Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current

[Anonymous]

Ellington seems to be a sacred cow to the non-Ward 3 crowd. It's OK for Non-Ward 3 to overcrowd Ward 3 neighborhood schools, but NOT OK to talk about restricting the Deal and Wilson ridiculously huge boundaries, but REALLY not OK to ask non-Ward 3 Ellington families to share Ellington's campus.

[Anonymous]

It's not a sacred cow like people on here would have you believe.

Is there opposition to moving the school? Absolutely. But that is to be expected: there would be opposition to moving any school.

I assure you, the stumbling block is the 10m in renovation planning that has already been spent. DCPS is loath to admit that as a sunk cost.

Other places for new HS include:

DHS campus by Ward Circle. DHS is moving to St. E's (eventually). The problem is that this would make two HSs in very close proximity.

IntelSat campus at Van Ness. Problem is that the land and the buildings are owned by different groups, so a purchase is more complicated than it should be. Plus, annoying neighbors are trying to have the buildings designated as historic. They've failed so far, and rightly so.

UDC campus. I don't know much about the viability of this option, but like two above, this would entail another HS in close proximity, which is clearly suboptimal.

Lab School campus is too small for a HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ellington seems to be a sacred cow to the non-Ward 3 crowd. It's OK for Non-Ward 3 to overcrowd Ward 3 neighborhood schools, but NOT OK to talk about restricting the Deal and Wilson ridiculously huge boundaries, but REALLY not OK to ask non-Ward 3 Ellington families to share Ellington's campus.

I attended this meeting and the group was led to believe that if you surveyed Ellington students themselves -- aside from the dozen or so MD/VA residents who pay out-of-state tuition to attend -- most of them would welcome a location nearer a transportation hub or metro. It was suggested that the block where Shaw JH is currently sitting empty could be razed and purpose-built for this instead of the $130 million renovation of Ellington for ~500 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not a sacred cow like people on here would have you believe.

Is there opposition to moving the school? Absolutely. But that is to be expected: there would be opposition to moving any school.

I assure you, the stumbling block is the 10m in renovation planning that has already been spent. DCPS is loath to admit that as a sunk cost.

Other places for new HS include:

DHS campus by Ward Circle. DHS is moving to St. E's (eventually). The problem is that this would make two HSs in very close proximity.

IntelSat campus at Van Ness. Problem is that the land and the buildings are owned by different groups, so a purchase is more complicated than it should be. Plus, annoying neighbors are trying to have the buildings designated as historic. They've failed so far, and rightly so.

UDC campus. I don't know much about the viability of this option, but like two above, this would entail another HS in close proximity, which is clearly suboptimal.

Lab School campus is too small for a HS.

I was to understand that the Old Hardy building was too small, but the land around it was large enough that a decent-sized high school could be built.

Also, how are renovation funds spent on the Old Western High a sunk cost if in either scenario (Duke stays or it goes) the building gets renovated for a high school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not a sacred cow like people on here would have you believe.

Is there opposition to moving the school? Absolutely. But that is to be expected: there would be opposition to moving any school.

I assure you, the stumbling block is the 10m in renovation planning that has already been spent. DCPS is loath to admit that as a sunk cost.

Other places for new HS include:

DHS campus by Ward Circle. DHS is moving to St. E's (eventually). The problem is that this would make two HSs in very close proximity.

IntelSat campus at Van Ness. Problem is that the land and the buildings are owned by different groups, so a purchase is more complicated than it should be. Plus, annoying neighbors are trying to have the buildings designated as historic. They've failed so far, and rightly so.

UDC campus. I don't know much about the viability of this option, but like two above, this would entail another HS in close proximity, which is clearly suboptimal.

Lab School campus is too small for a HS.

I was to understand that the Old Hardy building was too small, but the land around it was large enough that a decent-sized high school could be built.

Also, how are renovation funds spent on the Old Western High a sunk cost if in either scenario (Duke stays or it goes) the building gets renovated for a high school?

Yes, there is land around the Lab School (located on Foxhall) but this is DPR land. Even if DCPS could grab this, I doubt it would be large enough.

There is another Lab School (on Reservoir). I think this was the old Hardy. The school lot there is larger, but smaller than the school lot plus DPR space on Foxhall. So, it's also likely too small.

The renovation is being planned for a performing arts school, so few of those plans would translate easily into a comprehensive HS. Nonetheless, it is 10m. Frankly, that's pennies in the grand scheme of getting this right. And, while those plans wouldn't translate easily into a born-again Western High, parts of them may be usable for a new Ellington.

[Anonymous]

Nobody is "keeping" the EOTP high schools empty. Every one of them accepts every student who applies, any kid in the whole city is welcome to attend them. Students have lots of options "closer to where they live." The problem is not many families want to attend them. More kids who are in-boundary for Cardozo attend Wilson than Cardozo for example.

What DCPS [can't] do is force people to go to schools they don't want to go to. It's not politically feasible, and it ends up not working. DCPS has got to create schools that people want to go to, which means studying what makes schools popular. If part of the answer is location, then schools need to be put in locations that are attractive to people.

Part of the answer is indeed location. It's safe to say all parents prefer a school that's close to where they live.

So doesn't it make more sense to figure out what makes schools attractive and put those elements into schools that already exist - closer to the population that needs them - than create yet another school in proximity to the desirable high school that everyone wants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I was to understand that the Old Hardy building was too small, but the land around it was large enough that a decent-sized high school could be built.

Also, how are renovation funds spent on the Old Western High a sunk cost if in either scenario (Duke stays or it goes) the building gets renovated for a high school?

Yes, there is land around the Lab School (located on Foxhall) but this is DPR land. Even if DCPS could grab this, I doubt it would be large enough.

There is another Lab School (on Reservoir). I think this was the old Hardy. The school lot there is larger, but smaller than the school lot plus DPR space on Foxhall. So, it's also likely too small.

The renovation is being planned for a performing arts school, so few of those plans would translate easily into a comprehensive HS. Nonetheless, it is 10m. Frankly, that's pennies in the grand scheme of getting this right. And, while those plans wouldn't translate easily into a born-again Western High, parts of them may be usable for a new Ellington.

The old Hardy site is on Foxhall Road. The school itself sits on one acre and is contiguous with a DPR site of 4.5 acres, so a total of 5.5 acres of city-owned land. By contrast, the current Ellington site is under 2.5 acres. Rec centers and schools co-locate all over the city, for example Coolidge, Stoddert, Hearst.

The Lab School site on MacArthur at Reservoir is owned by the Lab School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ellington seems to be a sacred cow to the non-Ward 3 crowd. It's OK for Non-Ward 3 to overcrowd Ward 3 neighborhood schools, but NOT OK to talk about restricting the Deal and Wilson ridiculously huge boundaries, but REALLY not OK to ask non-Ward 3 Ellington families to share Ellington's campus.

Ellington isn't in Ward 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Nobody is "keeping" the EOTP high schools empty. Every one of them accepts every student who applies, any kid in the whole city is welcome to attend them. Students have lots of options "closer to where they live." The problem is not many families want to attend them. More kids who are in-boundary for Cardozo attend Wilson than Cardozo for example.

What DCPS [can't] do is force people to go to schools they don't want to go to. It's not politically feasible, and it ends up not working. DCPS has got to create schools that people want to go to, which means studying what makes schools popular. If part of the answer is location, then schools need to be put in locations that are attractive to people.

Part of the answer is indeed location. It's safe to say all parents prefer a school that's close to where they live.

It turns out that not all parents prefer a school close to where they live. Or at least that's not the highest consideration. One of the points made up-thread is that one of the important qualities of the current Ellington location is that it is in a safe neighborhood. For some parents, that is more important than being close by.

This is a factor at Hardy as well. I saw David Catania speak recently, and he talked about how he looked at Hardy, and noticed that it was less than 15% in-boundary but over 40% of the kids came from east of the Anacostia. Wouldn't it be a win-win, he wondered, to just pick up the whole school -- teachers, students, administration, programs -- and move it somewhere more convenient to just about all of its families? The answer he got is that one of the attractions of the school is the fact that it is located in a what is perceived to be a safe neighborhood.

Now, everyone deserves a neighborhood school and everyone deserves a safe neighborhood. But shouldn't DCPS give people what they want? And if what some people want is a school in a different neighborhood, shouldn't DCPS provide that? That would indicate that the thing to do is to put an overweighting of schools in the western part of the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Nobody is "keeping" the EOTP high schools empty. Every one of them accepts every student who applies, any kid in the whole city is welcome to attend them. Students have lots of options "closer to where they live." The problem is not many families want to attend them. More kids who are in-boundary for Cardozo attend Wilson than Cardozo for example.

What DCPS [can't] do is force people to go to schools they don't want to go to. It's not politically feasible, and it ends up not working. DCPS has got to create schools that people want to go to, which means studying what makes schools popular. If part of the answer is location, then schools need to be put in locations that are attractive to people.

Part of the answer is indeed location. It's safe to say all parents prefer a school that's close to where they live.

So doesn't it make more sense to figure out what makes schools attractive and put those elements into schools that already exist - closer to the population that needs them - than create yet another school in proximity to the desirable high school that everyone wants?

Of course it makes sense -- if DCPS supported the concept of neighborhood schools -- which it does not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nobody is "keeping" the EOTP high schools empty. Every one of them accepts every student who applies, any kid in the whole city is welcome to attend them. Students have lots of options "closer to where they live." The problem is not many families want to attend them. More kids who are in-boundary for Cardozo attend Wilson than Cardozo for example.

What DCPS [can't] do is force people to go to schools they don't want to go to. It's not politically feasible, and it ends up not working. DCPS has got to create schools that people want to go to, which means studying what makes schools popular. If part of the answer is location, then schools need to be put in locations that are attractive to people.

Part of the answer is indeed location. It's safe to say all parents prefer a school that's close to where they live.

It turns out that not all parents prefer a school close to where they live. Or at least that's not the highest consideration. One of the points made up-thread is that one of the important qualities of the current Ellington location is that it is in a safe neighborhood. For some parents, that is more important than being close by.

This is a factor at Hardy as well. I saw David Catania speak recently, and he talked about how he looked at Hardy, and noticed that it was less than 15% in-boundary but over 40% of the kids came from east of the Anacostia. Wouldn't it be a win-win, he wondered, to just pick up the whole school -- teachers, students, administration, programs -- and move it somewhere more convenient to just about all of its families? The answer he got is that one of the attractions of the school is the fact that it is located in a what is perceived to be a safe neighborhood.

Now, everyone deserves a neighborhood school and everyone deserves a safe neighborhood. But shouldn't DCPS give people what they want? And if what some people want is a school in a different neighborhood, shouldn't DCPS provide that? That would indicate that the thing to do is to put an overweighting of schools in the western part of the city.

Wouldn't it be better in the long run to work on making those neighborhoods safer? there could be an extra security around the schools -- plus -- these are the neighborhoods people LIVE in with their kids day and night -- CERTAINLY we can find a way to keep their kids safe while at the neighborhood school. PLUS think of all the things that can happen crime/safety wise in transit. Sorry, with a little thought, the "safe neighborhood" position doesn't hold. I suspect it's more the prestigious neighborhood that is the draw and not wanting to feel you're getting kicked out of it. At the rate the city is crowing, it shouldn't be too much of a PR effort to grow some pride in neighborhoods -- if anyone downtown cared about it, that is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ellington seems to be a sacred cow to the non-Ward 3 crowd. It's OK for Non-Ward 3 to overcrowd Ward 3 neighborhood schools, but NOT OK to talk about restricting the Deal and Wilson ridiculously huge boundaries, but REALLY not OK to ask non-Ward 3 Ellington families to share Ellington's campus.

Ellington isn't in Ward 3.

N0 -- it's in ritzy Georgetown -- even better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I was to understand that the Old Hardy building was too small, but the land around it was large enough that a decent-sized high school could be built.

Also, how are renovation funds spent on the Old Western High a sunk cost if in either scenario (Duke stays or it goes) the building gets renovated for a high school?

Yes, there is land around the Lab School (located on Foxhall) but this is DPR land. Even if DCPS could grab this, I doubt it would be large enough.

There is another Lab School (on Reservoir). I think this was the old Hardy. The school lot there is larger, but smaller than the school lot plus DPR space on Foxhall. So, it's also likely too small.

The renovation is being planned for a performing arts school, so few of those plans would translate easily into a comprehensive HS. Nonetheless, it is 10m. Frankly, that's pennies in the grand scheme of getting this right. And, while those plans wouldn't translate easily into a born-again Western High, parts of them may be usable for a new Ellington.

The old Hardy site is on Foxhall Road. The school itself sits on one acre and is contiguous with a DPR site of 4.5 acres, so a total of 5.5 acres of city-owned land. By contrast, the current Ellington site is under 2.5 acres. Rec centers and schools co-locate all over the city, for example Coolidge, Stoddert, Hearst.

The Lab School site on MacArthur at Reservoir is owned by the Lab School.

I believe the number of acres for both Lab@Foxhall and Ellington to be incorrect. I calculated them based on square footage in a city block. Of course, this also ignores the fact that DCPS doesn't own DPR land. Period. Co-locating would entail the elimination of all green space currently owned by DPR at the Foxhall site. I think it unlikely to presume DPR would be asked to vacate this space, and vacate (not co-locate) is what we're talking about here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nobody is "keeping" the EOTP high schools empty. Every one of them accepts every student who applies, any kid in the whole city is welcome to attend them. Students have lots of options "closer to where they live." The problem is not many families want to attend them. More kids who are in-boundary for Cardozo attend Wilson than Cardozo for example.

What DCPS [can't] do is force people to go to schools they don't want to go to. It's not politically feasible, and it ends up not working. DCPS has got to create schools that people want to go to, which means studying what makes schools popular. If part of the answer is location, then schools need to be put in locations that are attractive to people.

Part of the answer is indeed location. It's safe to say all parents prefer a school that's close to where they live.

It turns out that not all parents prefer a school close to where they live. Or at least that's not the highest consideration. One of the points made up-thread is that one of the important qualities of the current Ellington location is that it is in a safe neighborhood. For some parents, that is more important than being close by.

This is a factor at Hardy as well. I saw David Catania speak recently, and he talked about how he looked at Hardy, and noticed that it was less than 15% in-boundary but over 40% of the kids came from east of the Anacostia. Wouldn't it be a win-win, he wondered, to just pick up the whole school -- teachers, students, administration, programs -- and move it somewhere more convenient to just about all of its families? The answer he got is that one of the attractions of the school is the fact that it is located in a what is perceived to be a safe neighborhood.

Now, everyone deserves a neighborhood school and everyone deserves a safe neighborhood. But shouldn't DCPS give people what they want? And if what some people want is a school in a different neighborhood, shouldn't DCPS provide that? That would indicate that the thing to do is to put an overweighting of schools in the western part of the city.

You're absolutely right that some parents do want to remove their kids from their own neighborhoods entirely. I don't know the number that falls into that category, but I'd be willing to bet that it's about even with the number of parents who want a new high school in the western part of the city. And those two numbers combined still make a pretty small subset of students who currently go, are thinking about, or will go to a DCPS high school.

What that leaves is a large number of people who would be pretty angry that, instead of improving the quality of existing high schools, DCPS decided to invest in giving that smaller subset what they want--two high school bottlenecks in the western part of the city.

[Anonymous]

You're an idiot. Nobody wants a high school bottleneck in the western part of the city.

It's simple, really: many people can clearly foresee a looming overcrowding issue at Wilson. You have several choices:
1. Remove some feeder schools
2. Build greater capacity at Wilson
3. Create a new school.

If choosing 1., which feeder schools? Proponents of 3. realize that it may not be reasonable to remove east of the park feeder schools.

So, tell me again why I want?!? a bottleneck in my neighborhood. Or, stop denying the reality of the situation and tell me what you'd do.