My School DC New Lottery Data

[Anonymous]

Different LAMB SD parent: I drive and park in the neighborhood for morning drop off and on Perry Street for afternoon pick up.

I would never expect the city to bus my kids to a city-wide charter school. If we were at our IB we would walk.

[Anonymous]

You're still using city resources by driving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NYC PP here.

I agree. All kids should be able to walk to a good in-bound school. But all cannot.

It's called WMATA

If your WMATA provided bus connections that were timed to connect with other busses, and had routes that ran within a block or two of every school, this would be great. But one thing I found when researching school options was a corner of NE that has about five charter schools in it (drawing kids from all over the city), and two bus lines, both of which have limited schedules and don't even come that close to the schools. Compound this with heavily trafficked streets and no crossing guards... because this area also has all of that.

New York has a fairly complicated formula that determines its bus routes, and who is eligible to use them. If you have to travel out of your borough, you either do a private bus or take the subway. But if you're more than a mile from a school and less than five miles from a school, a bus route has to accommodate you. If New York can work this out, I really don't see why DC cannot. Or cannot provide some kind of transit route that runs close to all of its schools.

However, as I said, apparently parking lots are a bigger priority.

So NYC has bus system to transport all kids that want to go to different boroughs to hundreds of different schools?

New poster, also from New York.

NYC poster, thank you for pointing this out. I love how the solution to the carless family is to just buy a car. Everyone here pretends they're so green yet sits in clogged traffic to get to school. And if you want the "free" PK3, you're stuck going to a terrible part of town, sitting in traffic for hours. There is laughably bad city planning in DC.

Sorry, but I've live in NYC and DC and it's clear to me that neither of you has been out of the city long enough to realize that volume and capacity are everything. DC doesn't compare to NY in either of those. There are not enough school children to support school buses here and not enough room in the schools budget. In NYC there's more - more kids, more taxpayers, more money, more everything. And I'm sorry, but until there is a near 100% walkability score in all DC neighborhoods, you're going to have families who need their cars - to get groceries, go to the pharmacy, go to the doctor, and yes, get to school. DC has had a population boom in the last 6 years and many of those schools are still way under capacity.

I was the one who said you'd have to make IB school attendance obligatory for all those not in charters or private, because otherwise there aren't enough bus-needy kids to make it feasible. My own IB is .6 miles away. Walkable, sure, but something with wheels is more practical. If you want the city to be more green, push for more bike paths (separate from auto traffic, as they do in Europe) and strict enforcement of safety regulation for cycling. That's more doable than buses, and better for everyone.

[Anonymous]

My own IB is .6 miles away. Walkable, sure, but something with wheels is more practical.

Apologies - I just Googled and it's .8 miles. Would have been a real bear to make him walk that when I had to pick him up from the school nurse last week and then get him to urgent care. Cabs are also a lot less plentiful here than in NYC.

[Anonymous]

There are very few residents where their IB is more than a mile away. PP is correct impossible to create bus system for so few kids going to so many schools. Have you seen the map of where DC students come from and to? My street alone has 8 kids and they all go to 8 different schools all around the city.

[Anonymous]

I think that posters on this board also forget that for the most part, we are not the people for whom free preschool was created. Free preschool programming is (to my understanding) intended to help close the achievement gap between the children of the majority of DCUM posters (like the poster who thinks that her $350,000/yr salary makes her middle class) and the children who come from poor families in potentially dangerous and damaging neighborhoods. Those are the schools that need to be improved. That a relatively small but vocal number of actual middle class and DCUM middle class got "shut out" of the 1-12 schools they wanted to send their 3-year-olds to instead of paying $800-1500/month for private preschool or daycare is not the actual problem here. I understand that it's frustrating, but the talk about how unfair this is pales in comparison to how unfair it is that some schools are so bad that no one - not Ms. $350k-is-middle-class or the low income family who lives across the street - will send their kids there.

[Anonymous]

I'm also not talking about three year olds. Putting three year olds on a school bus is impractical--at best. In New York, we turned down a G&T spot that was nine miles from our house because I didn't want to put our kid on a bus at five to go that kind of distance. At three, I get it. You either go to your local school, or you drive or take transit. Fair enough.

But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Again, city existing public transportation should be arranged to accommodate options to existing schools. We looked at several charters--and discovered that for many of them there was no reliable, close, and safe bus stop. Nor do the buses connect--if you have to take more than one, you might be waiting 30 minutes for each one. A trip that is less than 2 miles from our house (with no bike lanes--I checked for that too) becomes an epic, four-mile long bus ride, taking two or three buses, or taking the metro too (which adds to the cost enough to make it equivalent to taking Uber.) Or, we have to walk about a mile of it. I'm not opposed to that... but it's somewhat weather-dependent, and it's not a good walk. Busy intersections, heavy traffic.

What shocks me the most is, the charter is one of five charter schools in the immediate area. That's a lot of kids being picked up and dropped off by car. Having crossing guards (they don't). Having a bus that runs directly from the metro to that area (the only bus that runs consistently, not just for rush hour, is about four blocks away--again, with no crossing guards, several complicated intersections, heavy traffic.... And so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Talk to the administrators of schools that are easily accessible by public transit. You'll find that they are stunned by how few parents use it to get their children to school and that the major complaints they receive from parents is how difficult parking is in the neighborhood for drop off and pick up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm also not talking about three year olds. Putting three year olds on a school bus is impractical--at best. In New York, we turned down a G&T spot that was nine miles from our house because I didn't want to put our kid on a bus at five to go that kind of distance. At three, I get it. You either go to your local school, or you drive or take transit. Fair enough.

But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Again, city existing public transportation should be arranged to accommodate options to existing schools. We looked at several charters--and discovered that for many of them there was no reliable, close, and safe bus stop. Nor do the buses connect--if you have to take more than one, you might be waiting 30 minutes for each one. A trip that is less than 2 miles from our house (with no bike lanes--I checked for that too) becomes an epic, four-mile long bus ride, taking two or three buses, or taking the metro too (which adds to the cost enough to make it equivalent to taking Uber.) Or, we have to walk about a mile of it. I'm not opposed to that... but it's somewhat weather-dependent, and it's not a good walk. Busy intersections, heavy traffic.

What shocks me the most is, the charter is one of five charter schools in the immediate area. That's a lot of kids being picked up and dropped off by car. Having crossing guards (they don't). Having a bus that runs directly from the metro to that area (the only bus that runs consistently, not just for rush hour, is about four blocks away--again, with no crossing guards, several complicated intersections, heavy traffic.... And so on.

I did not grow up in NYC or DC. When I attended a school across the city I grew up in, I took a public bus. I agree that the bus system could be better, but again, the system in DC is a system of neighborhood schools. Your decision to live in an area that is zoned for a school you are not willing to send your child to is your decision. You could make a different decision.

[Anonymous]

It's great to say "neighborhood schools should require no buses, and if everyone just attended theirs, we'd have no transportation problems" when nearly half of the public-school student body is enrolled in citywide charters. One out of every two students has to commute somewhere, most likely farther than that student's neighborhood school. It'd be nice if DC actually gave some thought to planning bus routes that would better serve something like half the families in the public school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm also not talking about three year olds. Putting three year olds on a school bus is impractical--at best. In New York, we turned down a G&T spot that was nine miles from our house because I didn't want to put our kid on a bus at five to go that kind of distance. At three, I get it. You either go to your local school, or you drive or take transit. Fair enough.

But kids don't stop needing to get to school at three. In an ideal world, I'd like my ten year old to be able to ride a public bus to school. With other ten year olds. As I did. As far as I'm aware, Deal and Wilson are the only schools that have dedicated public buses? What about just having regular buses that work with school schedules? If you're going to open several charter schools in an area, don't you have an obligation to make sure there's a possibility of taking transportation to that area?

Again, city existing public transportation should be arranged to accommodate options to existing schools. We looked at several charters--and discovered that for many of them there was no reliable, close, and safe bus stop. Nor do the buses connect--if you have to take more than one, you might be waiting 30 minutes for each one. A trip that is less than 2 miles from our house (with no bike lanes--I checked for that too) becomes an epic, four-mile long bus ride, taking two or three buses, or taking the metro too (which adds to the cost enough to make it equivalent to taking Uber.) Or, we have to walk about a mile of it. I'm not opposed to that... but it's somewhat weather-dependent, and it's not a good walk. Busy intersections, heavy traffic.

What shocks me the most is, the charter is one of five charter schools in the immediate area. That's a lot of kids being picked up and dropped off by car. Having crossing guards (they don't). Having a bus that runs directly from the metro to that area (the only bus that runs consistently, not just for rush hour, is about four blocks away--again, with no crossing guards, several complicated intersections, heavy traffic.... And so on.

No one decides to open 5 charter schools in a given area. Each charter LEA independently decides where to locate the school. The mayor has no say. The council has no say. The PCSB has no say. So far as I can tell, the ANCs have no say - even though they usually can weigh in on changed uses that will affect local traffic patterns. Everything about charters is designed to defeat any efforts at central planning. So it should come as no surprise that there is no central planning for charter transportation.

[Anonymous]

It's great to say "neighborhood schools should require no buses, and if everyone just attended theirs, we'd have no transportation problems" when nearly half of the public-school student body is enrolled in citywide charters. One out of every two students has to commute somewhere, most likely farther than that student's neighborhood school. It'd be nice if DC actually gave some thought to planning bus routes that would better serve something like half the families in the public school system.

This.

We go to a neighborhood school now. A few times a year they make a huge show of having the kids walk or bike to school--usually from pre-designated areas that they are driven to and dropped off. The rest of the year the parents complain about parking. This school is on major express bus routes, and is in a walkable, low-traffic area--so it doesn't even have half the issues these five charters do. And yet... on the topic of having neighborhood kids actually walk to school every day, there is strange apathy. I understand how impossible it would be to have more than one drop off, have a work deadline, and incorporate a bus ride out of the way into a morning commute vs. a fifteen minute drive... I really do. And yet, the current system doesn't really work either. Those five charter schools with no crossing guards are an accident waiting to happen.

[Anonymous]

What don't yall get? It's impossible to have public bus system and impossible to have WMATA create hundreds of routes to transport a handful of kids from each neighborhood to dozens of schools around the city. If it makes sense to add a mode bus line (will service many kids going same way) there is a process to ask WMATA to create. I would be livid if my tax dollars were used to transport 5 kids on one block going to 5 schools around the city (times that by 100+).

http://ddot.dc.gov/service/school-transit-service-requests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's great to say "neighborhood schools should require no buses, and if everyone just attended theirs, we'd have no transportation problems" when nearly half of the public-school student body is enrolled in citywide charters. One out of every two students has to commute somewhere, most likely farther than that student's neighborhood school. It'd be nice if DC actually gave some thought to planning bus routes that would better serve something like half the families in the public school system.

This.

We go to a neighborhood school now. A few times a year they make a huge show of having the kids walk or bike to school--usually from pre-designated areas that they are driven to and dropped off. The rest of the year the parents complain about parking. This school is on major express bus routes, and is in a walkable, low-traffic area--so it doesn't even have half the issues these five charters do. And yet... on the topic of having neighborhood kids actually walk to school every day, there is strange apathy. I understand how impossible it would be to have more than one drop off, have a work deadline, and incorporate a bus ride out of the way into a morning commute vs. a fifteen minute drive... I really do. And yet, the current system doesn't really work either. Those five charter schools with no crossing guards are an accident waiting to happen.

There is apathy, because for most people the current system does, in fact, work fine. Most adults are able to consider things like commute, time, $$$, etc when deciding if they will send their children to a neighborhood school or a charter.

[Anonymous]

I do not think I'm entitled to everything I want in this world. I have choices (more here than in most jurisdictions) and then it is up to me to make rational decisions based on my personal situation. Do I buy a house IB for JKLM if that mans that I will probably have to get another car because daily transport isn't as good (work, groceries)? Do I value what a charter is offering me over and above my IB school such that I'd choose that school? Even if it is walkable is the extra 30 minutes each way something that the charter's offering makes worthwhile to me? I didn't prioritize MV because I live in NE DC and having to cross both North Cap and NY Ave was not something I wanted to do with a young kid for many years. If I valued bilingual education more then maybe the extra time and effort or cost of getting a 2nd car would make it worthwhile. But that's all in my analysis of what school I'm willing to send my kid to. People value different things and this is just one more thing that mist be taken into consideration when an individual family chooses a school.