Boundary Study Townhalls - first one starts now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FYI- Latin person here. Mayor doesn’t even pretend to listen to Latinos. Same goes for my ward rep. I’m in ward 6 where there are few of us, but we are totally ignored. When I other parts of the city, sometimes they would pretend, but really we are invisible.

What would it look like to not be ignored? There are Latinos on the boundary committee but none of the notes (that I've seen) reflect Latin-centric perspectives/needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since there are very few school meetings actually scheduled is it fair to assume this boundary study is only impacting these few Elementary Schools?

https://dme.dc.gov/schoolmeetings2023

I thought there were significant issues w/overcrowding at Deal and Ross. Why aren't any of the schools in NW on this list?

Bancroft is in NW and feeds to Deal. So changing Bancroft's feeder would remediate Deal.

Ross got rid of PK3 already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it true that one of the potential options for feeders would be for Bancroft to feed to Adams?

Yes

If this is true, why isn’t Adams on the list of town halls? This could double the size of its middle school grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since there are very few school meetings actually scheduled is it fair to assume this boundary study is only impacting these few Elementary Schools?

https://dme.dc.gov/schoolmeetings2023

I thought there were significant issues w/overcrowding at Deal and Ross. Why aren't any of the schools in NW on this list?

I was wondering the same and feeling hopeful for no changes to our school feeder pattern, but there’s this at the bottom of the link: “Additional school meetings will be added to this page as they are scheduled.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've seen changes proposed to the Brent/Watkins/Payne boundaries, so not surprised to see meetings at the former two schools; seems like they should have one at the latter as well. (They want to move the bit just south of the Western end of the current Watkins zone from Brent to Watkins, which would have the effect of making the zone look slightly less gerrymandered; on the flip side, they plan to move a few blocks of the Watkins zone near Payne into the Brent zone, which also makes sense as directly across the street from the Payne playground is currently IB for Watkins & some of those families actually lottery for Payne now.)

I haven't heard any proposed changes to Maury's boundary, but I assume there must be something given the meeting. Will be interested to hear.

Are these published somewhere? I find the term "engagement" suspect if information is shared only through the existing school network and only if you can make a weeknight meeting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since there are very few school meetings actually scheduled is it fair to assume this boundary study is only impacting these few Elementary Schools?

https://dme.dc.gov/schoolmeetings2023

I thought there were significant issues w/overcrowding at Deal and Ross. Why aren't any of the schools in NW on this list?

Bancroft is in NW and is a Deal feeder and is on the list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've seen changes proposed to the Brent/Watkins/Payne boundaries, so not surprised to see meetings at the former two schools; seems like they should have one at the latter as well. (They want to move the bit just south of the Western end of the current Watkins zone from Brent to Watkins, which would have the effect of making the zone look slightly less gerrymandered; on the flip side, they plan to move a few blocks of the Watkins zone near Payne into the Brent zone, which also makes sense as directly across the street from the Payne playground is currently IB for Watkins & some of those families actually lottery for Payne now.)

I haven't heard any proposed changes to Maury's boundary, but I assume there must be something given the meeting. Will be interested to hear.

Are these published somewhere? I find the term "engagement" suspect if information is shared only through the existing school network and only if you can make a weeknight meeting.

I am pretty sure all meetings are virtual so that helps with people being able to log in. And there are citywide town halls coming up in December as well

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI- Latin person here. Mayor doesn’t even pretend to listen to Latinos. Same goes for my ward rep. I’m in ward 6 where there are few of us, but we are totally ignored. When I other parts of the city, sometimes they would pretend, but really we are invisible.

What would it look like to not be ignored? There are Latinos on the boundary committee but none of the notes (that I've seen) reflect Latin-centric perspectives/needs.

I have kids in one of the dual language schools. What needs are they not concretely addressing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI- Latin person here. Mayor doesn’t even pretend to listen to Latinos. Same goes for my ward rep. I’m in ward 6 where there are few of us, but we are totally ignored. When I other parts of the city, sometimes they would pretend, but really we are invisible.

What would it look like to not be ignored? There are Latinos on the boundary committee but none of the notes (that I've seen) reflect Latin-centric perspectives/needs.

I have kids in one of the dual language schools. What needs are they not concretely addressing?

How about putting dual language schools where we live in large numbers or make these schools citywide?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've seen changes proposed to the Brent/Watkins/Payne boundaries, so not surprised to see meetings at the former two schools; seems like they should have one at the latter as well. (They want to move the bit just south of the Western end of the current Watkins zone from Brent to Watkins, which would have the effect of making the zone look slightly less gerrymandered; on the flip side, they plan to move a few blocks of the Watkins zone near Payne into the Brent zone, which also makes sense as directly across the street from the Payne playground is currently IB for Watkins & some of those families actually lottery for Payne now.)

I haven't heard any proposed changes to Maury's boundary, but I assume there must be something given the meeting. Will be interested to hear.

Are these published somewhere? I find the term "engagement" suspect if information is shared only through the existing school network and only if you can make a weeknight meeting.

I am pretty sure all meetings are virtual so that helps with people being able to log in. And there are citywide town halls coming up in December as well

The meetings are virtual. But the only way I heard about specific boundary changes in my neighborhood was a comment from a neighbor. The communication on specific boundary changes seems to be only through DCPS schools and word of mouth. There should be a website with preliminary proposals on a map or at least something that the council members can communicate out more broadly to the neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI- Latin person here. Mayor doesn’t even pretend to listen to Latinos. Same goes for my ward rep. I’m in ward 6 where there are few of us, but we are totally ignored. When I other parts of the city, sometimes they would pretend, but really we are invisible.

What would it look like to not be ignored? There are Latinos on the boundary committee but none of the notes (that I've seen) reflect Latin-centric perspectives/needs.

I have kids in one of the dual language schools. What needs are they not concretely addressing?

How about putting dual language schools where we live in large numbers or make these schools citywide?

There are a lot of dual languages schools options. Powell and Bruce Monroe have no waitlist after K. If you are Spanish dominant you can get into them since pK.

[Anonymous]

not entirely wrong. Brightwood is the most latin school in DC that's not dual language.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Push Shepherd to Coolidge and the south part of the Coolidge catchment further south to the underenrolled schools, just like Hardy is being pushed south to MacA. There are plenty of open seats at existing schools.

Or instead of pushing anyone EOTP which the city has clearly stated they don't want, push another school in W3 to Hardy and MacArthur. Easier pull to swallow sending kids to equal performing schools don't you think? Unless you really are determined to make JR and Deal all white.

Push some EOTP students south and you’ll get a higher performing school. Unless you don’t want to go where there are so many OOB kids? Why is that?

I don't live in Shepherd Park but your logic makes zero sense and you know it. Shepherd's 40 kids will make zero difference at Coolidge (already at 100% capacity). So you'd need to send 250 kids from Coolidge to Brookland middle and Dunbar. Then you can send the 40 kids from Shepherd and the 200 kids from Lafayette. Yes. I agree, that could be tenable. But now you got an under-enrolled Deal and JR, same as Hardy and MacArthur. It would make more sense to take some kids from Janney and send them to Hardy and MacArthur.

Also Deal/JR to Hardy/MA, you're more likely to have buy-in. With moving kids from Wells/Coolidge to Brookland/Dunbar and then Deal/JR to Wells/Coolidge, you're pissing off and possibly losing 450 families vs 200 from Janney (or insert W3 neighborhood). Also W3 going to Hardy/MA is as close to even trade as you can get. The other scenario, everyone goes down in quality. Not to mention, you now have an all white Deal/JR.

I’m confused why you think there are only white kids enrolled at Deal feeders WOTP

Janney: 4% Black
Murch: 13% Black
Lafayette: 8% Black
Hearst: 17% Black
Deal: 26% Black
Hardy: 29% Black
DCPS: 57% Black, 22% Hispanic, 17% White

Ok but that still doesn’t add up to an all white Deal and JR.

I’m also very confused why we must insist that schools be the exact same percentages of the city for every school. Are we insisting that schools in Ward 8 take Hispanic kids? Because I don’t think we are.

Is anyone insisting on that? I think they are just pointing out that JR feeders are self segregated, in some cases extremely so.

There is no way to fix that. Houses are 1 million plus. The apartments are accepting vouchers so more at risk kids are getting in to Murch and Hearst. Janney has no apartments and Lafayette has very few. Maybe they should move some of the apartment buildings to those schools.

The only other way to fix it is to blow up neighborhood schools and that is not going to happen.

There absolutely is a way to try to fix it. Janney and Lafayette should not accept one single kid via lottery that is not at-risk. Period. You want extra funding to round out your new 2nd grade bubble class, all 10 of the kids you need to get there have to be at-risk. It's a simple fix. I know someone that got off the list OOB this year at one of the schools that is a very wealthy Crestwood family. That should no longer occur.

As an OOB family at one of those schools, I think it will be difficult to fill at-risk elementary slots. It’s a colossal pain in the ass to schlep your kid across the park every day. Lafayette especially is in the middle of nowhere and poorly served with public transit. Not dissing your idea, but sadly it takes privilege on top of lottery luck to attend these schools OOB.

Janney is literally at the metro and several busses crossing Missouri/military get you within a few blocks of Lafayette.

[Anonymous]

They could make the dual language schools a proximity preference rather than being the by right neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Push Shepherd to Coolidge and the south part of the Coolidge catchment further south to the underenrolled schools, just like Hardy is being pushed south to MacA. There are plenty of open seats at existing schools.

Or instead of pushing anyone EOTP which the city has clearly stated they don't want, push another school in W3 to Hardy and MacArthur. Easier pull to swallow sending kids to equal performing schools don't you think? Unless you really are determined to make JR and Deal all white.

Push some EOTP students south and you’ll get a higher performing school. Unless you don’t want to go where there are so many OOB kids? Why is that?

I don't live in Shepherd Park but your logic makes zero sense and you know it. Shepherd's 40 kids will make zero difference at Coolidge (already at 100% capacity). So you'd need to send 250 kids from Coolidge to Brookland middle and Dunbar. Then you can send the 40 kids from Shepherd and the 200 kids from Lafayette. Yes. I agree, that could be tenable. But now you got an under-enrolled Deal and JR, same as Hardy and MacArthur. It would make more sense to take some kids from Janney and send them to Hardy and MacArthur.

Also Deal/JR to Hardy/MA, you're more likely to have buy-in. With moving kids from Wells/Coolidge to Brookland/Dunbar and then Deal/JR to Wells/Coolidge, you're pissing off and possibly losing 450 families vs 200 from Janney (or insert W3 neighborhood). Also W3 going to Hardy/MA is as close to even trade as you can get. The other scenario, everyone goes down in quality. Not to mention, you now have an all white Deal/JR.

I’m confused why you think there are only white kids enrolled at Deal feeders WOTP

Janney: 4% Black
Murch: 13% Black
Lafayette: 8% Black
Hearst: 17% Black
Deal: 26% Black
Hardy: 29% Black
DCPS: 57% Black, 22% Hispanic, 17% White

Ok but that still doesn’t add up to an all white Deal and JR.

I’m also very confused why we must insist that schools be the exact same percentages of the city for every school. Are we insisting that schools in Ward 8 take Hispanic kids? Because I don’t think we are.

Is anyone insisting on that? I think they are just pointing out that JR feeders are self segregated, in some cases extremely so.

There is no way to fix that. Houses are 1 million plus. The apartments are accepting vouchers so more at risk kids are getting in to Murch and Hearst. Janney has no apartments and Lafayette has very few. Maybe they should move some of the apartment buildings to those schools.

The only other way to fix it is to blow up neighborhood schools and that is not going to happen.

There absolutely is a way to try to fix it. Janney and Lafayette should not accept one single kid via lottery that is not at-risk. Period. You want extra funding to round out your new 2nd grade bubble class, all 10 of the kids you need to get there have to be at-risk. It's a simple fix. I know someone that got off the list OOB this year at one of the schools that is a very wealthy Crestwood family. That should no longer occur.

As an OOB family at one of those schools, I think it will be difficult to fill at-risk elementary slots. It’s a colossal pain in the ass to schlep your kid across the park every day. Lafayette especially is in the middle of nowhere and poorly served with public transit. Not dissing your idea, but sadly it takes privilege on top of lottery luck to attend these schools OOB.

Janney is literally at the metro and several busses crossing Missouri/military get you within a few blocks of Lafayette.

I think the point is that most people don't have the time or inclination to sit on the bus for an hour (or more) to get their kid to school and then make it to work on time after that.