Why is the overcrowding issue so complex?

[Anonymous]

So enlighten us - how are you going to get a couple of thousand additional kids out of a low density neighborhood with no new housing being built?

DC has been adding roughly a thousand new residents a month for the past 20 years. The number of units of housing hasn't grown nearly that fast. What has happened is that the number of people per household has grown. When childless households are replaced with households with children that happens.

And while there aren't major developments happening in that area, there is an enormous amount of residential construction going on. There are several dumpsters on every block.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
No way is Foxhall gaining a couple of thousand school age kids in the next couple of years nor will it even if you add in Stoddert or Mann - there is almost no residential development slated in bounds for any of those 3 schools.

Check out the Office of Planning projections at: https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Office%20of%20Planning%20Presentation%20for%20CSCTF%204%2026%2016.pdf

Particularly page 22, where they have youth population projections. Foxhall Road is the boundary between Cluster 13 and Cluster 14. While they don't have specific numbers, both clusters are colored in the color that indicates growth of 1,772-3,278 school age kids. So the two clusters together have a minimum of 3500 kids growth and possibly as much as 6500.

It's not driven by residential development, it's families moving into existing housing.

Well they must be anticipating at lot of Catholics and Mormons moving in with enormous families then - the area on the map you point to is really low density so to get that many kids in that area you would need a lot of large families AND a lot of turnover of housing stock to enable that.

And BTW they don't predict that area as one growing particularly fast relative to other DC neighborhoods.

But the graphic with the map makes zero sense as they predict lower growth rates in the parts of Ward 3 that are potentially going to see actual new housing units built.

I suspect this is someone twisting the facts to make them match this illogical political decision to spend money on facilities in Foxhall rather than simply forcing more middle class whites to attend under utilized schools in Ward 4.

Yes, the Office of Planning is well-known for its pro-Foxhall agenda.

Devious too -- that report was issued before the Foxhall school was even proposed. They know how to play the long game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to recommend again this article:
https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge

Money quote:

For most of the past 50 years, DC Public Schools (DCPS) has had way too many schools, and the most pressing facilities issue for the agency has been how to close and dispose of unneeded buildings in an orderly manner. Even though DC has gained over 22,000 public school students since 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS shrunk from 134 to 110 schools, the number of seats still exceeds the number of students by about 25%.

Today, DCPS has a capacity of 61,925 seats and only 48,043 students, according to the Master Facilities Plan. However, if the projections hold, by 2027 – which is only eight years away – DCPS will have 61,697 students. For the first time in 60 years—two generations—DCPS is going to be full. And it's likely going to grow from there.

Ward 3 is seeing what the rest of the city is going to be seeing very soon.

I don't know why you believe this - there is a massive amount of spare MS and HS capacity EOTP and you don't have to go to Anacostia to find it. Just at Coolidge, Cardozo and Roosevelt alone you can accommodate 1500+ kids no problem. I get that gentrifiers don't want their kids to attend those schools but people in Ward 3 shouldn't have to deal with unsafe conditions at Deal and Wilson to accommodate them either.

1) Make kids go IB for high school no matter what. It will fix deal if people know they aren't getting feeder rights.
2) Make an income maximum for the School lottery of 75k per year per family. Then no more white families buying cheap EOTP homes and expecting Ward 3 schools but poor families still have a shot for good starts .

You also need to find someway to cut UMC families out of charters or alternately allow charters to evolve over time to being more neighborhood oriented. Charters were a solution to 1995's problems - I doubt 25 years ago anyone would have anticipated so many UMC white families flooding the charters and taking slots they anticipated would be going to working class POC from poor neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods should be seeing dramatic improvements in their in-bound schools but aren't because gentrifiers aren't enrolling their kids and that in fact is causing things to worsen at these schools instead of improve as their enrollment sags.

You want to live in Petworth? Great - part and parcel of the deal should be you send your kids to their neighborhood school along with your neighbors kids who have lived in the neighborhood for generations rather than holding up your nose and using your superior resources to enroll your kids elsewhere.

LMAO. I live in Petworth and the first thing my long-time neighbours told me was that no one on the block sends their kids IB and they could help us find a school.

+1000. I tried so hard at our IB. For years. And my neighbors all rolled their eyes and went to Catholic and Friendship schools. After four years of beating my head on the brick wall of dysfunction and incompetence that is DCPS, I saw the light.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So enlighten us - how are you going to get a couple of thousand additional kids out of a low density neighborhood with no new housing being built?

DC has been adding roughly a thousand new residents a month for the past 20 years. The number of units of housing hasn't grown nearly that fast. What has happened is that the number of people per household has grown. When childless households are replaced with households with children that happens.

And while there aren't major developments happening in that area, there is an enormous amount of residential construction going on. There are several dumpsters on every block.

DC has been adding hundreds of residents a month for about 15 years. But they have been moving into new housing units and virtually no new housing units are being built in Foxhall or the Palisades - the fact that you are seeing homes being renovated does not mean new homes are being built - it is rare that there are lots in DC with room for additional homes to be built on them and most new homes are scrapes.

And the number of people per household has not been going up in DC.

Now it is true that families from other neighborhoods with less desirable schools have been cashing out their equity and moving to Ward 3 instead of the suburbs but I find it hard to believe that will had a couple of thousand students to a low density neighborhood.

I'm not going to spend the time looking up the census data but ANC districts are based on Census Data and the two ANC SMD's that cover Foxhall are quite large and total 4,000 total residents - it is hard to fathom a 50% increase in that population from just children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to recommend again this article:
https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge

Money quote:

For most of the past 50 years, DC Public Schools (DCPS) has had way too many schools, and the most pressing facilities issue for the agency has been how to close and dispose of unneeded buildings in an orderly manner. Even though DC has gained over 22,000 public school students since 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS shrunk from 134 to 110 schools, the number of seats still exceeds the number of students by about 25%.

Today, DCPS has a capacity of 61,925 seats and only 48,043 students, according to the Master Facilities Plan. However, if the projections hold, by 2027 – which is only eight years away – DCPS will have 61,697 students. For the first time in 60 years—two generations—DCPS is going to be full. And it's likely going to grow from there.

Ward 3 is seeing what the rest of the city is going to be seeing very soon.

I don't know why you believe this - there is a massive amount of spare MS and HS capacity EOTP and you don't have to go to Anacostia to find it. Just at Coolidge, Cardozo and Roosevelt alone you can accommodate 1500+ kids no problem. I get that gentrifiers don't want their kids to attend those schools but people in Ward 3 shouldn't have to deal with unsafe conditions at Deal and Wilson to accommodate them either.

1) Make kids go IB for high school no matter what. It will fix deal if people know they aren't getting feeder rights.
2) Make an income maximum for the School lottery of 75k per year per family. Then no more white families buying cheap EOTP homes and expecting Ward 3 schools but poor families still have a shot for good starts .

You also need to find someway to cut UMC families out of charters or alternately allow charters to evolve over time to being more neighborhood oriented. Charters were a solution to 1995's problems - I doubt 25 years ago anyone would have anticipated so many UMC white families flooding the charters and taking slots they anticipated would be going to working class POC from poor neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods should be seeing dramatic improvements in their in-bound schools but aren't because gentrifiers aren't enrolling their kids and that in fact is causing things to worsen at these schools instead of improve as their enrollment sags.

You want to live in Petworth? Great - part and parcel of the deal should be you send your kids to their neighborhood school along with your neighbors kids who have lived in the neighborhood for generations rather than holding up your nose and using your superior resources to enroll your kids elsewhere.

LMAO. I live in Petworth and the first thing my long-time neighbours told me was that no one on the block sends their kids IB and they could help us find a school.

+1000. I tried so hard at our IB. For years. And my neighbors all rolled their eyes and went to Catholic and Friendship schools. After four years of beating my head on the brick wall of dysfunction and incompetence that is DCPS, I saw the light.

Yet your neighborhood still has under enrolled public schools that some people in the neighborhood are sending their kids too.

I get that there is some chicken and egg stuff here but someone needs to go first and primary reasons schools improve are their demographics change and because parents get involved and help to improve them. Everyone from Petworth racing all over DC for charters and OOB Public Schools makes that impossible and leads to overcrowding in Ward 3 which also makes those schools worse.

[Anonymous]

Right- like if all the gentrifiers sent their kids to whatever the IB school is for Petworth....it would probably have a similar profile to what, Murch?
There’s nothing special about WOTP schools besides that the parents are high SES. I work with many people with the same demographic/SES profile who live EOTP, but I bought my house WOTP 10 years earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to recommend again this article:
https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge

Money quote:

For most of the past 50 years, DC Public Schools (DCPS) has had way too many schools, and the most pressing facilities issue for the agency has been how to close and dispose of unneeded buildings in an orderly manner. Even though DC has gained over 22,000 public school students since 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS shrunk from 134 to 110 schools, the number of seats still exceeds the number of students by about 25%.

Today, DCPS has a capacity of 61,925 seats and only 48,043 students, according to the Master Facilities Plan. However, if the projections hold, by 2027 – which is only eight years away – DCPS will have 61,697 students. For the first time in 60 years—two generations—DCPS is going to be full. And it's likely going to grow from there.

Ward 3 is seeing what the rest of the city is going to be seeing very soon.

I don't know why you believe this - there is a massive amount of spare MS and HS capacity EOTP and you don't have to go to Anacostia to find it. Just at Coolidge, Cardozo and Roosevelt alone you can accommodate 1500+ kids no problem. I get that gentrifiers don't want their kids to attend those schools but people in Ward 3 shouldn't have to deal with unsafe conditions at Deal and Wilson to accommodate them either.

1) Make kids go IB for high school no matter what. It will fix deal if people know they aren't getting feeder rights.
2) Make an income maximum for the School lottery of 75k per year per family. Then no more white families buying cheap EOTP homes and expecting Ward 3 schools but poor families still have a shot for good starts .

You also need to find someway to cut UMC families out of charters or alternately allow charters to evolve over time to being more neighborhood oriented. Charters were a solution to 1995's problems - I doubt 25 years ago anyone would have anticipated so many UMC white families flooding the charters and taking slots they anticipated would be going to working class POC from poor neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods should be seeing dramatic improvements in their in-bound schools but aren't because gentrifiers aren't enrolling their kids and that in fact is causing things to worsen at these schools instead of improve as their enrollment sags.

You want to live in Petworth? Great - part and parcel of the deal should be you send your kids to their neighborhood school along with your neighbors kids who have lived in the neighborhood for generations rather than holding up your nose and using your superior resources to enroll your kids elsewhere.

LMAO. I live in Petworth and the first thing my long-time neighbours told me was that no one on the block sends their kids IB and they could help us find a school.

+1000. I tried so hard at our IB. For years. And my neighbors all rolled their eyes and went to Catholic and Friendship schools. After four years of beating my head on the brick wall of dysfunction and incompetence that is DCPS, I saw the light.

Yet your neighborhood still has under enrolled public schools that some people in the neighborhood are sending their kids too.

I get that there is some chicken and egg stuff here but someone needs to go first and primary reasons schools improve are their demographics change and because parents get involved and help to improve them. Everyone from Petworth racing all over DC for charters and OOB Public Schools makes that impossible and leads to overcrowding in Ward 3 which also makes those schools worse.

This is such a dumb argument - someone needs to go first! How about it be your kid and the mayor’s kid? This is a DCPS problem not a parent problem. They need to improve the schools first. There is no way around having different levels of classes including advanced. DCPS won’t do that and just want parents to suck it up and send their kids anyway. Not going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Well I can tell you it won’t be the mayor on schools - she’s a Catholic schools kid and will do the same for her daughter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well I can tell you it won’t be the mayor on schools - she’s a Catholic schools kid and will do the same for her daughter.

The mayor hasn't given any indication that she sees a difference between public schools and private schools. In terms of the city's role, I mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to recommend again this article:
https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge

Money quote:

For most of the past 50 years, DC Public Schools (DCPS) has had way too many schools, and the most pressing facilities issue for the agency has been how to close and dispose of unneeded buildings in an orderly manner. Even though DC has gained over 22,000 public school students since 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS shrunk from 134 to 110 schools, the number of seats still exceeds the number of students by about 25%.

Today, DCPS has a capacity of 61,925 seats and only 48,043 students, according to the Master Facilities Plan. However, if the projections hold, by 2027 – which is only eight years away – DCPS will have 61,697 students. For the first time in 60 years—two generations—DCPS is going to be full. And it's likely going to grow from there.

Ward 3 is seeing what the rest of the city is going to be seeing very soon.

I don't know why you believe this - there is a massive amount of spare MS and HS capacity EOTP and you don't have to go to Anacostia to find it. Just at Coolidge, Cardozo and Roosevelt alone you can accommodate 1500+ kids no problem. I get that gentrifiers don't want their kids to attend those schools but people in Ward 3 shouldn't have to deal with unsafe conditions at Deal and Wilson to accommodate them either.

1) Make kids go IB for high school no matter what. It will fix deal if people know they aren't getting feeder rights.
2) Make an income maximum for the School lottery of 75k per year per family. Then no more white families buying cheap EOTP homes and expecting Ward 3 schools but poor families still have a shot for good starts .

You also need to find someway to cut UMC families out of charters or alternately allow charters to evolve over time to being more neighborhood oriented. Charters were a solution to 1995's problems - I doubt 25 years ago anyone would have anticipated so many UMC white families flooding the charters and taking slots they anticipated would be going to working class POC from poor neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods should be seeing dramatic improvements in their in-bound schools but aren't because gentrifiers aren't enrolling their kids and that in fact is causing things to worsen at these schools instead of improve as their enrollment sags.

You want to live in Petworth? Great - part and parcel of the deal should be you send your kids to their neighborhood school along with your neighbors kids who have lived in the neighborhood for generations rather than holding up your nose and using your superior resources to enroll your kids elsewhere.

LMAO. I live in Petworth and the first thing my long-time neighbours told me was that no one on the block sends their kids IB and they could help us find a school.

+1000. I tried so hard at our IB. For years. And my neighbors all rolled their eyes and went to Catholic and Friendship schools. After four years of beating my head on the brick wall of dysfunction and incompetence that is DCPS, I saw the light.

Yet your neighborhood still has under enrolled public schools that some people in the neighborhood are sending their kids too.

I get that there is some chicken and egg stuff here but someone needs to go first and primary reasons schools improve are their demographics change and because parents get involved and help to improve them. Everyone from Petworth racing all over DC for charters and OOB Public Schools makes that impossible and leads to overcrowding in Ward 3 which also makes those schools worse.

Yes, some people are-- lottery losers, late arrivals, idealistic upper income people, and lots of immigrants. But emphatically not longtime neighborhood residents.

You are missing the point. People "went first" 5 years ago. Parents *are* involved. It's not like people aren't giving DCPS a chances. But the harder they try and the longer they stay, the more they learn about how deeply and profoundly toxic DCPS actually is at the central office. That is the problem. Not people's unwillingness to work or to give it a chance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted in the ANC Foxhall thread, but will post my comment here.

Why hasn’t DCPS looked into how many students attend Ward 3 schools, Shepherd and Bancroft that are OOB? Once those figures come in, then look to see what percentage of those kids would eliminate the overcrowding of those schools? If it’s a significant amount, then those families would need to lottery for Deal, Hardy and Wilson.

This seems like a simple task that should be understandable to those families OOB. I say this as an OOB parent who kids attend Bancroft. I guess my kids would have to attend MacFarland if faced with this decision.

Why wouldn't you just say Deal feeders or Wilson feeders? These Ward 3 parents always start off these threads the same way: it's a given that my Ward 3 child has a right to go to Deal and Wilson, and those other kids in Shepherd and Bancroft have a lesser status. We must distinguish between the rest of the feeders and them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is very simple and they don't want to do it because it would make the school system way more segregated than it already is, there would be so much blowback politically. This should be obvious to you.

But there are set aside seats for at-risk students and Bancroft and Shepherd are diverse enough to not give off a segregation feel.

You're missing the point: it's that the other Ward 3 Deal feeders ARE segregated and Shepherd and Bancroft DO provide diversity to Deal and Wilson. Sorry, but the DC Council isn't going to support your desire to continue your child going to MS and HS with mostly white kids like they did for elementary. Sometimes I think posters like this just really don't get how bad they look to the rest of the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1

The racism on this site and by many upper nw parents is unbelievable. The fact that these are the same “progressives” who place BLM signs in their yards is hilarious.

To label certain desires by parents as “racism” is just wrong and an easy out to what the real issues are. No - it’s not racist for a parent living in upper NW to want a local public school that their children can walk to and enjoy neighborhood friends. Let’s NOT pretend we all don’t want is best for our children. That is goal number 1. Are we thinking about children we don’t know? No. Sorry.

So maybe start and focus on making all DCPS better. Maybe every child can win.

Oh, Ward3EdNet parents. You keep trying to turn the argument back to walkability as the highest priority. You've been raising the alarm regarding overcrowding for years in hopes of getting Shepherd and Bancroft kicked out of the feeder pattern. I warned you years ago to be careful because it could be you getting the boot. DCPS prioritizes other objectives higher than Ward 3 white kids walking to school. Now some of you are the ones fighting to not get ousted from the feeder pattern. I told you so.

[Anonymous]

DCPS has stated very clearly that eliminating feeder rights for OOB students is off the table. The sooner folks will get this through their heads the faster we'll be able to come to a solution. Just look at the materials from the Foxhall and MacArthur planning meetings. DCPS is committed to maintaining and expanding OOB, with a focus on at-risk. That was a goal from the last boundary process and it persists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to recommend again this article:
https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge

Money quote:

For most of the past 50 years, DC Public Schools (DCPS) has had way too many schools, and the most pressing facilities issue for the agency has been how to close and dispose of unneeded buildings in an orderly manner. Even though DC has gained over 22,000 public school students since 2008, and between 2008 and 2013 DCPS shrunk from 134 to 110 schools, the number of seats still exceeds the number of students by about 25%.

Today, DCPS has a capacity of 61,925 seats and only 48,043 students, according to the Master Facilities Plan. However, if the projections hold, by 2027 – which is only eight years away – DCPS will have 61,697 students. For the first time in 60 years—two generations—DCPS is going to be full. And it's likely going to grow from there.

Ward 3 is seeing what the rest of the city is going to be seeing very soon.

I don't know why you believe this - there is a massive amount of spare MS and HS capacity EOTP and you don't have to go to Anacostia to find it. Just at Coolidge, Cardozo and Roosevelt alone you can accommodate 1500+ kids no problem. I get that gentrifiers don't want their kids to attend those schools but people in Ward 3 shouldn't have to deal with unsafe conditions at Deal and Wilson to accommodate them either.

1) Make kids go IB for high school no matter what. It will fix deal if people know they aren't getting feeder rights.
2) Make an income maximum for the School lottery of 75k per year per family. Then no more white families buying cheap EOTP homes and expecting Ward 3 schools but poor families still have a shot for good starts .

You also need to find someway to cut UMC families out of charters or alternately allow charters to evolve over time to being more neighborhood oriented. Charters were a solution to 1995's problems - I doubt 25 years ago anyone would have anticipated so many UMC white families flooding the charters and taking slots they anticipated would be going to working class POC from poor neighborhoods. Gentrifying neighborhoods should be seeing dramatic improvements in their in-bound schools but aren't because gentrifiers aren't enrolling their kids and that in fact is causing things to worsen at these schools instead of improve as their enrollment sags.

You want to live in Petworth? Great - part and parcel of the deal should be you send your kids to their neighborhood school along with your neighbors kids who have lived in the neighborhood for generations rather than holding up your nose and using your superior resources to enroll your kids elsewhere.

LMAO. I live in Petworth and the first thing my long-time neighbours told me was that no one on the block sends their kids IB and they could help us find a school.

+1000. I tried so hard at our IB. For years. And my neighbors all rolled their eyes and went to Catholic and Friendship schools. After four years of beating my head on the brick wall of dysfunction and incompetence that is DCPS, I saw the light.

Yet your neighborhood still has under enrolled public schools that some people in the neighborhood are sending their kids too.

I get that there is some chicken and egg stuff here but someone needs to go first and primary reasons schools improve are their demographics change and because parents get involved and help to improve them. Everyone from Petworth racing all over DC for charters and OOB Public Schools makes that impossible and leads to overcrowding in Ward 3 which also makes those schools worse.

Ward 3 elementary schools are not overcrowded due to Petworth families sending their kids here out of bounds. They're overcrowded due to Ward 3 students (to the extent they actually are overcrowded -- my kids' classes in DCPS are smaller than my elementary classes were in Montgomery County, Md., a generation ago).