Stoddert and Key to get expansions
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Anonymous
| So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years? |
Anonymous
Maybe, if they all go to Wilson. But some will go to SWW. And others may decide to go to Ellington, Banneker, McKinley or dual language high school at Roosevelt (ok that's probably a long shot). 100 isn't so many. |
Anonymous
And lots of kids will go private. We've been DCPS since PS3 and will stay in DCPS through 8th but will likely go private for high school. |
Anonymous
Better for traffic is a weak argument at the MS and especially HS level. High schoolers use the metro & buses, their traffic impact is minimal. |
Anonymous
Depends on your POV. Many people would say that decoupling address from school patterns is one of the factors that keeps people invested in public education in one form or another. Forcing families into schools they don't like and don't trust led to white flight generations ago and then black flight (more of a DC phenomenon). So far, there is massive under-capacity across the system with very few exceptions. You can entice families to try a school they're on the fence about, but you can't force them. Human nature hasn't changed in a decade. |
Anonymous
Before they tear them out of Wilson, they'll have to tear them out of Deal. It makes no sense to maintain OOB feeder rights for some from all over the District into, say, Hearst (just an example - not picking on Hearst) but tell Lafayette that after Deal they need to attend Roosevelt. You could end up with a student from Shaw going through Hearst - Deal - Wilson, and a student IB for Lafayette (in a house less than a mile from Deal/Wilson) going through Deal to Roosevelt? If this is an attempt to ration the resources, it won't work to play with the HS without changing the MS. |
Anonymous
I agree. It should be Shepherd and Lafayette to the New North middle school described in the DME plan, and then on to Coolidge. This requires the New North middle school to be built. That could be a whole new building, or another option would be to take one of the existing ECs that feeds into Coolidge (Takoma, LaSalle-Backus, Brightwood, and Whittier) and make it New North middle school, and adjust the boundaries of the remaining 3 schools to accommodate the PK-5 students at all 4 ECs. Oyster (expanded so it serves PK-2 and Adams serves 3-5) and Bancroft should go to MacFarland and then Roosevelt. At the same time, or even before (since it doesn't require construction), I would like DCPS to end the rule that an OOB spot at elementary qualifies you for a seat at the destination middle and high school. One way to cushion the blow is to start it with the kids who start in PK3 in the 2019-2020 school year, so it won't affect middle school enrollment until 2026. That seems too slow to me though. A better way would be to give a preference in the lottery to kids who are enrolled OOB in a feeder school. Where that preference should go relative to sibling and proximity preference is something DCPS would have to figure out. |
Anonymous
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12:40 - you are too late.
New North is already being built now; it will occupy part of the renovated Coolidge building (Coolidge is now in trailers). The Takoma, LSB, Brightwood and Whittier will all feed to New North MS, and there isn't actually projected to be space for any other schools to feed into it. |
Anonymous
What does this mean? There are tons of condos, apartments, and rowhouses in Glover Park and Burleith, and hundreds of kids. Not everyone chooses to or can afford to live in a large, suburban-style house. |
Anonymous
This is not insurmountable. Let New North and Coolidge grow over time--if it gets too full, DCPS can convert one of the ECs to a middle school, give Height a boundary, or take back one of the schools it's leased to charters: Paul, Cap City, and Friendship Online (in the Old Brightwood building adjacent to Brightwood EC) all lease DCPS buildings in-bounds for Coolidge according to https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Formerly%20Closed%20DCPS%20Facility%20Landscape_as%20of%20SY1617_FINAL_Updated%20July2017_0.pdf |
Anonymous
You misunderstand me. I'm not anti-OOB at all, schools are public property and should be for everybody. What I'm specifically calling out is the feeder process. If a kid gets a seat at a Deal feeder for Pre-K3 this year, under the current policy he is guaranteed a seat at Deal until 2029 and at Wilson until 2033. If a kid gets a seat at a Deal feeder for 5th grade she is guaranteed a seat at Deal until 2021 and at Wilson until 2025. There is a strong motivation for families to lottery into elementary schools with a better feeder pattern, even if the elementary school itself is no better than their current one. That is destabilizing for the school that is left. There is a strong motivation to lottery into a better feeder pattern for 4th or 5th grade, which is destabilizing for both the new school and the old school. Deal and Wilson have effectively lost the ability to control their enrollment, because more students have the right to attend than the schools can hold, and those rights are locked in until 2033. That is destabilizing. Under the current system families who have poor luck in the lottery are out of luck, and need to either move or leave the public school system. A more rational system would be you lottery into a school and stay as long as you stay at that school, but each new school has a new lottery at the entry year. The argument that is often made that it is important to preserve class cohorts from elementary to middle school. Unfortunately, the reality is that Deal is the only middle school in the city where that happens already. I'm not IB fo Deal, I put my kids through my IB elementary, and by the time they got to fifth about 60% of the kids who were there in kindergarten were gone. Of that class, a couple went to the IB middle school, a handful got into Deal by hook or by crook, and the rest scattered, going to charter, parochial, or private, or moving. So yeah, preserving cohorts is good, but it isn't happening in most of the city today, and it doesn't outweigh the destabilizing influence of the current OOB feeder rules. |
Anonymous
This was posted by someone (me) who’d like to live IB for Stoddert and has been frustrated by the lack of homes for sale. |
Anonymous
OK, maybe try to step outside of your own bubble and realize that lots more families could move IB for Stoddert because there are lots of options beyond purchasing a single family home or a row house. Condo buildings are everywhere. |
Anonymous
It's not easy to "go private" for high school out of Deal. Something like 20 kids TOTAL were accepted to ANY private school from Deal this year. You don't just walk into private school in 9th grade. Your kid has to be the best of the best and even then it's a lottery. I know a large number of kids with all A's at Deal who were shut out in 9th grade private admissions. Just an FYI. You just don't "go private" when you decide to not use Wilson. |
Anonymous
But how many kids applied and where did they apply to? Blythe-Templeton on Capitol Hill starts at 9th. Oneness Family Montessori in Bethesda is expanding through high school, and the Nora School is growing. Not to mention Jewish, Catholic, and other schools. Of course not everyone's going to get into Sidwell Friends or whatever. But I'm pretty sure that most kids who can pay full tuition can find *somewhere* to go for high school. |