Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This all assumes boundaries are even changed in the first place.

I think the Cluster boundary will definitely change, because with no bus between Peabody and Watkins, the situation is untenable. If that boundary changes, it will impact nearly every other ES on the Hill because of the way that boundary is shaped.

Isn’t Peabody really small? Could it have a K-6 school?

[Anonymous]

Peabody could be a standalone ECE and then ECE could potentially also be added at Watkins. But there is a history and shared PTA associated with the Cluster. So I do not necessarily see it breaking up (especially not the Watkins to Stuart Hobson part).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Peabody could be a standalone ECE and then ECE could potentially also be added at Watkins. But there is a history and shared PTA associated with the Cluster. So I do not necessarily see it breaking up (especially not the Watkins to Stuart Hobson part).

Former Peabody parent here (we left for K elsewhere) - Peabody is essentially acting as a standalone school. 75% of my son's prek4 class left this year for different Ks. The "Cluster" history doesn't mean anything to current parents at Peabody and the majority of people I talked to either left or were trying to leave to avoid Watkins. Watkins will never improve as long as the boundary is so weird - so many of us have proximity preference at other schools and were able to use that to get into Ludlow or Maury, some others went to Brent and others to SWS.

[Anonymous]

New Maury parent…to the PP that said the boundary is weird, it’s a rectangle. Also, it would not make sense to cut off the western part of the rectangle because the school is on the western part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New Maury parent…to the PP that said the boundary is weird, it’s a rectangle. Also, it would not make sense to cut off the western part of the rectangle because the school is on the western part.

If they flattened the top (taking the Miner “tail”) & were trying to promote diversity, they’d need to trim the western edge or southern edge. Maury is on 11th-13th and it’s boundary starts around 8th, so there are certainly a few blocks to the West that could be shaved off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New Maury parent…to the PP that said the boundary is weird, it’s a rectangle. Also, it would not make sense to cut off the western part of the rectangle because the school is on the western part.

If they flattened the top (taking the Miner “tail”) & were trying to promote diversity, they’d need to trim the western edge or southern edge. Maury is on 11th-13th and it’s boundary starts around 8th, so there are certainly a few blocks to the West that could be shaved off.

The Maury boundary ends at the East side of 10th.

[Anonymous]

Maybe it used to be 8th, but the current boundary is 10th. So there is very little room to cut on west without it being absurdly close to the school.

And if you moved the boundary south a block from D to C, then the houses on the north side of C around 12th and 13th would be out of bounds, where you could throw a nerf football onto the playground.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the Maury boundary would move further East if TPTB thinks the present boundary is over-gentrified. Maybe the people who need to worry are those on the western side of the Maury boundary.

There is nowhere for Maury's eastern boundary to go -- it runs to RFK. More likely they'd look at shifting the northern and southern boundaries. Though I think if there are shifts, you would see the western border move. It would be contentious though because Maury already sits towards the western end -- if you eliminate some of this blocks to the west of Lincoln Park from it's boundary, you will be shifting people who paid a major premium to be not only near Maury but near the park and Eastern Market. And they would likely be shifted to a school significantly further away, since Ludlow-Taylor already has a very large boundary and is pretty full. Unless you moved part of the L-T boundary up to JOW.

It gets very, very messy very quickly. Which is why if there's a redraw, it is likely to be quite minor. But you still might wind up with some unhappy folks.

The most natural change to the Maury boundary would be to flatten the top of the boundary and steal Miner's "tail." Pushing up the northern boundary of Maury a block or two at the Western end would have very little effect on demographics (unless you also bumped up the tail), since you'd carveout some of the gentrified L-T zone and a sliver of the most gentrified part of the Miner zone. You could shift the bottom part of the Maury boundary north in compensation & send those kids to Payne, but I'm not sure that has a huge effect on anything except moving a few very wealthy families to a school they may or may not use.

One thing to keep in mind is that both of the L-T & Maury districts are pretty narrow North-to-South. Look at the map and where Maury and L-T are stacked on top of each other is just East Capitol to H St... all of which is heavily gentrified central Hill. There's nowhere to go for non-gentrified real estate in that swath.

You can't give much of the L-T boundary to JOW by the way, because L-T is only a block from the Northern edge of the boundary... and the whole boundary is only from north of D to H; it's actually really narrow already. (Also, it goes unsaid that affected families would freak out entirely. There are many, many heavily involved L-T families on those blocks.) Unlike what the PP said, L-T is actually a small boundary... among the smallest in the area. But the school is full, so making it bigger would just mean weeding out OOB kids and with an IB rate approaching 2/3rds, I can't see why DCPS would back that either.

What you could do is move the Western edge of the Maury boundary to Watkins. Parents would freak out. As with the shift to Payne, it's taking the wealthiest families out of the zone and zoning them to somewhere they won't like as much. I think parents might balk even more, because there's a sense Payne is on the upswing with solid leadership and Watkins is very much the reverse.

Some might freak out. Others would be glad for the opportunity to attend Stuart-Hobson instead of Eliot-Hine.

This^.

[Anonymous]

Wouldn't it play in favor of Watkins if they are merging with Peabody IB and have Stuart Hobson for middle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it used to be 8th, but the current boundary is 10th. So there is very little room to cut on west without it being absurdly close to the school.

And if you moved the boundary south a block from D to C, then the houses on the north side of C around 12th and 13th would be out of bounds, where you could throw a nerf football onto the playground.

I know there’s at least one school in Bethesda that sits almost on top of its boundary line.

What would be the idea for re-routing the kids on Maury’s inmediate borders? Send them to Watkins? Or to a very small new elementary at Peabody? If the goal is diversity it doesn’t seem like you can engineer that at Peabody (at a size the school can fit) unless you create some kind of long, skinny zone that takes part of L-T and JOW.

If the idea is to route Maury parents to Watkins, it seems tough to make the kids from C st south literally walk past Maury to get to Watkins. We live on the western boundary and Watkins isn’t a terrible walk, but it sure would be annoying. But if this is part of an overall effort to fix the problems created by the cluster, OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the Maury boundary would move further East if TPTB thinks the present boundary is over-gentrified. Maybe the people who need to worry are those on the western side of the Maury boundary.

There is nowhere for Maury's eastern boundary to go -- it runs to RFK. More likely they'd look at shifting the northern and southern boundaries. Though I think if there are shifts, you would see the western border move. It would be contentious though because Maury already sits towards the western end -- if you eliminate some of this blocks to the west of Lincoln Park from it's boundary, you will be shifting people who paid a major premium to be not only near Maury but near the park and Eastern Market. And they would likely be shifted to a school significantly further away, since Ludlow-Taylor already has a very large boundary and is pretty full. Unless you moved part of the L-T boundary up to JOW.

It gets very, very messy very quickly. Which is why if there's a redraw, it is likely to be quite minor. But you still might wind up with some unhappy folks.

The most natural change to the Maury boundary would be to flatten the top of the boundary and steal Miner's "tail." Pushing up the northern boundary of Maury a block or two at the Western end would have very little effect on demographics (unless you also bumped up the tail), since you'd carveout some of the gentrified L-T zone and a sliver of the most gentrified part of the Miner zone. You could shift the bottom part of the Maury boundary north in compensation & send those kids to Payne, but I'm not sure that has a huge effect on anything except moving a few very wealthy families to a school they may or may not use.

One thing to keep in mind is that both of the L-T & Maury districts are pretty narrow North-to-South. Look at the map and where Maury and L-T are stacked on top of each other is just East Capitol to H St... all of which is heavily gentrified central Hill. There's nowhere to go for non-gentrified real estate in that swath.

You can't give much of the L-T boundary to JOW by the way, because L-T is only a block from the Northern edge of the boundary... and the whole boundary is only from north of D to H; it's actually really narrow already. (Also, it goes unsaid that affected families would freak out entirely. There are many, many heavily involved L-T families on those blocks.) Unlike what the PP said, L-T is actually a small boundary... among the smallest in the area. But the school is full, so making it bigger would just mean weeding out OOB kids and with an IB rate approaching 2/3rds, I can't see why DCPS would back that either.

What you could do is move the Western edge of the Maury boundary to Watkins. Parents would freak out. As with the shift to Payne, it's taking the wealthiest families out of the zone and zoning them to somewhere they won't like as much. I think parents might balk even more, because there's a sense Payne is on the upswing with solid leadership and Watkins is very much the reverse.

Some might freak out. Others would be glad for the opportunity to attend Stuart-Hobson instead of Eliot-Hine.

This^.

Not really. Maury families are pretty happy at EH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it used to be 8th, but the current boundary is 10th. So there is very little room to cut on west without it being absurdly close to the school.

And if you moved the boundary south a block from D to C, then the houses on the north side of C around 12th and 13th would be out of bounds, where you could throw a nerf football onto the playground.

I know there’s at least one school in Bethesda that sits almost on top of its boundary line.

What would be the idea for re-routing the kids on Maury’s inmediate borders? Send them to Watkins? Or to a very small new elementary at Peabody? If the goal is diversity it doesn’t seem like you can engineer that at Peabody (at a size the school can fit) unless you create some kind of long, skinny zone that takes part of L-T and JOW.

If the idea is to route Maury parents to Watkins, it seems tough to make the kids from C st south literally walk past Maury to get to Watkins. We live on the western boundary and Watkins isn’t a terrible walk, but it sure would be annoying. But if this is part of an overall effort to fix the problems created by the cluster, OK.

Who knows what, if any changes will be rolled out after this boundary review. Maybe everything can be linked back to the strange history of the cluster boundary, but the houses across the street from Payne on the south side are in Watkins boundary, not Payne - so it has happened before that schools sit right on a boundary line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the Maury boundary would move further East if TPTB thinks the present boundary is over-gentrified. Maybe the people who need to worry are those on the western side of the Maury boundary.

There is nowhere for Maury's eastern boundary to go -- it runs to RFK. More likely they'd look at shifting the northern and southern boundaries. Though I think if there are shifts, you would see the western border move. It would be contentious though because Maury already sits towards the western end -- if you eliminate some of this blocks to the west of Lincoln Park from it's boundary, you will be shifting people who paid a major premium to be not only near Maury but near the park and Eastern Market. And they would likely be shifted to a school significantly further away, since Ludlow-Taylor already has a very large boundary and is pretty full. Unless you moved part of the L-T boundary up to JOW.

It gets very, very messy very quickly. Which is why if there's a redraw, it is likely to be quite minor. But you still might wind up with some unhappy folks.

The most natural change to the Maury boundary would be to flatten the top of the boundary and steal Miner's "tail." Pushing up the northern boundary of Maury a block or two at the Western end would have very little effect on demographics (unless you also bumped up the tail), since you'd carveout some of the gentrified L-T zone and a sliver of the most gentrified part of the Miner zone. You could shift the bottom part of the Maury boundary north in compensation & send those kids to Payne, but I'm not sure that has a huge effect on anything except moving a few very wealthy families to a school they may or may not use.

One thing to keep in mind is that both of the L-T & Maury districts are pretty narrow North-to-South. Look at the map and where Maury and L-T are stacked on top of each other is just East Capitol to H St... all of which is heavily gentrified central Hill. There's nowhere to go for non-gentrified real estate in that swath.

You can't give much of the L-T boundary to JOW by the way, because L-T is only a block from the Northern edge of the boundary... and the whole boundary is only from north of D to H; it's actually really narrow already. (Also, it goes unsaid that affected families would freak out entirely. There are many, many heavily involved L-T families on those blocks.) Unlike what the PP said, L-T is actually a small boundary... among the smallest in the area. But the school is full, so making it bigger would just mean weeding out OOB kids and with an IB rate approaching 2/3rds, I can't see why DCPS would back that either.

What you could do is move the Western edge of the Maury boundary to Watkins. Parents would freak out. As with the shift to Payne, it's taking the wealthiest families out of the zone and zoning them to somewhere they won't like as much. I think parents might balk even more, because there's a sense Payne is on the upswing with solid leadership and Watkins is very much the reverse.

Some might freak out. Others would be glad for the opportunity to attend Stuart-Hobson instead of Eliot-Hine.

This^.

Not really. Maury families are pretty happy at EH.

The 19% of Maury families who don't have a Latin, BASIS or private escape hatch and are forced to stay and move within the feeder are pretty happy at EH.

Fixed it for you.

The point (in case you missed it) is that the idea is to make the feeder attractive, not a tolerable 4th option if all else fails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the Maury boundary would move further East if TPTB thinks the present boundary is over-gentrified. Maybe the people who need to worry are those on the western side of the Maury boundary.

There is nowhere for Maury's eastern boundary to go -- it runs to RFK. More likely they'd look at shifting the northern and southern boundaries. Though I think if there are shifts, you would see the western border move. It would be contentious though because Maury already sits towards the western end -- if you eliminate some of this blocks to the west of Lincoln Park from it's boundary, you will be shifting people who paid a major premium to be not only near Maury but near the park and Eastern Market. And they would likely be shifted to a school significantly further away, since Ludlow-Taylor already has a very large boundary and is pretty full. Unless you moved part of the L-T boundary up to JOW.

It gets very, very messy very quickly. Which is why if there's a redraw, it is likely to be quite minor. But you still might wind up with some unhappy folks.

The most natural change to the Maury boundary would be to flatten the top of the boundary and steal Miner's "tail." Pushing up the northern boundary of Maury a block or two at the Western end would have very little effect on demographics (unless you also bumped up the tail), since you'd carveout some of the gentrified L-T zone and a sliver of the most gentrified part of the Miner zone. You could shift the bottom part of the Maury boundary north in compensation & send those kids to Payne, but I'm not sure that has a huge effect on anything except moving a few very wealthy families to a school they may or may not use.

One thing to keep in mind is that both of the L-T & Maury districts are pretty narrow North-to-South. Look at the map and where Maury and L-T are stacked on top of each other is just East Capitol to H St... all of which is heavily gentrified central Hill. There's nowhere to go for non-gentrified real estate in that swath.

You can't give much of the L-T boundary to JOW by the way, because L-T is only a block from the Northern edge of the boundary... and the whole boundary is only from north of D to H; it's actually really narrow already. (Also, it goes unsaid that affected families would freak out entirely. There are many, many heavily involved L-T families on those blocks.) Unlike what the PP said, L-T is actually a small boundary... among the smallest in the area. But the school is full, so making it bigger would just mean weeding out OOB kids and with an IB rate approaching 2/3rds, I can't see why DCPS would back that either.

What you could do is move the Western edge of the Maury boundary to Watkins. Parents would freak out. As with the shift to Payne, it's taking the wealthiest families out of the zone and zoning them to somewhere they won't like as much. I think parents might balk even more, because there's a sense Payne is on the upswing with solid leadership and Watkins is very much the reverse.

Some might freak out. Others would be glad for the opportunity to attend Stuart-Hobson instead of Eliot-Hine.

This^.

Not really. Maury families are pretty happy at EH.

Stuart-Hobson is the preferred choice for most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it used to be 8th, but the current boundary is 10th. So there is very little room to cut on west without it being absurdly close to the school.

And if you moved the boundary south a block from D to C, then the houses on the north side of C around 12th and 13th would be out of bounds, where you could throw a nerf football onto the playground.

I know there’s at least one school in Bethesda that sits almost on top of its boundary line.

What would be the idea for re-routing the kids on Maury’s inmediate borders? Send them to Watkins? Or to a very small new elementary at Peabody? If the goal is diversity it doesn’t seem like you can engineer that at Peabody (at a size the school can fit) unless you create some kind of long, skinny zone that takes part of L-T and JOW.

If the idea is to route Maury parents to Watkins, it seems tough to make the kids from C st south literally walk past Maury to get to Watkins. We live on the western boundary and Watkins isn’t a terrible walk, but it sure would be annoying. But if this is part of an overall effort to fix the problems created by the cluster, OK.

Peabody cannot be a standalone ES; it's not big enough for even one class per grade + other needed elementary school spaces. I think it could become a standalone ECE or, I guess, a 0-3 facility (although its neighborhood is hardly a target for those), but pretty much everything else is off the table. That said, if you don't do something with it, the ridiculous Watkins IB zone will always exist and Watkins will never be able to resolidify into a neighborhood school.