Wilson in 10 years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of black people who live IB for Wilson.

Agree, both of those statements are flat wrong. The second is not true because Wilson is 50% OOB, so yes, you would solve the crowding by eliminating OOB feeder rights. The segregation argument doesn't make sense based on current numbers. Wilson is only 27% white. Even if every white kid was IB (they aren't) and if every OOB kid were black (they aren't), eliminating all OOB students (which no one is arguing for, just an extreme example), the school would still only be about 54% white. Even this extreme example is not a segregation case in the making at all. The reason DC schools are deemed segregated is because there aren't enough white students in the system to eliminate majority minority schools because the minority is the majority in the school system. The problem has never been that Wilson and Deal are not diverse; the problem is that so many other schools in DC are not diverse. You don't fix that by overcrowding Deal and Wilson. That is not what is going on in this political play.

If you gave an OOB feeder preference in the lottery for OOB kids coming up from a feeder school, you could award spots to fill available seats without overcrowding the schools. Some OOB feeder kids would not go to Wilson from Hardy or Deal, but they still have a good shot at Wilson (80% of them will still get seats), and have all the other choice options in DC: Walls, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Those families have already chosen to commute for schools, so this would not be the same kind of burden it would be for IB families forced out of the neighborhood school. This is logical, fair, it makes sense, it gives kids good options, it preserves neighborhood schools and limits commuting, and solves overcrowding. It may even have the effect of increasing the diversity in schools in other parts of the city where white families live. And therefore, it will probably not even be seriously considered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

Those schools are the source of most of Wilson's behavior problems. Jettison them!

What schools are you talking about jettisoning?

Thinking logically, the schools geographically furthest from Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of black people who live IB for Wilson.

Agree, both of those statements are flat wrong. The second is not true because Wilson is 50% OOB, so yes, you would solve the crowding by eliminating OOB feeder rights. The segregation argument doesn't make sense based on current numbers. Wilson is only 27% white. Even if every white kid was IB (they aren't) and if every OOB kid were black (they aren't), eliminating all OOB students (which no one is arguing for, just an extreme example), the school would still only be about 54% white. Even this extreme example is not a segregation case in the making at all. The reason DC schools are deemed segregated is because there aren't enough white students in the system to eliminate majority minority schools because the minority is the majority in the school system. The problem has never been that Wilson and Deal are not diverse; the problem is that so many other schools in DC are not diverse. You don't fix that by overcrowding Deal and Wilson. That is not what is going on in this political play.

If you gave an OOB feeder preference in the lottery for OOB kids coming up from a feeder school, you could award spots to fill available seats without overcrowding the schools. Some OOB feeder kids would not go to Wilson from Hardy or Deal, but they still have a good shot at Wilson (80% of them will still get seats), and have all the other choice options in DC: Walls, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Those families have already chosen to commute for schools, so this would not be the same kind of burden it would be for IB families forced out of the neighborhood school. This is logical, fair, it makes sense, it gives kids good options, it preserves neighborhood schools and limits commuting, and solves overcrowding. It may even have the effect of increasing the diversity in schools in other parts of the city where white families live. And therefore, it will probably not even be seriously considered.

The feeder right was created by Michelle Rhee about eight years ago when Deal first started turning away OOB kids. If at that time it had been created as a preference rather than a right no one would have batted an eye.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone in MoCo getting their panties in a knot that Whitman has no kids from Briggs Chaney. Schools tend to fill from their localities and when parents invest in a school, whether through high taxes of expensive property purchases, sweat equity/volunteering or both, they expect results... not social engineering.

BTW, why is it that South Asians and East Asians never count as "diversity" in majority-Black DC?

+ a million.

You probably get more actual diversity with 10 Asians or Latinos than with 100 African Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone in MoCo getting their panties in a knot that Whitman has no kids from Briggs Chaney. Schools tend to fill from their localities and when parents invest in a school, whether through high taxes of expensive property purchases, sweat equity/volunteering or both, they expect results... not social engineering.

BTW, why is it that South Asians and East Asians never count as "diversity" in majority-Black DC?

+ a million.

You probably get more actual diversity with 10 Asians or Latinos than with 100 African Americans.

Are you being willfully obtuse or do you not understand the difference between 'diversity' and legal segregation issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone in MoCo getting their panties in a knot that Whitman has no kids from Briggs Chaney. Schools tend to fill from their localities and when parents invest in a school, whether through high taxes of expensive property purchases, sweat equity/volunteering or both, they expect results... not social engineering.

BTW, why is it that South Asians and East Asians never count as "diversity" in majority-Black DC?

+ a million.

You probably get more actual diversity with 10 Asians or Latinos than with 100 African Americans.

What does statement this even mean? It sounds a lot like you're assigning a higher value to one group over another.

Also, do you even know any AAs in DC? There are certainly many DC natives with deep DC roots, and we've gotten to know plenty of these families--but overall AAs in DC are an pretty diverse group. My kid's predominantly black school has a ton of diversity. There are kids with East African, West African, Central American, and Caribbean heritage. In my kid's class of 16 kids this past school year, there were at least four other languages spoken among the black kids.

-a black and Asian parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone in MoCo getting their panties in a knot that Whitman has no kids from Briggs Chaney. Schools tend to fill from their localities and when parents invest in a school, whether through high taxes of expensive property purchases, sweat equity/volunteering or both, they expect results... not social engineering.

BTW, why is it that South Asians and East Asians never count as "diversity" in majority-Black DC?

+ a million.

You probably get more actual diversity with 10 Asians or Latinos than with 100 African Americans.

What does statement this even mean? It sounds a lot like you're assigning a higher value to one group over another.

Also, do you even know any AAs in DC? There are certainly many DC natives with deep DC roots, and we've gotten to know plenty of these families--but overall AAs in DC are an pretty diverse group. My kid's predominantly black school has a ton of diversity. There are kids with East African, West African, Central American, and Caribbean heritage. In my kid's class of 16 kids this past school year, there were at least four other languages spoken among the black kids.

-a black and Asian parent

np: I understand your point, pp. I, too, feel like I live in a multi-cultural world. But I also find it frustrating that some AAs, on DCUM at least, and apparently some local politicians seem to view the city as AA vs. white, where 'white' includes everything but AA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see anyone in MoCo getting their panties in a knot that Whitman has no kids from Briggs Chaney. Schools tend to fill from their localities and when parents invest in a school, whether through high taxes of expensive property purchases, sweat equity/volunteering or both, they expect results... not social engineering.

BTW, why is it that South Asians and East Asians never count as "diversity" in majority-Black DC?

+ a million.

You probably get more actual diversity with 10 Asians or Latinos than with 100 African Americans.

What does statement this even mean? It sounds a lot like you're assigning a higher value to one group over another.

Also, do you even know any AAs in DC? There are certainly many DC natives with deep DC roots, and we've gotten to know plenty of these families--but overall AAs in DC are an pretty diverse group. My kid's predominantly black school has a ton of diversity. There are kids with East African, West African, Central American, and Caribbean heritage. In my kid's class of 16 kids this past school year, there were at least four other languages spoken among the black kids.

-a black and Asian parent

np: I understand your point, pp. I, too, feel like I live in a multi-cultural world. But I also find it frustrating that some AAs, on DCUM at least, and apparently some local politicians seem to view the city as AA vs. white, where 'white' includes everything but AA.

PP here. What forum have you found this to be the case in? I haven't noticed such sentiments here before, and I haven't found it to be expressed by those I know IRL. My social circle is probably half highly educated AA families (several of whom are DC natives), and the rest a mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Those schools are the source of most of Wilson's behavior problems. Jettison them!

Can you point me to exactly where you got the data that supports this assertion? Or are you just engaging in more of the persistent racist trolling that seems fated to accompany every Wilson thread on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of black people who live IB for Wilson.

Agree, both of those statements are flat wrong. The second is not true because Wilson is 50% OOB, so yes, you would solve the crowding by eliminating OOB feeder rights. The segregation argument doesn't make sense based on current numbers. Wilson is only 27% white. Even if every white kid was IB (they aren't) and if every OOB kid were black (they aren't), eliminating all OOB students (which no one is arguing for, just an extreme example), the school would still only be about 54% white. Even this extreme example is not a segregation case in the making at all. The reason DC schools are deemed segregated is because there aren't enough white students in the system to eliminate majority minority schools because the minority is the majority in the school system. The problem has never been that Wilson and Deal are not diverse; the problem is that so many other schools in DC are not diverse. You don't fix that by overcrowding Deal and Wilson. That is not what is going on in this political play.

If you gave an OOB feeder preference in the lottery for OOB kids coming up from a feeder school, you could award spots to fill available seats without overcrowding the schools. Some OOB feeder kids would not go to Wilson from Hardy or Deal, but they still have a good shot at Wilson (80% of them will still get seats), and have all the other choice options in DC: Walls, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Those families have already chosen to commute for schools, so this would not be the same kind of burden it would be for IB families forced out of the neighborhood school. This is logical, fair, it makes sense, it gives kids good options, it preserves neighborhood schools and limits commuting, and solves overcrowding. It may even have the effect of increasing the diversity in schools in other parts of the city where white families live. And therefore, it will probably not even be seriously considered.

Ohmygod stop it with the OOB feeder rights. It's a dog-whistle for Ward 3. No-one else in the District (including the politicians with the possible exception of the powerless Mary Cheh) gives a flying fark about shutting down OOB feeder rights. Everybody WANTS OOB feeder rights.

Move to Bethesda already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of black people who live IB for Wilson.

Agree, both of those statements are flat wrong. The second is not true because Wilson is 50% OOB, so yes, you would solve the crowding by eliminating OOB feeder rights. The segregation argument doesn't make sense based on current numbers. Wilson is only 27% white. Even if every white kid was IB (they aren't) and if every OOB kid were black (they aren't), eliminating all OOB students (which no one is arguing for, just an extreme example), the school would still only be about 54% white. Even this extreme example is not a segregation case in the making at all. The reason DC schools are deemed segregated is because there aren't enough white students in the system to eliminate majority minority schools because the minority is the majority in the school system. The problem has never been that Wilson and Deal are not diverse; the problem is that so many other schools in DC are not diverse. You don't fix that by overcrowding Deal and Wilson. That is not what is going on in this political play.

If you gave an OOB feeder preference in the lottery for OOB kids coming up from a feeder school, you could award spots to fill available seats without overcrowding the schools. Some OOB feeder kids would not go to Wilson from Hardy or Deal, but they still have a good shot at Wilson (80% of them will still get seats), and have all the other choice options in DC: Walls, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Those families have already chosen to commute for schools, so this would not be the same kind of burden it would be for IB families forced out of the neighborhood school. This is logical, fair, it makes sense, it gives kids good options, it preserves neighborhood schools and limits commuting, and solves overcrowding. It may even have the effect of increasing the diversity in schools in other parts of the city where white families live. And therefore, it will probably not even be seriously considered.

Ohmygod stop it with the OOB feeder rights. It's a dog-whistle for Ward 3. No-one else in the District (including the politicians with the possible exception of the powerless Mary Cheh) gives a flying fark about shutting down OOB feeder rights. Everybody WANTS OOB feeder rights.

Move to Bethesda already.

Nope. There are several thousand Ward 3 families with the skill and resources that intend to stay and fight for a high performing Deal and Wilson. This is a much different crowd.

[Anonymous]

Please tell us who gains when IB parents of ES and MS-age students intent on making Wilson work for their families move to Bethesda. Kids? Taxpayers? Try Bethesda realtors. PPs who suggest this lack vision for the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please tell us who gains when IB parents of ES and MS-age students intent on making Wilson work for their families move to Bethesda. Kids? Taxpayers? Try Bethesda realtors. PPs who suggest this lack vision for the city.

Many people feel their kids do benefit, as do their families. Many people have no interest in planning their lives around your "vision for the city," whatever the hell that means.

(And this is a complete aside, but when a family moves from D.C. to Bethesda, the D.C. realtors benefit more than the Bethesda ones because that creates a D.C. house that will be sold and then presumably purchased by a new family. The move itself only creates one transaction, a purchase, for the Bethesda realtor. So your random snark actually made no sense at all.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One other thing to consider is that if Wilson ever goes all IB, that's a tremendous loss of enrollment. Part of what makes Wilson so successful now is the large number of students- so they can offer lots of great classss plus advanced maths, physics, languages etc. Even if you counter with "well if we could just become all IB upper income white kids therefore we will attract more iB parents who currently send their kids private" the demographic projections don't bear this out. No matter how you slice those numbers, the HS pop of IB families is dropping, not growing enough to fill those empty OOB seats. So whenever people complain about OOB kids ruining Wilson, I thank god for them because if not for OOB Wilson would have died on the vine a long time ago.

I don't know what numbers you are referring to (and I've scrutinized them) but there is no evidence of this - at the rising 5th grade level at just Janney, Murch & Lafayette there are 375 students and that is just a fraction of the IB population and Deal is already almost as big as Wilson.

Sure some of the kids from the adjacent 3 schools will go private but most won't.

The loss of Wilson going all IB would be in diversity so for that reason I hope it doesn't happen but there is a crush of in-boundary kids bound for Wilson over the next 4-5 years.

Diversity is a nice bonus. But not at the cost of overcrowding. There are lots of other opportunities to surround your child with diversity: sports, clubs, church, etc. Ward 3 parents who absolutely need diversity in schools should have no trouble lotterying into EOTP schools.

I think diversity is more than a "bonus" and consider it a fact of life my kids (and others) should be exposed to and my sense is most WOTP parents are open minded enough to agree - after all most of us could buy our way out of diversity if we so choose.

But there are a large number of OOB students at Wilson so there is no reason diversity needs to come at the expense of overcrowding - like everything else it is a question of whether there is enough political courage to actually enforce the paper boundaries the school has but that has been discussed elsewhere in this thead and others.

Without the OOB students Wilson would be segregated. If you end OOB rights you will lose diversity and it will still be overcrowded.

The only solution that solves both problems is re-routing at least 2 current schools from the feeder pattern and replacing with one feeder that is mostly minority.

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of black people who live IB for Wilson.

Agree, both of those statements are flat wrong. The second is not true because Wilson is 50% OOB, so yes, you would solve the crowding by eliminating OOB feeder rights. The segregation argument doesn't make sense based on current numbers. Wilson is only 27% white. Even if every white kid was IB (they aren't) and if every OOB kid were black (they aren't), eliminating all OOB students (which no one is arguing for, just an extreme example), the school would still only be about 54% white. Even this extreme example is not a segregation case in the making at all. The reason DC schools are deemed segregated is because there aren't enough white students in the system to eliminate majority minority schools because the minority is the majority in the school system. The problem has never been that Wilson and Deal are not diverse; the problem is that so many other schools in DC are not diverse. You don't fix that by overcrowding Deal and Wilson. That is not what is going on in this political play.

If you gave an OOB feeder preference in the lottery for OOB kids coming up from a feeder school, you could award spots to fill available seats without overcrowding the schools. Some OOB feeder kids would not go to Wilson from Hardy or Deal, but they still have a good shot at Wilson (80% of them will still get seats), and have all the other choice options in DC: Walls, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Those families have already chosen to commute for schools, so this would not be the same kind of burden it would be for IB families forced out of the neighborhood school. This is logical, fair, it makes sense, it gives kids good options, it preserves neighborhood schools and limits commuting, and solves overcrowding. It may even have the effect of increasing the diversity in schools in other parts of the city where white families live. And therefore, it will probably not even be seriously considered.

Ohmygod stop it with the OOB feeder rights. It's a dog-whistle for Ward 3. No-one else in the District (including the politicians with the possible exception of the powerless Mary Cheh) gives a flying fark about shutting down OOB feeder rights. Everybody WANTS OOB feeder rights.

Move to Bethesda already.

Nope. There are several thousand Ward 3 families with the skill and resources that intend to stay and fight for a high performing Deal and Wilson. This is a much different crowd.

There has been a significant change in how many students from Ward 3 students go to public schools, but they are still only 6% of the city's public school population. Other wards are growing too so the Ward 3 parents clout, so to speak, isn't necessarily any larger than it was.

https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Public%20School%20Enrollment%20Trends%202011-2016%20FINAL.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Even the "jail' track isn't what you would find at Cardozo or Ballou. Only 33% of students are economically disadvantaged at this point.

...only one third, huh? Elite high schools are all sub 5%.