ANC3D Discussion on Foxhall Elementary / Old Hardy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ah yes. Palisades. Well, if they hadn't considered their neighborhood as too good for luxury condos, they would now have a brand new walkable grocery store instead of an ugly office building. Also, "no bike lane on MacArthur! We need it for the cars!" and "keep the gravel on the trails! We don't want anyone using them! They get in the way of the view out of a few of our expensive houses!" "Yes, sure, cancel those bus lines! They bring poor people!"
Be better, rich people, be better.

The other funny example was what happened with the renovation of the Palisades Rec Center. The original proposal included a swimming pool and another nice amenities. True to form, members of the community fought that tooth and nail because attractive amenities might attract people outside the neighborhood (“parking” being the operative euphemism deployed to disguise more pernicious sentiments). And also true to form, the city caved to the wishes of the moneyed assholes, resulting in a truly ridiculous renovation that - I shit you not - has as it’s centerpiece half a basketball court.

Oh wow, a swimming pool would have been so much better than the spray feature it got! That half-basketball court might have the most gorgeous view of all DPR rec centers. If that had been the view from the pool, it would have been featured in magazines, and millennials would have taken it over with swim teams and lane reservations.

The outsider bitterness of the have-lesses is palpable here.

LOL, yes, please go on and palpate my bitterness over your have-more abuse of power over city decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The outsider bitterness of the have-lesses is palpable here.

When the extremely wealthy repeatedly pervert democratic processes by using back channels and inducements to appropriate public resources for their own use, the rest of us indeed have a right to be bitter. There’s a term now for what has been going on in the Palisades: “empty swimming pool politics”. It’s a disgusting phenomenon that should be furiously opposed by anyone who has any interest in making this city a better place to live.

What?


Anyway I am curious about the "inducements" that the highest-income Palisades dwellers employed to prohibit public access to resources that are physically located in Palisades.

Are you saying that the situation is analogous to coastal dwellers in Connecticut and Malibu who get the town to pass laws allowing only town residents to park on beach-adjacent streets so non-town dwellers effectively cannot get to the beach? Or like the waterfront residents in the Hamptons who erect jetties that block beach walking along the shore?

Or maybe you're alleging that Palisades residents accomplished a Gramercy Park situation, where only adjacent residents get a $$$ key to gain access to locked park?

Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

Different poster. The public space that, per Google maps, should connect the Palisades Recreation Center to the trails nearby but has been intentionally kept muddy and overgrown is a pretty good example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The outsider bitterness of the have-lesses is palpable here.

When the extremely wealthy repeatedly pervert democratic processes by using back channels and inducements to appropriate public resources for their own use, the rest of us indeed have a right to be bitter. There’s a term now for what has been going on in the Palisades: “empty swimming pool politics”. It’s a disgusting phenomenon that should be furiously opposed by anyone who has any interest in making this city a better place to live.

What?


Anyway I am curious about the "inducements" that the highest-income Palisades dwellers employed to prohibit public access to resources that are physically located in Palisades.

Are you saying that the situation is analogous to coastal dwellers in Connecticut and Malibu who get the town to pass laws allowing only town residents to park on beach-adjacent streets so non-town dwellers effectively cannot get to the beach? Or like the waterfront residents in the Hamptons who erect jetties that block beach walking along the shore?

Or maybe you're alleging that Palisades residents accomplished a Gramercy Park situation, where only adjacent residents get a $$$ key to gain access to locked park?

Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

Different poster. The public space that, per Google maps, should connect the Palisades Recreation Center to the trails nearby but has been intentionally kept muddy and overgrown is a pretty good example.

Note that the Palisades Community Association has been a strong advocate of increased public use of that space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

I'd agree with the first three. Fourth is a stretch and the fifth is private property.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

6 is the connection to the CCT at the corner of Norton & Potomac opposite the water treatment plant. For much of the past 30 years, people who live on or near that corner have been using threats and acts of violence to prevent that connection from being developed into something usable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The outsider bitterness of the have-lesses is palpable here.

When the extremely wealthy repeatedly pervert democratic processes by using back channels and inducements to appropriate public resources for their own use, the rest of us indeed have a right to be bitter. There’s a term now for what has been going on in the Palisades: “empty swimming pool politics”. It’s a disgusting phenomenon that should be furiously opposed by anyone who has any interest in making this city a better place to live.

What?


Anyway I am curious about the "inducements" that the highest-income Palisades dwellers employed to prohibit public access to resources that are physically located in Palisades.

Are you saying that the situation is analogous to coastal dwellers in Connecticut and Malibu who get the town to pass laws allowing only town residents to park on beach-adjacent streets so non-town dwellers effectively cannot get to the beach? Or like the waterfront residents in the Hamptons who erect jetties that block beach walking along the shore?

Or maybe you're alleging that Palisades residents accomplished a Gramercy Park situation, where only adjacent residents get a $$$ key to gain access to locked park?

Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

Different poster. The public space that, per Google maps, should connect the Palisades Recreation Center to the trails nearby but has been intentionally kept muddy and overgrown is a pretty good example.

Note that the Palisades Community Association has been a strong advocate of increased public use of that space.

Considering all the dumb s**t you've been successful with, I'm terribly sorry for the abject failure, muddy, all-scratched-up-lost-in-the-woods failure, at increasing public usability of that space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

6 is the connection to the CCT at the corner of Norton & Potomac opposite the water treatment plant. For much of the past 30 years, people who live on or near that corner have been using threats and acts of violence to prevent that connection from being developed into something usable.

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

6 is the connection to the CCT at the corner of Norton & Potomac opposite the water treatment plant. For much of the past 30 years, people who live on or near that corner have been using threats and acts of violence to prevent that connection from being developed into something usable.

That was actually an agenda item on last months ANC 3D meeting. Fortunately the ANC would hear none of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The pool was proposed 25+ years ago, I don't really know the history.

It seems that you are right. Here is a snippet I found:

“In the mid 1990s the city initiated a plan to turn the Palisades Park into a “Mega Center” that would include a swimming pool. The idea, when presented to the community, met with overwhelming opposition. The thought then, as it is today, was that the community was reluctant to turn the neighborhood park into a major destination that would draw a regional base of users.” (http://www.palisadesdc.org/newsletters/2004/parkplan.pdf)

That’s drained-pool politics at its core.

the sad thing is that all of the other neighborhoods except any in Ward 3 (until the Hearst pool is finished) have their own neighorhood centers and pools, so Palisades only really screwed themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you elaborate on the public resources that are off limits to any city dweller?

1. Old Hardy public school building. Not available for use by public school children thanks, in part, to the actions of the FCCA and some of their constituents.
2. Jelleff playing fields. Not available for use by public school children thanks to Maret doing a backroom deal with Jack Evans and DPR.
3. Palisades Trolley Trail. Technically available for public use by all those who enjoy getting their shoes covered in mud. Plans to renovate the trail into something useful for the rest of the city were opposed by well-connected residents of Sherier Pl who believe the trail to be an extension of their backyards.
4. Palisades rec center. See above.
5. Safeway. See above.

I'd agree with the first three. Fourth is a stretch and the fifth is private property.

Agree with PP. How fitting that in America's capital, woke parents in Ward 3 Washington love to talk about the public weal, public schools, yada yada yada, openly, nakedly, obviously kowtows to special interests and provincial Lori Loughlin Mossimo values of "only the best for my DC DD DS snowflakes" damn everyone else. If capitalism truly worked, Maret and Lab School would pay the top dollar for the precious commodity (space, fields) that their endowments and alumni can easily afford so that DC taxpayers and community could at least justify the transactional nature of the relationship.

At least I'm getting my stimulus checks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are slides here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17d7ZYwYlkVre4sc4EiH3SWpU-FL5zvj_

Of most interest to me is the 50 percent out of boundary enrollment on slide 8.

I'm not prepared to map inboundary enrollments to capacities because of the tediousness of the work, but I expect, as usual, that out-of-boundary attendance is at the core of overcrowding at all but a few specific schools.

Not for the ESs. These are all heavily IB and trending more in that direction. Hardy MS has historically been mainly OOB but that is changing fast. I imagine that Bowser’s calculus is that, without these two new schools, the rest of the city will be all but shut out of the Wilson feeder pattern.

Thank you PP for sharing the materials - fascinating discussions on FCCA / PCA foibles, but did anyone draw any conclusions from this?

87 pages later, kicking self for naively hoping the primary driver was DCPS out-of-the-box thinking to use GDS MacArthur to reduce Deal/Wilson overcrowding, or maybe even getting high SES WOTP kids into empty seats EOTP, instead of the decades-old status quo of cramming Deal/Wilson with OOB until it explodes (2028 according to the slides?

It's late at night, maybe I'm imagining things but it seems like a driving motivation for the new MS and/or HS is to encourage OOB seats/enrollment and the current racial balance proportions? Isn't that called gerrymandering or racial quotas/redlining? Even for an admirable aspiration? What about the children? Sigh. DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are slides here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17d7ZYwYlkVre4sc4EiH3SWpU-FL5zvj_

Of most interest to me is the 50 percent out of boundary enrollment on slide 8.

I'm not prepared to map inboundary enrollments to capacities because of the tediousness of the work, but I expect, as usual, that out-of-boundary attendance is at the core of overcrowding at all but a few specific schools.

Not for the ESs. These are all heavily IB and trending more in that direction. Hardy MS has historically been mainly OOB but that is changing fast. I imagine that Bowser’s calculus is that, without these two new schools, the rest of the city will be all but shut out of the Wilson feeder pattern.

Thank you PP for sharing the materials - fascinating discussions on FCCA / PCA foibles, but did anyone draw any conclusions from this?

87 pages later, kicking self for naively hoping the primary driver was DCPS out-of-the-box thinking to use GDS MacArthur to reduce Deal/Wilson overcrowding, or maybe even getting high SES WOTP kids into empty seats EOTP, instead of the decades-old status quo of cramming Deal/Wilson with OOB until it explodes (2028 according to the slides?

It's late at night, maybe I'm imagining things but it seems like a driving motivation for the new MS and/or HS is to encourage OOB seats/enrollment and the current racial balance proportions? Isn't that called gerrymandering or racial quotas/redlining? Even for an admirable aspiration? What about the children? Sigh. DC.

The Crowding Working Group a couple of years ago found that DCPS is going to need four new schools west of Rock Creek -- two elementary, one middle and one high. There are sites for two schools in play here, no matter how you cut it you can't get four schools out of two sites. It's looking like they're coalescing around one elementary and one high school. The high school will help crowding at Wilson. Neither site is really geographically capable of helping Deal. The new elementary will help with crowding in the southern part of Ward 3 but not the northern part. The solution for crowding at Deal is to build another middle school somewhere within Deal's boundaries. The solution for crowding in the northern part of the ward is to build another elementary somewhere in the northern part of the ward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are slides here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17d7ZYwYlkVre4sc4EiH3SWpU-FL5zvj_

Of most interest to me is the 50 percent out of boundary enrollment on slide 8.

I'm not prepared to map inboundary enrollments to capacities because of the tediousness of the work, but I expect, as usual, that out-of-boundary attendance is at the core of overcrowding at all but a few specific schools.

Not for the ESs. These are all heavily IB and trending more in that direction. Hardy MS has historically been mainly OOB but that is changing fast. I imagine that Bowser’s calculus is that, without these two new schools, the rest of the city will be all but shut out of the Wilson feeder pattern.

Thank you PP for sharing the materials - fascinating discussions on FCCA / PCA foibles, but did anyone draw any conclusions from this?

87 pages later, kicking self for naively hoping the primary driver was DCPS out-of-the-box thinking to use GDS MacArthur to reduce Deal/Wilson overcrowding, or maybe even getting high SES WOTP kids into empty seats EOTP, instead of the decades-old status quo of cramming Deal/Wilson with OOB until it explodes (2028 according to the slides?

It's late at night, maybe I'm imagining things but it seems like a driving motivation for the new MS and/or HS is to encourage OOB seats/enrollment and the current racial balance proportions? Isn't that called gerrymandering or racial quotas/redlining? Even for an admirable aspiration? What about the children? Sigh. DC.

The Crowding Working Group a couple of years ago found that DCPS is going to need four new schools west of Rock Creek -- two elementary, one middle and one high. There are sites for two schools in play here, no matter how you cut it you can't get four schools out of two sites. It's looking like they're coalescing around one elementary and one high school. The high school will help crowding at Wilson. Neither site is really geographically capable of helping Deal. The new elementary will help with crowding in the southern part of Ward 3 but not the northern part. The solution for crowding at Deal is to build another middle school somewhere within Deal's boundaries. The solution for crowding in the northern part of the ward is to build another elementary somewhere in the northern part of the ward.

DC missed a huge opportunity by not putting a new school on the site of the Chevy Chase Community Center, which is being replaced. That site could have been completely reimagined to include a school while also keeping the library and community center. Instead we're just getting the community center to placate the few geriatrics who actually use it. Massive missed opportunity. That site should be either a school (there was one on that site long ago) or housing.

[Anonymous]

Metro is pushing to end the only bus line to that area.

Traffic will be epic