Feeding Bancroft and Shepherd across park undermines efforts

[Anonymous]

It makes no sense whatsoever to me to feed these two ES programs across the park under the new DCPS proposal. If we are trying to launch new dual-language programming at McFarland and a new North MS, why on earth would we leave out the highest performing population (Shepherd) from New North and the bilingual population (Bancroft) from those feeder patterns?

This is back room political maneuvering which has no place in a rational and effective school policy. Get it together people, because we are watching you.

[Anonymous]

Get over it. Its on the docket to have these two schools feed into DEAL. Perhaps your can take DC to court to get it overturned.

[Anonymous]

Bancroft truly makes no sense, when the kids could go a couple of blocks away to CHEC Or to McFarland to continue dual language. That is ridiculous. Shepherd is an IB program, like Deal, so that makes more sense to me. If the city wants to increase diversity of Deal and offer consistent programming, it would make more sense to have other the IB programs, Cooke and Thomson, feed to Deal, both of which are community eligibility FARM schools.

[Anonymous]

^^ Happy to have dodged the bullet, PP? Don't jump up and down too high or you'll bump your head!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bancroft truly makes no sense, when the kids could go a couple of blocks away to CHEC Or to McFarland to continue dual language. That is ridiculous. Shepherd is an IB program, like Deal, so that makes more sense to me. If the city wants to increase diversity of Deal and offer consistent programming, it would make more sense to have other the IB programs, Cooke and Thomson, feed to Deal, both of which are community eligibility FARM schools.

And the kids can enroll into CHEC if they please. I'm sure they have the room.

[Anonymous]

Shepherd and Bancroft will go to Wilson/Deal to protect DCPS from a lawsuit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shepherd and Bancroft will go to Wilson/Deal to protect DCPS from a lawsuit.

Lawsuit about what? Too many rich white kids?

If they institute the proposal to have OOB seats for at risk kids, would that cover it?

[Anonymous]

The problem with Bancroft/CHEC is that it gives no options for IB parents who don't want dual language. The net effect of these proposals will be to heighten a pattern that already exists. High SES/educated families in Mt P send their kids to Eaton (and Hearst) OOB. With mt pleasant continuing to feed Deal/Wilson, and IB Eaton families stuck with Hardy, you'll see more MtP families at Eaton-- thus keeping Eaton's scores up while IB parents start bailing at 3rd, 4th and 5th. Then the OOB Eaton but IB Deal MtP families will switch back to Deal for MS.

[Anonymous]

Shepherd already feeds Deal. Shepherd and Deal are both IB schools. Shepherd students attending Deal have had the right once enrolled in Deal to continue to Wilson (per DCPS). This doesn't represent a change. 9:59 is either being sarcastic or really doesn't know the demographics of Shepherd Park.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shepherd already feeds Deal. Shepherd and Deal are both IB schools. Shepherd students attending Deal have had the right once enrolled in Deal to continue to Wilson (per DCPS). This doesn't represent a change. 9:59 is either being sarcastic or really doesn't know the demographics of Shepherd Park.

Bancroft already feeds Deal, too. It also feeds into Lincoln/CHEC, yet the overwhelming majority of 5th graders (or their parents) choose Deal. Even low income Latino parents know which is the better school.
We'll also have MacFarland as an option and if they can build a high quality program, Bancroft parents will come.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shepherd already feeds Deal. Shepherd and Deal are both IB schools. Shepherd students attending Deal have had the right once enrolled in Deal to continue to Wilson (per DCPS). This doesn't represent a change. 9:59 is either being sarcastic or really doesn't know the demographics of Shepherd Park.

Bancroft already feeds Deal, too. It also feeds into Lincoln/CHEC, yet the overwhelming majority of 5th graders (or their parents) choose Deal. Even low income Latino parents know which is the better school.
We'll also have MacFarland as an option and if they can build a high quality program, Bancroft parents will come.

+1

If you read the DME proposal in full, you see that Bancroft will have rights to Deal/Wilson but also a programmatic feed to the (yet to be established) McFarland dual language program. This McFarland program will also be an option for all of the other DCPS bilingual schools regardless of location, except Oyster, which has its own MS already. For example Cleveland, Tyler are far away geographically but will have this programmatic feed to McFarland in addition to their geographic feed. If the McFarland program is looking promising, parents from the DCPS bilingual schools may be interested. In the meantime, it is proposed that Bancroft remain as a Deal feeder.

Regarding CHEC... It's perhaps odd that CHEC converted to bilingual, given that its main current feeder schools (Cooke, Tubman) are not bilingual programs. As PP mentioned, most Bancroft parents choose Deal. You could perhaps ask the admin of CHEC why they did that. I somehow doubt that it was part of any overall DCPS plan, given the feeder schools. I imagine they were attempting a rebranding? It may have made more sense to have CHEC officially English-only, with a lot of de facto bilingualism accomplished through teaching assistants. This is what they do at Cooke, and it's a sensible approach to an English program when you have a lot of latinos attending. But that's just a suggestion from an outsider. Again, it was CHEC's decision to convert to bilingual, doesn't seem to have been part of any overall plan, so it's really CHEC's issue to figure out how to handle students coming from English-only feeders. Thankfully Tubman and especially Cooke have a lot of latinos so maybe it is working ok in practice - I don't know.

But it does not make any sense to say that Bancroft should be directed into CHEC just because CHEC made its own decision to "go bilingual" when its feeders were mostly English-only. I think the DME staff and committee understand this very well, which is why your suggestion was not adopted in their proposal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bancroft truly makes no sense, when the kids could go a couple of blocks away to CHEC Or to McFarland to continue dual language. That is ridiculous. Shepherd is an IB program, like Deal, so that makes more sense to me. If the city wants to increase diversity of Deal and offer consistent programming, it would make more sense to have other the IB programs, Cooke and Thomson, feed to Deal, both of which are community eligibility FARM schools.

But Bancroft and Shepherd are already Deal feeders, so why would you take them out and bring in Cooke and Thomson? Makes no sense.

In the end, after all the grand talk of city wide lotteries and such, the DME proposal tried to make the minimum changes possible. The final proposal represents moderate, incremental change, which is what most on DCUM have been asking for all along. Of course some parents are not happy with some of the changes.

So if you can maintain diversity at Deal by continuing Bancroft and Shepherd as feeders, that's what you do. It would be really silly to remove those two schools and add two others that were not previously Deal feeders.

Plus, in Mount Pleasant's case, its IB school-aged population is majority latino and low income, so it is guaranteed to continue to provide diversity to Deal. Whereas some other schools under discussion on DCUM have been providing diversity to Deal or Hardy primarily via their OOB populations, which may be more temporary.

[Anonymous]

Undermines what efforts, exactly?

[Anonymous]

New poster. I agree Shepard and Bancroft should feed elsewhere. They do look to have gained a gerrymander via some political deal.

The only reason I can see that makes any sense is that DME looked at the available Deal/Wilson seats, decided she could fit in a few more kids, and that Shep/Bancroft just had the political pull (or got lucky) to be the ones selected.

But if there really are more available seats at Deal/Wilson, I think it makes more sense to put them into the openly available lottery rather than reserve them for Shep/Bancroft.

Does DME describe any justification anywhere for giving this special favor to Shep/Bancroft?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New poster. I agree Shepard and Bancroft should feed elsewhere. They do look to have gained a gerrymander via some political deal.

The only reason I can see that makes any sense is that DME looked at the available Deal/Wilson seats, decided she could fit in a few more kids, and that Shep/Bancroft just had the political pull (or got lucky) to be the ones selected.

But if there really are more available seats at Deal/Wilson, I think it makes more sense to put them into the openly available lottery rather than reserve them for Shep/Bancroft.

Does DME describe any justification anywhere for giving this special favor to Shep/Bancroft?

You seem to be confused about the current (pre-proposal) situation. Bancroft and Shepherd have been feeding to Deal and Wilson for decades. They were not added to Deal/Wilson.

Curious what kind of political deal you have in mind? Hey, we'll keep you in Deal/Wilson, if you promise to vote for the DME. Oh wait, the DME is not an elected official. Ok, then you must promise to vote for Gray. Oh wait, that's already decided... seriously, what "deal" could there possibly be between a neighborhood and the DME? Ridiculous.