Pre-K 3: Free in DC, but seems like a real lack of schools, especially in NW!

[Anonymous]

I think they are, if they have a child at Wilson. Personally this Ward 5 parent doesn't care. Wilson parents are the ones complaining, so why not come together around a proposal? Its not like you have no influence, there are a lot of you.

Um....they have. Formally. And were basically rejected.

https://dcpsplanning.wordpress.com/category/wilson-feeder-pattern/

[Anonymous]

A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

[Anonymous]

Agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

Please explain to me where you will place PK3 in Ward 3 without exacerbating overcrowding?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

OK, and would you support these solutions if it changed YOUR boundaries?

[Anonymous]

What about a special commission - with real authority - to examine and change boundaries.

Similar to the Dept of Defense and Congress creating the base closure commission to deal with movement and closing on unneeded military facilities. The decisions are so fraught politically that DCPS seems unable to tackle it.

Last time it was run by the DME, which was fine but many think it didn't go far enough.

Council could create. Members could include some parents, demographers, office of planning, DCPS staff, teachers/WTU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no free PK-3 and limited PK-4 (space allowing - not by right) in Ward 3 because the funding to start PK in DC (law passed in 2008) was funded in part with federal funding from Head Start targeted to better education for low income children. Ten years ago virtually all schools EOTP were majority low income.

That said, the time may be coming that DC has the income to fund universal PK3. One could also fairly comment that the lack of PK3 in Ward 3 means PK3 spots EOTP are taken by families who will leave later for their in bounds school. There aren't sufficient seats to meet the demand for PK in all locations, but meanwhile home prices and taxes mean DC's revenue is going up, up, up.

DC's revenue is down this year, in part due to the shutdown. If you want PK3 in WOTP schools are you going to build additions to them (which costs a lot and takes away from the playing field and your kids will spend years in the swing space at Meyer) or are you going to shrink the boundaries so fewer people have rights to the more crowded schools WOTP?

I'm not endorsing any particular plan. The overcrowding indicates schools need to expand or additional schools should be built or both. There are also not a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand. The government shutdown this year is but a blip on the 20 year trend of housing, property and income taxes in DC. The population increases combined with redevelopment and infill development of many parts of the city mean there are far more properties and incomes being taxed and at a much higher rate. The trend is still up, up, up over the long term. At some point the city can decide it can afford more schools or expand access to preschool and as a city we can likely afford it. Certainly the renovation and construction of schools all over the city could have never happened in the DC of the 1990s (for example - Roosevelt, Dunbar, Burroughs, MacFarland, DCI, Powell - these are just a few I can think of that combines are probably a $1 billion investment). In the 1990s the city could barely get the garbage picked up and even stopped recycling due to cost...not our world anymore.

Nope and nope. The overcrowding indicates that boundaries and feeder patterns should shift so that more kids are assigned to less crowded schools.

And there are a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand: each year after the lottery there are PK seats that are still available.

There needs to be some consideration of location and also quality in this - children aren't equally dispersed across the city. The extra PK seats are almost all in lower performing schools and outside NW DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

Please explain to me where you will place PK3 in Ward 3 without exacerbating overcrowding?

New schools or expand existing ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

Please explain to me where you will place PK3 in Ward 3 without exacerbating overcrowding?

New schools or expand existing ones.

Neither of which are either easy or free.

Everyone complains about overcrowding, but the second that someone proposes a boundary change to alleviate overcrowding, the people affected scream bloody murder. Everyone wants overcrowding fixed--by moving out other people's kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A poster up thread nailed it with the statement that parents stop caring about PreK 3 enough to make a stink once they have kids in elementy school. It is a nice to have and if it is worth it to a family it is available in other parts of the city. No other city in the country has preK3 and 4 as widely available at the quality of DC. It is wonderful but the goal is ECE for kids in need. Those kids generally do not reside in Ward 3. Much more important to the majority of upper NW DCPS families are the overcrowding issues.

But the problem is that DCPS is doing nothing to address PK3 or overcrowding in Ward 3. So many Ward 3 parents are justifiably pissed off because unlike many challenges facing DCPS, these problems are entirely within their control and fixable. When Mendelson said last week that there are “no easy” answers to Ward 3 overcrowding everyone shook their heads. There are several easy and FREE solutions. Now they may be politically difficult for him, but that’s seperate issue.

Please explain to me where you will place PK3 in Ward 3 without exacerbating overcrowding?

I don’t think there should be free prek3 in Deal feeders and OOB should be the first thing eliminated to reduce overcrowding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no free PK-3 and limited PK-4 (space allowing - not by right) in Ward 3 because the funding to start PK in DC (law passed in 2008) was funded in part with federal funding from Head Start targeted to better education for low income children. Ten years ago virtually all schools EOTP were majority low income.

That said, the time may be coming that DC has the income to fund universal PK3. One could also fairly comment that the lack of PK3 in Ward 3 means PK3 spots EOTP are taken by families who will leave later for their in bounds school. There aren't sufficient seats to meet the demand for PK in all locations, but meanwhile home prices and taxes mean DC's revenue is going up, up, up.

DC's revenue is down this year, in part due to the shutdown. If you want PK3 in WOTP schools are you going to build additions to them (which costs a lot and takes away from the playing field and your kids will spend years in the swing space at Meyer) or are you going to shrink the boundaries so fewer people have rights to the more crowded schools WOTP?

I'm not endorsing any particular plan. The overcrowding indicates schools need to expand or additional schools should be built or both. There are also not a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand. The government shutdown this year is but a blip on the 20 year trend of housing, property and income taxes in DC. The population increases combined with redevelopment and infill development of many parts of the city mean there are far more properties and incomes being taxed and at a much higher rate. The trend is still up, up, up over the long term. At some point the city can decide it can afford more schools or expand access to preschool and as a city we can likely afford it. Certainly the renovation and construction of schools all over the city could have never happened in the DC of the 1990s (for example - Roosevelt, Dunbar, Burroughs, MacFarland, DCI, Powell - these are just a few I can think of that combines are probably a $1 billion investment). In the 1990s the city could barely get the garbage picked up and even stopped recycling due to cost...not our world anymore.

Nope and nope. The overcrowding indicates that boundaries and feeder patterns should shift so that more kids are assigned to less crowded schools.

And there are a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand: each year after the lottery there are PK seats that are still available.

There needs to be some consideration of location and also quality in this - children aren't equally dispersed across the city. The extra PK seats are almost all in lower performing schools and outside NW DC.

Children are definitely not equally dispersed and generally speaking, PK spots are most available where there are the most students (including seats in both charters and DCPS). There are not seats in Ward 3 due to space. There are PK seats in Ward 2, which has roughly the same number of children under age 5 as Ward 3, probably because of a high percentage of private school families there.

DC child population by Ward in 2016 - from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KidsCount report. https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/6747-population-by-age-group-by-ward#detailed/21/1852-1859/false/870,867,133,38,11/3933,214,838,123/13833

Ward 1
<18 yrs 10444
<5 yrs 4559

Ward 2
<18 4387
<5 2309

Ward 3
<18 12902
<5 4162

Ward 4
<18 17233
<5 5464

Ward 5
<18 15407
<5 6581

Ward 6
<18 11547
<5 4811

Ward 7
<18 17963
<5 5988

Ward 8
<18 24705
<5 8061

[Anonymous]

^^ Big Correction --

Ward 2 has fewer children under the age of 5 than any other ward, including Ward 3

[Anonymous]

99% of parents in ward 3 do not expect free neighborhood PK3. It's not a hot button issue at all around here. I have 3 kids and am super involved in our DCPS, preschool, neighborhood, etc and it's just not a concern that you ever hear about.
Mainly because no one moved here expecting it (because it's never existed). So no one laments not having it.
OP does not represent the common parent. She/he is just one random DCUM poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:99% of parents in ward 3 do not expect free neighborhood PK3. It's not a hot button issue at all around here. I have 3 kids and am super involved in our DCPS, preschool, neighborhood, etc and it's just not a concern that you ever hear about.
Mainly because no one moved here expecting it (because it's never existed). So no one laments not having it.
OP does not represent the common parent. She/he is just one random DCUM poster.

+100. Also, these schools are already quite large- Lafayette has over 900 kids, Janney has over 700 kids etc. last thing we need is to add another 100 kids for PK3 and/or “guaranteed” PK4.