Ward 6 Needs to Boot Joe Weedon

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS included the Maury/Miner cluster as an option to deal with in-boundary demand, but it was originally proposed by Joe Weedon, the Ward 6 rep to the State Board of Education. Weedon wrote a letter to DCPS in Dec 2015 urging DCPS to explore either 1) a Maury/Miner cluster or 2) moving Maury's 3-5 grades to Eliot-Hine MS.

Weedon didn't do any meaningful outreach on these ideas to either the Maury or Miner communities, so I think there was some shock when DCPS floated this to Maury (and neglected to advise Miner that a cluster was being considered). Whether or not Weedon or DCPS should be blamed for bad process, both the Maury PTA survey and the DCPS survey show little support for a cluster now among Maury families. The well is poisoned, perhaps even more so by this thread.

I think Weedon is angry that people aren't lining up behind his ideas. His family has been at Maury since the early days of the PK program and he has a kid at Eliot-Hine now. I think he feels like he built Maury so he should be able to propose significant changes to the neighborhood school model. I think his belief is that these changes (along with the Eliot-Hine renovation) would convince more Maury families to continue to Eliot-Hine instead of bailing for Basis, Latin, etc. Maybe. But I can see how the risk-averse might need more convincing.

What has been ugly is Weedon telling people not to discuss the cluster idea on the Maury listserv, accusing anyone who doesn't line up behind him as a racist, and saying that people who support the cluster have been intimidated. He can get a bit heated when you don't yield to his ideas, but these are scorched earth tactics. At this point, I think the cluster idea is dead both for lack of support and Weedon's approach/attitude.

Weedon is now saying on Facebook that he can't support the additional funding for an addition that would accommodate Maury's projected in-boundary demand. I think this is about his hurt feelings, so I doubt he will come around to supporting what a majority of Maury families want.

I found the above post to be very enlightening about how Joe works. Does anyone else remember the earlier days when He was trying to build-up support for Elliot-Hine by advocating that Stuart Hobson should be closed? He claimed that in aggregate, the Hill middle schools were under subscribed by almost the exact occupancy of SH. Therefore to him, it was obvious that SH was going to be closed and everyone else on the Hill should be supportive of this.

Reflecting about his ourtright attacks on SH and Maury (two of the best schools on the Hill), I don't understand how he holds the position he does.

[Anonymous]

Then run against him in 2018.

[Anonymous]

I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

The idea that was kicked around DCUM was creating a middle school cluster at either Jefferson or E-H that would include all of Ward 6, minus S-H. I still like that idea!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS included the Maury/Miner cluster as an option to deal with in-boundary demand, but it was originally proposed by Joe Weedon, the Ward 6 rep to the State Board of Education. Weedon wrote a letter to DCPS in Dec 2015 urging DCPS to explore either 1) a Maury/Miner cluster or 2) moving Maury's 3-5 grades to Eliot-Hine MS.

Weedon didn't do any meaningful outreach on these ideas to either the Maury or Miner communities, so I think there was some shock when DCPS floated this to Maury (and neglected to advise Miner that a cluster was being considered). Whether or not Weedon or DCPS should be blamed for bad process, both the Maury PTA survey and the DCPS survey show little support for a cluster now among Maury families. The well is poisoned, perhaps even more so by this thread.

I think Weedon is angry that people aren't lining up behind his ideas. His family has been at Maury since the early days of the PK program and he has a kid at Eliot-Hine now. I think he feels like he built Maury so he should be able to propose significant changes to the neighborhood school model. I think his belief is that these changes (along with the Eliot-Hine renovation) would convince more Maury families to continue to Eliot-Hine instead of bailing for Basis, Latin, etc. Maybe. But I can see how the risk-averse might need more convincing.

What has been ugly is Weedon telling people not to discuss the cluster idea on the Maury listserv, accusing anyone who doesn't line up behind him as a racist, and saying that people who support the cluster have been intimidated. He can get a bit heated when you don't yield to his ideas, but these are scorched earth tactics. At this point, I think the cluster idea is dead both for lack of support and Weedon's approach/attitude.

Weedon is now saying on Facebook that he can't support the additional funding for an addition that would accommodate Maury's projected in-boundary demand. I think this is about his hurt feelings, so I doubt he will come around to supporting what a majority of Maury families want.

I found the above post to be very enlightening about how Joe works. Does anyone else remember the earlier days when He was trying to build-up support for Elliot-Hine by advocating that Stuart Hobson should be closed? He claimed that in aggregate, the Hill middle schools were under subscribed by almost the exact occupancy of SH. Therefore to him, it was obvious that SH was going to be closed and everyone else on the Hill should be supportive of this.

Reflecting about his ourtright attacks on SH and Maury (two of the best schools on the Hill), I don't understand how he holds the position he does.

He has a problem controlling his rage when you do not agree with him and/or he does not understand your explanation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

Your school capacity totals are right for the three schools but the breakdown is off (EH 850, Jefferson 900, SH 460). You've also omitted CH Montessori and Walker Jones (admittedly small) which are education campuses. Keep in mind that's total seats 6-8 and a 4th grade total could only be expected to occupy a third of that capacity and not the entire school. That would represent a 6th grade need of ~ 750 seats. of course Jefferson and Eliot Hine are both severely underenrolled with fewer students enrolled than SH, and EH having less than 1/2 of SH enrollment. EH and Jefferson combined only have 482 compared to 424 at SH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

[Anonymous]

If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

And SWS is citywide, so what's your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

Cut off feeder rights. Problem solved.

-NP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.