Reply to Greater Greater Washington story on school enrollment growth

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If smart boundary review won't fix the "overcrowding" problem (which it WOULD, everywhere except WOTP)[/quote]

Nick here.

One of the things I'm trying to raise the alarm about is that everything that has been true about DCPS for the past 50 years is going to stop being true in the next ten.

Today, what you say is more-or-less true. According to DCPS there are about 20 schools currently that are overcrowded. They aren't all WOTP, but they are concentrated there. DCPS has 13,000 empty seats, so the capacity is there, it's just a matter of moving it around.

In 2027 DCPS is going to have 61,000 students and 61,000 seats. By the definition that DCPS uses, a school is considered "overcrowded" if more than 95% of the seats are filled. So at a bare minimum DCPS will be 3,000 seats short. There's no way that moving boundaries creates 3,000 seats.[/quote]

Are you taking into account the slowing economy/recession which a majority of economists are predicting? I am just far more skeptical that the growth the Office of Planning anticipates will continue, and as an arm of the mayor it is not in their interest to project stagnating growth.

Finally, poor residents, who have the most children in our public school system -- are being pushed out of the city as it gentrifies. That is actually happening in DC more than in any other city in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-the-district-gentrification-means-widespread-displacement-report-says/2019/04/26/950a0c00-6775-11e9-8985-4cf30147bdca_story.html?utm_term=.10a14bae91a8

IMO opinion, as an EOTP parent, before DC builds any more schools, it has to get to get a handle once and for all on how many out of state -- not OOB DCPS students -- there actually are. I think the cases that have been discovered are a drop in the bucket and even if it just 5%, that represents a significant amount of capacity that would be available to DC students.[/quote]

The Mayor's office has been pressuring the OP to downplay their projections for school-age children, because they are so inconvenient.

There are lots of reasons to believe the numbers are conservative. First, the OP has consistently under-estimated youth growth over the past ten years. Second, while the OP has youth population growing at 26%, the DME numbers have DCPS growing at 19%, charters at 26%, and non-public growing at a whopping 62%. A cynical person could say that they tamped down DCPS growth to the level they needed to say DCPS needs no new facilities. It certainly is convenient that enrollment exactly matches capacity in 2027. What if DCPS actually grows at the rate of the city, 26%? It would then needed several thousand more seats.

There's lots of reasons to believe that charters and non-publics are not going to be able to grow to keep up with population growth. DCPS is the school system of last resort. [/quote]

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