Deal is tremendously overcrowded - something is to give
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Anonymous
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The only way to solve this issue it to move out one of the big predominantly white and wealthy feeder schools: Lafayette or Janney or maybe Murch (although my understanding is that Murch is a bit more diverse ethnically and economically).
Move one of these schools and then you can move Shepherd and/or Bancroft too. I'm a Janney/Deal parent and I think Deal's strongest suit is it's diversity. I've actually been surprised/disappointed by how white it is and how much it feels just like Janney. I'd be 100% fine with my kids going to a new middle school (as a white minority) if they're going as part of some sort of feeder school cohort. I think many, many parents would be perfectly fine with this. Am I going to pull them out solo from Janney/Deal and send them to an underachieving school in NE? No. But I'd be find if they went as part of a larger group of kids. |
Anonymous
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Janney, Murch and Lafayette are the only ones you can't move if the term neighborhood school is to have any meaning.
If those are moved out of deal/Wilson then you have defacto destroyed the idea of neighborhood schools. Moreover, moving them does not solve the underlying population growth issuen(although maybe it does) in a different way). But hey, I got mine right. |
Anonymous
I posted this on the integration thread, but it backs up your point. The new racial and economic intergration report that came out yesterday also found that an equal number of white families in Ward 3 are opting out of public schools entirely, as are opting in. For the purposes of Wilson and its feeders and overcrowding, that's probably a good thing, but it also significantly limits the amount of racial or economic balance we can hope to achieve (just 10% of the entire DC public and charter school student population is white). The data also showed that in 16-17 Wilson was the most integrated racially, but not an all integrated economically but from the student newspaper and the principal's comments, the number of minority students has dropped significantly in the last 2 years. The most integrated schools are (in order) below. It seems fair to conclude that housing patterns in DC prevent most DCPS neighborhood schools from being integrated racially unless a school has a history of accepting OOB students (Hyde, Murch, Eaton) or there is some sort of gerrymandering (e.g. the Gold Coast / Bancroft and longer ago having some parts of SW feed Wilson). Wilson Yu Ying Mundo Verde Basis Seaton EW Stokes DCI Hearst EL Haynes Elementary Breakthrough Montessori SWW high school CMI Washington Latin MS Hyde Addison Inspired Teaching Ross Shining Stars Deal LAMB Eaton Cap City Lower Cap City Middle Center City Petworth EL Haynes HS Barnard Van Ness EL Haynes MS SWW @ FS Appletree Lincoln Park Center City Brightwood Washington Latin HS Appletree CH Thomson LaSalle Backus Bridges Garrison Tubman West Hardy Roosevelt Cap City HS Cardozo Maury Center City Shaw Peabody Ludlow Taylor Cooke Two Rivers Murch Takoma Oyster Adams CHML Cleveland |
Anonymous
That is silly. Mann and Hearst are closer to Deal/Wilson than Lafayette is. And again there is this thing where we need to remind people of the actual status quo today at Deal/Wilson which is that neither is a de facto neighborhood school today. |
Anonymous
| Why do these threads always devolve into who gets a piece of Deal/Wilson? Where are the threads about improving schools in other wards so these kids (my kids) can have a good neighborhood school? |
Anonymous
No one (read: UMC white people) willingly wants to be the first-mover to send THEIR kids to the new school. No one wants their kid to be the guinea pig. We live in the Hyde-Addison catchment and are expecting our first kid. As I see it, there are two options to solve the soon-to-be crisis at Deal/Wilson: (1) create a new by-right high school for Hardy MS or (2) carve out at lease two elementary schools from Deal/Hardy in conjunction with stopping OOB feeder rights. Personally, I think #1 is more politically feasible. People get angry and organized when you take something of value away from their kids (option #2). Plus, Option #1 allows more OOB spots to remain open for savvy and politically influential folks who live in Hillcrest and NE DC; Bowser won't abandon this constituency. |
Anonymous
| The thing about Hardy HS is that none of the kids are from the neighborhood. Something like 2% of all DCPS high schoolers are from Ward 2, right? So it'd be like Ellington - they all come west for its location in a nice neighborhood, which is a reinforcement of segregation and not a systemic fix of anything. |
Anonymous
You are right of course. There needs to be a bridge between the elementary schools (which people all over the city generally seem to be happy with) and the under enrolled high schools EOTP which is where I somewhat disagree because it really is crazy to try to build a new high school when there are literally half a dozen DC High Schools that are grossly under enrolled, most of which have had $100 million plus modernizations. The city needs an excellent new middle school to do this and the logical place for this school is in Ward 4. And there is a person on this thread who keeps screaming that only Shepherd kids would potentially get moved to such a new school but that is outright wrong as there are kids from a lot of other neighborhoods that currently are going to Deal/Wilson who logically would get moved to a school closer to their neighborhood. BTW the same thing actually happened in Ward 3. It used to be lots of Ward 3 residents pulled their kids out of DCPS after Elementary school. Then Deal got turned around starting about 15 years ago and 10 years ago the trend reversed and lots of Ward 3 families kept their kids in DCPS, including through HS to Wilson and this sort of gets glossed over but Wilson is not a perfect high school by any stretch - I think if problems equivalent to the ones Wilson has were the same at Deal lots of Ward 3 families wouldn't enroll but by high school the families are ok with the imperfections. If the schools are good and people have confidence in them the political problem will be solved and EOTP parents will be thrilled to have shorter commutes. But the courage for this has to come from politicians - there is too much status quo bias for this to ever come from parents. And unspoken in this thread is the problem of charters poaching a lot of the kids who would make up the critical mass needed for this new middle school to work and with some charters being for profit they no doubt are expending resources to lobby for the status quo as well which is to their benefit. |
Anonymous
Ward 2 is a weird map and I wouldn't let Ward 2 numbers impact your thinking on Wilson. The only parts of Ward 2 zoned for Hardy (and thus Wilson) are Georgetown and Burleith. Those parts of Ward 2 are only covered by Hyde-Addison. Meanwhile, Hardy - located in Ward 2 - pulls in students from Key, HA, Mann, Stoddert, and Eaton. Plus, a ton of military kids; there's a direct bus from the nearby bases to Hardy. Culturally and demographically, Hardy is looking more and more like Ward 3 every year. Ward 2 percentage to Wilson doesn't matter; the 5 very strong elementary feeders into Hardy is going to cause a huge crunch at Wilson. The crisis will hit a peak at Wilson within the next five years. Therefore, another by-right high school to serve Hardy is what is needed. It will also take some pressure off Deal, IMHO, as more OOB families target Hardy for access to a 2nd excellent HS. Hardy is still under-utilized, but not for long. |
Anonymous
This is not true anymore. |
Anonymous
To be fair, only 27% of the current cohort is IB. But they are expecting big gains each year as Eaton now feeds into Hardy. I believe the current class of 6th graders is nearly 40% IB. |
Anonymous
| You could just send the Hardy kids to Cardozo. Problem solved. |
Anonymous
Yes, sending kids who live in the Palisades to Cardozo completely makes sense from the standpoint of "neighborhood schools."   #sarcasm
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Anonymous
From the new document on Cardozo feeds it looks like they might move Bancroft out of the Deal feed. |
Anonymous
pffft. Like it's a cinch to drive from Palisades to Wilson, either. |