Reply to Please explain relevance of "OOB crowding" to the DCPS boundary review process

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here, wow, I love how active DCUM forums can be!

Ok, this has really helped me. I was unsure of what my opinion was on all of this, and I think now my opinion is the following:

- the boundary for Wilson should stay as it is (not sure about Deal, but sounds like Wilson has the real crowding problem)
- everyone resident within the boundary gets first preference
- then those OOB with siblings attending
- then those OOB from Rhee-era feeder schools
- then everyone else
- until the school has reached capacity.

This is how it works in cities with good neighborhood schools, that I have seen. Everyone IB for neighborhood schools gets in first and if (only if) there are extra spots, they do a lottery.

In practice, this would, it sounds to me, drastically reduce OOB attendance thru feeder schools, which seems fair to me.

In response to the PP(s) who say that even IB is not an entitlement, sure, same as how you can buy a house next to a park, pay a premium, and yet the govt builds a trash dump on the park, over your protests.

But if you are going to cut property owners out of 40-year old boundaries for a desirable school then you should have a compelling reason. The only compelling reason I can think of would be overcrowding that is solely due to increased school-age population within the boundary.

But in this case Wilson is big enough to handle all children within boundary. The 47% of OOB should be cut before any boundary shrinking takes place.

To the OOB parent above who refers to the contract, I am not going to get into the legal issues of contract law! But I will ask you this: what reasonable expectation did you have for Wilson when you bought your house in Eckington or Anacostia, etc? It seems to me that a purchaser in Crestwood or Palisades had a reasonable expectation of Wilson, and paid a preimum for it, but the purchaser in Anacostia or Eckington or Co Heights did not have a reasonable expectation; they won a lottery, and probably their house was inexpensive (by DC standards!).

It seems much more fair to me to take away someone's lottery win than to take away something that someone paid for with their hard-earned dollars.

Therefore, I think the OOB kids must be excluded before any IB kids, with some grandfathering. Tough on those OOB families of course, but you are no worse off than when you bought your house. You only had a lucky windfall taken away from you. Like as if you bought a house, and later the govt announced a new park, and then the govt changed its mind and didn't build the park. You're not worse off.

To those (perhaps Rhee?) who say they want to "force" high socio-economic status parents to invest in DCPS, good luck with that. White participation in DCPS (sad but true, race is a good SES proxy in DC) is at a multi-decade record high of 12%, correct? And a whopping 22% at Wilson? The idea that local schools are bad is already assumed in most parts of DC. For many high-SES parents, Deal and Wilson are probably on the borderline of acceptable quality. Worsen them and people will likely do something else, as they have for decades. And yes someone will take their place in their house if they move to the 'burbs, but probably someone childless.

As an aside, I came to the depressing realization when reading all of this, that there probably just isn't the demographics in DC to support a system-wide high-quality public school system right now. I mean even if you accomplished the goal of "spreading out" all the high-SES parents across the city schools, they would be spread too thin. A universal quality education in DC seems demographically impossible now.

The only long term hope for DCPS is demographic change. This city just has more poverty than it can bear, not in terms of tax base (where the mean average plays a role), but in terms of critical mass for social capital accumulation (where the median rules all).

In the meantime, probably better to preserve whatever quality has been concentrated in a small number of schools west of the park, than to pursue a beggar-thy-neighbor policy and ruin all schools within DC...

[/quote]

Completely rationale and thoughtful analysis, we can only hope dcps is this rationale and they then turn their energies to how to create mor schools high SES families want to send their kids to.  My only dispute is with your thinking that Wilson is the largest problem.  I think there are more good high school slots (Wilson, SWW, Banneker, Ellington) that successful/hardworking kids are more likely to find a good fit than in MS.  I am hopeful that Hardy will gain momentum, Jefferson seems to be working for many as well.[/quote]

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