Why is the overcrowding issue so complex?

[Anonymous]

I do not blame or fault any family who plays by the rules to get lottery and out of boundary seats through a process the city itself has established! As long as you’re playing by the rules there’s no reason to point fingers and blame families for doing all they can to get their children into the best school possible. If you don’t like it then you need to have the policies changed. OSSe and DCPS have been pretty clear that they will continue to support policies that ensure equity and diversity. Neighborhood boundaries or not their primary concern. Don’t like it? Find candidates that support your view and elect them.

[Anonymous]

Look most all of what’s real systemic segregation now is LEGAL. The lottery is not just. To be fair it needs to clearly advantage the poor more. It needs to make charters less demographic refuges. I am a lawyer and used to believe in the the rule of law as a basis for just action. But just think of what’s legal! Don’t let legality be a moral salve. Be just in spite of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

See, prior PP, it's not necessarily the case that a neighborhood school is full of neighborhood kids. Sure, *some* people in the neighborhood are sending their kids, but that's often concentrated in preschool and doesn't last. A lot of low-performing schools have a pretty low capture rate for their in-boundary kids. A large proportion (sometimes even a sizeable majority) are OOB-- people who didn't get into their own IB for preschool and will leave for PK4 or K, kids who are IB for even worse schools, and kids who have to go to a particular school because they need a self-contained classroom so they don't have a lot of choices. You can look at the IB/OOB projections in the Master Facilities Plan. It's just simply not the case that longtime DC resident families always send their children to DCPS. Sometimes they do, if the school is okay. But a lot of the time they don't, especially after preschool when the lottery is easier. If you want to help and advocate for DCPS, you need to understand the nature of the problem. It's a very serious problem. But it just isn't what you're describing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Nice try at changing the subject.

Everyone in Ward 3 wants the Ward 3 public schools to be diverse.

But it isn't a choice between diversity and being right sized - Deal and Wilson are overcrowded but not actually serving very many low income kids who would actually benefit from the access.

Again this is not a fight between Ward 3 parents and parents of low income kids from Wards 7 & 8 for space in a pair of very over capacity schools - this is a fight between UMC families who can walk to Deal and Wilson and UMC families from Ward 4 who think they have an inalienable right to cross the park every day and then scream at Ward 3 parents for being racists when they themselves refuse to attend diverse schools in their own neighborhoods - hopefully all of you on here whining about your right to Deal and Wilson realize that you come across as a bunch of hypocrites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are missing the point.

The Ward 3 schools you are clamoring for are dealing with the exact same toxic DCPS central office.

The difference is the Ward 3 schools have a critical mass of UMC parents with the resources and clout to overcome those problems which in the process lifts all of the students at a school.

I appreciate that some people tried and didn't succeed but the answer is to duplicate the SES mix that has lifted WOTP schools not to further dissipate those students around the city rather than concentrating them in their own neighborhoods.

And it isn't the fault of those parents who have tried - it is the fault of city leaders who won't take on the charters and re-draw the boundaries and end all of the OOB feeder rights which would enable the city to create additional clusters of successful public schools in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Oh you selfish and affluent Ward 4 parents are going to kill the golden goose if you keep trying to cram more students into Deal and Wilson - or don't you believe a MS designed for 1200 that is now up to 1600 and is still growing and a HS designed for 1800 and now at 2400 and still growing is a problem?

I love getting lectures from other affluent parents who bought an expensive house in a neighborhood where they aren't comfortable with some of the lesser peoples that live nearby and think they are therefore entitled to get as far away as possible and overcrowd the school my kids can walk to which reduces the educations of everyone involved, particularly those pesky lower income kids you scramble across the park every day to get away from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are missing the point.

The Ward 3 schools you are clamoring for are dealing with the exact same toxic DCPS central office.

The difference is the Ward 3 schools have a critical mass of UMC parents with the resources and clout to overcome those problems which in the process lifts all of the students at a school.

I appreciate that some people tried and didn't succeed but the answer is to duplicate the SES mix that has lifted WOTP schools not to further dissipate those students around the city rather than concentrating them in their own neighborhoods.

And it isn't the fault of those parents who have tried - it is the fault of city leaders who won't take on the charters and re-draw the boundaries and end all of the OOB feeder rights which would enable the city to create additional clusters of successful public schools in DC.

I promise you, it's not UMC white parents that make the politicians too chickensht to remove OOB rights and they're not the ones who would be hurt most by that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are missing the point.

The Ward 3 schools you are clamoring for are dealing with the exact same toxic DCPS central office.

The difference is the Ward 3 schools have a critical mass of UMC parents with the resources and clout to overcome those problems which in the process lifts all of the students at a school.

I appreciate that some people tried and didn't succeed but the answer is to duplicate the SES mix that has lifted WOTP schools not to further dissipate those students around the city rather than concentrating them in their own neighborhoods.

And it isn't the fault of those parents who have tried - it is the fault of city leaders who won't take on the charters and re-draw the boundaries and end all of the OOB feeder rights which would enable the city to create additional clusters of successful public schools in DC.

I promise you, it's not UMC white parents that make the politicians too chickensht to remove OOB rights and they're not the ones who would be hurt most by that.

That's funny - I didn't say UMC white parents because I am well aware many of the students finding myriad ways into Deal and Wilson are UMC and not white. As I've written repeatedly this is not a fight between UMC Ward 3 parents and and lower income families from Wards 7 & 8 as the lower income families were squeezed out a decade ago - this is a fight for space between UMC parents from Ward 3 and UMC parents from EOTP though the UMC EOTP parents (of all races I presume) are all happy to jump on the race card if they think it helps them while conveniently ignoring that their selfishness has kept lower income kids who would actually benefit from the access from getting into Ward 3 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Nice try at changing the subject.

Everyone in Ward 3 wants the Ward 3 public schools to be diverse.

But it isn't a choice between diversity and being right sized - Deal and Wilson are overcrowded but not actually serving very many low income kids who would actually benefit from the access.

Again this is not a fight between Ward 3 parents and parents of low income kids from Wards 7 & 8 for space in a pair of very over capacity schools - this is a fight between UMC families who can walk to Deal and Wilson and UMC families from Ward 4 who think they have an inalienable right to cross the park every day and then scream at Ward 3 parents for being racists when they themselves refuse to attend diverse schools in their own neighborhoods - hopefully all of you on here whining about your right to Deal and Wilson realize that you come across as a bunch of hypocrites.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Perhaps, but the majority of UMC families outside of Ward 3 already know we have no chance at Deal/Wilson and don’t consider this our fight at all and don’t have overcrowding on our radar.

We mostly get into Walls, charters or move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are missing the point.

The Ward 3 schools you are clamoring for are dealing with the exact same toxic DCPS central office.

The difference is the Ward 3 schools have a critical mass of UMC parents with the resources and clout to overcome those problems which in the process lifts all of the students at a school.

I appreciate that some people tried and didn't succeed but the answer is to duplicate the SES mix that has lifted WOTP schools not to further dissipate those students around the city rather than concentrating them in their own neighborhoods.

And it isn't the fault of those parents who have tried - it is the fault of city leaders who won't take on the charters and re-draw the boundaries and end all of the OOB feeder rights which would enable the city to create additional clusters of successful public schools in DC.

I promise you, it's not UMC white parents that make the politicians too chickensht to remove OOB rights and they're not the ones who would be hurt most by that.

That's funny - I didn't say UMC white parents because I am well aware many of the students finding myriad ways into Deal and Wilson are UMC and not white. As I've written repeatedly this is not a fight between UMC Ward 3 parents and and lower income families from Wards 7 & 8 as the lower income families were squeezed out a decade ago - this is a fight for space between UMC parents from Ward 3 and UMC parents from EOTP though the UMC EOTP parents (of all races I presume) are all happy to jump on the race card if they think it helps them while conveniently ignoring that their selfishness has kept lower income kids who would actually benefit from the access from getting into Ward 3 schools.

By not bringing up race you ignore a major factor why the politicians will never do what you want them to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

It takes a good principal, good teachers, and engaged families to have a good school.

You can’t just say “education-focused parents, send your kids to the school” and it magically gets to be perfect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You are missing the point.

The Ward 3 schools you are clamoring for are dealing with the exact same toxic DCPS central office.

The difference is the Ward 3 schools have a critical mass of UMC parents with the resources and clout to overcome those problems which in the process lifts all of the students at a school.

I appreciate that some people tried and didn't succeed but the answer is to duplicate the SES mix that has lifted WOTP schools not to further dissipate those students around the city rather than concentrating them in their own neighborhoods.

And it isn't the fault of those parents who have tried - it is the fault of city leaders who won't take on the charters and re-draw the boundaries and end all of the OOB feeder rights which would enable the city to create additional clusters of successful public schools in DC.

Try a little math. There is no way the SES mix of Ward 3 would be duplicated even if everyone did attend their IB. There aren't enough high income people for that. And if Ward 3 schools lost their OOB parents they would have considerably less political clout and would likely be worse schools because of it. Favoritism of Ward 3 schools is part of DCPS' dysfunction and inherent racism, but it's the only way Ward 3 schools can keep their parents satisfied. Without that's the system falls apart and there are no schools that anyone is satisfied with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

It takes a good principal, good teachers, and engaged families to have a good school.

You can’t just say “education-focused parents, send your kids to the school” and it magically gets to be perfect.

WOTP schools are part of the same DCPS system that assigns principals and teachers no? I actually don’t know how those choices are made but presumably people don’t apply only to work at JKLMM etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

It takes a good principal, good teachers, and engaged families to have a good school.

You can’t just say “education-focused parents, send your kids to the school” and it magically gets to be perfect.

WOTP schools are part of the same DCPS system that assigns principals and teachers no? I actually don’t know how those choices are made but presumably people don’t apply only to work at JKLMM etc

You say “assigns” like these are manual laborers not knowledge workers whose smarts and talents are hard to find and key to our kids’ success.