Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Is it just me, or are people on DCUM very imprecise about option 2b, above? For example, given that the Deal boundary extends EOTP, why would you assume that shrinking the Wilson boundaries means it becomes exclusively WOTP?

The DME and committee, in contrast, are precise (see Policy Option B).

The real work on this issue is not done at the very big picture level like the PP and most posters on this thread (full credit for taking it seriously, though).

The real work is in tweaking Policy Option B as needed, in a very detailed way. For example, DME Smith reportedly said at the Hardy meeting (I was not there - see other thread) that if the Wilson boundaries were shrunk only as far as the current Hardy and Deal boundaries, this would likely solve the current overcrowding issue.

just to be clear (precise) that means:

1) Wilson boundaries shrunk to Deal and Hardy, which means that no-one currently IB gets cut out of Deal or Hardy and the only families cut from Wilson are those that aren't IB for Deal or Hardy - for example Southwest.
2) OOB students can stay if they want, now and forever, so long as the schools in question (ES, MS, HS) are still accepting OOB. Currently enrolled OOB students stay and follow the feeder patterns.
3) anticipating the time in the future when none of the ESs or MSs in this pyramid, or Wilson, will be accepting OOB naturally because they all have a lot of IB interest, have a 10-20% set-aside to ensure that they always take some OOB. This is now necessary at Janney, for example, but isn't yet necessary at Hearst, Murch or Hardy, for example.

The result will be a short-term crowding as all the OOB work their way through. IB will slowly replace OOB, up to the limit of the set-aside. No one gets zoned to a worse MS. Some people may get zoned from Wilson to a worse HS, but, just possibly, these are not people who were really planning on Wilson anyway, with some exceptions. (that is to say, how many people IB for Wilson but not IB for Deal or Hardy are planning on Wilson?)

In the meantime, lots of time to gradually build up schools for the OOB families that will gradually be replaced by IB at the above pyramid.

Emphasis on "gradually".

Does this sound like a reasonable way to go?

If the DME said that, the DME was wrong.

Here's the problem: DCPS policy is that if a school has capacity beyond the number of IB students it has to accept OOB students. The capacity of the schools that feed Deal, per grade, is greater than the capacity of Deal, per grade (although it's getting closer with the expansion of Deal). Similarly, the capacity of Deal and Hardy, per grade, is greater than the capacity of Wilson per grade.

You can't solve crowding at Deal by reducing its boundaries. Nobody is getting in as an OOB student at sixth grade, they're all coming in through the feeders. The only way to reduce the number of kids who have the right to attend is by either shrinking the capacity of the feeder schools, or reducing the number of feeder schools. If you shrunk the boundaries of the feeders it would mean the same number of kids, just more of them would be OOB.

Same deal with Wilson.

At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there. To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll. But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years. Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there. To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll. But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years. Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.

If I understand you what you're calling a "soft cap" is what others call converting the OOB feeder right to a preference -- the OOB kids from feeders participate in the OOB lottery, but in a new preference category. The number of seats in the lottery is determined by the actual capacity of the building.

Question: which is higher preference: feeder school, or non-feeder with sibling?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there. To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll. But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years. Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.

Would your "soft cap" pass court muster? Adjusting the firmness of the cap based on the population of students affected smells an awful lot like disparate impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would your "soft cap" pass court muster? Adjusting the firmness of the cap based on the population of students affected smells an awful lot like disparate impact.

Different poster. I seriously doubt any race-based court challenge would be successful. If you've read the court rulings from the 1970 timeframe, it should be clear what DCPS was doing then was pretty ridiculous. I've not seen any more modern court cases where a challenge to some similar action to the school boundaries proposed here has had any support at all. Indeed, some of the recent precedent from the Supreme Court might even suggest that a DCPS plan that reserves OOB spots for AA or Hispanic students would face court scrutiny as an equal protection violation. It seems pretty clear that so long as DCPS creates a plan that's race-neutral on its face, there will be no successful challenge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there. To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll. But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years. Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.

If I understand you what you're calling a "soft cap" is what others call converting the OOB feeder right to a preference -- the OOB kids from feeders participate in the OOB lottery, but in a new preference category. The number of seats in the lottery is determined by the actual capacity of the building.

Question: which is higher preference: feeder school, or non-feeder with sibling?

The way I was thinking about it was, the soft cap applies when the school reaches its pre-determined capacity. That is, once the soft cap is met, no more OOB students are allowed in. You could make an exception for siblings; and once you're in, the OOB students are not excluded from the feeder track. As long as DCPS narrows the boundaries for all of the schools and the feeder schools, and creates the soft cap, over-subscription problem would be resolved after a few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there. To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll. But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years. Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.

If I understand you what you're calling a "soft cap" is what others call converting the OOB feeder right to a preference -- the OOB kids from feeders participate in the OOB lottery, but in a new preference category. The number of seats in the lottery is determined by the actual capacity of the building.

Question: which is higher preference: feeder school, or non-feeder with sibling?

The way I was thinking about it was, the soft cap applies when the school reaches its pre-determined capacity. That is, once the soft cap is met, no more OOB students are allowed in. You could make an exception for siblings; and once you're in, the OOB students are not excluded from the feeder track. As long as DCPS narrows the boundaries for all of the schools and the feeder schools, and creates the soft cap, over-subscription problem would be resolved after a few years.

What you're describing is the current system. It's been years since Wilson or Deal admitted anyone in the OOB lottery, they are already far beyond their "pre-determined capacity." The kids who are attending Deal and Wilson OOB are doing so because they attended feeder schools, which would still be the case in your proposal. The root cause of crowding is that the Wilson feeders -- Deal and Hardy -- have more seats per grade than Wilson does. The Deal feeders have more seats per grade than Deal does. In each case there are feeder schools -- Hardy for Wilson, Eaton, Hearst, Bancroft and Shepherd for Deal -- that don't attract enough IB kids to fill the building, and are required to accept OOB kids to capacity. Shrinking the boundaries of any of the schools won't affect crowding, every seat will still be filled. It just means that more of those seats will be filled with OOB students.

To solve crowding at Deal you need to reduce the total number of seats in the feeder schools. You could do that by removing one or more schools as feeders, or by reducing the number of seats in the feeder schools. Similarly, to reduce crowding at Wilson you need to reduce the number of seats at Hardy and Deal combined. That can be done by removing one as a feeder, or by cutting seats at one or both.

Moving boundaries without cutting seats in the feeders has no impact on crowding.

I'll conclude by saying this is all fantasy, DCPS has shown zero willingness to take anything away from anyone, so cutting seats is a non-starter too.

[Anonymous]

This whole IB v OOB is so confusing the Wilson demographics sheet on DCPS says Wilson is 54% IB? The Wilson website says no OOB kids accepted in 2014-2015 school year BUT all who feed from a feeder school are accepted (along with matter of right IB address)

http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Wilson+High+School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole IB v OOB is so confusing the Wilson demographics sheet on DCPS says Wilson is 54% IB? The Wilson website says no OOB kids accepted in 2014-2015 school year BUT all who feed from a feeder school are accepted (along with matter of right IB address)

http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Wilson+High+School

I wouldn't say confusing, I'd say f****d up. More kids have been guaranteed the right to attend the school than the school can hold. DCPS wrote a check it can't cash.

It's been building for a few years. What really greased the skids was a decision Michelle Rhee made in 2009: Deal had suddenly become popular and there was concern that not everyone who wanted to go would be able to. Rhee announced that everyone in the feeder schools was guaranteed a spot at Deal. This decision guaranteed the crowding we have today. It hasn't helped that since then DCPS has been furiously adding capacity in the feeder schools, with no regard for what happens to those kids once they move up to the next school.

[Anonymous]

The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

Not going to happen. Hopefully for the 2014-2015 school year SWW will have its own principal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

The location and facilities of Francis Stevens would make a nice small high school for the inner city set. But where do you want to put the elementry the middle school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

The location and facilities of Francis Stevens would make a nice small high school for the inner city set. But where do you want to put the elementry the middle school?

There are very few in-boundary kids that go to F-S. It's always been a convenient drop-off point for parents who work on the west side of town, or for parents who want a better option than their local schools. Just send the Foggy Bottom kids to the expanded Hyde; convert F-S to a new Ward 2/Ward 3 High School. The growing capacity of the charters would be more than enough to take on the OOB population that attends F-S now.

And it wouldn't have to be a small high school. There is plenty of room to expand the F-S campus if the will and the money is there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

The location and facilities of Francis Stevens would make a nice small high school for the inner city set. But where do you want to put the elementry the middle school?

There are very few in-boundary kids that go to F-S. It's always been a convenient drop-off point for parents who work on the west side of town, or for parents who want a better option than their local schools. Just send the Foggy Bottom kids to the expanded Hyde; convert F-S to a new Ward 2/Ward 3 High School. The growing capacity of the charters would be more than enough to take on the OOB population that attends F-S now.

And it wouldn't have to be a small high school. There is plenty of room to expand the F-S campus if the will and the money is there.

What a great idea. Kids who are zoned for FS could also go to Garrison, another Ward 2 school slated for closure. For middle school they could go to Hardy, also in Ward 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

The location and facilities of Francis Stevens would make a nice small high school for the inner city set. But where do you want to put the elementry the middle school?

There are very few in-boundary kids that go to F-S. It's always been a convenient drop-off point for parents who work on the west side of town, or for parents who want a better option than their local schools. Just send the Foggy Bottom kids to the expanded Hyde; convert F-S to a new Ward 2/Ward 3 High School. The growing capacity of the charters would be more than enough to take on the OOB population that attends F-S now.

And it wouldn't have to be a small high school. There is plenty of room to expand the F-S campus if the will and the money is there.

What a great idea. Kids who are zoned for FS could also go to Garrison, another Ward 2 school slated for closure. For middle school they could go to Hardy, also in Ward 2.

Where do you live, PP?

Do they have a public library nearby? If so, ask the person at the counter for "maps." (The word is pronounced how it's spelled.) It will be useful for you to familiarize yourself with these "maps" before making further suggestions. Let me know when you're done, and then we'll move on to the advanced course: incorporating traffic patterns and flows! (Here we'll discuss topics like "rush hour." You may have heard of it on the AM radio. It particularly applies to places without convenient metro rail access, so that's a further layer of complexity that we'll hopefully cover before the end of the semester.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer isn't the old Western or the old Hardy.

The answer is converting SWW into a neighborhood HS. (The rather pathetic Francis Stevens crowd who've contributed so much to the school's downfall will be thrilled of course.) It has enough shine beneath the tarnish to appeal to Ward 2 and the southern portion of Ward 3.

Plus, DCPS just hates it.

And, it's terribly run.

Make SWW the new Western HS!

The location and facilities of Francis Stevens would make a nice small high school for the inner city set. But where do you want to put the elementry the middle school?

There are very few in-boundary kids that go to F-S. It's always been a convenient drop-off point for parents who work on the west side of town, or for parents who want a better option than their local schools. Just send the Foggy Bottom kids to the expanded Hyde; convert F-S to a new Ward 2/Ward 3 High School. The growing capacity of the charters would be more than enough to take on the OOB population that attends F-S now.

And it wouldn't have to be a small high school. There is plenty of room to expand the F-S campus if the will and the money is there.

What a great idea. Kids who are zoned for FS could also go to Garrison, another Ward 2 school slated for closure. For middle school they could go to Hardy, also in Ward 2.

Where do you live, PP?

Do they have a public library nearby? If so, ask the person at the counter for "maps." (The word is pronounced how it's spelled.) It will be useful for you to familiarize yourself with these "maps" before making further suggestions. Let me know when you're done, and then we'll move on to the advanced course: incorporating traffic patterns and flows! (Here we'll discuss topics like "rush hour." You may have heard of it on the AM radio. It particularly applies to places without convenient metro rail access, so that's a further layer of complexity that we'll hopefully cover before the end of the semester.)

Somehow everyone currently attending F-S is able to manage it. But, hey, urban living isn't for everyone. The suburbs help manage the hysteria, for those who can't cope.