Greater Greater Washington story on school enrollment growth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to limit PreK to low income families. Universal PreK is great but why does a family making $150k a year need it? They will need to pay for daycare or private PreK.

Free Park has been the biggest driver to get UMC families into DCPS. Not shiny buildings or empty promises. FREE preschool. The families get into the school
And realize it’s not that bad and slowly more families have stayed. And that’s why test scores are going up.

UMC can easily afford PreK. Why do you think that draws them?

Our HHI was about $275K when our daughter was in a $20K daycare. Heck yeah we signed up for our IB to save on PK3! And we ended up loving the school. Free PK3 is a big draw for people like us that do okay but aren't rich (I think it would be less of a draw for folks above $400K).

+1. It's absolutely a benefit to save the daycare/ private PreK fees. We make about $360+ and we're pleased as punch to put our youngest into free PreK-3 this Fall. With a mortgage, saving for retirement, saving for college, plus other living expenses, saving this money is significant.

BTW I think it's a draw even for some families making $400K+, basically all those except the ones bent on private school. Private school is so crazy expensive that even some families with HHI of $400K+ might hesitate to spend $35-45K per year per kid. It really adds up if you have 2-3 kids. Some of them are leveraging public elementaries and saving for private for middle and high school too. PreK is pretty good at almost every DCPS, even some of the ones with poor performance in older grades.

[Anonymous]

PP here. Out household income is 300k and free preK saved us 22k a year in child care costs. That’s close to 50k for PK3 and PK4. It’s HUGE. I never would have considered our IB but like all my neighbors we figured “how bad can pre k be?”— and then we had amazing teachers, nice community of families and little by little more UMC families stay. Plus the HRCS are becoming next to impossible to get into. Yes we have a high HH income but everything costs a fortune in DC, so saving on childcare was the number one motivator.

[Anonymous]

Can someone tell me why it feels like there is zero long term plan for DCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone tell me why it feels like there is zero long term plan for DCPS?

Because there isn’t. Because we have had how many mayors since mayoral control was established? How many DMEs? How many chancellors?

When you have that much turnover .. long term planning is pretty much impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone tell me why it feels like there is zero long term plan for DCPS?

Because there is zero long-term plan for DCPS?

A lot of the issues that face DCPS cross fault lines in DC politics, like geography, gentrification and above all race. Making long-term plans would require whoever makes those plans to address those issues. Nobody wants to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone tell me why it feels like there is zero long term plan for DCPS?

Because there is zero long-term plan for DCPS?

A lot of the issues that face DCPS cross fault lines in DC politics, like geography, gentrification and above all race. Making long-term plans would require whoever makes those plans to address those issues. Nobody wants to do that.

Charter system, because it is more "organic" or less top-down, does a better job of adapting to changing demographics than central DCPS planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone tell me why it feels like there is zero long term plan for DCPS?

The last mayor with a plan got run out of town. No one will ever make that mistake again.

[Anonymous]

Just read through the 16 pages here (don't tell my boss!) and a few things to add (still!)

Real Estate. Touched on in page 12, but 20015 is the second most expensive zip code in the whole DMV now (https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/04/15/great-places-live-100-priciest-zip-codes-washington/) If you don't think that's directly because of the Lafayette renovation, you're not paying attention to local estate trends.

DMV Demographics. MoCo schools are having their own capacity crisis, and in Virginia, #Amazon. Who knows what that will do to the wider area!

Free pre-k. Free Pre-K keeps affluent families in DC. Echoing what folks have started posting - even for 'affluent' families, it's huge! Without free pre-k, we likely would have bought in the 'burbs instead of the city, since we have more than one kid, and we were already lotteried into a HRC.

I'd like to see DCPS + the charter board merged so there's central (and new, smart) leadership. The savings on redundant admin staff along should make it worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'd like to see DCPS + the charter board merged so there's central (and new, smart) leadership. The savings on redundant admin staff along should make it worth it.

The whole point of charters is that they have independent leadership. And they're supposed to keep the traditional schools honest by providing competition. So I'm not sure how that would work.

[Anonymous]

20015’s real estate values are poorly correlated with anything related to Lafayette. Lafayette success is correlated to parental educational achievement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:20015’s real estate values are poorly correlated with anything related to Lafayette. Lafayette success is correlated to parental educational achievement.

I would say that the strongest correlation with the increased success of the WOTP schools is growing school-age population WOTP.

[Anonymous]

The growth is light the capture rate - less students going private - is the change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The growth is light the capture rate - less students going private - is the change.

Utterly unsupported by the numbers. Ward 3 has been gaining kids steadily since 2000, it's the only part of the city that has gained kids consistently in the past 20 years. There's no evidence that the DCPS capture rate is increasing. The DC private schools are enrolling increasing numbers of DC kids, they aren't growing but DC kids are replacing kids from MD and VA.