Bowser and Catania reiterate intent to stop/delay school boundary changes
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Anonymous
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From WUSA9:
WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- Saturday, the District's mayoral candidates talked more on axing the announced School Boundaries Plan announced by Mayor Vince Gray last week. Talking to WUSA9 after her Town Hall at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Hill Crest Saturday, Democratic candidate Muriel Bowser said, "I'm concerned about drawing lines that separate our communities by our geography. My plan is to focus on where we need help the most and that's in middle school, in middle school grades and how we transform four middle schools across the district by 2020." Once her administration takes office is when Bowser said she and her staff would start on their own plan. Bowser immediately came out against Mayor Gray's new School Boundaries Plan writing in a statement that she could not accept the recommendations. One of the two mayoral candidates running in the Independent ticket, David Catania, also expressed grievances against the Boundaries Plan but said Saturday, he would delay it at least a year. "Giving us another year will allow us to create school improvement plans for those schools that are perceived as lower performers. And at the same time, I'm looking for ways to ensure that parents have additive rights and not subtractive rights. In other words, giving them and making sure they maintain access to the schools we have now while at the same time, improving the schools where we might want them to send our children," said Catania. --------------------------------------- As I read their quotes, they both seem to be sticking to their stories, and maybe even "doubling down" to quote a prior characterization of Mayor Gray and the DME in trying to push changes through by January. Bowser says she doesn't want city schools divided by geography and sees the better plan as funding transformation of 4 middle schools over the next 6 years. Catania wants to delay things "at least" one year until school improvement plans are in place, AND he wants to ways to give parents "additive rights and not subtractive rights". Sounds like an extended dual access right to Deal and Wilson might be on his mind until other schools are improved. |
Anonymous
Great. Maybe I should buy stock in a trailer company now, because it sounds like DCPS will need buy many more to stuff hundreds more kids into Deal. |
Anonymous
| How is it that they don't understand that the horse will be out of the barn when the new lottery opens in December? |
Anonymous
| Do we really think a month-old lottery would be irreversible? Why couldn't they just re-set it and extend the registration deadline by another month? |
Anonymous
what has actually changed though? I thought the DME proposals were basically gutted. |
Anonymous
| ^^ clearly the proposal is dead and DCPS has internally halted the discussion. We never received the letter from the DME/Cancellor from our child's school. The message to the DME is clear. |
Anonymous
The council should demand DME Smith's resignation now. Hardly any of the council members support this -- not just the mayoral candidates. |
Anonymous
see the thread on DME boundaries |
Anonymous
In order to go back to the old boundaries, wouldn't DC have to notify families one year in advance of the boundaries changing (so at this point, no earlier than the 2016-17 school year, unless they're going to reassign kids mid-year)? Otherwise, council would have to repeal that law, AND interpret it in some way that allows them to retroactively eliminate the notice requirement. Seems highly unlikely. There are families that would fight it (folks newly assigned to Cleveland, people shifted from Amidon to Van Ness, to name a few) and I think the courts would agree with them. Plus, if there's any hint of this I bet a ton of charters will drop out of the common lottery, and possibly start their own common lottery. Why should they deal with DCPS uncertainty if they don't have to? If there's a separate charter lottery look forward to a much bigger September shuffle in future years, and a continued rise in the % of kids attending charters compared to DCPS. |
Anonymous
No DC Council EVER has supported school boundary changes. 40 years of kicking the can down the road. Not a profile in courage. |
Anonymous
In DC, it generally takes courage to stand up to a harebrained plan. I'm glad to see some council members finally joining Catania in doing just that. |
Anonymous
They don't have to believe it...they just need to convince the folks who aren't paying attention. |
jsteele
Site Admin Online
Site Admin Online
Boundary changes need to be announced in advance and changes were announced at the end of August. However, those changes have not occurred. If the brakes are put on now (or anytime before the year of notification expires), no changes will take place. Hence, no notification requirement. If the same changes or different changes were then proposed, it would require notification a year in advance. Halting the implementation after the lottery starts would be a PR and logistics nightmare. I have personally talked to both Bowser and Catania about the need to stop things before the lottery opens. We'll see what happens. |
Anonymous
If they just hunt down and expel (and prosecute the parents of) the PG-MD kids who have burrowed their way into Deal and Wilson, while claiming a fictitious DC address, a chunk of the overcrowding problem would be solved. |
Anonymous
There's nothing harebrained about it. Besides the set-asides, it's a stock standard school assignment policy. You get one elementary, one ms and one hs. Not the crazy quilt mess that we currently have, dual zones, schools zoned differently than they neighborhoods they sit in, too big zones, too small zones. It's nuts. |