How does a 'safety" school turn into a highly regarded one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16 of the kids at Appletree CH are from WOTP. That's 10% of the student body. If a bunch of those kids leave after PK3 to go back to their IB schools, it creates a PK4 class with less cohesion.

Same issue with people pulling kids out of BASIS to go to Deal (or, more often, Wilson). Except there the issue is even bigger since the school won't take new 9th graders to fill the vacated seats.

And what makes you think that people who live WOTP have less of a right to make school choices for their children involving citywide charter schools than people EOTP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

Um, Hyde-Addison? Even I know that and I'm an EOTP resident.

Yes, except that it's pointless to try to lottery into this school for Pk because they haven't been accepting anyone OOB in the past years. As another PP noted, WOTP is underserved when it comes to PK. As long as there is no means testing for access to these programs, this is unfair, and it is even more unfair to suggest that people should be excluded from playing the lottery (or shamed for doing so because classes will have "less cohesion" when they leave) based on where they live.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Almost everyone I know in any DC school, be it public, charter, HRCS, WOTP, whatever--isn't thrilled, and would jump ship tomorrow, given the chance.

OMG WITH THE 'WOTP' thing again, as if it's interchangeable with Noyes and DC Bilingual.

If you actually knew someone whose kids went to Murch or Janney -- and it's clear you don't really, you just barfed out a list of words to make some point -- you would know that there are 0.03% of the student body at these types of "WOTP" schools who "would jump ship tomorrow."

where the eff are these allegedly disgruntled Chevy Chase residents going to "jump ship" TO? Mundo Verde, you think?

Private, like our neighbors did after a year at Deal.

Why are you such a raging douche, that you have to discredit someone else's experience? Class insecurity? Dropped on the head as a child? A bad upbringing?

NP here. They are part of the 0.03%.

As for the rest of your post, pot meet kettle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

We've certainly seen a ton at SWW Francis-Stevens. They make up at least 1/4 of the PK cohorts.

Funny, I wonder how they all got in, considering that SWWFS didn't admit any OOB students for PK3 in last year's lottery. See PP's link on the previous page.

Yeah, the PP is full of sh*t. It's impossible to get into PK at SWWFS OOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

OK, cool. Let's shrink the boundaries at a bunch of WOTP schools so there is enough room for PK3 classes at each. As West and Brightwood shift out of being ECs, there will be more room for elementary students there, so Lafayette and Murch can have some of the eastern part of their boundaries shift to schools across the park, and Hearst can shift to Powell (if you want, combine the Hearst and Powell boundaries and each family can indicate a preference for the traditional school or the bilingual one). Some of Oyster's boundary can move to the bilingual schools to the east, or just make Adams another bilingual elementary school and send the kids from there, Oyster, Marie Reed, Bancroft, Powell, etc. to MacFarland and Roosevelt). We could also end the ridiculousness of having SWW at FS (it's not SWW; it just means DCPS saves paying for one principal) and make Francis-Stevens PK3-5 with a bigger boundary. It could go to Hardy and then all the folks salivating over Hardy's IB percentage could be happy.

Given the freakouts people had over moving WOTP school boundaries by a couple blocks in the last reassignment process, I don't think it's going to happen. But I agree--all schools should have PK3. It's just that most folks IB for schools without it are unwilling to move school boundaries in order to accommodate it.

[Anonymous]

^^ mic dropped.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

OK, cool. Let's shrink the boundaries at a bunch of WOTP schools so there is enough room for PK3 classes at each. As West and Brightwood shift out of being ECs, there will be more room for elementary students there, so Lafayette and Murch can have some of the eastern part of their boundaries shift to schools across the park, and Hearst can shift to Powell (if you want, combine the Hearst and Powell boundaries and each family can indicate a preference for the traditional school or the bilingual one). Some of Oyster's boundary can move to the bilingual schools to the east, or just make Adams another bilingual elementary school and send the kids from there, Oyster, Marie Reed, Bancroft, Powell, etc. to MacFarland and Roosevelt). We could also end the ridiculousness of having SWW at FS (it's not SWW; it just means DCPS saves paying for one principal) and make Francis-Stevens PK3-5 with a bigger boundary. It could go to Hardy and then all the folks salivating over Hardy's IB percentage could be happy.

Given the freakouts people had over moving WOTP school boundaries by a couple blocks in the last reassignment process, I don't think it's going to happen. But I agree--all schools should have PK3. It's just that most folks IB for schools without it are unwilling to move school boundaries in order to accommodate it.

I agree that boundaries need to be adjusted, but it makes no sense to have any school boundary, especially in elementary, cross the park. It would be a commuting nightmare, when right now most kids can actually walk to their local elementary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

OK, cool. Let's shrink the boundaries at a bunch of WOTP schools so there is enough room for PK3 classes at each. As West and Brightwood shift out of being ECs, there will be more room for elementary students there, so Lafayette and Murch can have some of the eastern part of their boundaries shift to schools across the park, and Hearst can shift to Powell (if you want, combine the Hearst and Powell boundaries and each family can indicate a preference for the traditional school or the bilingual one). Some of Oyster's boundary can move to the bilingual schools to the east, or just make Adams another bilingual elementary school and send the kids from there, Oyster, Marie Reed, Bancroft, Powell, etc. to MacFarland and Roosevelt). We could also end the ridiculousness of having SWW at FS (it's not SWW; it just means DCPS saves paying for one principal) and make Francis-Stevens PK3-5 with a bigger boundary. It could go to Hardy and then all the folks salivating over Hardy's IB percentage could be happy.

Given the freakouts people had over moving WOTP school boundaries by a couple blocks in the last reassignment process, I don't think it's going to happen. But I agree--all schools should have PK3. It's just that most folks IB for schools without it are unwilling to move school boundaries in order to accommodate it.

I agree that boundaries need to be adjusted, but it makes no sense to have any school boundary, especially in elementary, cross the park. It would be a commuting nightmare, when right now most kids can actually walk to their local elementary.

Have the PTA pay for some school buses.
Shift kids down into Hyde-Addison and F-S (especially if you cut out the middle grades).
Split Oyster and Adams into two elementary schools and stop the middle school.

If your priority is offering PK3, there are going to be some tradeoffs.
If your priority is have a school within walking distance, it's not going to have much room for PK3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

Um, Hyde-Addison? Even I know that and I'm an EOTP resident.

Yes, except that it's pointless to try to lottery into this school for Pk because they haven't been accepting anyone OOB in the past years. As another PP noted, WOTP is underserved when it comes to PK. As long as there is no means testing for access to these programs, this is unfair, and it is even more unfair to suggest that people should be excluded from playing the lottery (or shamed for doing so because classes will have "less cohesion" when they leave) based on where they live.

Or that the optimal solution involves retooling boundaries to encompass large chunks of Rock Creek Park, which, as another PP observed, would design into the system the kind of commuting chaos that charters currently layer on top of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

OK, cool. Let's shrink the boundaries at a bunch of WOTP schools so there is enough room for PK3 classes at each. As West and Brightwood shift out of being ECs, there will be more room for elementary students there, so Lafayette and Murch can have some of the eastern part of their boundaries shift to schools across the park, and Hearst can shift to Powell (if you want, combine the Hearst and Powell boundaries and each family can indicate a preference for the traditional school or the bilingual one). Some of Oyster's boundary can move to the bilingual schools to the east, or just make Adams another bilingual elementary school and send the kids from there, Oyster, Marie Reed, Bancroft, Powell, etc. to MacFarland and Roosevelt). We could also end the ridiculousness of having SWW at FS (it's not SWW; it just means DCPS saves paying for one principal) and make Francis-Stevens PK3-5 with a bigger boundary. It could go to Hardy and then all the folks salivating over Hardy's IB percentage could be happy.

Given the freakouts people had over moving WOTP school boundaries by a couple blocks in the last reassignment process, I don't think it's going to happen. But I agree--all schools should have PK3. It's just that most folks IB for schools without it are unwilling to move school boundaries in order to accommodate it.

I agree that boundaries need to be adjusted, but it makes no sense to have any school boundary, especially in elementary, cross the park. It would be a commuting nightmare, when right now most kids can actually walk to their local elementary.

Have the PTA pay for some school buses.
Shift kids down into Hyde-Addison and F-S (especially if you cut out the middle grades).
Split Oyster and Adams into two elementary schools and stop the middle school.

If your priority is offering PK3, there are going to be some tradeoffs.
If your priority is have a school within walking distance, it's not going to have much room for PK3.

Nope. As an Oyster parent I am firmly against any proposal that involves the loss of Adams/middle school. I want my children to attend a dual immersion school for as long as possible. I, along with a majority of O-A parents, would fight tooth and nail against any proposal that threatens its existence.

[Anonymous]

Oyster students could go to MacFarland and keep doing dual language immersion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.

Um, Hyde-Addison? Even I know that and I'm an EOTP resident.

Yes, except that it's pointless to try to lottery into this school for Pk because they haven't been accepting anyone OOB in the past years. As another PP noted, WOTP is underserved when it comes to PK. As long as there is no means testing for access to these programs, this is unfair, and it is even more unfair to suggest that people should be excluded from playing the lottery (or shamed for doing so because classes will have "less cohesion" when they leave) based on where they live.

Or that the optimal solution involves retooling boundaries to encompass large chunks of Rock Creek Park, which, as another PP observed, would design into the system the kind of commuting chaos that charters currently layer on top of it.

You say you want PK3 - you can't have it all (good commutes, calcified school boundaries, AND PK3).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oyster students could go to MacFarland and keep doing dual language immersion.

Need more popcorn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ mic dropped.

Cute tactic -- diversion into boundary angst. But DCPS has never proposed PK3 at any of these schools and has no intention of doing so.

[Anonymous]

They won't propose PK3 because people like some of the PPs above will reject any solution that would allow for it...except MAYBE for doing massive and expensive renovations to the schools to make them bigger (but then they'll fight about swing space, renovation timelines, and the loss of playing fields).

The WOTP schools need to figure out what they want. If it's PK3, smaller boundaries would help. Ending OOB feeder rights would help (because fewer people would care about getting into Deal/Hardy feeders if it didn't guarantee them the right to go to those schools). Taking kids out of the smaller middle schools (F-S, Adams) and sending them to other middle schools (Shaw, MacFarland) would help. So would openness to a longer commute.

But the problem is that there aren't as many families with 0-2 year olds (the ones who care about PK3) as there are families with 3-12 year olds (the ones who care about elementary and middle school) and the parents of younger kids aren't as well organized--after all, most of them don't have kids at WOTP schools so they don't have much do to with the PTAs. So the folks who'd be willing to compromise in order to get PK3 in Ward 3 are always going to be outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the people who will fight tooth and nail to keep their kids in schools bound for Wilson.