Reply to 2018 Master Facilities Plan removed from DME website

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Reply to "2018 Master Facilities Plan removed from DME website"

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[quote=Anonymous]The guidelines are from the last boundary review. DCPS has adopted everything in this section of the guidelines. Looks like it is 1/2 mile, which is consistent with the way that the common lottery determines whether a student can get proximity preference to another elementary school. See page 12 (excerpted below)

[b]Walking and Public Transit to Public Schools[/b]

Throughout this process, the Advisory Committee, parents, and community members expressed a strong desire to locate and sustain DCPS zoned elementary schools that can be reached safely by walking. The Committee developed a deeper understanding for the varying walkability and transportation issues across the city. It was clear that we could not measure the ease of walking and transportation based solely on distance, but that geographic barriers, public transit routes, and the safety of the neighborhood are also important factors to consider.

[b]Where a community is geographically isolated, the Committee recommends that a small school be considered in order to ensure equity in access to walkable schools[/b]. When this is not feasible, the committee seeks to relieve the transportation burden placed on parents, students, and families and find ways to better support transportation to school, which is currently the responsibility of families, not the district, except in the case of students who receive special education services. Currently, all students have access to free Metrobus transportation to and from school, and subsidized Metrorail.

In many school districts where walkability is the exception rather than the organizing principle of the system, transportation is provided by the school district. The Advisory Committee and many of the participants in the public discussions believe that the District of Columbia is in the fortunate position of never having fully dismantled its walkable system of schools and strongly [b]encourages the District to retain walk zones for elementary schools of roughly a half mile.[/b] The Committee acknowledges that the enrollment patterns are complex and that even after re-commissioning some geographically isolated schools there will still be some students and families who will have greater travel burdens than others. However, to address the limitations of the current and proposed student assignment system, boundaries and feeder pathways, the Advisory Committee makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation 31: Provide students who live greater than a half mile walking distance from their zoned DCPS elementary school with a proximity priority for out-of-zone placement to a DCPS elementary school that is a half mile or less walking distance from their home.

Recommendation 32: Provide parents or guardians of PK3 through 5th grade students residing one mile or greater walking distance from their zoned DCPS school with free passage on Metrobus to accompany the elementary grade student to their zoned school.

Recommendation 33: Provide free passage on Metrorail to 9th through 12th grade students for travel to and from a public school.

Recommendation 34: DME shall work with Metro, Metro Police, Metropolitan Police Department
(MPD), DC Department of Transportation, and public school parents and students to review bus
routes and other Safe Routes to School services and ensure that bus routes and services are
maximized to support safe and efficient public school travel by DCPS and public charter school
students. [/quote]

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