Reply to Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Thank you. Who would go to the new school? That is, how would this solution ease overcrowding at Wilson? Which feeders are you removing. (That's the hard question, so don't hide from it.) [/quote]

Not PP, but I think the answer is easy: [b]Powell, Oyster, Bancroft, maybe Shepherd[/b]. I'm sure I'm missing a few. This would be predicated on have quality MS and HS destinations.[/quote]

As other posters have by now told you, Powell does not feed to Deal. Oyster Adams does not feed to Deal, although some households are IB for both Oyster and Deal, so I can understand your misunderstanding there. Oyster Adams is K-8.

Here is a list of the 7 current Deal feeders (you can find this on the Deal website): Janney, Lafayette, Murch, Shepherd, Hearst, Eaton, Bancroft.

Eaton can also choose Hardy (but historically most choose Deal - this may be changing in recent years), and Bancroft can also choose CHEC (but most choose Deal - and this does not appear to be changing at all).

Bancroft stands out in this list. It is true that Hearst and Shepherd, and to a lesser extent Eaton, have had a lot of African-Americans come in OOB and have then fed that diverse student body to Deal/Wilson. But the IB demographics of those schools is much more white and affluent than the student body would suggest (particularly Eaton and Hearst).

Whereas Bancroft has a significant low-income latino and AA population IN BOUNDARY, especially latino. They are housed in the numerous affordable apartment buildings in Mount Pleasant. The graduating class at Bancroft is mostly latino, mostly low income, and many are IB.

If the government removes Bancroft from Deal then they will be denying access, where it existed for decades, for a group of students that is predominantly latino and low-income. The result will be a whiter, wealthier Deal, a Deal that could end up almost three-quarters white in a city school system that is only one quarter white.

And, most crucially, they will be accomplishing this by excluding these racial minority students on the basis of their address in Mount Pleasant. This is basically the dictionary definition of "red-lining" (read the Wikipedia entry for red-lining if you don't know). The textbook case of red-lining is where you find geographical areas with significant populations of racial minorities, and then you exclude those geographical areas from services, from opportunities, from equal quality schools etc. For example, you charge more for mortgages for certain zip-codes, or you re-zone neighborhoods out of desirable schools. You know that you cannot just put a sign on the front door of Deal MS that says "white people only", so instead you re-zone the most diverse neighborhoods out of the school based on address, on some other pretense, perhaps to relieve over-crowding. Sorry for lecturing on the basics to those of you who know our nation's history, but it seems that some on DCUM need a bit of a refresher.

This exclusion of Bancroft from Deal would be:

A) wrong
B) politically foolish
C) the losing side of a civil rights lawsuit

Removing Bancroft from Deal is a complete non-starter. And no-one is proposing it outside of DCUM. Not the DME, not Catania, not Bowser (although she is vague on what she thinks of all of this in general) - not anyone who has an important role in all of this, whom I know of.

Some of you may be thinking, wait, Shepherd and Hearst are majority African-American right now. Wouldn't cutting out either of those schools also give rise to a civil rights claim based on race and red-lining? The answer is, I am not sure, because as I understand it most AAs arrived at those schools via OOB. So it's not such an obvious case of red-lining as it would be for Bancroft. Maybe a claim would succeed, maybe not. I suspect it might turn on what the IB population for those schools looked like. Likewise, I doubt a claim for Woodley Park would succeed (some of which currently is IB for Deal). They have achieved some diversity at Oyster through OOB, but the IB area is very white and affluent.

By all means please continue proposing solutions that create options, as opposed to closing off opportunities. For example, allowing Bancroft and Mount Pleasant to continue to feed to the CHEC MS or to create an optional feed to Adams MS, or create an application-only bilingual MS (note that CHEC HS is application only, but CHEC MS is a neighborhood school). That is all productive conversation. And maybe as the years go by people will choose those options if they start to look good. But NOT if your proposal cuts Bancroft/Mount Pleasant out of Deal involuntarily.

Full disclosure (if it wasn't obvious): Mount Pleasant and Bancroft parent here.

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