Middle Schools - Ward 6 Centric

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Ward Six parent, I feel like the only way I am going to buy into a DCPS middle school is if I have a strong connection to it, and if lots of other parents (whom I have gotten to know) from other Ward Six schools are also connected to it. But to be sure, Ward Six parents cannot do it alone, there's not enough of us, and we need parents from other Wards to also put their shoulder into it.

Which schools can possibly meet this description, for you? Stuart Hobson, Jefferson, Eliot Hine? none of the above?

Which of the three schools has a principal willing to set the bar high? As others in this thread have said Principal Kim did for Deal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ditto. At my ward 6 school it is the AA parents who seem to have the highest standards about having their kids in middle school with the "right" kind of students and families who share their values. Yet it is white parents who get singled out for being "racist" when they express an extremely mild version of the same thing. Incredible.

and

Anonymous wrote:
Let's remember that Deal used to be the school of last resort only 6 years ago. Only half of the families from Lafayette and Murch were moving on to Deal. The school has done a complete 180 in 3 years. We should learn from this story.

To tie those two thoughts together, remember that 6 years ago there were parents protesting out on the sidewalk in front of Deal with signs and drums, accusing Melissa Kim of being a racist because she dared speak of making the school more academically ambitious.

This is not accurate. They felt discipline was being doled out unfairly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Ward Six parent, I feel like the only way I am going to buy into a DCPS middle school is if I have a strong connection to it, and if lots of other parents (whom I have gotten to know) from other Ward Six schools are also connected to it. But to be sure, Ward Six parents cannot do it alone, there's not enough of us, and we need parents from other Wards to also put their shoulder into it.

Which schools can possibly meet this description, for you? Stuart Hobson, Jefferson, Eliot Hine? none of the above?

Which of the three schools has a principal willing to set the bar high? As others in this thread have said Principal Kim did for Deal?

I honestly believe that Hobson and Eliot Hine are real possibilites given their feeder patterns and the kids in the pipeline. I don't think Jefferson can do it - Brent is too small, Amidon has too far to go and sadly Thomson is imploding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Ward Six parent, I feel like the only way I am going to buy into a DCPS middle school is if I have a strong connection to it, and if lots of other parents (whom I have gotten to know) from other Ward Six schools are also connected to it. But to be sure, Ward Six parents cannot do it alone, there's not enough of us, and we need parents from other Wards to also put their shoulder into it.

Which schools can possibly meet this description, for you? Stuart Hobson, Jefferson, Eliot Hine? None of the above? Which of the three schools has a principal willing to set the bar high? As others in this thread have said Principal Kim did for Deal?

To me, Eliot Hine is the most logical location for a strong middle school to emerge. With its proximity to Eastern, its facilities and capacity, and the potential for strong feeder schools, EH jumps out as the first candidate. Also, the Ward Six redistricting machinations demonstrated the strong affinity Old City/Hill East and Capitol Hill has for its schools. Even though Tommy broke a lot of China and pissed off his colleagues, Ward Six demonstrated its affinity and its ability to mobilize successfully.

There is one factor that stands above all else, it is crucial to ensure that EH (or another middle school) starts from a position of strength. Parents are willing to enroll children in struggling elementary schools and work hard to improve them. Parents are not willing to enroll children in struggling middle schools – there’s no wiggle room in grades six to eight (as compared with PS & PK). It is not just a question of programs (IB, great Principal) or facilities, in order for parents to rally behind a middle school, from day one it must have a strong cohort with a culture and climate conducive to learning.

Jefferson could also emerge as a viable option if it were set up as a magnet or some sort of controlled choice. I would bet that Jefferson has the best and most expensive real estate of any property in DCPS’s portfolio. Its location (monumental core, Smithsonian, Arena Stage and a $2 billion redevelopment underway), its capacity, its 2013 modernization potential for the beautiful building, its central location (L’Enfant Plaza & 395), and the limited number of students in its feeders (no one would be displaced) all combine to make it a strong candidate for becoming a school of choice.

Stuart Hobson could emerge, but its capacity is a serious constraint for it becoming anything other than a boutique school. That being said, if SH became a magnet or controlled choice program, it would become an attractive high performing and rigorous option in the same way that Latin is attractive despite Latin not having facilities or capacity.

To be sure, the renaissance of Ward Six schools would not have happened if the Cluster has not lead the charge – SH has made this discussion (of creating a strong Ward Six middle school) possible in many ways.

[Anonymous]

How are the principals at E-H, S-H & Jefferson? That's a necessary though not sufficient requirement for a strong school.

[Anonymous]

Principals can be brought in or moved out. Communities are much less fungible.

[Anonymous]

% inboundary from DCPS school profiles, School Principal

Eliot-Hine: 33%, Tynika Young

Jefferson: 54%, Patricia Pride

Stuart-Hobson: 21%, Dawn Clemens

Data supports 12:58 and not 12:20. Community is fungible if the school is primarily OOB students, as these are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:% inboundary from DCPS school profiles, School Principal
Eliot-Hine: 33%, Tynika Young
Jefferson: 54%, Patricia Pride
Stuart-Hobson: 21%, Dawn Clemens
Data supports 12:58 and not 12:20. Community is fungible if the school is primarily OOB students, as these are.

WARD SIX MS ENROLLMENT/CAPACITY
SH – 428 / 460
EH - 284 / 850
Jeff – 279 / 900

IN-BOUNDS STUDENTS
SH - 90
EH – 94
Jeff – 151

* Ward Six has capacity for 2,210 students in three middle schools.
* Ward Six middle schools use 45% of their capacity.
* Ward Six has 991 total students enrolled.
* Ward Six has 335 in-bounds students.
* Ward Six students fill 15% of the Ward Six middle school capacity.

[Anonymous]

12:52 poster here. I still don't understand your point, 12:20. I agree that changing the "catchment area" doesn't happen quickly (although the demographics of the surrounding neighborhood for Eliot-Hine are much more diverse than your posting would suggest, and certainly much more diverse than the school population). But that has an impact on the school only if the student body population is drawn from the catchment area. Right now, the majority of Eliot-Hine students are from outside that area. And if the school is going to be populated by OOB kids, it is an open question whether they would be the kind of OOB students who go to Deal, for example -- often highly motivated, high-achieving students who want a better education than their neighborhood school can provide, or whose parents at least want that for them. It may be that there isn't a sufficiently critical mass of very-high-performing students willing to attend Eliot-Hine, and it's likely that there will need to be such a critical mass, but I don't see how that has to do with the catchment area.

In addition, Eliot-Hine's feeder school include some real stand-out elementary school on Capitol Hill, including Brent. Right now, the number of Brent students heading to Eliot-Hine is miniscule. Similarly, Maury now has an extremely diverse student body and hopefully will be raising scores soon. My guess is that very, very few of the parents of high-achieving Maury students would be willing even to entertain the thought of sending a child to Eliot-Hine. I realize that there is a chicken-and-an-egg problem in trying to build an academic program that will meet the needs of advanced middle school students if few of the existing students are currently operating at that level, but I also have to think that if there were a way to surmount that problem, the makeup of the school would also change. Build it and they will come.

[Anonymous]

There are not enough children in the neighborhood to make these schools viable. Again, we MUST consider the school boundaries for these children and the small percentage of students who reside outside the boundaries to make the relaunch of Eastern and Eliot-Hine successful.

Even when some of the schools were at their BEST and HIGH RECOGNIZED for everything that is educational, there were parents who chose not to attend the neighborhood school of Eastern and Eliot-Hine.

It is inevitable that the children from Benning Heights, River Terrace and Capitol Hill will all be needed to make Eastern substantial. Yes, and at one point in time they all walked to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are not enough children in the neighborhood to make these schools viable. Again, we MUST consider the school boundaries for these children and the small percentage of students who reside outside the boundaries to make the relaunch of Eastern and Eliot-Hine successful.

Even when some of the schools were at their BEST and HIGH RECOGNIZED for everything that is educational, there were parents who chose not to attend the neighborhood school of Eastern and Eliot-Hine.

It is inevitable that the children from Benning Heights, River Terrace and Capitol Hill will all be needed to make Eastern substantial. Yes, and at one point in time they all walked to school.

Are you sure there aren't enough kids? The Hill is crawling with kids. Every Cap Hill elementary school had a waitlist this year right after the lottery.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous
* Ward Six students fill 15% of the Ward Six middle school capacity.


Interesting. How many middle school aged students are there in Ward 6? I live in Ward 6, but opted to send my middle schooler to a charter across town. I would love to see someone like Dr. Kim, if not Dr. Kim herself, run one of the Ward 6 Middle Schools.

[Anonymous]

I just did a weighted in bounds for elementary schools. In Ward 6, most are majority out of bounds. Assuming equal number of seats per grade level in each school (so for a Ps-5 school divide population by 8 to get students per grade level), there are 433 seats per grade level, and 142 in bounds students. Some of the out of bounds are certainly intra Ward 6 transfers (e.g., zoned for Watkins, attending Tyler, and vice vers). However, it looks like Ward 6 also has too many elementary school seats for number of children.

[Anonymous]

There are so many Ward 6 transfers. My oldest is in first grade - I could personally name more than 142 ward 6 first graders at ward 6 DCPS schools (but can't promise they'll all go to Hine or Hobson).

[Anonymous]

And the number of OOB students in the upper grades in the more popular Capitol Hill school is MUCH different from the number of OOB students in the lower grades. Brent didn't even accept all of the OOB siblings last year, I believe. Probably also true at Maury. Payne and Miner are also starting to draw more IB kids. To make decisions that have a dramatic impact on future capacity without taking into some consideration the upcoming demographic shifts would be shortsighted. That said, I can personally name 50 sixth graders who live on Capitol Hill, and not a single one of them is at Eliot-Hine (and only a tiny # are at Stuart-Hobson). They've gone private, charter, or OOB elsewhere.