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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
The idea of opening new public schools in remote Foxhall Village to solve enrollment problems in Tenleytown caused by students living EOTP, many of whom are affluent and white, who live near grossly under enrolled but recently renovated public schools is just insane and shows the lack of courage from the DC Council.
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Two schools are proposed for the Foxhall area:
Foxhall Elementary will be a neighborhood elementary school that will pull kids from Key, Stoddert and Mann. The DCPS planning documents claim it will be filled by kids who live within 1.2 miles of the school, all of whom will be closer to their new school than their old school. The area is expected to gain a couple thousand school-age kids in the next 6-7 years. No intention there to alleviate crowding anywhere other than at those three schools.

MacArthur School will be at the old GDS lower school on MacArthur Boulevard. The ideas that are getting the most traction are to either have it be a high school that is fed only by Hardy, or move Hardy to the MacArthur site and have a new high school there. In either case there would be a net addition of one high school. Hardy would be removed from the Wilson feeder pattern, which would alleviate crowding at Wilson. Sure, it's not an ideal site, but it would add high school capacity.

DCPS is expected to add something like 15,000 students in the next 6-7 years, that excess capacity will largely vanish. [/quote]

No way is Foxhall gaining a couple of thousand school age kids in the next couple of years nor will it even if you add in Stoddert or Mann - there is almost no residential development slated in bounds for any of those 3 schools.

While there are really only two projects of any consequence under construction in Ward 3 they are both in-bound for Hearst but there are lots of sites in bound for Janney & Lafayette that could see new housing built in the next 10 years (though multi-unit buildings tend to have relatively few children) so new capacity in Foxhall is of really limited utility for dealing with current or future crowding.

And moving Hardy to students to Foxhall is just nuts - the entirety of Stoddert is within comfortable walking distance of Hardy and much of Eaton is as well but for anyone who doesn't want to walk to Hardy it is on a major arterial road and served by numerous WMATA bus routes.  Foxhall is the opposite and really isn't even walkable (or bikeable) from the Stoddert catchement area and traffic around both potential sites is already terrible with mostly narrow streets.

And Hardy MS is not big enough to be a High School either and has no athletic fields or locations nearby to add them so you create a bigger problem if you think it can be re-purposed.

I get that Foxhall and Palisades residents are excited because for a small slice of Ward 3 students these schools are in a good location but for most Ward 3 residents and students it is a terrible and inaccessible location that in net is going to make many more peoples commutes worse and probably not even solve the underlying overcrowding at Deal & Wilson.

Again DCPS does not need new facilities in Ward 3 - DCPS needs to move students to under utilized facilities in Ward 4 that it has already spent many millions on modernizing.[/quote]

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