School closings coming

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is any of this new news? DCPS has been working on consolidating facilities and closing underused schools since at least Janey's tenure.

Because it's a big deal to the people who live in neighborhoods near closed schools. Neighbors are upset at losing their school (which they may have attended or where they may regularly volunteer). Receiving schools must be chosen for displaced kids. And a plan needs to be formulated for the now-vacant buildings.

If you're in-boundary for a school that's significantly over-enrolled, the process probably won't affect you. For everyone else, it's a huge deal.

Actually, I would be happy if they closed our neighborhood PS 3-8. It's under enrolled, and few of my neighbors would ever send their children there. Actually, some did enroll their children last year, but ultimately fled. I am sure circumstances are different in many other neighborhoods, tho.

This was my perspective a few years ago, but reality has wound up changing my mind. I cheered when our local elementary school was closed. Rhee's office stated that kids from that school "might" be sent to one of the four schools surrounding the to-be-closed school: schools A & B (which both happened to be high-performing, and for which we applied OOB) or C or D (both lower-performing than the school that was slated to close). But once the closure actually happened, families were assigned to school D or to a new school E (again with lower test scores than the now-closed school).

Schools D & E are both located west & south of the now-closed school, guaranteeing that for about half of the kids in-boundary, there's another (usually higher-performing) elementary school that is closer to their home than their newly-assigned school. So all the children are now receiving a lower-quality education, and many of them have a longer journey to school. I guess from an administrative standpoint, it made sense--the schools that sucked were the ones that had the most spaces open, so let's be efficient and send everyone there.


I hope that Henderson's office thinks this through more thoroughly than Rhee's did.

[Anonymous]

Rumor has it that Shaw will be used as swing space for the Dunbar students when their new school is under construction. It is already being used as housing facility for historical files and data of DCPS.

I would be VERY opposed to this plan for Dunbar. I can't imagine what this would do to my neighborhood. We already have lots of problems from the Garnett Patterson crowd, and adding this number of kids would not be good.

[Anonymous]

They should close schools that have a high population of out of boundry students and move the teachers and leaders of that school to help improve the schools in the neighborhoods where those kids are coming from. I think Henderson should take serious steps to reduce the OOB craziness at DCPS schools. too many neighborhood schools are underenrolled because parents prefer to have their kids go OOB-- and those receiving schools are often happy to take those kids and the extra resources they bring in for the school.

[Anonymous]

I too have been thinking along the lines of 12:47. Why not just move the teachers/principals closer to the students they actually serve? It seems to me like that would be an effective way to right-size the system with good teachers/principals. Also - that way neighborhood schools could actually be neighborhood schools.

What am I missing? (Other than the general uproar that would ensue - but that will ensue with any announcement of school closures)

I truly hope that the Illinois Fund folks are paying close attention to where kids come from in a given school and pay attention on the grade level and not just the school level.

[Anonymous]

Principals of under-enrolled schools may be tempted to enroll students from other jurisdictions (ie non-DC residents) in order to keep their numbers up. In deciding whether or not a school with flagging enrollment should be retained, there should be a census of the school population to find out how many students actually reside in DC. We should ensure that we are not funding schools whose enrollment is artificially bolstered by non-DC residents. We cannot afford to do that anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should close schools that have a high population of out of boundry students and move the teachers and leaders of that school to help improve the schools in the neighborhoods where those kids are coming from. I think Henderson should take serious steps to reduce the OOB craziness at DCPS schools. too many neighborhood schools are underenrolled because parents prefer to have their kids go OOB-- and those receiving schools are often happy to take those kids and the extra resources they bring in for the school.

What percentage are you looking at here? I guess I can only think of one school that really fits this description with about a 60/40 split. But the other calculation you have to take into account is this huge population surge of kids born up to 2008 and then the drop off.

[Anonymous]

hey, I thought DCPS enrollment had stabilized in 2010 for the first time in years.

Given a bunch of closings a few years ago and a stabilized enrollment, why a need for more closures?

[Anonymous]

Because it is very expensive to run a school of less than 300 students, and we have lots of them. Because enrollment stablized means that they were more slots created at the PreK PreS levels, but enrollment was down in upper grades. Because the 2207 or was it 2008 closures did not bring the system down to as few buildings as needed. Because charters continue to grow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should close schools that have a high population of out of boundry students and move the teachers and leaders of that school to help improve the schools in the neighborhoods where those kids are coming from. I think Henderson should take serious steps to reduce the OOB craziness at DCPS schools. too many neighborhood schools are underenrolled because parents prefer to have their kids go OOB-- and those receiving schools are often happy to take those kids and the extra resources they bring in for the school.

What percentage are you looking at here? I guess I can only think of one school that really fits this description with about a 60/40 split. But the other calculation you have to take into account is this huge population surge of kids born up to 2008 and then the drop off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They should close schools that have a high population of out of boundry students and move the teachers and leaders of that school to help improve the schools in the neighborhoods where those kids are coming from. I think Henderson should take serious steps to reduce the OOB craziness at DCPS schools. too many neighborhood schools are underenrolled because parents prefer to have their kids go OOB-- and those receiving schools are often happy to take those kids and the extra resources they bring in for the school.

What percentage are you looking at here? I guess I can only think of one school that really fits this description with about a 60/40 split. But the other calculation you have to take into account is this huge population surge of kids born up to 2008 and then the drop off.

In my neighborhood there are LOADS of kids born 2008 and later -- in yours there is not?

[Anonymous]

What if DCPS is downsized, and charters expand, and the only kids in DCPS are either west of the park or struggling students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should close schools that have a high population of out of boundry students and move the teachers and leaders of that school to help improve the schools in the neighborhoods where those kids are coming from. I think Henderson should take serious steps to reduce the OOB craziness at DCPS schools. too many neighborhood schools are underenrolled because parents prefer to have their kids go OOB-- and those receiving schools are often happy to take those kids and the extra resources they bring in for the school.

They should eliminate school choice and force students into failing schools? Maybe the underutilized schools are that way because they are ineffective. Isn't that the point of school choice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if DCPS is downsized, and charters expand, and the only kids in DCPS are either west of the park or struggling students?

Isn't this exactly what is happening?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if DCPS is downsized, and charters expand, and the only kids in DCPS are either west of the park or struggling students?

Isn't this exactly what is happening?

Not exactly, there are a handful of schools east of the park on the upswing. Most are elementary schools on the Hill or somewhere along the 16th Street Corridor.

[Anonymous]

More likely we will have the New Orleans model. All schools are independent, such as the autonomous status some schools have been able to obtain. Central office will only focus on schools where there are issues. Problem with this model is that it does not really address the societal issues that perpetuate under-performing schools.