Question for Supporters of New WotP High School
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Anonymous
| Go hardy!!! |
Anonymous
Winning students back from charters does nothing to alleviate the over-crowding at Deal and Wilson. Good charters are taking some of the pressure OFF of Deal and Wilson. |
Revitalize
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Very cool. Thanks Jeff. |
Anonymous
Doh! Students in HS EoTP - DO NOT!!! repeat DO NOT!!! have a decent neighborhood high school. The only group that has a decent neighborhood HS is the "neighborhood" that is IB for Wilson. The next closest option for creating a good neighborhood school is to create a new WoTP HS and possibly split the Wilson and up-coming surge of high school students into this new HS -- which has been proposed for Western/Ellington site. At that point, you might have locked in WoTP attendence in quality HS and have created some additional OOB seats to take some of the EoTP students. Or you could rebuild Eastern, or Roosevelt... |
Anonymous
Why would we create a new WOTP HS when the up-coming surge of students is EAST of the park? Does it really make sense to keep planning OOB seats for that projected growth? |
Anonymous
Thank you for pointing out the obvious! That's not sarcasm, btw. It's ridiculous how that keeps getting lost. A new HS is NOT necessary WotP. There are several under-enrolled high schools (read: all of them) EotP, and that is where the desperate need for a quality program is. I favor Cardozo for reasons of geography but could be happy with Roosevelt for the clean slate, since it's undergoing renovation right now. Hell, Coolidge should be considered as well. Renaming any of them is absurd and insulting, that idea needs to be let go. Instead, open an academy program inside one of them and pour resources into it. Those resources need to be more than just the capital investments we can see: labs, theaters, fields, etc. They need to be programming resources: Commit to some elite athletic options: lacrosse, field hockey, crew, or golf. Most of all commit to a destination school EAST of the Park, where the actual need is. |
Anonymous
PP poster here: DCPS has not had success luring white high performing students to any comprehensive HS EoTP. Eastern HS is the latest attempt to create a new HS to attract high-SES families. They staged the enrollment to make it a nice, clean break from the old "failing" school. And still, DCPS failed in their attempts to get any white families to select the new school. It's already been proven that families EoTP will send their kids across town for better schools. It has been demonstrated that WoTP families mostly won't. So if you want a new neighborhood school that is of high quality, (which quality hinges primarily on the SES of the families sending students), you need to locate it in a neighborhood where the residents are high-SES and willing to send their children to the neighborhood school. It's true that most of the new need for a quality program comes from students living EoTP but it has been demonstrated that unless a school gets a certain level of proficient white students it won't be a school that high-SES white parents will send their children to. Both McKinley and Banneker are filled with proficient students, but the white population is zero percent. According to DCPS building utilization figures there are 130 spaces that could be added to McKinley Tech HS and there are 190 spaces that could be created at Banneker if there was a surge. How would a magnet school or a magnet academy inside a comprehensive HS differ from an application only HS and why would parents prefer this to an application school like Banneker and McKinley Tech?. If the answer is only that it would be a neighborhood school then you would need some way to insure that there would be enough neighborhood participation by proficient "diverse" students. There is both a minimum level of "diversity" needed to label a school as acceptable, and a tipping point where the school is recognized as a preferred destination. Old Wilson, pre-renovation was "acceptable". Post-renovation Wilson is a preferred destination. Once a school has become a preferred destination the utilization numbers go over 100% pretty quickly, so you can take a look at the DCPS figures to see what schools have the quality. Getting this "quality demographic" set of "new" students for a "new" school across all grades at once is nearly impossible. So how do you grow a "diverse" high-quality school? How many students do you need to seed it so that it is acceptable and the parents will not flee? Can you get them from the neighborhood? A plan should give a number of students that are needed in first year, second year to grow the demographic and identify where these students will come from (all EoTP? / former Wilson? / commuting from WoTP / re-joining DCPS)? What incentives do these parents need to take a gamble on the new program that hasn't been vetted by others that they trust? Can you fund the incentives? You mention all the AP classes at Wilson and top-flight teachers. Put a price tag on that. Why would Roosevelt turn out any differently than Eastern? |
jsteele
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It is closer to the people who might likely attend it. I like a lot of the points in your message, but I think you concentrated too much on race. When you write, "unless a school gets a certain level of proficient white students it won't be a school that high-SES white parents will send their children to", I don't agree with you. EotP park there are a growing number of integrated neighborhoods in which residents are less likely to view others strictly in terms of race. I think it is better to focus on factors such as DC-CAS proficiency and preparedness for a rigorous education (which may be indicated by factors other than testing). For lack of a better term, I would simply call this group "prepared students'. If the number of prepared students at an EotP (but still close to the park) high school that offered challenging and rigorous programs was north of 50%, residents would show great interest regardless of race. |
Anonymous
Roosevelt would be different because two things have changed pretty dramatically in the last few years. They are 1) the demographics, and 2) the housing and school options available to families. A LOT of young couples bought homes EOTP in the last 5-7 years, before they had kids, and they're still here. More are coming. When the DC USA shopping mall, Giant grocery store and 11th Street corridor of restaurants opened back in 2007, you had an influx of buyers who sent housing prices way up. That phenomenon is pushing its way up the path of the green and yellow Metro line. If you've got a HHI around $150K and you're looking for a starter home on a tree-lined street, the smart housing investment right now is in walking distance of the Petworth Metro station, just a few blocks from MacFarland MS and Roosevelt High. The same is happening along the H street corridor in NE. Couples are buying their homes in areas they previously would not have been caught in dead or alive, and they're making their decisions before they've had kids or even thought about the school situation. The economic development is not slowing down. I'm looking at a house across the street from mine in Petworth. Two months ago it was a run-down shell that had been empty for more than a decade. Now it's been renovated and will go on the market shortly for about $870k. Who's buying homes at that price point? High SES families who have young kids or will have them soon. So we've also made conscientious home-buying decisions, and we want to stay in them. The decision now that we have school-aged children is, do we sell and move WOTP to add to the overcrowding there, or do we stay and invest in the continually-rising schools over here? The answer to that is positive at the elementary school level, but it gets murky when we think about MS. If DCPS wants to hold on to higher SES families EOTP, they have to grab them NOW while they're making decisions about PK. And then they have to keep them by assuring that there's something to look forward to at MS and HS. They're already telling us that Deal/Wilson ain't it, so they have to convince us that somrthing else here in our back yard is something we can count in ten years out. From what I've heard, this was the same scenario in Ward 3 less than ten years ago. People invested in the neighborhoods, but they needed to be convinced to invest in the schools. So the same can be done over here. I believe it. |
Anonymous
Love what you're saying and hope there are many others like you. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there was talk of a new charter opening in your neighborhood, giving your neighbors the option (if they get lucky in the lottery!) of a good ms/hs without having to do the work of getting DCPS to cooperate with getting a good neighborhood school up and running. I hope I'm wrong, but I think DCPS is more eager to help charters than it is to help parents. Keep that in mind when dealing with them. |
Anonymous
PP here and I don't agree that DCPS wants to help charters. I believe opening up PS and PK was, in part, a gambit against charters. DCPS can get more families in the door if they make PK4 a guaranteed right at neighborhood schools. I also think the unified lottery is the same gambit. The overwhelming majority of participants are new to the schools game. Previously, the approach for families EOTP was to talk to neighbors and friends, peruse and search DCUM for the most talked about schools, and line up a mix of mostly charters and a few DCPS. Maybe there were 2-5 decent DCPS you could envision for your child, most of those only for the near-term before you jump again for something better. But limiting the number of schools that could be ranked forced parents to do more research and, hedging bets against the outrageous wait lists at charters and WOTP schools, many more parents considered DCPS elementary schools for their PS and PK kids that they would not have considered previously. For one thing, it was too much work to visit every single school profile online. MySchoolDC put the quick stats right in your face. And maybe the majority of those who were shut out in the first round will just go back to their private preschool or daycare, but there are others who are taking a look at those never-discussed schools for the second round. Maybe they'll get involved and start advocating for more parents to join them. Two years ago, I would have said no way to Powell and Bruce Monroe; this year both schools have wait lists. I drive by Garrison ES a lot and had no idea there was such an enthusiastic group of parents there - until I considered it as a "safety choice" on my ranking and did some research. Some of those parents are going to jump ship at the first opportunity, but some are going to stay and others will join them. Now that DCPS is getting parents in the door EOTP, they have to keep them. It's not too early to start enticing them with EOTP middle and high schools. In fact, if more charters open up, it will be too late. And for those who say there are not enough students who could go a new MacFarland or Roosevelt right now, consider this: - the number of students EOTP currently going to Deal http://edu.codefordc.org/#!/school/405 - and the number going to Wilson http://edu.codefordc.org/#!/school/463 You can't tell me that all of those coming from EOTP are low-scoring, low-income students. And you can't tell me they'd keep choosing Deal/Wilson if they had a closer option that offered the same quality experience. Finally, I'll say this: I firmly believe that at least some of the challenge OOB students have in their schools can be attributed to the jumping around to different schools that so many families do and the stress of commuting. When you can keep a cohort of kids close to home and at the same school until their transition to the next, I think you raise their chances of doing well. |
Anonymous
| Wow, thanks for the CodeForDC link! That's great stuff! |
Anonymous
So we can conclude that (1) Deal and Wilson are not at capacity. If that's the case, then what is all the fuss about? (2 However, if they are at or projected to be over capacity, and you don't want to add capacity west of the Park, then the solution is (a) eliminate feeder rights for OOB students or (b) constrict the boundaries of the IB area for those schools, by pulling in the outermost eastern border. It makes no sense whatsoever to send kids who live west of Rock Creek a greater distance to attend a school east of the park, when kids who live east of the park would be traveling a greater distance to Wilson than to some other, closer option. Remember, what started the whole conversation was DME suggestion that Hardy would feed to a new high school to be built west of Rock Creek Park. Was a misrepresentation? |
Anonymous
| Nothing to add other than I am liking this Roosevelt idea. |
Anonymous
Whether or not you agree is not the issue. I am speculating and ask you to stay alert to signs that DCPS is supporting charters. |