give. You can't keep cramming more and more kids into "desirable" elementary and middle schools. It wasn't so long ago that these schools were not so desirable. It's not out of the question that there is more positive change on the horizon. I think Hearst is a great example of that.

And before you get on me, positive change doesn't mean EOTP vs WOTP, it means families who are really involved in the school and who are dedicated to their kid's educations.

EOTP
A tempting thought, but read the Hardy threads sometime. It's complicated. DCPS wants more IB kids there, but there are other views that are wary of IB newcomers wanting to change Hardy too much, or changing Hardy more to attract more Ward 3 kids. Hardy has been a safety valve for kids EOTP whose regular middle school options are not great. Not only do parents of these kids (who view Hardy as being a quite "good enough" school) get annoyed at Ward 3 parents who discount Hardy as being unequal to Deal's quality, but they fear that if too many IB kids enroll, it will effectively cut off access to Hardy for families like them. This tension makes me skeptical that change at Hardy will be anything other than very incremental.

I'm not a Hardy parent, but I don't think they're afraid of being cut off by an influx of IB - the school has capacity for a couple hundred more kids. What's annoying is the way people on DCUM want to cut off access to OOB kids. They will only find Hardy acceptable once OOB students have been diminished, even though there aren't enough IB kids to even get close to filling the school.

There may be space at Hardy but DCPS isn't using it. There are about 50 kids on the Hardy WL for 6th right now. Why won't they let them in?

[Anonymous]

Janney parent of three kids here.

They should send Janney to Hardy. I'd welcome
it. Sure, the commute would suck but I'd do it for the smaller school size. Janney parents move as a pack. You move Janney to hardy and suddenly you'd have 120 new kids per year with extremely involved parents.

[Anonymous]

Janney parent here again.

The sad reality is though that NONE of these changes mentioned up thread will be made. The only thing that will happen is that those who can afford it will leave Janney and the numbers will self-adjust down. We saw it last year with Deal--a larger number of kids than ever before in recent years from Janney went on to private instead of Deal. However, the number of families who can afford to pay for private school and choose to live in AU Park is small. Most who can already do. The rest of us have decent, 2 salary house hold incomes but don't have a spare $35K per kid hanging around each year. I'd say that for 90% of families at Janney, private school is not even remotely a financial option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Janney parent of three kids here.

They should send Janney to Hardy. I'd welcome
it. Sure, the commute would suck but I'd do it for the smaller school size. Janney parents move as a pack. You move Janney to hardy and suddenly you'd have 120 new kids per year with extremely involved parents.

You'd still have a Wilson overcrowding issue.

[Anonymous]

GDS is adding more than 300 units of housing in-bounds for Janney to reduce the cost to its students. Maybe GDS should build a Janney annex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is my tiny violin playing a sad song for all of you Janney parents. I would give my left arm to have my kid there, no matter how many damn students in the class.

Ok, let's say you do. Which, given the overcrowding there, and the fact that so many people on DCUM try to knock them down, is a pretty common feeling. So, is it Janney itself you'd give your left arm for? Or is it the feeder pattern?

[Anonymous]

Option 1 - reduce PreK to 2 classes as it was a few years ago. Free up a few classrooms and reconfigure them to support smaller class size in 2nd and 3rd grade.

Option 2 - Conduct a full audit of enrollment. You either live IB now or you got in through OOB lottery. This will reduce each grade by 10% making class size more manageable.

[Anonymous]

I have a feeling overcrowding is here to stay because there is no political appetite to actually deal with the situation (this was abundantly clear during the whole boundary review process). I think you will see more and more WOTP kids trying to go to Hardy, because, really, where else are they going to go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option 1 - reduce PreK to 2 classes as it was a few years ago. Free up a few classrooms and reconfigure them to support smaller class size in 2nd and 3rd grade.

Option 2 - Conduct a full audit of enrollment. You either live IB now or you got in through OOB lottery. This will reduce each grade by 10% making class size more manageable.

Option 1: makes sense, except the number will still go up for K, so you only decrease the number of kids in the building, but not the class size.

Option 2: sounds like a good idea. Such a good idea that I'll bet it's been tried before. Probably a hard one to enforce, though. Takes a lot of nerve to do that, and I just don't see a Principal doing that if s/he expects to stay beyond his/her one year contract.

[Anonymous]

What would an OOB audit actually look like? Looking at the paperwork wouldn't tell you anything. Is it a good use or resources to drive to everyone's house?