Please explain relevance of "OOB crowding" to the DCPS boundary review process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With regard to Hearst - how can a school that is using trailers not require expansion to meet current student capacity?

I don't mean any disrespect, I just want to know what you mean by "not expanding Hearst."

Perhaps we just understand different things by the word "expanding". Clearly they are expanding the size of the building. Sounds like that is what you meant, and if so, you are completely correct. I thought you meant expanding the student population. That they are not doing. They are taking the existing population, many of which are in trailers, and creating permanent space. Moreover, they are adding common space -- multi-purpose room, cafeteria, library, etc -- that never really existed in the 1930s building.

Considering a) the crowding at Deal and Wilson, and b) the OOB feeder policy, it makes absolutely no sense to size any Deal feeder for more than its IB population. DCPS is just making promises it can't keep. It made no sense to add trailers at Hearst when any crowding was entirely the result of a voluntary decision to admit more OOB kids than the building could hold. Rather than expanding the building they should have started reducing the number of kids admitted each year for PK and K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It seems to me that a purchaser in Crestwood or Palisades had a reasonable expectation of Wilson, and paid a preimum for it, but the purchaser in Anacostia or Eckington or Co Heights did not have a reasonable expectation; they won a lottery, and probably their house was inexpensive (by DC standards!).

Why should someone's private real estate investment entitle them to priority access to public schools? Should people who buy houses next to polling places get priority entrance to vote? If I buy a house near the National Science Foundation should I get first dibs on research grants?

I am not a parent at a DCPS school, but I think both IB and OOB parents have a reasonable "claim" to a school. That's the problem. (But it's not because of any investment. It's because it's something that's been true in the past, and they are expecting/hoping it to be true in the future.)

You have 'priority access' because you are zoned for the school. Just as your polling place is geographically defined...don't roll up to the Palisades poll site if you live in Capitol Hill and expect to be allowed to vote

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With regard to Hearst - how can a school that is using trailers not require expansion to meet current student capacity?

I don't mean any disrespect, I just want to know what you mean by "not expanding Hearst."

Perhaps we just understand different things by the word "expanding". Clearly they are expanding the size of the building. Sounds like that is what you meant, and if so, you are completely correct. I thought you meant expanding the student population. That they are not doing. They are taking the existing population, many of which are in trailers, and creating permanent space. Moreover, they are adding common space -- multi-purpose room, cafeteria, library, etc -- that never really existed in the 1930s building.

Considering a) the crowding at Deal and Wilson, and b) the OOB feeder policy, it makes absolutely no sense to size any Deal feeder for more than its IB population. DCPS is just making promises it can't keep. It made no sense to add trailers at Hearst when any crowding was entirely the result of a voluntary decision to admit more OOB kids than the building could hold. Rather than expanding the building they should have started reducing the number of kids admitted each year for PK and K.

Well, that horse has left the barn, so no need to keep re-hashing whether they should have made Hearst into a PK -5 school, that happened years ago now. It was formerly only up to 3rd grade, and the kids went to other schools for 4th and 5th, so it is not that they added entire classrooms to each grade. I think you are understandably concerned about Deal overcrowding, but Hearst did not single-handedly create the crowding at Deal.

Rhee maybe shouldn't have promised feeder rights in perpetuity --that was the mistake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With regard to Hearst - how can a school that is using trailers not require expansion to meet current student capacity?

I don't mean any disrespect, I just want to know what you mean by "not expanding Hearst."

Perhaps we just understand different things by the word "expanding". Clearly they are expanding the size of the building. Sounds like that is what you meant, and if so, you are completely correct. I thought you meant expanding the student population. That they are not doing. They are taking the existing population, many of which are in trailers, and creating permanent space. Moreover, they are adding common space -- multi-purpose room, cafeteria, library, etc -- that never really existed in the 1930s building.

Considering a) the crowding at Deal and Wilson, and b) the OOB feeder policy, it makes absolutely no sense to size any Deal feeder for more than its IB population. DCPS is just making promises it can't keep. It made no sense to add trailers at Hearst when any crowding was entirely the result of a voluntary decision to admit more OOB kids than the building could hold. Rather than expanding the building they should have started reducing the number of kids admitted each year for PK and K.

Well, that horse has left the barn, so no need to keep re-hashing whether they should have made Hearst into a PK -5 school, that happened years ago now. It was formerly only up to 3rd grade, and the kids went to other schools for 4th and 5th, so it is not that they added entire classrooms to each grade. I think you are understandably concerned about Deal overcrowding, but Hearst did not single-handedly create the crowding at Deal.

Rhee maybe shouldn't have promised feeder rights in perpetuity --that was the mistake.

Agree that Rhee made a colossal -- and cynical -- mistake.

It's not about whether Hearst should be a PK-5 school, it's about how big a school it should be. They could have kept it the same physical size as when it was k-3, limited it to one class per grade -- seven classrooms, about 150 students -- and it still would have been about three times larger than the in-boundary population needs. They wouldn't need to displace any existing students, just limit the lottery to a single pre-K and a single K each year, and as those kids move up take the trailers away.

Alternately, before expanding it they should have had a plan to adjust the boundary to correspond with the increased capacity. But that would have required planning, which we know DCPS doesn't do.

[Anonymous]

I guess I am not fully following this line of argument about Hearst, but I am likely just being dense. Previously Hearst 3rd graders went to other NW schools that fed into Deal. So in some sense these kids are still around in either scenario. I guess you could argue that adding 4th and 5th grades allowed the feeder schools to expand more than otherwise could have. So we'd have had a crisis of space at Janney or Murch sooner. (Or you could argue that more OOB kids came in when the grades where added, as some of then current families at the school made other choices instead of keeping their children at Hearst, but some of that effect is presumably temporary.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It seems to me that a purchaser in Crestwood or Palisades had a reasonable expectation of Wilson, and paid a preimum for it, but the purchaser in Anacostia or Eckington or Co Heights did not have a reasonable expectation; they won a lottery, and probably their house was inexpensive (by DC standards!).

Why should someone's private real estate investment entitle them to priority access to public schools? Should people who buy houses next to polling places get priority entrance to vote? If I buy a house near the National Science Foundation should I get first dibs on research grants?

I am not a parent at a DCPS school, but I think both IB and OOB parents have a reasonable "claim" to a school. That's the problem. (But it's not because of any investment. It's because it's something that's been true in the past, and they are expecting/hoping it to be true in the future.)

You have 'priority access' because you are zoned for the school. Just as your polling place is geographically defined...don't roll up to the Palisades poll site if you live in Capitol Hill and expect to be allowed to vote

Sure, it could be argued that both IB and OOB have a reasonable "claim" to the school but what I don't think would be reasonable is to deny the IB families access to their own neighborhood school. Which means, either you will have overcrowding, or some limits (i.e. a lottery) have to be put on OOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess I am not fully following this line of argument about Hearst, but I am likely just being dense. Previously Hearst 3rd graders went to other NW schools that fed into Deal. So in some sense these kids are still around in either scenario. I guess you could argue that adding 4th and 5th grades allowed the feeder schools to expand more than otherwise could have. So we'd have had a crisis of space at Janney or Murch sooner. (Or you could argue that more OOB kids came in when the grades where added, as some of then current families at the school made other choices instead of keeping their children at Hearst, but some of that effect is presumably temporary.)

When Hearst was K-3, it was four grades, two classes per grade, eight classrooms total. They could have expanded it to PK-5, seven grades, one class per grade, seven classrooms total and it would have fit in the same space (actually one less classroom). This is roughly 150 kids. Currently, Hearst has fewer than 50 in-boundary students. This would have been ample space for all of the in-boundary kids, so you could maintain this attendance simply by limiting the number of new OOB kids admitted each year. There would have been a transition period as the two-class-per-grade kids aged out, for that they could have kept the trailers.

By maintaining Hearst as a two-class-per-grade school they're creating an addition 25 kids per year who have the right to attend Deal and then Wilson.

[Anonymous]

HOW on earth do you subtract entire grades from an elementary to make it one class per grade? What happens one year to the next with those students?

[Anonymous]

They already expanded the school. Arguing for a new school while simultaneously arguing they should have narrowed Hearst to a one room school house is not logical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They already expanded the school. Arguing for a new school while simultaneously arguing they should have narrowed Hearst to a one room school house is not logical.

Nobody is simultaneously arguing for those two things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HOW on earth do you subtract entire grades from an elementary to make it one class per grade? What happens one year to the next with those students?

It takes seven years. In year one you have a single pre-k. In year two you have a single K. By year seven all seven grades in the school are one class per grade. Hearst had trailers. They could have kept the trailers, and as the school shrank gradually gotten rid of them.

[Anonymous]

NP. I don't follow why people think any school should be one class per grade? Look dcps clearly doesn't always plan efficiently, but an elementary with one class per grade makes no sense, not a smart use of resources. You can have opinions about IB/OOB, but having schools of 150 when others are 600 doesn't seem like the best solution. They could have closed it back then, and sent kids to Eaton for example, but it is now a thriving community from what I hear.