Reply to Question for Supporters of New WotP High School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Banneker was originally proposed for Capitol Hill, on the Blue/Orange metro line at the now-abandoned Hine Junior High space with excellent access to all of the city. It was located instead, as a conscious choice, in a location that was not anywhere near accessible to the enclaves of white families. The concern was that if it was easy to get to it would "flip" and become a white, academic HS.[/quote]

You are really backwards on this.

White students who could get into a magnet school had privates open to them - and privates were more affordable.  High achieving black students who didn't have the funds and couldn't get tuition assistance for privates had nothing but DCPS.  The proximity to Howard University - a visible incentive to get to the next step - is the reason for Banneker's location.  [/quote]

The high-performing black kids absolutely needed access to an academic HS.  But the single DCPS academic HS was purposely placed in a location that had very poor across-town transportation in 1980.  And "across from Howard U" was not the same neighborhood then, and the major improvements in the neighborhood come only after the Green Line opened.   While the private schools were less expensive in the 1980s, there were still plenty of kids from families that made the move to the suburbs because private schools were not affordable and the magnet school would have required bus travel and transfers in the ghetto.

A magnet school that was accessible via Metro would have attracted these students, as SWW did.  There were  plenty of white families who "couldn't get tuition assistance for privates" who left town because DCPS's academically rigorous HS was "closed" to them because transportation was a nightmare, with time and safety being two major concerns.

Location and transportation options factor in parental decisions of where to send one's kids.  But so do school demographics, and few white families are willing to have their kid be "an only", which is why Banneker, even years after the Green Line opened has had very, very few white students.

It is really hard to attract white students to high schools that do not already have white students in their population.  This is and will be a problem for any EoTP high school.  Washington Latin did it by initially opening the middle school in a difficult to get to location two blocks west of the Washington National Cathedral (WoTP).  They have moved EoTP since but they had seeded their diverse population early with their first class.

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