Eagle Academy Board votes to close school
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Anonymous
There are DCPS schools that serve the SW Eagle Academy have taken in about 45 in-bounds students total. This means that these DCPS schools were last week scrambling to find desks for these children, let alone instructor ratios. |
Anonymous
*clarifying about 45 total. There are likely more at other schools. Just a preventable, unnecessarily stressful and last minute decision for parents and schools. |
Anonymous
PP here. Yes, our school is one of the seven you listed. Staff indicated that the last-minute enrollments were well beyond what they'd expect in a typical year and directly attributed it to Eagle's closure. |
Anonymous
Van Ness and Amidon both had a significant number of last minute enrollments (approximately 15 and 30 from what I understand) from the Eagle Academy that was in Buzzard Point. Those schools will both do a great job of welcoming new families, but that’s a huge burden on the teachers and administrators, and of course on the Eagle families as well. |
Anonymous
| Of course, Eagle only serves PK-3rd, so rising 4th graders should not be counted. They would have had to change schools regardless. |
Anonymous
In 22-23, there were 22 kids at Eagle Capitol Riverfront who lived in bounds for Van Ness and 12 who lived in bounds for Amidon. Eagle lost students since then. And some of the kids who were enrolled when it closed were going to start PK3 or PK4, where the DCPS in-bounds school does not need to accept them. Closing Eagle at this late date is certainly disruptive to families and DCPS schools--a massive failure of Eagle's board and the DCPCSB. But it would really surprise me if either Van Ness or Amidon had 30 kids, who live in bounds and had been attending Eagle, enroll in grades K-3 this month. Especially given that these families would already have had a right to attend their IB school and preferred a charter and the Post said there was a fair at Eagle featuring schools with open spaces (the schools mentioned in the article as enrolling three of the 350 former Eagle students were Childrens Guild and Ingenuity Prep). |
Anonymous
Well, I guess be surprised. What exactly would be the incentive for DCPS parents, teachers, and admin to lie about this? |
Anonymous
Admins could use it as cover for making changes to class rosters, personnel, or space/money allocations that they wanted to do anyway (for example, finding out that two kids assigned to the same class don't get along so moving one). It's also a good rationale for being slow to respond to existing parents or otherwise being disorganized. Or the school took kids they weren't required to take (OOB, PreK) and doesn't want to say so. Or the principal is new and doesn't realize how many families usually enroll at the last minute and is assuming it's all due to Eagle when some of it isn't. Or someone misspoke, misunderstood, estimated, or exaggerated. Not necessarily a lie, and not done with bad intent. It is theoretically possible that while Eagle's enrollment was dropping, the number of kids there who live in-bounds for Amidon and Van Ness went from 34 kids across six grades to at least 45 across four grades. It is also theoretically possible that 45 of those enrolled Eagle students--all of whom had previously eschewed the IB DCPS they had a right to attend--enrolled there rather than picking another charter or an OOB DCPS or homeschooling or a private or parochial. But it doesn't seem likely. |
Anonymous
Let’s not theoretically disparage the folks who have been moving mountains to make this work. |
Anonymous
Based on this comment you clearly know very little about these schools or the neighborhoods they serve. |
Anonymous
I was swimming in the pro-charter policy waters 20 years ago when this all was catching on, and I think you’re wrong. That’s probably what it has become, but that wasn’t the concept. |
Anonymous
+1 It seems like a poster or two is going to downplay this as no big deal for any of the neighborhood schools. Meanwhile their kid is probably at an upper NW school that is not affected at all by this. At some smaller elementary schools even 5 or 6 kids added to an already crowded grade can be difficult to accommodate. |
Anonymous
| I live in bounds for amidon and I am skeptical that they got 15 or 30 kids in grades k-3 this month who were previously enrolled at eagle. I am familiar with the school, have lived in the neighborhood for over 15 years, and participated in the more recent and the previous boundary process. I like the school, and Van Ness, a lot. I am sure that whether the number of new kids is 5 or 25 or something else it is hard for the school and the families to cope. But the data don't support what is being posted here. |
Anonymous
Navy Yard and SW have added a ton of housing stock over the last several years. Eagle Academy was located right next to the Navy Yard Metro until SY20-21 when they moved to their less accessible SW campus. Both could easily explain why the data from two years ago doesn't align with what people are saying. https://open.dc.gov/36000by2025/ https://wtop.com/business-finance/2023/10/two-dc-zip-codes-lead-nation-for-new-apartment-construction/ |
Anonymous
| The data being cited is from the 22-3 school year. And all reports on eagle enrollment shows it declined since then...which is how they ran out of money and needed to close. But none of us here know the actual numbers and either way it's a shame for everyone affected. The school should have announced its closure before the lottery and then closed in June to allow for a smoother transition. That the school board didn't monitor it closely enough to make that happen is an embarrassment. |