ANC3D Discussion on Foxhall Elementary / Old Hardy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The March, 2019, issue of the Foxhall Community Citizens Association newsletter had a letter from the FCCA Board to the Mayor, saying that they are “very concerned that the present ‘Keep Hardy Public’ effort will lead to driving the current occupant — the LAB School — out of the Hardy School property for no good purpose.”

https://www.kohp.org/2019/03/19/fcca-board-backs-lab-school-lease/

The letter claims that the "FCCA represents the neighbors who would be most impacted by any change to the current beneficial use of Hardy School by the LAB School."

Of course, public school children who live in the neighborhood and attend classes in trailers might beg to differ . . . I guess it's a nice irony that they are now going to lose their park, partly perhaps as a result of telling lies to suit their own selfish ends.

The whole "we are the most affected" line of argument just makes me so mad. Believe it or not, other people exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course, the FCCA’s stance has nothing to do with traffic. That is, I’m sure that they’re collectively smart enough to figure out that the traffic footprint of a neighborhood ES on a x-city bus line is going to pale in comparison to the hordes of SUVs that descend upon an expensive private school serving kids from MD and VA. Yet they’ll bend over backwards to make sure the latter stays yet gesticulate wildly about the traffic chaos that the former will bring to their precious Foxhall Rd.

No need to include Lab School elementary @ Old Hardy in this debate. A) The school is constantly misrepresented like above. B) Lab School has NO control or outsized influence, despite conspiracy theories of a rich cabal of out of state parents pulling the strings. That. Is. Not. True.

Lease/usage of Old Hardy is, and always has been, up to the mayor and DCPS. They are in control. They decide. They are supposed to come up with a plan.

A) For those new to the drama, Lab is a special education school. It was supposed to have more DC students with diagnosed disabilities. But DC politics got in the way because of "optics." The school has sought lease extension for maintenance and repairs with NO expansion of 90 kids. Period. It does not get preferential use of Hardy Field and has no field of it's own. Foxhall neighbors locked in strict dropoff/pickup & parking rules. Most MD & VA families use shuttle buses and carpooling. It's not the school's fault that Foxhall folks have gotten used to being entitled to a compliant tenant of the city.

Full responsibility for this whole thing falls with the Mayor, the Chancellor, the Deputy Mayor for Education (who lives IB for Hyde-Addison but sends kids to private), & Mary Cheh who's been playing all sides for years.

b) Lab does NOT have some all-powerful cabal of rich parents pulling the strings. That is hearsay and gossip of space-coveting locals who keep bringing it up to distract from the real problem: DCPS ward 3 feeder plan.

Lab is NOT a fancy general education private school like St Patrick's and Field School. Those two schools recently added campuses on MacArthur near old GDS elementary and have their own athletic fields. They have deep pockets, rich parents from DMV, and ZERO publicly-funded students with disabilities. No idea if they use shuttles or cap # of kids like Lab does.

So please, stop using Lab @ Old Hardy like some bogeyman. If we really cared about equity for DC kids, we would lobby DCPS to fund DC kids from wards 7 and 8 where there are high rates of special education students. Lab will keep educating kids with language and attention disabilities like it has for 50 years. Hopefully politics and prejudice will allow it to help the District more as intended.

How a Lab booster forms a sentence: noun, verb, "special education."

[Anonymous]

DC is a DCPS refuge at Lab not currently funded to go there (in a contentious drawn out painful process just trying to get an education for my son who dcps won’t teach to read). Anyway point being the “Lab should be treated special because it educates dcps special Ed kids” is just untrue. I’d say it’s less than 10% who are dcps funded to attend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is a DCPS refuge at Lab not currently funded to go there (in a contentious drawn out painful process just trying to get an education for my son who dcps won’t teach to read). Anyway point being the “Lab should be treated special because it educates dcps special Ed kids” is just untrue. I’d say it’s less than 10% who are dcps funded to attend.

My understanding is that DCPS used to voluntarily place students there, but during the Gray administration it stopped, and since then the only DCPS-funded kids are ones whose parents have successfully sued or otherwise prevailed over DCPS. Another poster noted that Lab doesn't give the city any break on tuition. So Lab isn't a partner of DCPS or the city, it's an adversary.

[Anonymous]

Can DCPS get to an analysis of demand for a middle school or high school over there that DOES NOT require demand from DC that isn't RESIDENT inside the Wilson feeder pattern?

I'd appreciate an analysis of demand for schools that would only include in-boundary students. Without that, it's hard to support another secondary school set west of Rock Creek Park.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can DCPS get to an analysis of demand for a middle school or high school over there that DOES NOT require demand from DC that isn't RESIDENT inside the Wilson feeder pattern?

I'd appreciate an analysis of demand for schools that would only include in-boundary students. Without that, it's hard to support another secondary school set west of Rock Creek Park.

I don't understand the agenda of your question.
Why is it hard to support another MS or HS WOTP taking into account demand from IB and OOB families?
We've established that allowing some OOB students is the only way to have some socioeconomic diversity in DCPS. Such limited socioeconomic diversity is an absolute ethical requirement in any school district. It is also, practically, a great buffer for WOTP ES to maintain consistent numbers of classes per grade and consistent staffing, even as IB enrollment waxes and wanes.

Unless and until DCPS find a way to attract a few WOTP zero-stimulus receiving families to schools EOTP and EOTR, they will have to account for a few EOTP and EOTR stimulus-families in their WOTP school planning.

[Anonymous]

Hi! My feeling is serving DC students by serving west of Rock Creek Park is not great. I'm OK with some limited participation westbound - just not the kind of thing that makes Deal a GIGANTIC school dwarfing all other middle schools because of the rest of DC getting access. Diversity is one thing, but having a school system based on "the good schools are where the white people are so just build more" is not something I want to support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi! My feeling is serving DC students by serving west of Rock Creek Park is not great. I'm OK with some limited participation westbound - just not the kind of thing that makes Deal a GIGANTIC school dwarfing all other middle schools because of the rest of DC getting access. Diversity is one thing, but having a school system based on "the good schools are where the white people are so just build more" is not something I want to support.

Fair enough but what would recommend the city do instead? It’s not like the DC government hasn’t put a lot of money into building schools in the rest of the city. That approach hasn’t really worked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi! My feeling is serving DC students by serving west of Rock Creek Park is not great. I'm OK with some limited participation westbound - just not the kind of thing that makes Deal a GIGANTIC school dwarfing all other middle schools because of the rest of DC getting access. Diversity is one thing, but having a school system based on "the good schools are where the white people are so just build more" is not something I want to support.

This kind of zero-sum Drained Pool Politics in reverse is just as damaging as the original version. You don’t build good quality public institutions by crowding middle and upper-middle class families out of the system. Building a more diverse DCPS student body is in everybody’s interests.

[Anonymous]

so would you build a diverse student body by sending students to Roosevelt and Cardozo from west of Rock Creek?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is a DCPS refuge at Lab not currently funded to go there (in a contentious drawn out painful process just trying to get an education for my son who dcps won’t teach to read). Anyway point being the “Lab should be treated special because it educates dcps special Ed kids” is just untrue. I’d say it’s less than 10% who are dcps funded to attend.

My understanding is that DCPS used to voluntarily place students there, but during the Gray administration it stopped, and since then the only DCPS-funded kids are ones whose parents have successfully sued or otherwise prevailed over DCPS. Another poster noted that Lab doesn't give the city any break on tuition. So Lab isn't a partner of DCPS or the city, it's an adversary.

It was a minor scandal in the 90s. Wealthy white parents were gaming the easily-gamed DCPS system and getting their kids -- some of them with only minor learning challenges that could have been handled by their local public school -- into Lab with taxpayers paying the tuition.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/04/02/dcs-tuition-free-zone/78c1f12a-7a83-4812-915d-885534177916/

As of 2013, the most recent year I could find the numbers for, DC taxpayers still were paying the tuition for 70 of Lab School's 360 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:so would you build a diverse student body by sending students to Roosevelt and Cardozo from west of Rock Creek?

Can you grow an orchard by cutting down fruit trees?

[Anonymous]

or more aptly, refuse to let your rich neighbor plant more trees with your money?

[Anonymous]

I don't get it - you don't want an analysis that makes clear how much demand is in-boundary? You want to do this without that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is a DCPS refuge at Lab not currently funded to go there (in a contentious drawn out painful process just trying to get an education for my son who dcps won’t teach to read). Anyway point being the “Lab should be treated special because it educates dcps special Ed kids” is just untrue. I’d say it’s less than 10% who are dcps funded to attend.

My understanding is that DCPS used to voluntarily place students there, but during the Gray administration it stopped, and since then the only DCPS-funded kids are ones whose parents have successfully sued or otherwise prevailed over DCPS. Another poster noted that Lab doesn't give the city any break on tuition. So Lab isn't a partner of DCPS or the city, it's an adversary.

It was a minor scandal in the 90s. Wealthy white parents were gaming the easily-gamed DCPS system and getting their kids -- some of them with only minor learning challenges that could have been handled by their local public school -- into Lab with taxpayers paying the tuition.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/04/02/dcs-tuition-free-zone/78c1f12a-7a83-4812-915d-885534177916/

As of 2013, the most recent year I could find the numbers for, DC taxpayers still were paying the tuition for 70 of Lab School's 360 students.

Pretttty sure the kids who entered in the 90s have since graduated.