Merging Deal and Hardy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never. Gonna. Happen.

-- Hardy IB family who would love it, but seriously why would any IB Deal family or Deal feeder family be up for this...

I seriously don't get the Hardy IB community. You have a school fed exclusively by top performing elementary schools. No dead weight whatsoever and most as hard to get into OOB as Deal feeds. If you just enrolled in boundary you'd have a school superior to Deal with a much more manageable size.

But that means someone's gotta do it first. They gotta keep going to reduce the OOB and thus reduce the brown kids to make it safe for everyone to come on in. You also have a great school in Banneker that no white families look at. DC, neck and neck with Boston for being the most racist liberal city.

Yep, as the mom of an OOB Hardy grad, the bolded statement is really offensive. Yeah, if you could just get rid of kids like mine, your school would be sooooo much better. Nice to know what you think of my child.

Poster of the Never comment. I wasn't throwing shade at Hardy as much as why on earth would the parents of the best well performing school in the city - a majority of whom live close to the school - be willing to disrupt that AND add a commute. Seriously.

For a long time - for a variety of dynamics that rehash a lot of history - many of inflated and diversionary ones are regularly brought up on DCUM - Hardy has had low IB enrollment. For families coming from schools with super high scores and lots of amenities (yes, lots supplemented by the PTA) - there is a chicken and egg issue. Hardy is a good school - but is at a point where they are working through an increasing neighborhood and feeder families along with serving a big population of students from around the city. And helping all students achieve and succeed. We are sending our kids there.

A majority of Deal students do not live close to the school. A chunk, maybe but not over 50%. Beck the school is only 60% IB which includes Shepherd, Bancroft, and Lafayette. It does t help to exaggerate numbers when having these discussions.

That doesn't change the point.

yEs it does. The implication was that the majority of kids walk to school which is not the case. If you're driving from Chevy Chase it won't hurt to drive another 7 minutes especially if you're on the way downtown. Or better yet have your kid take bus all together.

"Much of whom live close to the school" -- never says walk. Murch, Hearst, much of Janney, some of Lafayette can walk or drive within 5-10 mins and have a neighborhood connection to the Wisconsin/Connect Ave corridor.

On a Saturday - no traffic, 19 minutes from Lafayette to Hardy ...

...https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lafayette+Elementary+School,+Broad+Branch+Road+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/Hardy+Middle+School,+1819+35th+St+NW,+Washington,+DC+20007/@38.940896,-77.1102587,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9a6072f5dd3:0xd152d586ec440367!2m2!1d-77.0679076!2d38.9664459!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7b63a1938c26d:0x75d31a331e4aef79!2m2!1d-77.0686541!2d38.9153755

Lafayette to Deal -- 8 minutes https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lafayette+Elementary+School,+Broad+Branch+Road+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/Deal+Middle+School,+Fort+Drive+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/@38.9593916,-77.078273,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9a6072f5dd3:0xd152d586ec440367!2m2!1d-77.0679076!2d38.9664459!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9bf36be0f89:0x5df987d325cc8916!2m2!1d-77.075086!2d38.953232

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never. Gonna. Happen.

-- Hardy IB family who would love it, but seriously why would any IB Deal family or Deal feeder family be up for this...

I seriously don't get the Hardy IB community. You have a school fed exclusively by top performing elementary schools. No dead weight whatsoever and most as hard to get into OOB as Deal feeds. If you just enrolled in boundary you'd have a school superior to Deal with a much more manageable size.

But that means someone's gotta do it first. They gotta keep going to reduce the OOB and thus reduce the brown kids to make it safe for everyone to come on in. You also have a great school in Banneker that no white families look at. DC, neck and neck with Boston for being the most racist liberal city.

Yep, as the mom of an OOB Hardy grad, the bolded statement is really offensive. Yeah, if you could just get rid of kids like mine, your school would be sooooo much better. Nice to know what you think of my child.

Poster of the Never comment. I wasn't throwing shade at Hardy as much as why on earth would the parents of the best well performing school in the city - a majority of whom live close to the school - be willing to disrupt that AND add a commute. Seriously.

For a long time - for a variety of dynamics that rehash a lot of history - many of inflated and diversionary ones are regularly brought up on DCUM - Hardy has had low IB enrollment. For families coming from schools with super high scores and lots of amenities (yes, lots supplemented by the PTA) - there is a chicken and egg issue. Hardy is a good school - but is at a point where they are working through an increasing neighborhood and feeder families along with serving a big population of students from around the city. And helping all students achieve and succeed. We are sending our kids there.

A majority of Deal students do not live close to the school. A chunk, maybe but not over 50%. Beck the school is only 60% IB which includes Shepherd, Bancroft, and Lafayette. It does t help to exaggerate numbers when having these discussions.

That doesn't change the point.

yEs it does. The implication was that the majority of kids walk to school which is not the case. If you're driving from Chevy Chase it won't hurt to drive another 7 minutes especially if you're on the way downtown. Or better yet have your kid take bus all together.

"Much of whom live close to the school" -- never says walk. Murch, Hearst, much of Janney, some of Lafayette can walk or drive within 5-10 mins and have a neighborhood connection to the Wisconsin/Connect Ave corridor.

On a Saturday - no traffic, 19 minutes from Lafayette to Hardy ...

...https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lafayette+Elementary+School,+Broad+Branch+Road+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/Hardy+Middle+School,+1819+35th+St+NW,+Washington,+DC+20007/@38.940896,-77.1102587,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9a6072f5dd3:0xd152d586ec440367!2m2!1d-77.0679076!2d38.9664459!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7b63a1938c26d:0x75d31a331e4aef79!2m2!1d-77.0686541!2d38.9153755

Lafayette to Deal -- 8 minutes https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lafayette+Elementary+School,+Broad+Branch+Road+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/Deal+Middle+School,+Fort+Drive+Northwest,+Washington,+DC/@38.9593916,-77.078273,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9a6072f5dd3:0xd152d586ec440367!2m2!1d-77.0679076!2d38.9664459!1m5!1m1!1s0x89b7c9bf36be0f89:0x5df987d325cc8916!2m2!1d-77.075086!2d38.953232

And P.S. - half of the point of this idea is to try to cut down the OOB # of those who do not live close to Deal...

[Anonymous]

My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

What happens for 9-12

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP, I was a NP. How the hell can you state that IB scores are better than OOB? It's stupid made up statements as facts that strip away any credibility.

The PARCC scores offer a pretty clear picture. For example, it's not hard to compare the PARCC scores of the Hardy feeders (mostly IB) with the PARCC scores of Hardy students (mostly OOB). You can even follow the same student cohort by looking at successive years of PARCC results. Lots of demographic info is cross-tabulated with the PARCC scores. I'm sure your OOB particular child is scoring near the top of the PARCC levels. I also suspect that most of the OOB students at Hardy are often good students, if only because their families care enough about their education to research and work the lottery for Hardy admission, and put for the effort to get the kids to Hardy each day. But it's pretty obvious that the OOB students at Hardy are on average pulling down the PARCC scores.

FWIW, I'm not the person who posted about Hardy's IB and OOB students. I agree that poster's comments could have been phrased more carefully to avoid possible offense. But I also think that poster clarified her comments after she was called out. Can you just drop it so we can move forward with the discussion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

Doesn't that just create extra capacity at other elementary schools, which then gets filled by OOB students? If so, that leads to overcrowding at the middle school level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great, more traffic on Wisconsin! No.

Because I am driving 8th grade DC1 to pickup point for private school in MoCo and then DC2 to Sidwell for 6th grade because the now-out Hardy principal has FUBAR'd our neighborhood MS? And then back ont Wisconsin to take DC3 to IB Hardy feeder while I contemplate how to pay a third private school tuition after paying $70K in DC income and property taxes for a neighborhood and home I love but stuck with a school system focused on raising the bottom up but not the middle (and definitely NOT raising the top up).

Wisconsin Ave all the way.

But why would you need 3 tuitions? Your oldest will be ready for Wilson before your youngest starts.

Someone who can afford in bounds Hardy housing, and $70K tuition can choose many other places to live that would involve less driving and good schools. You chose this, not sure why.

You sound like the Mayor - thank you for your tax dollars, you may sit down now. Or leave, because there are plenty of dual-income young couples waiting for the positive pregnancy test who will be tax contributors for 9-11 years until they fully comprehend that the District is all about raising the bottom at the expense of children born to parents who actually care about advancing their children's education every year of their 14 years of primary and secondary education, not just 9 or 10 of those years.

We stay here because we love our home, our neighborhood, the 5-minute proximity to Rock Creek Park and the Potomac, being able to walk everywhere, including to our offices. It will be a huge sacrifice to send our three kids to private school - we don't have parents/grandparents who were Biglaw or started us out with our house (as our two mortgages attest). Perhaps we will send the oldest to Wilson or Walls. Not sure we will be able to extricate DC2 from the Big 3 selected. And with the "every child is gifted" mentality of DCPS. DC3 is just bored to tears, literally (hate seeing those dried tear tracks on DC's cheeks at piclk-up). So we supplement with on-line math and math competitions, creative writing workshops, and lots and lots of music instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

What happens for 9-12

Use the academic classrooms at Duke Ellington while the artists-in-triaing during the arts part of their day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

What happens for 9-12

Use the academic classrooms at Duke Ellington while the artists-in-triaing during the arts part of their day.

Interesting. Here's the Ellington bell schedule - looks like the academic classrooms may be free from about 12:30-4:30 each day (right now about 30 minutes a day are lost to riding from Meyer to Garnet Patternson) http://www.ellingtonschool.org/about/bell-schedule/

DCPS is planning to increase enrollment at Ellington post-move.

What about adding more programming there to attract new students -- perhaps filmmaking (narrative and documentary) would attract additional students away from Wilson. You could add more AP teacher training and AP classes to increase the academic rigor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP, I was a NP. How the hell can you state that IB scores are better than OOB? It's stupid made up statements as facts that strip away any credibility.

The PARCC scores offer a pretty clear picture. For example, it's not hard to compare the PARCC scores of the Hardy feeders (mostly IB) with the PARCC scores of Hardy students (mostly OOB). You can even follow the same student cohort by looking at successive years of PARCC results. Lots of demographic info is cross-tabulated with the PARCC scores. I'm sure your OOB particular child is scoring near the top of the PARCC levels. I also suspect that most of the OOB students at Hardy are often good students, if only because their families care enough about their education to research and work the lottery for Hardy admission, and put for the effort to get the kids to Hardy each day. But it's pretty obvious that the OOB students at Hardy are on average pulling down the PARCC scores.

FWIW, I'm not the person who posted about Hardy's IB and OOB students. I agree that poster's comments could have been phrased more carefully to avoid possible offense. But I also think that poster clarified her comments after she was called out. Can you just drop it so we can move forward with the discussion?

Just like you're not the racist PP, I am not the PP that was offended. Like I clearly said in the prior post, I am a NP. This is only my second post. Your numbers and assumptions are faulty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

Doesn't that just create extra capacity at other elementary schools, which then gets filled by OOB students? If so, that leads to overcrowding at the middle school level.

At Key and stoddert it gets rid of tthe trailers. No increase in oob.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

Doesn't that just create extra capacity at other elementary schools, which then gets filled by OOB students? If so, that leads to overcrowding at the middle school level.

At Key and stoddert it gets rid of tthe trailers. No increase in oob.

Yes, but it increases OOB at other elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

Doesn't that just create extra capacity at other elementary schools, which then gets filled by OOB students? If so, that leads to overcrowding at the middle school level.

At Key and stoddert it gets rid of tthe trailers. No increase in oob.

Yes, but it increases OOB at other elementary schools.

Stoddert has stopped taking any OOB students in the younger grades - will be 100% IB in a few years. Eaton's OOB is also declining from around 50% down to 25% or so in the younger grades. Hyde's OOB is going down some. Key & Mann seem to be remaining 10-15%

The facility at Hardy wouldn't be able to fit two grades worth of a combined Hardy-Deal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My middle school was grades 5-8. You could have Hardy be 5-6 and Deal 7-8. Taking the 5th graders out of JKLM would open up classrooms there. The city could have dedicated school busses at points throughout upper NW. Opening up extra spaces at the elementary level also would allow for more OOB spaces there.

Doesn't that just create extra capacity at other elementary schools, which then gets filled by OOB students? If so, that leads to overcrowding at the middle school level.

This is an important point. If you're going to have a feeder-based system, you have to coordinate capacity at each level. I suggest that it's easier to do that with just one middle school. Merging Deal and Hardy is the politically palatable way of doing that, there's no way that Hardy's coming out of Wilson (unless the middle school feeder patterns change, and there's no way that's happening).

[Anonymous]

Send AP Neal over to Hardy to be the principal as she runs a very tight ship and is very experienced. Send help over to Deal for the 7/8th, these grades are out of control and discipline is a mess, these children feed into Wilson for the most part and are taking their bad behavior with them. Shore up the relationship between Deal and Wilson and make transition seamless re. academics, behavior, expectations, rigor, etc.