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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Reading this is so depressing. The answer is clear and it's right in front of all of us: send all of our kids to the inboundary public middle school and then high school. The end. The quality of the public schools in our neighborhoods depend on the families that attend. You want better ones? Join the PTO and make the school more attractive.

I hear a lot of people on here saying there aren't tracked classes and then that tracked classes are in name only and no one is prepared for the next level. Well, then tracking isn't the solution. Just get a commitment from your other parent friend circles to attend. And do it! The end. That's what happened at Hardy and now all of y'all are salivating over it. Just do it in your own neighborhood. [/quote]

I know groups of Hill families who have tried to do this, at least for S-H, but it has not worked out. People chicken out and it doesn't take long for everyone else to bail too. No one wants to be the one family that sticks to the plan only to have everyone else flee for charters, privates, and suburbs -- they you'll really feel like you failed your kids because not only has your plan to improve the IB MS fallen apart, now all their friends are elsewhere.

I think one reason it worked at Hardy but you see so people on the Hill struggling is that there are actually a number of viable options for Hill families for MS outside the IB. Two Rivers, ITS, CHML, Basis, Latin. All of these are more viable for Hill families than for Hardy. Plus PPs are right that having the Hill divided among three MS also undercuts the ability to create a cohort. One thing I've seen happen is that people get influenced by what their friends at other schools are doing. So for instance if you have friends at Brent and they aren't even looking at Jefferson as a possibility (common) and eyeing Basis instead, then even if your feeder is S-H, that is going to make you give Basis a harder look than if they were just going to Jefferson. So it's not just that any cohort is split between 3 schools, it's that dissatisfaction with Jeffersion and EH seems to spill over into S-H families because there is a lot of mixing among families on the Hill outside of school boundaries. As another PP pointed out, people tend to put a lot of faith in what their friends with older kids have done, too, because as a parent it's hard to chart a new path.

But anyway, I don't think people on the Hill "salivate" over Hardy that much. I think the main envy is Wilson. And Wilson was already established as a good option before Hardy started retaining more students, because Deal was already established. But Eastern doesn't have a feeder like Deal. Eastern is an incredibly tough sell for any family who is invested in their kid going to college. It's really hard for me to imagine sending my kid there even if we do stick with the plan to go to S-H. Eastern is the problem.[/quote]

All of this

It's even worse for high school

Anybody still in DCPS who cares about education is going to go Walls or Banneker for HS, the former super woke school board rep eventually broke down and sent his kid to Walls over Eastern, can't blame him

If DCPS was smart they would have 1 hill based honors type public middle school and then funnel that into a high school ala what was done to make Deal/Wilson.
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