Reply to HARDY: Anyone know how many feeder school kids attending next yr?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]A new principal starts on July 1. She dismantles Pope's admissions scheme, and goes to a straight by-the-book lottery. Enrollment surges by over 120 students -- it turns out Pope had been keeping the school almost a quarter empty. The new students cause problems with scheduling and discipline. Pro-Pope parents know they can't complain about the change in admissions policy, so they start a campaign blaming all of the problems on the incompetence of the new prinicpal. After four months the new principal has had enough and begs for her old job back. [/quote]

I didn't follow the Hardy drama at the time, but reading this version makes me feel Pope a) lost the IB families when the school was in NE; b) couldn't lure the families back fast enough but had lots of OOB families, c) still wanted to maintain a high standard, and so d) used the admissions process to do that.

Pope's got one crowd unwilling to drive across town and another crowd that keeps doing just that.   Why should he turn his back on them if they're willing to jump through hoops?

New principal removes the admissions process, and the discipline problems start.  As a parent, I'd be pretty angry about that, too. 
[/quote]

The situation was a little more complicated than that, PP.

Pope lost IB families due to the move to NE, but he also transformed Hardy from a school with a traditional curriculum to an arts magnet program to which students were admitted by submitting a portfolio, scheduling and interview, etc.  Pope appears to be a big believer in arts enrichment as a was to attract and retain at-risk students.  He is doing something similar at his new ES:

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/savoy-elementary/2012/12/09/c8a9b322-3fd0-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story.html [/url]

The real issue was this:  it was unfair to IB families that Pope transformed their neighborhood school into what was essentially an arts magnet school.

Rhee offered Pope a reasonable compromise: a different school building to serve as a DCPS-endorsed arts magnet school, allowing Hardy to revert back to a neighborhood MS with a traditional curriculum.  Pope refused to compromise.  Instead he rallied the support of his OOB parents.  Of course, the OOB families were almost all AA, and the IB families were not, so accusations of racism were leveled:

From [url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501580.html[/url]
[quote]Jeffrey Watson, who sent two sons to Hardy, said neighborhood parents stayed away because they were not comfortable with the racial composition of the school.

"Don't play games with people in here. We're not stupid," Watson said. "Rather than having private meetings with them, tell them to walk on over."

Rhee said she found the suggestion that race factored into her dealings with neighborhood parents to be "extraordinarily disconcerting."

"In none of the conversations that I have had about Hardy, with parents either at school currently or at the feeder schools, has anyone said they were said they were concerned with the racial makeup of the school," Rhee said.
[/quote]

Pope's failure to compromise with Rhee resulted in a loss for both IB and OOB families.  However, as you note, PP, the OOB families were probably hurt more.  They lost the DCPS-endorsed selective admissions art magnet program where many of their kids would have thrived.[/quote]

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