Coffee in Lincoln Park with David Catania

[Anonymous]

Ask him if he'd consider ending the current rule (in place since 2009) that once you get in to an OOB school you get to go to its destination school.

Ending this rule would:

* keep more kids in good elementaries and middle schools that don't feed Wilson (all of Ward 6 now with the boundary changes, also Ross and probably others) through grade 5...thus raising their test scores and allowing for more of the per-pupil funding

* reduce overcrowding at Deal, Wilson, and their feeders

* allow people who moved to the area with older kids or weren't successful in elementary school lotteries to have a chance of attending Deal and Wilson OOB

This is my main issue with the DME's plan. I know there are parents who got into Hearst and would raise hell if that meant they didn't have a right to Wilson over the next couple decades for their 3yo and his unborn siblings, but she could have grandfathered those kids in and changed the rule going forward. I hope Catania will consider making that change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ask him if he'd consider ending the current rule (in place since 2009) that once you get in to an OOB school you get to go to its destination school.

Ending this rule would:

* keep more kids in good elementaries and middle schools that don't feed Wilson (all of Ward 6 now with the boundary changes, also Ross and probably others) through grade 5...thus raising their test scores and allowing for more of the per-pupil funding

* reduce overcrowding at Deal, Wilson, and their feeders

* allow people who moved to the area with older kids or weren't successful in elementary school lotteries to have a chance of attending Deal and Wilson OOB

This is my main issue with the DME's plan. I know there are parents who got into Hearst and would raise hell if that meant they didn't have a right to Wilson over the next couple decades for their 3yo and his unborn siblings, but she could have grandfathered those kids in and changed the rule going forward. I hope Catania will consider making that change.

You are not going to get much of an appetite for this question in Ward 6.

[Anonymous]

What would you want Catania to do in terms of legislation or policy for Seaton?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Catania's going to lose bigtime, and is going to be off the counsel soon enough.

I'll go to LP to ask him if he's ever thought about trying to convince the counsel to get DCPS to give school principals cash bonuses for attracting and keeping in-boundary residents, just like they give for raising test scores.

But I can't get excited about another meet and greet. He's almost out of the picture already.

It's "Council" not "counsel." I hope that you didn't learn to spell at a DCPS. And yes, he will be off the Council - and sitting in the mayor's chair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the issue of PG cheaters really the most pressing issue facing DCPS? Hopefully you can come up with something more substantive as a topic of discussion. Remember, even if Catania loses to Bowser, he will continue to head the Education Committee and exert substantial influence on funding and policy priorities. Anyone in Ward 6 who is not concerned about middle schools has their heads in the sand.

I'm in Ward 6 and I'm more concerned about elementary rather than middle school. Not all of us have kids going to Brent or SWS.

I am continually perplexed by the naïveté of some DCUM posters. I have no real expectation that the Ward 6 middle school clister@&$@ will be fixed in time for my children to benefit but understand all-too-well that it needs to be fixed, something DCPS and Abby Smith can't quite seem to comprehend in their quest for social engineering experimentation. Middle schools and feeder patterns are policy issues that affect the number of Hill families committing to DCPS pst Fourth Grade, which they don't do with the exception of a few Cluster families who continue to Stuart-Hobson, but not Eastern. It's great the DME addressed the fact Hill families were divided among Eastern, Dunbar and Wilson, but the fact remains that none will ever get to Eastern if the path is through Jefferson or Eliot-Hine. So, what exactly do expect Catania or the Council to do for your elementary?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the issue of PG cheaters really the most pressing issue facing DCPS? Hopefully you can come up with something more substantive as a topic of discussion. Remember, even if Catania loses to Bowser, he will continue to head the Education Committee and exert substantial influence on funding and policy priorities. Anyone in Ward 6 who is not concerned about middle schools has their heads in the sand.

I'm in Ward 6 and I'm more concerned about elementary rather than middle school. Not all of us have kids going to Brent or SWS.

I am continually perplexed by the naïveté of some DCUM posters. I have no real expectation that the Ward 6 middle school clister@&$@ will be fixed in time for my children to benefit but understand all-too-well that it needs to be fixed, something DCPS and Abby Smith can't quite seem to comprehend in their quest for social engineering experimentation. Middle schools and feeder patterns are policy issues that affect the number of Hill families committing to DCPS pst Fourth Grade, which they don't do with the exception of a few Cluster families who continue to Stuart-Hobson, but not Eastern. It's great the DME addressed the fact Hill families were divided among Eastern, Dunbar and Wilson, but the fact remains that none will ever get to Eastern if the path is through Jefferson or Eliot-Hine. So, what exactly do expect Catania or the Council to do for your elementary?

I am glad to see that social engineering and social experiment have now been combined into one phrase. This will make the DCUM gentrification war drinking game even easier to play.

[Anonymous]

Charles Allen? Where is he? Has anyone tried to ask him about the middle school problem. So far all I hear is "we need to support our middle schools in infrastructure and programming".

Nope. We need a major re-look at feeder patterns, perhaps consolidating schools and resources. Perhaps more straight talk on high achieving and struggling students at middle schools and how it is/will be addressed.

We want Eastern to thrive we have GOT to do something other than the status quo on middle schools. Look at this map and how the Stuart Hobson boundary is illogical and causes physical as well as community division. Do SH graduates even consider Eastern?
http://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Final%20SY2015-16%20Feeder%20School%20Maps_ES%20to%20MS%20and%20MS%20to%20HS.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen? Where is he? Has anyone tried to ask him about the middle school problem. So far all I hear is "we need to support our middle schools in infrastructure and programming".

Nope. We need a major re-look at feeder patterns, perhaps consolidating schools and resources. Perhaps more straight talk on high achieving and struggling students at middle schools and how it is/will be addressed.

We want Eastern to thrive we have GOT to do something other than the status quo on middle schools. Look at this map and how the Stuart Hobson boundary is illogical and causes physical as well as community division. Do SH graduates even consider Eastern?
http://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Final%20SY2015-16%20Feeder%20School%20Maps_ES%20to%20MS%20and%20MS%20to%20HS.pdf

Could you please not capitalize GOT as it makes me think your are referring to Game of Thrones!

. . . Sorry, I couldn't help riffing on a complaint in another thread about posters referring to Capitol Hill as CH.

[Anonymous]

You're, not your. Damn autocorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ask him if he'd consider ending the current rule (in place since 2009) that once you get in to an OOB school you get to go to its destination school.

Ending this rule would:

* keep more kids in good elementaries and middle schools that don't feed Wilson (all of Ward 6 now with the boundary changes, also Ross and probably others) through grade 5...thus raising their test scores and allowing for more of the per-pupil funding

* reduce overcrowding at Deal, Wilson, and their feeders

* allow people who moved to the area with older kids or weren't successful in elementary school lotteries to have a chance of attending Deal and Wilson OOB

This is my main issue with the DME's plan. I know there are parents who got into Hearst and would raise hell if that meant they didn't have a right to Wilson over the next couple decades for their 3yo and his unborn siblings, but she could have grandfathered those kids in and changed the rule going forward. I hope Catania will consider making that change.

You are not going to get much of an appetite for this question in Ward 6.

Well, the parts of Ward 6 that used to be zoned for Wilson and were kicked out because of overcrowding are definitely interested in an answer. DME could have left the Wilson boundary alone if she had stopped the OOB destination school rule. If Wilson feeders started to have a higher IB percentage, then the boundaries would have to shrink, but that would be many years from now, if ever.

[Anonymous]

As afar as I can tell, SW families sat on their hands throughout the process and of the few Brent families who had feeder rights to Wilson, no one, including Catania, is going to take on their cause. There are myriad reasons for this, not the least of which being only one or two actually went on to attend Wilson. Catania has bigger fish to fry and is not going to stick out his neck on OOB feeder rights with no obvious political payoff.

[Anonymous]

The payoff for ending OOB feeder rights at good schools with bad feeder patterns (like Brent and Ross) and really any school that doesn't feed Wilson is that more kids will stay for 5th grade (increasing school funding and test scores) if they know that lotterying into a Deal or Hardy feeder isn't going to get them a seat in those middle schools and that they will have a chance to lottery in for 6th grade, and again for 9th grade at Wilson.

This doesn't prevent people from applying to charters or moving out of DC but it would make a difference.

[Anonymous]

I agree that the SW families and Brent didn't advocate, and are not likely to, especially with the path going through Jefferson.

I think that there is a significant percentage of Ward 6 that want continued access to WOTP elementaries that feed to Deal (and Hardy now) onto Wilson. Cutting off feeder rights is largely, probably not solely, a IB Deal position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The payoff for ending OOB feeder rights at good schools with bad feeder patterns (like Brent and Ross) and really any school that doesn't feed Wilson is that more kids will stay for 5th grade (increasing school funding and test scores) if they know that lotterying into a Deal or Hardy feeder isn't going to get them a seat in those middle schools and that they will have a chance to lottery in for 6th grade, and again for 9th grade at Wilson.

This doesn't prevent people from applying to charters or moving out of DC but it would make a difference.

This.

I strongly believe that OOB feeder rights are quite destabilizing to the whole system. They also make the early-years lotteries higher-stakes than they need to be, and exacerbate the shortage of seats at desirable schools by creating artificial shortage.

[Anonymous]

Everybody makes good points here, apparently without having noticed that we don't exist electorally on schools issues. If we did, Payne and Miner would gentrifier friendly by now, and Watkins wouldn't be a little less so with each passing year.

What is Catania going to do for us but lose the mayoral race and end up as a talking head gadfly on local TV? He couldn't win four years from now either.