Why can’t Watkins get traction with Capitol Hill?
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Anonymous
+1. The lack of the bus is the real reason Watkins has fallen apart. I sent my kids through the school and there is no way I’d have done that without the bus. |
Anonymous
+2. My house and office are near Peabody. It was so convenient to take my little one Peabody and put my older one on the bus to Watkins, and then pick them both up at Peabody at the end of the day. Peabody and Watkins are way too far apart to make dual drop offs feasible. I’d just send them both to LT now. |
Anonymous
+3, and the argument about equity for getting rid of the bus relied on the idea that people sending their kids to Watkins from wards 7 and 8 don’t send their kids to Peabody (both because it’s harder to get into OOB and because it’s not as easy of a commute from their homes). So getting rid of the bus was like severing the schools, by treating families who go to Watkins from Peabody as less important to the school than those who lottery into Watkins. Ultimately I think they will sever the cluster and leave Peabody as a stand-alone ECE campus that will help with ECE overflow at schools like L-T, Brent, and Maury (where sometimes you can’t get a spot even in IB), and make Watkins a stand alone elementary with a zone that actually makes sense for it. And the choice to end the bus between them will be what made that happen. |
Anonymous
That’s a shame because I really enjoyed our time in the Cluster. The game nights at SH, the movie nights at Peabody, Cap Hill Classic…the community was really great, and I made so many friends there that I still have today. |
Anonymous
| Get some likeminded parents to make arguments at DCPS, get a journalist involved and you'll have traction to adjust boundaries, get bus etc. Its your right and even non-parents would support. Get petition signed. |
Anonymous
| If everyone is getting seats elsewhere, then maybe there aren’t enough people who care about the bus anymore. |
Anonymous
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Parents could pay for a bus and they absolutely would if Peabody/Watkins were still the most desirable school on the Hill, like they were ~20 years ago. Parents pay for buses from CH to Latin, YY, MV, etc. It's just that now parents would rather go to Brent/Maury/L-T, so the community will to pay for a bus just isn't there.
All that said, I think the district should absolutely provide a bus when they split the zone in a crazy way. But a better solution is just fixing the zone. Watkins is way oversized for boundary/purpose; it could easily become a tradition PK3-5 with a normal zone. Peabody could be a stand alone ECE to deal with neighborhood overflow in exactly the same way AT LP does. In fact, it would be less disruptive to schools like Miner if they weren't getting OOB Maury kids where the chance that they stay is 0% taking ECE slots from W7/8 kids who might stay. |
Anonymous
This is so stupid. |
Anonymous
| No, but Brent was 85% in-boundary six years ago, now not even two-thirds and dropping year on year. |
Anonymous
| The city could theoretically also at least run a city bus on a loop from Ward 7 or 8 past the 3 cluster schools. Adults would need to ride w smaller children. But it would be better than nothing. |
Anonymous
This is why it was controversial. The city can absolutely not do that (unless they can somehow justify it as an actual bus line), because they don't run private buses for anyone else. They are definitely not going to have their first such line be from OOB to one particular school. The Watkins bus was extremely suis generis, but a unique situation where it was just running the bus between the schools themselves. |
Anonymous
I think PP was suggesting they just make sure there is a bus line that runs from across the river, past Watkins (with a stop at Watkins) and past Peabody (with a stop at Peabody). Other people could also ride it (maybe it would extend into downtown, I don't know) but the idea would be that it would serve the needs of BOTH the OOB parents coming in from Wards 7/8 as well as the IB families with kids at Peabody and Watkins. It would be better than nothing if they are going to keep the boundary as is. Otherwise, killing the shuttle between effectively kills the cluster, and Peabody effectively becomes an auxiliary ECE school for parents who will move to L-T or Brent at 1st, and Watkins effectively becomes a stand-alone 1-5 school that primarily service OOB students from Wards 7 and 8. Maybe people are fine with that, I don't know, but they should either formalize that arrangement or actually do something to unite the cluster again. |
Anonymous
For high school may he but for elementary school, its school district's responsibility. |
Anonymous
| Why would anyone run a bus to a DCPS for OOB students who have their own IB and also charter options? |
Anonymous
Because it would be the only way to meet the schools equity goals while also providing transportation between both campuses for IB families. The reason the former HOS stopped the shuttle was that it was viewed as inequitable -- IB parents (mostly white, mostly higher SES) were getting a resource that was not available to OOB parents (mostly black, mostly lower SES). But if you just at a Metro bus that ran a route that stopped at Watkins and Peabody but also served communities across the river, you could meet the needs of both populations equitably. |