Shaw Middle School -- what's the plan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Banneker expansion is Bowser’s talking point re: Wilson overcrowding. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/764646.page

I’m the OP of that thread. The way Bowser talked about Banneker moving to Shaw, she made it seem like a fait accompli. It’s happening and the train has long left the station.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Banneker expansion is Bowser’s talking point re: Wilson overcrowding. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/764646.page

I’m the OP of that thread. The way Bowser talked about Banneker moving to Shaw, she made it seem like a fait accompli. It’s happening and the train has long left the station.

But the move is not a fait accompli as far as the Council is concerned. Banneker will be renovated and expanded, no one questions that. But it's definitely still up in the air as to how and where in terms of getting the funding. It's pretty clear that the Shaw MS issue needs to be sorted out too and that the issues are now tied together, unfortunately.

[Anonymous]

Also, Banneker deserved better than a DCPS plan that steamrolls other communities. But the plain disregard for the future of Shaw 3rd to 5th graders isn't the right way to go either. These are strong feeder schools and it's sad to see the apparent disregard for these kids. If DCPS has a new plan for them, it sure hasn't been announced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Banneker expansion is Bowser’s talking point re: Wilson overcrowding. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/764646.page

This isn’t really new. Antwan W said the same over and over — they want to get people in the Wilson feeder pattern to choose alternative schools. Adding another 75 slots to Banneker, a proven school, isn’t a bad idea.

I'm fine with expanding Banneker, and I think with the city's growth and school improvement they will be able to keep academic standards high.

But I still think that it isn't fair to promise something in the boundary plan and then yoink it away without a real process. And that the middle school grades for the Cardozo pyramid need some serious intervention.

Also, there is more than enough room to expand Banneker at the current site. This was the option preferred by parents and the most of the SIT. Moving it to Shaw Jr High is a terrible idea. Expand where it is.

Is there room to add 300 students at the current Banneker site? It doesn’t really look like it, but maybe I’m missing something. Seems like the Shaw site would be easier to access for kids from across the city (closer to metro & more bus lines) but I know that’s not everything (see: Duke Ellington).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

Yes. So since the gentrifiers in the neighborhood have shown NO commitment to upper grades at these elementaries, much less MS an HS, why should they build an expensive MS. Build a new Banneker, a school you KNOW will fill, and that has been in subpar facilities for a long time.

Banneker is one of the few schools that works in DCPS. And yet most of its students are not coming from one of the MS you design worthy of your children attending. Open your minds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

Yes. So since the gentrifiers in the neighborhood have shown NO commitment to upper grades at these elementaries, much less MS an HS, why should they build an expensive MS. Build a new Banneker, a school you KNOW will fill, and that has been in subpar facilities for a long time.

Banneker is one of the few schools that works in DCPS. And yet most of its students are not coming from one of the MS you design worthy of your children attending. Open your minds.

They have shown no commitment because DCPS has shown no commitment! They have had since 2014, or really since the initial closure, to come up with a plan for Shaw Middle. And what do we have? No plan. Take away the building that was promised? So now there's even less of a plan than before. Sorry but people don't want to be treated that way. If the city wanted to work TOGETHER with feeder parents instead of against them, then maybe they would consider staying longer. Until then, why would anyone think that's going to result in a quality education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

Yes. So since the gentrifiers in the neighborhood have shown NO commitment to upper grades at these elementaries, much less MS an HS, why should they build an expensive MS. Build a new Banneker, a school you KNOW will fill, and that has been in subpar facilities for a long time.

Banneker is one of the few schools that works in DCPS. And yet most of its students are not coming from one of the MS you design worthy of your children attending. Open your minds.

Banneker is under-enrolled now, in the space it currently has. Moving it to the Shaw site will have zero impact on enrollment numbers. And, there's plenty of space at the current location, in fact the Banneker SiT recommended enclosing the tennis courts on the site to expand the building itself - renovation at the Euclid location if fully possible.

Also, Banneker isn't a neighborhood school. We need strong schools from elementary through high school with feeder patterns that make sense. DCPS keeps saying they've got a plan, so let's see it delivered and the promises made to Shaw fulfilled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

On the contrary, I think it would really help. Getting an okay middle school would mean that you can then apply to Banneker/SWW/McKinley/Ellington, and it gives a few more chances to lottery into Latin/BASIS, DCI, or a Wilson feeder. That would mean people don't feel like the have to bail in upper elementary. Middle school is the weak link in DCPS, not high school.

Seaton and Garrison are doing so well lately. It saddens me that DCPS won't focus attention on this issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS wants to build or create a MS that will work for these feeders it really needs to start listening to the populations who go there and their leadership. Are these schools saying Cardozo sounds like a good long term plan? If you are hearing resistance to that idea then aren’t you setting yourself up for failure...again???? What other options might cost about the same and be better received? It seems to me that DCPS is living in a bubble with its own feedback loop with some misinformed assumptions and now is engaging in CYA.

I agree with this. Even if Shew is opened and functions well, many families will choose other options with a guaranteed path to a decent high school. We are inbounds for Cardozo, but I don't know of anyone who would send their kids there. I was hopeful that the families who are sending their kids to Cardozo for MS might be able to help improve the HS; however, I'm not sure there have been any signs of this happening yet.

On the contrary, I think it would really help. Getting an okay middle school would mean that you can then apply to Banneker/SWW/McKinley/Ellington, and it gives a few more chances to lottery into Latin/BASIS, DCI, or a Wilson feeder. That would mean people don't feel like the have to bail in upper elementary. Middle school is the weak link in DCPS, not high school.

Seaton and Garrison are doing so well lately. It saddens me that DCPS won't focus attention on this issue.

As a parent at one of these schools it is infuriating the way DCPS doesn't care. The process is broken. Trust is broken. And Paul Kihn is going to be a lap dog.

[Anonymous]

Outside of the middle school issue in Shaw, I see a lot of people moving for reasons unrelated to MS as their kids approach end of elementary school. Many of us are in small homes/condos and as teen years approach, desire a larger home, perhaps with a basement, some green space, etc. In areas of the city closer to downtown, it seems like there are fewer amenities and activities once your kids approach the end of ES. So yes, the lack of middle school doesn't help, but there are other reasons that people move once the kids get older.

[Anonymous]

If you’re for Shaw MS, explain how you get there with a mayor who’s dead set on pushing Banneker in that space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re for Shaw MS, explain how you get there with a mayor who’s dead set on pushing Banneker in that space.

The Council controls funding, not the mayor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re for Shaw MS, explain how you get there with a mayor who’s dead set on pushing Banneker in that space.

The Council controls funding, not the mayor.

The starting point for the budget is what the mayor submits. The Council holds hearings, shifts things around. If they shift things around too much the mayor can veto it. Lots of negotiations to come.

But Shaw parents should know that in the eyes of DCPS, they really don't believe you will ever come to a new Shaw middle. They assume you will go elsewhere for middle school, and then return for an application high school. They will claim your children as DCPS graduates.

DCPS and the mayor have heard all the same things from the parents in the Brookland / MacFarland / Eastern HS feeder patterns as you are saying now, and in those cases the white parents didn't show up.

Remember when Grosso and K. Henderson said at a hearing that the parents who were inbound for Jefferson didn't choose it because they were racists? I think he is going to side with Bowser on this one.

[Anonymous]

^^^THIS^^^ This in the end is why you lose. Because they don’t believe you are in any way committed to attend.