Why re-district JKLM; why won't DCPS build additions and/or a new ES in Upper NW? Q from Cap Hill
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Anonymous
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Down here in the Brent District, parents of little kids are waking up to the reality that the JKLM schools have, in several cases, had classrooms trailers on their grounds for over a decade. We're expecting our school to become similarly crowded as the years roll by, even if re-districting shrinks our 9-block square district.
Tell us, Upper NW folk, why hasn't DCPS put additions onto your schools if they're bursting at the seams, and have been for years? Why won't DCPS build a new ES in Upper NW rather than think in terms of pushing Lafayette families EotP to the Brightwood Ed. campus (where overall DC-CAS proficiency rates are more than 60 points lower), and whatever else they're considering on the boundary revision front? Why 500 - 700 kids at all your schools, seemingly without plans or budgets to add permanent classroom space to relatively spacious campuses? Is that right? Are obnoxious politics all to blame or what? How do hot elementary schools look ahead 3-5 years to head off the use of trailers? We don't have room for more than one or two on Brent's postage-stamp sized playground. But we do have a wing that's just one-story and probably could become two with the right inputs. Maury, also staring into the crowding abyss, does have room and will get a permanent addition in one or two years. Thanks for the advice. |
Anonymous
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Good question, OP.
The answer is Gray, Kaya and the city council members won't play ball before 2014. With DCPS closing 13 schools in NE and SE, forget it. When they go, additions might be planned, or even a new school. Lafayette might even be renovated at long last. Janney's recent renovation barely stemmed the tide; action is too little too late. ASK TO PUT IN FOR AN ADDITION ASAP (you will need at least a 5-year lead). |
Anonymous
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Lafayette has been pushing to expand and modernize forever. It just never happens.
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Anonymous
| And remember that Fenty was criticized for allegedly favoring Ward 3 projects over other parts of the city, even though the facts were otherwise. As a result, the Gray administration, which is cautious to begin with, has taken things very sl-o-o-o-w with fully funding new school projects west of Rock Creek Park. |
Anonymous
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You will become overcrowded OP, with DCPS claiming they didn't see it coming. Trailers baby, trailers. Your best hope of real walls is a new mayor.
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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You will get trailers or be reconfigured to make more classrooms (actually reconfigured first then trailers is typical). I know the lot is small but you would be surprised at how adept DCPS is at getting trailers to fit.
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Anonymous
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Even just looking at our (one-block) street, it's insane how fast demographic changes. One year, it's all babies, the next it's all toddlers, then it's all preschoolers etc. If our block doesn't change radically in the next couple of years, it'll be about half a classroom of middleschoolers in a few short years, maybe with a late-arriving preschooler thrown in here and there. The point I'm trying to make it this: The demographic fluctuations that any bit and piece of the city is subject to, within a 9 block square, or even a 16 block square, area are huge. I can totally see a city's point in saying that mobile classrooms are a much better way to deal with such fluctuations. Calling them trailers really doesn't do anyone justice. Deal calls the "cottages". They're not the end of the world! Even better would be to design the feeding patterns in such a way that they automatically adjust to such demographic patterns.
And let's not forget that the market can also get working here. If you don't like an over-crowded school, then cash out and buy yourself a house a few blocks over in the Payne district. Or apply OOB to less crowded schools, or go charter. It's not like there aren't any options! |
Anonymous
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And let's not forget that the market can also get working here. If you don't like an over-crowded school, then cash out and buy yourself a house a few blocks over in the Payne district. Or apply OOB to less crowded schools, or go charter. It's not like there aren't any options!
OP again. There are options of course, just not very good ones. No high-SES kids at Payne above PreK, and, apparently, any momentum to keep any even for K. Ludlow-Taylor, JO Wilson, Tyler Traditional and Miner are a little better, but not much, Peabody is jammed, Tyler Spanish Immersion, SWS and Logan Montessori limit intake, and every charter ES with high-SES kids but 2 Rivers (with dozens of applicants for each spot below 2nd grade) is six or seven miles away. I can see that crowding and trailers/cottages aren't the end of the world, or Lafayette parents wouldn't be petitioning to maintain their school's boundaries. Brent would survive without the asphalt area of the playground for play, although parents of older kids and neighbors on N. Carolina would surely hate trailers. What I still don't understand is why DCPS doesn't add permanent additions to super crowded schools like Murch and Lafayette, or build a new school, in zones experiencing steady year on year increases in the number of children being born in a school district, or moving in. |
Anonymous
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I think you make a fine point.
DC could buy the episcopal school for children at Utah and Nebraska avenues and make a great pre k to 5 for ward 4 kids. That's a beautiful building and grounds. |
Anonymous
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+1. Excellent idea.
Fact is, DCPS is bad at right-sizing schools in both low-SES and high-SES neighborhoods. Simple incompetence. Any wonder that, within a few years, we will be the country's only school system with a majority of students in charters? I'm holding out hope that Gray either won't run or won't win, opening the door to the election of a mayor who will appoint a schools chancellor with the moxie to right-size more schools. Kaya's nonsense about hanging onto a dozen shuttered buildings in poor neighborhoods to deal with future overflow needs to go. Auction off buildings and pay for more capacity in areas where more is needed. WotP needs more capacity right now, and the Hill will shortly if more than half the schools remain Ward 7 and 8 enclaves. In other cities, GT programs popular with middle-class families are set up in struggling and under-enrolled schools to draw in strong students fast. |
Anonymous
| One neighborhood full of children don't justify larger buildings. The boundaries of the school can be the determing factor. More importantly it has to be a wave of more students and not just a sprinkle. |
Anonymous
And where would you.propose the Episcopal kids go? |
Anonymous
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A school closer to their neighborhood. The nonprofit could buy a building with the proceeds from the sale of the land.
None of the kids there come from 20015, as you know |
Anonymous
Not practical for the boundaries of the over-crowded school to be the determining factor in a city where one school has test scores in the 80s and an under-enrolled neighboring school has test scores in the 20s or 30s. Parents won't go to the other school; they'll go to privates, charters MoCo or VA first. Who gains? |