Ballou's New $120 Million Building--With an 8 Lane POOL!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Woodson was built in 1972 and was not properly maintained through DCPS, it was not vandalized. It was poorly designed and maintained. How do you have a school with an escalator and not have maintenance contract to repair it. So to compare the old Woodson to the future new Ballou is the hysteria generated by fools. If we want all this wish-list of what we don't want it too look like, I am all for saying let it not look like Wilson High School from the inside and outside. Yeah, I said it.

What's wrong with Wilson? I pass through a few times a year, it seems clean

[Anonymous]

I don't know if construction costs are over-the-top, but I think it only fair if high schools are given equally nice facilities, regardless of the location

[Anonymous]

20:44, you don't get it. Your sarcasm buttom must be broken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now what if that $150K for each student (the article said about 800 students) were simultaneously invested in the community's children, put towards the necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter (reading AND writing AND math AND science AND language) and regular attendance. Then it could be a HS that is world class. It will only end up being a world class building without the student body to go with it. DCPS's approach "if you build it, they will come/learn/succeed" doesn't seem to make sense.

Why, then we'd have a single generation of kids who registered a minor uptick in performance (possibly). Instead, we're investing in a decent learning facility for generations of kids. Sorry, but while having a decent school facility may not be sufficient for student success, it sure as Hell is necessary. To say we should spend capital improvement money on test prep (or whatever the Hell "necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter") is ridiculously short-sighted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. From the WaPo article:

"Fewer than one-quarter of Ballou’s students are proficient in reading and math, according to the city’s standardized tests, and half graduate within four years. Chronic truancy is also a problem: 46 percent of Ballou students missed at least a month of class in the past school year."

As a general statement I oppose vouchers, but when I see this, I wonder what is a better use of financial resources and students' time.

Good thinking. Let's get the entire current population of Ballou into charters. With a little hand-waving and ???, they'll be scoring "proficient" in no time!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:14:26- Vouchers won't make the truant kids show up for school, especially if they have to go across town to get there. They're not skipping school because of the teachers or (in most cases) the other kids. They don't value education (for a wide variety of reasons).

I used to teach in SE. Had a kid miss 80 days of school in the 3rd grade. I didn't miss that many days of school in 13 years. That's mom's fault, not the school's. By the time these kids get to high school, they don't care anymore. He's dead now, BTW- gang shoot out.

And the rest of the school population gets the benefits of seeing their classmates dying by the week. PTSD is very conducive to learning.

Anyone who thinks that DCPS' problems are the fault of the central office, or a couple of bad teachers needs to watch that "180 Days" documentary. Then listen to TAL's report on Chicago's Harper High School:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/487/harper-high-school-part-one

I have a hard time concentrating on work because of possible sequester cuts and how they might affect my family. Can you imagine what it would be like to be worried you're going to be shot at any time, see your friends shot, and try to raise a kid? All at age 15? The only chance any of these kids have is either a) a wholesale change in US *national* poverty policy; or b) displacement to the suburbs.

We need to reduce the amount of subsidized housing in DC, and increase the amount of "Section 8" -style housing vouchers available to the poor.

[Anonymous]

The first sentence of the first comment on the WaPo Ballou piece:

"Being an alumni of Anacostia Class of '89 I find it obsured..."

Ouch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now what if that $150K for each student (the article said about 800 students) were simultaneously invested in the community's children, put towards the necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter (reading AND writing AND math AND science AND language) and regular attendance. Then it could be a HS that is world class. It will only end up being a world class building without the student body to go with it. DCPS's approach "if you build it, they will come/learn/succeed" doesn't seem to make sense.

Why, then we'd have a single generation of kids who registered a minor uptick in performance (possibly). Instead, we're investing in a decent learning facility for generations of kids. Sorry, but while having a decent school facility may not be sufficient for student success, it sure as Hell is necessary. To say we should spend capital improvement money on test prep (or whatever the Hell "necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter") is ridiculously short-sighted.

PP you quoted here. No, it wouldn't be test prep for a select group of students to see a minor uptick. It would be a comprehensive approach for a generation of students in an under-served area. A gorgeous HS building is shortsighted in and of itself without the academic piece to go with it. In other words, why build a beautful pool if the students can't swim (it's a metaphor - I really don't care about the pool or not pool).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now what if that $150K for each student (the article said about 800 students) were simultaneously invested in the community's children, put towards the necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter (reading AND writing AND math AND science AND language) and regular attendance. Then it could be a HS that is world class. It will only end up being a world class building without the student body to go with it. DCPS's approach "if you build it, they will come/learn/succeed" doesn't seem to make sense.

Why, then we'd have a single generation of kids who registered a minor uptick in performance (possibly). Instead, we're investing in a decent learning facility for generations of kids. Sorry, but while having a decent school facility may not be sufficient for student success, it sure as Hell is necessary. To say we should spend capital improvement money on test prep (or whatever the Hell "necessary prerequisites to get those students to proficiency in HS subject matter") is ridiculously short-sighted.

PP you quoted here. No, it wouldn't be test prep for a select group of students to see a minor uptick. It would be a comprehensive approach for a generation of students in an under-served area. A gorgeous HS building is shortsighted in and of itself without the academic piece to go with it. In other words, why build a beautful pool if the students can't swim (it's a metaphor - I really don't care about the pool or not pool).

The cost of renovating Ballou is so high because we've spent the last 30 years letting it fall into a miserable state of disrepair. I'd argue that you have to maintain your facilities. In fact, it's cheaper to actually maintain them than rebuild them every 30 years or so, so I think there's a bit of a false choice here.

As far as "the academic piece" that will be a "comprehensive approach for a generation of students" let's go ahead and fund that too. First you're going to have to define what that is, though. And you'll probably want to support the "under-served area" charge while you're at it. That a student cohort is doing terribly is not evidence that they're under-served. It's more likely that they're being "equally-served", but would need to be massively over-served in order to overcome the crippling effects of poverty.

Advocating nebulous "comprehensive approaches" that fulfill "necessary prerequisites" are all well and good, but in the past such things have been a recipe for throwing hundreds of millions of dollars down a hole with the exact same outcomes. At least by investing in buildings, you have something tangible, and can more easily maintain your investments.