Greater Greater Washington story on school enrollment growth

[Anonymous]

The city is going to face a choice: build new schools where they are needed; have ridiculously gerrymandered boundaries where families often drive past several other schools to get to their assigned school, or go all-lottery.

The commuting paths of an all-lottery system would be more ‘ridiculous’ (ie, less logical and efficient) than the gerrymandered version. Hi

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey Nick! Do you have anything whatsover to say about the increase in segregation in San Francisco after they imposed the same idea that you're proposing? Do you care AT ALL about that?

Nick here.

I really don't know enough about San Francisco to comment on it.

To be clear, I'm not advocating going to all-lottery. I feel DC should be working harder to strengthen its by-right school system. It's important that there be a lottery system to offer an outlet for families who are failed by the traditional system but in my mind the fact that 75% of DC kids are going through the lottery is a sign of failure.

Then maybe you should do some RESEARCH before you write about it in your article! My god. It is almost like you only care about Ward 3 and DGAF about equity. Caring is as caring does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about a lottery only system for high school? Students can apply to a special focus program or one of 4 comprehensive high schools.

High school students can travel independently -- most do already.

Turn Wilson into a middle/elementary school to deal with WOTP crowding.

Wilson is the only general high school WOTP, and it is the largest and most crowded. That is the one you'd close?????

Yes. It has been filled with students from across the city for years, so clearly commuting isn’t an issue for 14-18 yo’s.

WOTP needs capacity for younger kids who should be in schools closer to home. The Wilson HS building would provide it.

There are too many high schools with capacity. We need to get more students to them — and close a few or lease to charters.

The neighborhood school system for HSs simply isn't working when you consider the whole city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What about a lottery only system for high school? Students can apply to a special focus program or one of 4 comprehensive high schools.

High school students can travel independently -- most do already.

Turn Wilson into a middle/elementary school to deal with WOTP crowding.

Wilson is the only general high school WOTP, and it is the largest and most crowded. That is the one you'd close?????

Yes. It has been filled with students from across the city for years, so clearly commuting isn’t an issue for 14-18 yo’s.

WOTP needs capacity for younger kids who should be in schools closer to home. The Wilson HS building would provide it.

There are too many high schools with capacity. We need to get more students to them — and close a few or lease to charters.

The neighborhood school system for HSs simply isn't working when you consider the whole city.

I'm sort of on board with this even though my child is not likely a candidate for an application school because of learning disabilities. We'd have to go private. But I think a system of application and niche high schools (health profession academy etc.) would serve most of the city well.

[Anonymous]

If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP), then clearly you need more square footage to accommodate the students. Someone else said that the City will refuse to build new school(s) WOTP (which would also fix the problem), so the logical next alternative is to allow one or more charters to pop up in areas of need. That option would present less of a political headache for the elected pols than getting approval for the new charter schools.

[Anonymous]

If commuting across the city is fine, then let Wilson kids commute to other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If commuting across the city is fine, then let Wilson kids commute to other schools.

Who says commuting across the city is fine?!

I get that a lot of kids choose to do it, but a lot don’t.

We live where we do to minimize our commutes. I would move out of DC if my kids had to commute across the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If commuting across the city is fine, then let Wilson kids commute to other schools.

If San Francisco is an example, they'll just commute to VA and MD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If commuting across the city is fine, then let Wilson kids commute to other schools.

Who says commuting across the city is fine?!

I get that a lot of kids choose to do it, but a lot don’t.

We live where we do to minimize our commutes. I would move out of DC if my kids had to commute across the city.

People who think an all-lottery plan are saying that it is fine for Ward 3 kids to commute across the park. Because that would be the outcome.

[Anonymous]

One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nick here.

Today DCPS has 13,000 empty seats so you could argue that any crowding is a policy issue not a facilities issue. But if the projections hold, in eight years those empty seats are going to be gone. This will be a new historic era for DCPS. There may be policy challenges, but there are going to be real facilities issues-- and not just WOTP.

I believe in neighborhood-based schools, for a lot of reasons. But right now nobody at any level of city government is doing the things that will need to be done to keep them a viable option.

Nick,

Did you speak with officials in DCPS and OSSE? Did they express a few of the ideas mentioned in your story? For example, you state:

"DCPS may not be able to continue as a neighborhood-based school system"
"It may not be possible to draw boundaries for each school that include the school building." --- WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?
"The city may not have the political will to spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on new schools when it would mean that some existing schools would be part empty."

I'd like to know if these are the sentiments being expressed by DCPS.

Frankly, according to the statement I bolded above, it sounds like you're concluding that DCPS/OSSE is purposely undermining the neighborhood-based school system in order to bust it up. If so, this is extremely concerning. We know forced lotteries are a failure.

Nick here.

In the past few months I've spoken with councilmembers, people in the mayor's office, people in the DME's office, people from DCPS. They've all expressed versions of the same story: the enrollment surge that is coming can be handled with a combination of boundary changes and some revisions to student assignment policies. Nobody has talked about going to all-lottery, but no one has expressed any doubt about the ability to meet the demand by a few simple tweaks to the status quo. It was definitely conveyed to me that building new schools is just not going to happen.

This article had its origins when I started trying to make a map that would show where some of those boundary changes might go. I quickly got frustrated, because it seemed impossible. Then I added up the projected enrollment and projected capacity of all the elementary schools, and I got that the city is going to be 886 seats short. No amount of moving boundaries or changing assignment policies creates seats. So I said, OK, assume you can put two new elementary schools anywhere you want, with 900 seats, and try again.

It still didn't work. All of the schools that needed to shed students were concentrated in the same parts of the city. My own local elementary, Key, for example, is going to be about 150 kids over. The closest elementary that is projected to have space is Walker-Jones, in Shaw (and my old in-boundary school when I used to live over there). Walker-Jones is coincidentally projected to have about 150 seats. But between Key and Walker-Jones are nine other schools, and all nine of those also need to reduce their student count. In fact, the two closest schools to Walker-Jones, Seaton and Thomson, are going to need to move about 190 students between them, and could take all the capacity at Walker-Jones just by themselves.

I started seeing scenarios like Key sends 150 students to Mann. Mann is projected to be 125 over, and if you just added 150 now it's 275 over. So it needs to send 275 to it's closest neighbor, Stoddert. Stoddert sends 340 to Hyde, Hyde sends 350 to Francis-Stevens, Francis-Stevens sends 520 to Thomson, and so on. These aren't boundary adjustments, these are wholesale turnovers. Look at the map, every school in the city would have to change its boundaries to get all the kids to fit.

"It may not be possible to draw boundaries for each school that include the school building." --- WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?

This is an important point and I'm sorry that I didn't make it more eloquently. DCPS has 64 elementary schools right now. We're going to need two more no matter what, so let's assume 66 in eight years. There are an infinite number of ways you could divide the city into 66 zones, each with the appropriate number of kids for one of the elementary schools. However, if you add the constraints that the zone physically contains the school, and is continuous, and is reasonably compact, it may not be possible at all. The reason for this is that the schools that are going to be crowded are concentrated, and the schools that are going to have seats are concentrated. There is a mismatch between the schools that the city has and the schools that it needs.

The city is going to face a choice: build new schools where they are needed; have ridiculously gerrymandered boundaries where families often drive past several other schools to get to their assigned school, or go all-lottery.

1) They lie. You cannot believe what they say. Maybe they have a plan but they will announce it when they are ready, not just tell you because you called up and asked.

2) Saying no new schools does not mean they can't reopen old schools. Outside of Ward 3 there are numerous buildings that, with boundary revisions, could take the pressure off. This is a Ward 3 problem and you are pretending it is a problem everywhere. It is not.

3) Kicking some schools out of Wilson is hard politically, but going all-lottery is hard too because then everyone loses their right to Wilson, and potentially matches somewhere even worse than Coolidge. So why is all-lottery inevitable but kicking out a few schools is not? You have not explained your reasoning here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

75% of students are already doing this. And most are t driving if you see the data on who is using the Kids Ride Free cards.

My 2 kids have been using Metro - 2 lines - to commute to school for the last 6 years. They have been late 10 times in those years. We were late 5 times (2 years) when we drove.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

75% of students are already doing this. And most are t driving if you see the data on who is using the Kids Ride Free cards.

My 2 kids have been using Metro - 2 lines - to commute to school for the last 6 years. They have been late 10 times in those years. We were late 5 times (2 years) when we drove.

You are talking about a bunch of people who choose to make the commute because the school and the particular commute make sense to them, not people doing it because they are required to and even if the commute is highly impractical.

[Anonymous]

It's never going to happen so I don't know why we're even engaging this topic. There is almost no one who would advocate for it, neither parents nor politicians. Something else will happen. I'm guessing that charters and privates will take up the overflow; they can open fast. Or, buildings will have to be expanded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of GGW's stated goals is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles in DC. Someone tell me how a citywide lottery could possibly advance that goal? DC isn't about to purchase the fleet of school buses that would be needed, leaving parents in such a scenario to rely upon WMATA -- have fun with that -- or (more likely) their own cars.

It's one of a billion reasons a citywide lottery is a non-starter. Wish GGW would admit that.

75% of students are already doing this. And most are t driving if you see the data on who is using the Kids Ride Free cards.

My 2 kids have been using Metro - 2 lines - to commute to school for the last 6 years. They have been late 10 times in those years. We were late 5 times (2 years) when we drove.

You are talking about a bunch of people who choose to make the commute because the school and the particular commute make sense to them, not people doing it because they are required to and even if the commute is highly impractical.

True. And the DC government has to make decisions that benefit the greatest number of people. Retaining a failing neighborhood school system -- at the high school level -- where students are most capable of travelling on their own using mass transit, is increasingly untenable.