Hardy---did they change number of OOB spots available?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The principal is working hard to attract more families from feeders, so it is a sign of responsible planning to offer significantly fewer spots on the OOB lottery. Otherwise she could end up with a crowding situation. The waitlist will still be there. Families can still select hardy as a lottery pick.

I heard the principal speak recently and she mentioned that a few students have been returned to their local schools so she is obviously dealing with serious behavioral issues.

Good for her. As best I can tell, Pride is fantastic.

[Anonymous]

I spoke to Hardy's principal at one of the open houses. Yes, she said explicitly that she was working to reduce the number of OOB kids and to increase the number of IB kids, although she did not mention - at the time - an explicit number. There is only one problem with such statements as many have already pointed out. Today, she limits the number of OOB kids to, say, 15, and 100 families of IB kids initially sign up for Hardy, and 50 kids from OOB are waitlisted. As the months go on, some IB families chicken out and send their kids to private schools or move elsewhere. At that point, the principal goes out and reaches for all the waitlisted OOB kids, and Hardy never becomes a neighborhood school, with all the problems associated with that.

There are a few differences between this year and the previous ones, however.

First, IB families are more upset than ever that their feeder school is not as good as it should be, and across all feeder schools there is a strong movement of parents that say "I will send my kid to Hardy no matter what, and will change this school once and for all".

Second, the principal, maybe because she is new and because she feels the pressure from principals of IB feeder schools, has repeatedly vowed to change things in recent months, and she will have to prove that she is a real leader by acting upon her words in recent months.

Last but not least, many parents (more now than before) have the feeling that they want to give Hardy a try, knowing that, yes, Hardy test scores are low, but, once you control for where kids come from, they are just as good (for your IB kid) as those from Deal (in other words, smart kids do not become stupid once they get into Hardy).

[Anonymous]

wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Well I'm amazed at how ridiculous you sound.

First you bemoan "IB vs OOB snobbery" and then you lay on the us vs. them rhetoric. Here's a tip: people will respect you more if you view them as individuals rather than members of groups. Every parent wants to do what's best for their children. It's not like OOB families sacrificed the future of their children by sending them to Hardy so the school would stay open, they did it because it was the best option available. Today's IB families and OOB have nothing in common with the ones from five years ago. Nobody owes anybody anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There are a few differences between this year and the previous ones, however.

First, IB families are more upset than ever that their feeder school is not as good as it should be, and across all feeder schools there is a strong movement of parents that say "I will send my kid to Hardy no matter what, and will change this school once and for all".

Having observed Hardy for a decade and studied the earlier history, I would say parent dissatisfaction in the feeder schools peaked in about 2009. From 2005 to 2008 the school was moved to the Hamilton Education Campus, over by Gallaudet, and ceased to function as a neighborhood school at all. At the same time, until 2009 it was very easy to get into Deal OOB, so kids who wanted to stay in public for middle school just went to Deal. And Deal was no great shakes at that time, no public middle school in the city was, so a lot of parents just assumed they'd move or go private for middle school.

When the school moved back the principal got very aggressive about keeping the in-boundary families out, much more so than before the move. Then Deal took off, and the OOB slots evaporated there overnight. Things quickly came to a boil: people wanted an in-boundary school, and they wanted it to be as good as Deal.

People still want those things today, but there is a lot more caution today than there was five years ago. It's due to what happened in the last five years. Nobody expected the level of turmoil that resulted from trying to change the school. Hardy has had five principals since 2011. People are still pretty shell-shocked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Well I'm amazed at how ridiculous you sound.

First you bemoan "IB vs OOB snobbery" and then you lay on the us vs. them rhetoric. Here's a tip: people will respect you more if you view them as individuals rather than members of groups. Every parent wants to do what's best for their children. It's not like OOB families sacrificed the future of their children by sending them to Hardy so the school would stay open, they did it because it was the best option available. Today's IB families and OOB have nothing in common with the ones from five years ago. Nobody owes anybody anything.

+1.

Also, I wonder how much traction Mary Cheh might have gotten on a new middle school in the Palisades if all those noble self-sacrificing OOB families hadn't kept Hardy on life support.

Relatedly, has anyone proposed moving Hardy back to the Hamilton EC (how many current OOB students are in proximity to that facility?) and opening a new Ward 3 MS in its stead? Or is that a political nonstarter?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Lady, you sound the most entitled of all. You have the right to attend your own IB school. If you don't like it, please don't blame others. You chose where to live. Plus, lucky you, you have access to dozens great charters and even to good DCPS schools via OOB lottery. Quit whining, say Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Nice try, PP, but you're spewing revisionist history. The story I've heard is that former Hardy administrators were hostile toward IB families, failed to recruit at feeder schools, and reserved a large number of spots for OOB kids in the lottery every year. The IB families were discouraged from attending and, as a result, did not enroll their children...what a surprise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

IAlso, I wonder how much traction Mary Cheh might have gotten on a new middle school in the Palisades if all those noble self-sacrificing OOB families hadn't kept Hardy on life support.

Relatedly, has anyone proposed moving Hardy back to the Hamilton EC (how many current OOB students are in proximity to that facility?) and opening a new Ward 3 MS in its stead? Or is that a political nonstarter?

Hamilton EC has been granted to a charter, I forget which one.
New MSs have been opened at McKinley Tech, and one scheduled for Brookland in 2015-16
Why would you move "Hardy" and open a new "MS" in Ward 3. The building in Ward 3 is renovated for the neighborhood, and right sized for the neighborhood. There need to be more MS options throughout the city. Not a new MS in Ward 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There are a few differences between this year and the previous ones, however.

First, IB families are more upset than ever that their feeder school is not as good as it should be, and across all feeder schools there is a strong movement of parents that say "I will send my kid to Hardy no matter what, and will change this school once and for all".

Having observed Hardy for a decade and studied the earlier history, I would say parent dissatisfaction in the feeder schools peaked in about 2009. From 2005 to 2008 the school was moved to the Hamilton Education Campus, over by Gallaudet, and ceased to function as a neighborhood school at all. At the same time, until 2009 it was very easy to get into Deal OOB, so kids who wanted to stay in public for middle school just went to Deal. And Deal was no great shakes at that time, no public middle school in the city was, so a lot of parents just assumed they'd move or go private for middle school.

When the school moved back the principal got very aggressive about keeping the in-boundary families out, much more so than before the move. Then Deal took off, and the OOB slots evaporated there overnight. Things quickly came to a boil: people wanted an in-boundary school, and they wanted it to be as good as Deal.

People still want those things today, but there is a lot more caution today than there was five years ago. It's due to what happened in the last five years. Nobody expected the level of turmoil that resulted from trying to change the school. Hardy has had five principals since 2011. People are still pretty shell-shocked.

Thanks for sharing the history - that's really helpful in understanding how we got here and how things are moving now. And Trisha Pride is one lady who gets things done! Tough as nails and gets what she asks for from downtown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Nice try, PP, but you're spewing revisionist history. The story I've heard is that former Hardy administrators were hostile toward IB families, failed to recruit at feeder schools, and reserved a large number of spots for OOB kids in the lottery every year. The IB families were discouraged from attending and, as a result, did not enroll their children...what a surprise.

"Revisionist history" is overly kind. It's completely backwards.

Until 1996, Hardy was a nice, small neighborhood middle school, located in a 12-classroom building on Foxhall Road. Amy Carter went there when her dad was president. Then it got moved into the much larger building that it occupies today, the former Gordon Junior High. In 2005 it moved again to Hamilton EC in Northeast. In 2008 it moved back to the old Gordon building. Somewhere along the way the principal was allowed to convert the school into an application-only magnet arts and music program, but on the down-low, the in-boundary folks were never told about it.

It's unfair to ascribe motives, but if you set out to destroy a neighborhood school, those might be the steps you would follow.

[Anonymous]

Why didn't IB parents just send their kids to Hardy notwithstanding being intimidated and frightened away by the all powerful Patrick Pope?
After all, if they could not or did not want to drop $35,000 at NCS, Maret, St. Alban's, etc, and Hardy is their neighborhood school, why not just say "To hell with Pope; my kid is IB, has a right to go to Hardy, so, he/she is going!" Could Pope or DCPS stopped IB kids from enrolling? No. Anonymous has a point; I have personally heard IB parents and melanin challenged OOB parents at Hardy feeder schools say without reservation that they would not send their princes/princesses to Hardy because it was too...you know... BLACK!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

IAlso, I wonder how much traction Mary Cheh might have gotten on a new middle school in the Palisades if all those noble self-sacrificing OOB families hadn't kept Hardy on life support.

Relatedly, has anyone proposed moving Hardy back to the Hamilton EC (how many current OOB students are in proximity to that facility?) and opening a new Ward 3 MS in its stead? Or is that a political nonstarter?

Hamilton EC has been granted to a charter, I forget which one.
New MSs have been opened at McKinley Tech, and one scheduled for Brookland in 2015-16
Why would you move "Hardy" and open a new "MS" in Ward 3. The building in Ward 3 is renovated for the neighborhood, and right sized for the neighborhood. There need to be more MS options throughout the city. Not a new MS in Ward 3.

Yes, the first pp seems not to know that Hardy was moved to Hamilton so that the building on Wisconsin Ave could be renovated. They had wanted to keep the kids in the building during the renovation and it was decided that that would not be possible to do safely.

Speaking as an OOB parent whose kid went to the Hamilton location for two years, Hamilton was not particularly near us. It wasn't in what you could call a neighborhood where kids could walk to the school. (And I'm guessing that OOB Hardy students still come from all over the District and it's even harder to get to Hamilton on mass transit than Hardy.) It also seems odd to to even wonder how many OOB students currently are in proximity to a facility where Hardy has not been located in years. Seriously, my kid is in college now. Hamilton is ancient history. If you want to get rid of the OOB students, sending them all to Hamilton is a non-starter. Anyway you didn't seriously mean that, did you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Nice try, PP, but you're spewing revisionist history. The story I've heard is that former Hardy administrators were hostile toward IB families, failed to recruit at feeder schools, and reserved a large number of spots for OOB kids in the lottery every year. The IB families were discouraged from attending and, as a result, did not enroll their children...what a surprise.

The spots you are describing as "reserved" were spots for OOB kids who were in the feeder schools. Those kids did not keep out IB kids who always had a right to go to school there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:wow, just wow. the level of privilege and IB vs OOB snobbery is just amazing. Those of you considering Hardy from your IB homes should be kissing the feet of your OOB friends who put their children in Hardy and kept it alive and well for your princelings to enter when you felt it was now good enough..or when you could no longer afford GDS, NCS etc…..

I am just so amazed by how ridiculous you all sound.

Nice try, PP, but you're spewing revisionist history. The story I've heard is that former Hardy administrators were hostile toward IB families, failed to recruit at feeder schools, and reserved a large number of spots for OOB kids in the lottery every year. The IB families were discouraged from attending and, as a result, did not enroll their children...what a surprise.

"Revisionist history" is overly kind. It's completely backwards.

Until 1996, Hardy was a nice, small neighborhood middle school, located in a 12-classroom building on Foxhall Road. Amy Carter went there when her dad was president. Then it got moved into the much larger building that it occupies today, the former Gordon Junior High. In 2005 it moved again to Hamilton EC in Northeast. In 2008 it moved back to the old Gordon building. Somewhere along the way the principal was allowed to convert the school into an application-only magnet arts and music program, but on the down-low, the in-boundary folks were never told about it.

It's unfair to ascribe motives, but if you set out to destroy a neighborhood school, those might be the steps you would follow.

This is false. It was not an application-only school. As I understand it, the arts focus (which required filling out an application) was put into place about the same time the lottery was initiated. I don't know if this is accurate but I always assumed it was so the administration did not have to accept a disruptive student who got a lottery spot. Before the lottery, principals had control over which OOB kids were allowed to attend. After the lottery, principals lost that control and my assumption (which granted could be wrong so take it with a grain of salt) was that the application was a way of controlling which OOB kids could attend. IB students always had the right to attend but the impression I got (again, this could be wrong) was that the IB families didn't like the fact that Pope didn't fawn all over them.

The ironic thing was that Pope ran a tight ship which is something the IB families should have appreciated. Rhee removed Pope just after the school moved back to the Wisconsin ave building and expanded. As I understand it, the expansion brought in a lot more new OOB students which was quite a change for the school and the one person you would want to have in charge would have been Patrick Pope. But then Rhee was a short-sighted manager and was unable to grasp that.

Again, this is speculation on my part - but so are half of the statements on this thread. They're just not being labeled as such.