I'm happy you're thrilled and that your child is already at Hardy, which means you're good with the whole "add one grade at a time" experience for your child. Not me. I expect grandfathering policies that will allow Hardy families to pick between the new high school and Wilson for the first three years. Giving my child what I deem as a normal, full high school experience with four grades, sports, extra curriculars, etc. is important to us. For others, I get that they might like the idea of a small school populated with just one grade of students, then two, then three. I also don't want my child attending class for the first year when there is an onsite addition going on. Nor do I want to learn at the 11th hour that they'll suddenly be in a swing space God knows where for a year or two. Five or six years from now, I'd probably be happy to send my child to the new high school. But not now. |
So how do you propose that the city open new schools? |
Open the new school one grade at a time, understanding that the ONE feeder school that DCPS has designated/forced will give families the option of selecting Wilson or MacArthur for the first three grades/years. After that Hardy feeds to MacArthur (although younger siblings of Hardy/Wilson kids will get preference in the lottery). And no jumping back and forth. If you selected Wilson, you don't get to jump to MacArthur the next year unless it's through the lottery. And for those first three years, there will be more opportunity for non-Hardy kids to lottery in to fill up those first few grades, thus establishing some sibling preference for their younger siblings too. |
| under that it'd probably start like Hardy was - largely out-of-boundary students for years. I am not sure the neighborhood would react favorably to that. |
And very few would opt-in to the new school. This is not a reasonable way to fill a new, remotely located high school. It’s unfortunate that you assumed that your school boundaries would never change when you bought your home, but sometimes these things do happen. |
Every single one of the many meetings I participated on relating to Foxhall and MacArthur over the last 18 months emphasized that there would be grandfathering. And while not all the Hardy kids would opt in, I’m sure plenty will, plus lots of Wilson kids would likely want to switch. I think it comes down to whether a family is comfortable with a big established school (Wilson) or would prefer a smaller school. Different kids thrive in different environments |
If all Wilson feeder schools were given a choice that would fill up the new school. Many find Wilson too big and the new school offers relatively few spots. After four years MacArthur could be restricted to Hardy kids only. |
Why wouldn't the existing student assignment process -- the lottery -- work? |
Dcps even admitted that the school will be over 60-70% IB from the start. It probably only will go up from there. https://mobile.twitter.com/PerryStein/status/1509241844600877065 This is going to just be a new ‘w’ school for a rich suburban population. |
And if so, wouldn’t that free up slots at Reed-Jackson? What is it exactly you want to happen? A return to busing? Prolonged overcrowding at Reed-Jackson that brings its attractiveness down to par? |
I don't think I had a point, just a statement of fact and a prediction. The implication is DCPS is just making Reed/Jackson less overcrowded with almost no effect on the rest of the city. |
Isn't the point of a new high school to make J/R less crowded? |
At the very least a less crowded JRHS and a new MacArthur will leave citywide seats open at Walls. Maybe that’s not revolutionary, but DCPS has been pretty focused, in recent years, in making sure those seats were distributed to kids from more wards. |
People have a hard time understanding spillovers apparently. It’s not realistic to expect hundreds of kids from Ward 8 to make the trek to the Palisades to attend MacArthur HS, but they don’t have to in order to benefit from it. The notion that it will have almost no effect on the rest of the city is just wrong. |
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FWIW, Ferebee said yesterday that the new high school won't be an exact 50/50 Hardy/OOB split but rather would have the same percentage of OOB students as Hardy, around 38 percent. This would seem to be an acknowledgment that Hardy's IB enrollment is growing.
https://twitter.com/PerryStein/status/1509241844600877065 |