Hardy for 6th & Deal for 7th & 8th? DCPS Survey on Changing Feeder Pattern

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Intl Baccalaureate curriculum at Deal is an obstacle to this idea.

Simplest solution would be to eliminate it. It would take longer to get all the Hardy teachers trained and the program expansion certified.

And how would they address merged 7th and 8th grades with 20-25% of kids with no exposure.

You are probably right and another reason this will never happen. Deal families won't be willing to do something that they perceive as a loss for their children.

Do they love the curriculum that much? IB MYP is considered the weakest link. And Deal opts out of IB integrated math already.

I guess it depends on which is more important - crowding or saying their kids do IB.

[Anonymous]

How do Hardy families feel about this idea?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do Hardy families feel about this idea?

I will not send my child to Hardy because the percentage of on-grade-level and well behaved children is too low.

I would send my child.to a combined deal/hardy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate the idea. My kid doesn't transition well and with that plan he'd have to go to three different schools in three years and then another new school two years later. No way. Plus, they walk to school now and getting to Hardy will be a PITA and major change in our lifestyle. Avoiding that is why we live here.

A 6-12 school would be a much better plan.

You are greatly missing the point.

Then explain. As I read it, they are proposing that you go from your 5th grade school to Hardy for 6th then back up to Deal for 7th and 8th then on to Wilson for 9th. That's 4 schools in 5 years, and that is nuts.

You are conflating the, frankly, snowflake-y needs of your kid with the crushing, overwhelming wave of kids Tee'd up for deal and wilson in the next few years. It's like complaining about the quality of the sand in the sandbags used to stop the flood.

And btw, it's not crazy at all. Many school systems have elementary, middle, junior high and high schools as their feeder pattern. Or early elementary, middle elementary, middle and high school-- as they do in many parts of MoCo.

Um, it's her job as a parent to not only prioritize her child's needs, but to extrapolate from them. It's the same reason that parents of children with special needs are used as advisory counsel for children besides just their own.

Also, just because MoCo does it, that doesn't mean it's automatically a great idea. Large swaths of MoCo are nothing to envy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Intl Baccalaureate curriculum at Deal is an obstacle to this idea.

Simplest solution would be to eliminate it. It would take longer to get all the Hardy teachers trained and the program expansion certified.

And how would they address merged 7th and 8th grades with 20-25% of kids with no exposure.

If they merge the schools - the 6th grade teachers and principal from deal could move over to hardy ... 'extra ' hardy teachers could move with kids tondeal foe 7th and 8th in the first year to help with the transition to IB. I like the idea!!

[Anonymous]

So convoluted.

[Anonymous]

Tile back dcps middle to 5th (so all the feeders send 5th to Hardy where they stay through 6th) and this starts to make real sense...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tile back dcps middle to 5th (so all the feeders send 5th to Hardy where they stay through 6th) and this starts to make real sense...

So that there are 3 middle school models in DCPS (5-8, 6-8 and K-8), instead of the 2 now? No.

[Anonymous]

My problem with the idea is that it creates lots of movement and shuts, but does not do much to lessen overcrowding. The only way it lessens overcrowding is to ensure the extra capacity at Hardy is soaked up. It doesn't reduce the total number of MS students, or the number of students going to Wilson. The small benefit doesn't seem to justify the significant burdens.

[Anonymous]

Agitation, not "shuts"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My problem with the idea is that it creates lots of movement and shuts, but does not do much to lessen overcrowding. The only way it lessens overcrowding is to ensure the extra capacity at Hardy is soaked up. It doesn't reduce the total number of MS students, or the number of students going to Wilson. The small benefit doesn't seem to justify the significant burdens.

It isn't supposed to reduce number of students. It is to better use space available.

[Anonymous]

PP again. I also dislike that it gives an illusion of change, which is what I think DCPS wants as an excuse to avoid making real changes that will do more to fix the problem but might be politically unpopular.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My problem with the idea is that it creates lots of movement and shuts, but does not do much to lessen overcrowding. The only way it lessens overcrowding is to ensure the extra capacity at Hardy is soaked up. It doesn't reduce the total number of MS students, or the number of students going to Wilson. The small benefit doesn't seem to justify the significant burdens.

It isn't supposed to reduce number of students. It is to better use space available.

I agree it uses the extra space. But it doesn't do very much to reduce overcrowding. Perhaps it's meant to be a tiny partial solution that could be combined with a few other steps, and the combination will cause a meaningful reduction in overcrowding? If so, then maybe I'm on board. But then this step needs to be presented as part of a package deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tile back dcps middle to 5th (so all the feeders send 5th to Hardy where they stay through 6th) and this starts to make real sense...

Hardy isn't big enough for that.

[Anonymous]

The biggest benefit I see is that it prevents more OOB students from flooding the feeder pattern via Hardy. According to the last set of boundary data, hardy was only 13% in bounds, so 87% OOB. That's over 300 extra. students being packed into Wilson from outside the Wilson boundary.