Reply to Zoning Lafayette out of Deal/Wilson

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Since everyone is just making stuff up with absolutely no grounds whatsoever (or shamelessly advancing solutions that benefit them), I figured why not.  So here is how I think DCPS will "solve" overcrowding.  Not what I think they should do, or even what makes sense, but what they might do.

Unlikely that Bowser will screw Ward 4.  Either she is running, in which case why.  Or she is not, in which case she still won't screw over her allies.  Either way Shepherd and Lafayette sleep soundly.

She wouldn't screw Jack Evans either, but he is likely toast now, so what the hell.  And Hyde has already been shoved off to Meyer for swing space.  And who in the city will weep for Georgetown.  So Hyde loses gets sent to SWWFS and Cardozo.  And out of spite to the Save Old Hardy folks, she redraws the boundaries to put them in Hyde too.  Old Hardy stays with Lab.

Brianne Nadeau isn't an ally of the mayor either so Bancroft goes to MacFarland and Roosevelt.

Even with Bancroft gone, Deal needs a big school to leave.  One that can take 100 kids a year out.  Cheh isn't exactly a supporter of the Mayor so Janney is off to Hardy.  Yes Janney.  Janney moms lose their minds and scream, but in the boundary review look so clueless and out of touch with the rest of the city that they undermine themselves.

OOB feeder policy doesn't get changed.  But it doesn't matter because OOB has been squeezed out at the elementary level and will be at middle and high soon.  Why take flack for changing the policy when demographics will do the job for you?

But none of this solves the elementary school problem.  So PK is gone in Ward 3.  Again not an official policy, but DCPS just lets it happen because they don't do anything.  Class sizes rise to 30 kids.  Gardens and bee hives get trailers on top of them.  Art, music, science, and foreign languages are taught out of a cart.  Parents start turning to other options (private, move).  Add to this minor tweaks to the elementary school boundaries to move kids across the park.  It doesn't do much, but it makes the rest of the city feel better.  Again, Ward 3 and 4 parents who are affected flip out, but DCPS conducts lots of focus groups, surveys, and listening sessions, and then declares victory.

Also barely solved is overcrowding at Wilson (Bancroft and Hyde do a little but not much).  For that we have expanded citywide schools.  Duke Ellington, a newly-renovated Banneker (sorry Save Shaw), and maybe even McKinley Tech expand their seats.  DCPS tries desperately to convince white parents to send their kids to them.  They fail, and post anonymously on DCUM that it would have worked if parents weren't racist (which might very well be true in most cases).[/quote]

I don’t think most Janney parents would actually have a problem with this outcome.  When you combine their cohort with that of Key, Eaton, and a handful from Mann, it’s a pretty attractive package.  At a much smaller size than the Frankenschool that Deal has become.  [/quote]

I'm a Janney parent as well and would be happy to have our kids at Hardy with it smaller size and don't mind the uniforms at all.

But it it is nuts to take a population of kids who can walk to their neighborhood school and send them to Hardy while the Lafayette kids, almost none of whom can walk to Deal, don't get moved to a middle school that is a shorter distance away and a faster trip than the trip to Hardy is.

Do all of the supposed Lafayette parents on here actually know how chaotic and diverse Deal is and that this years 6th grade class is the first majority white class?  I read some of the comments on here and it sounds like some of these families think that Deal=Sidwell and that they have the same false over inflated expectations about Wilson.  Deal is a large and diverse and chaotic and definitely imperfect school -  we've been happy overall (and think the diversity is important) but parents need to be realistic about what the school is really like and if you can get to a place where you have a realistic baseline about what Deal is like then going to a new school EOTP isn't the radical social experiment on your child that you act like it is.

Do they know that just 10 years ago few WOTP parents wanted to send their kids to Deal?  Do they know that Roosevelt was a majority white HS until the mid 1960's?  Do they know there are many middle and upper middle class families (some of color) living in Crestwood, 16th Street Heights, Shepherd Park & Takoma Park?  Duplicating the ethnic and economic mix at Deal really won't be that hard so long as DCPS is bold enough to move a large cohort from a school like Lafayette.

A significant cohort of kids needs to be moved out of Deal & Wilson and it needs to happen asap (and not in 4-5 years) as this years 6th grade class could potentially have a freshman class of 800 at Wilson in just 2.5 years which is double what the school is designed for.

I've stared at the map of DC Public schools many times and Lafayette is the WOTP school that makes the most sense to move - the commute across the park on Military Road takes about as long as the trip to Deal takes especially for those East of Connecticut and north of Military which is most of the schools area.

Again - some significant number of kids need to be moved from Deal/Wilson - if some of the apparently smarter Lafayette parents have a more logical idea of who that should be then please share it but I'd be surprised if they can come up with a better proposal because to date no one else has.[/quote]

It's such a great deal to get zoned out of Deal and you would love for this to happen to your family BUT . . . but you have a pretext for why this fabulous opportunity couldn't possibly work for you. Janney has no more legal right to Deal and Wilson than Shepherd and Bancroft do, and no one wants to get kicked out of the established, higher performing Deal and Wilson. The PP who said that this is about politics is right. I would fall out of my chair laughing if the Ward 3 parents advocating to kick out Shepherd and Bancroft based on their wildly exaggerated claims of overcrowding got kicked out instead. BUT TRAILERS!!! The modular buildings out back are fine. No reason quality learning couldn't occur there, and it does. There's still a large field. Parking. Beautiful gym. Keep making up reasons why someone needs to get kicked out, but that someone could be you.

And it doesn't matter what Roosevelt was like 50 years ago. Cardozo was a solid school back then too but it's not now. You're really over reaching to suggest these are reasons other families (not yours) should be glad to lose rights to Deal and Wilson.[/quote]

+1. That’s exactly what I think.[/quote]

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