Looking for a slot at Watkins Elementary or Stuart Hobson MS?

[Anonymous]

Do you know someone who might be interested in joining the Cluster? Now's the time to skip the lottery and wait lists! There are a handful of open seats at Watkins (grades 1 - 5) and Stuart-Hobson (grades 6 - 8) available immediately. For more information, give the school a call at 202-698-3355 for Watkins, or 202-671-6010 for Stuart-Hobson.


Please forward on to anyone interested

[Anonymous]

That should read grades 6 - 8, not grades 6 - smiley face.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. So, how does that square with the common rhetoric that "Cluster, and Stuart Hobson in particular, is full to the brim"? and that therefore no additional schools can feed towards Stuart Hobson. On a separate thread, we read that schools in Capitol Hill need to close so they'd altogether funnel fewer out of boundary applicants to Stuart Hobson, so that Stuart Hobson could actually serve the Capitol Hill community? Well, it sure looks here like Watkins is the problem...

[Anonymous]

As a Hill parent who would love to have SH as an option for my child in a few years, I find this positive (that there is space) and really frustrating that it is only available in October.

It's not like preschool, where you can just send them to daycare or keep them home until a slot opens up week 2 or week 5 of school. There is no way I'd move my 3rd grader to Watkins now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no way I'd move my 3rd grader to Watkins now.

I wouldn't move a third grader to Watkins period, and neither would I move my 4th or my 5th grader. What's not right is that meanwhile Watkins, lacking a good program and being attractive solely as a waiting loop for SH, is fanning out those spots across the city. Where what we could actually be doing is feeding more of those schools that have good programs towards SH. Like it or not, this is what's wrong with SH.

[Anonymous]

A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids. Problem is, when and if all the 5th graders at Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO WIlson actually matriculate to SH, there truly would be no more space for another school to feed in there.

It's not like the airlines, where you can overbook and then kick some out.

I am sure the Cluster is trying to fill those last few seats before the official head count in a few days. All the schools are doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids.

Actually, it does because that now means that SH has gone through the entire waitlist and is that the very dead end of that. And that waitlist would have by now contained at least 40 OOB applicants, in whose place would have been 40 children from feeder schools.
And what actually bothers me more: Watkins must have gone through all its waitlists, which are notoriously stuffed with OOB, non Capitol Hill applicants, and funnel those kids to SH and then say, oh sorry we can't add other feeder schools.
That is a problem for the rest of us, who have kids at schools that have top notch programs with enrollments that are bursting at the seams but (as of now) no viable middle school option to feed towards. That is the problem with the Cluster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids. Problem is, when and if all the 5th graders at Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO WIlson actually matriculate to SH, there truly would be no more space for another school to feed in there.

It's not like the airlines, where you can overbook and then kick some out.

I am sure the Cluster is trying to fill those last few seats before the official head count in a few days. All the schools are doing it.

My thoughts exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids.

Actually, it does because that now means that SH has gone through the entire waitlist and is that the very dead end of that. And that waitlist would have by now contained at least 40 OOB applicants, in whose place would have been 40 children from feeder schools.
And what actually bothers me more: Watkins must have gone through all its waitlists, which are notoriously stuffed with OOB, non Capitol Hill applicants, and funnel those kids to SH and then say, oh sorry we can't add other feeder schools.
That is a problem for the rest of us, who have kids at schools that have top notch programs with enrollments that are bursting at the seams but (as of now) no viable middle school option to feed towards. That is the problem with the Cluster.

YES! It's not like Brent has a huge graduating class that S-H couldn't accomodate. Only 20 kids graduated from Brent's 5th grade last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids. Problem is, when and if all the 5th graders at Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO WIlson actually matriculate to SH, there truly would be no more space for another school to feed in there.

It's not like the airlines, where you can overbook and then kick some out.

I am sure the Cluster is trying to fill those last few seats before the official head count in a few days. All the schools are doing it.



----------------------

Where are all those Watkins, L-T and JO wilson kids going, if not to S-H? And why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids.

Actually, it does because that now means that SH has gone through the entire waitlist and is that the very dead end of that. And that waitlist would have by now contained at least 40 OOB applicants, in whose place would have been 40 children from feeder schools.
And what actually bothers me more: Watkins must have gone through all its waitlists, which are notoriously stuffed with OOB, non Capitol Hill applicants, and funnel those kids to SH and then say, oh sorry we can't add other feeder schools.
That is a problem for the rest of us, who have kids at schools that have top notch programs with enrollments that are bursting at the seams but (as of now) no viable middle school option to feed towards. That is the problem with the Cluster.

+1

[Anonymous]

Watkins lost 20 5th graders to Basis, Latin, better DCPS that feed to Deal, parochials and private. Mainly BASIS, though. No faith in S-H. No real public HS option.

[Anonymous]

Yes! This is a huge problem. If you could get Stuart Hobson to have a feed from Watkins, Brent and Maury along with other Capitol Hill schools, it would have a fighting chance of being a viable neighborhood middle school that would compete with Basis, Latin, Deal.

But who has the courage and intelligence and knowledge to work this out? It's complicated. Brent tried really hard a few years ago and was shut down by the powers that be in DCPS and some others here in the neighborhood.

Maybe if we consolidated all the middle school $$$$ and Capitol Hill feeders at Eliot-Hine? They are working on an International Baccalaureate Program there that should be poised to take off. But currently, the money is being poured into renovations at S-H. Any chance that will make Cluster parents think twice about keeping their kids at SH rather than charters?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids.

Actually, it does because that now means that SH has gone through the entire waitlist and is that the very dead end of that. And that waitlist would have by now contained at least 40 OOB applicants, in whose place would have been 40 children from feeder schools.
And what actually bothers me more: Watkins must have gone through all its waitlists, which are notoriously stuffed with OOB, non Capitol Hill applicants, and funnel those kids to SH and then say, oh sorry we can't add other feeder schools.
That is a problem for the rest of us, who have kids at schools that have top notch programs with enrollments that are bursting at the seams but (as of now) no viable middle school option to feed towards. That is the problem with the Cluster.

It's not a problem with the cluster specifically. The same problem occurs (at least historically) at schools that feed to Deal, OOB kids enter in 4th 5th grade to schools especially Shepherd, Eaton, Hearst, that feed to an overcrowded Deal. That is happening less as Janney, Lafayette, and to a lesser extent Murch are putting the brakes on OOB admits.

The system wide problem is with the 2009 policy change, that allows OOB students at a feeder school the right to attend the next school in the feeder pattern. The cluster set that up as a cluster specific policy back in the day, but now it exists throughout the system.

The problem has a root cause that there even is an OOB system. To really have neighborhood schools, there should be no OOB system, and if you don't go to a charter you go only to your neighborhood school. That would make it obvious where the students live, and which schools need to close because there are not enough students in the neighborhood to support the school. Either no kids live there, the kids go charter, the kids go parochial/private. But to fill neighborhood schools with kids who don't live in the neighborhood means you don't have a neighborhood school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few spots open at SH does not mean that an entire school ( say Brent ) could fit in as a feeder school. That's 40 or so kids.

Actually, it does because that now means that SH has gone through the entire waitlist and is that the very dead end of that. And that waitlist would have by now contained at least 40 OOB applicants, in whose place would have been 40 children from feeder schools.
And what actually bothers me more: Watkins must have gone through all its waitlists, which are notoriously stuffed with OOB, non Capitol Hill applicants, and funnel those kids to SH and then say, oh sorry we can't add other feeder schools.
That is a problem for the rest of us, who have kids at schools that have top notch programs with enrollments that are bursting at the seams but (as of now) no viable middle school option to feed towards. That is the problem with the Cluster.

YES! It's not like Brent has a huge graduating class that S-H couldn't accomodate. Only 20 kids graduated from Brent's 5th grade last year.

Now, Brent has at least 40, more like 50 per grade ( wasn't true before ). If they all followed the feeder pattern and stayed for 5th at Brent, it would be almost 50 kids with rights to S-H.