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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree, make the case to DCPS - Wells maybe be useless on education in Ward 6, but he wouldn't stand in our way.

What can the LT parents do in regard to the looming boundary fight?  Fight to be IB for SWS - it's not set in stone that the school will have a city-wide draw??   Fight for proximity preference?  Fight to switch the city-wide draw to LT?  Fight to shift LT's boundaries North, away from Stanton Park perhaps with F St as the southern border (many of us live between F and the park).  What?[/quote]

Here is one way to make it happen: all Ward Six ES schools feed into one middle school.  There are not enough middle class families within the catchment areas for the three middle schools to reach the tipping point and become a viable option.  Try to do three at once and get nowhere.  Send everyone to one school and suddenly you have the ties that bind and a common sense of purpose.  One school at Eliot Hine with 600 - 900 students is one answer.  The tag line should be “All Roads Lead to EH & Eastern.”

Having a single middle school creates a huge incentive for families to jump into LT, JO Wilson, Payne, Amidon, Miner and Tyler.  It also keeps middle class families at Watkins, Maury and Brent.  And it keeps families away from Yu Ying, Two Rivers, Cap City, LAMB, EL Haynes and others.

Use a map and diagram all of the schools and the feeder patterns.  It makes no sense.  The Cluster bisects the Hill, Brent feeds into two MS schools, Jefferson is not Hill-centric, Eliot Hine attracts most of its students from beyond Ward Six, and Ward Six has lots of poverty and a history of families leaving for greener pastures.  The current reform plan recipe is little more than warmed over status quo with a few middle class kids and a dash of IB.  Promises from DCPS that “we know how to do this,” and the perception of an overwhelming wave of middle class kids creating change (al la Maury and Brent, and the Cluster in the 90s) will likely not cut it.

Further, Stuart Hobson gets a modernized school making it the “it” school to some degree, but with an enrollment cap that boxes out families, and the gains of SH pushing Eliot Hine and Jefferson’s modernization beyond the event horizon for current families, and the lure of SH’s middling appeal eroding efforts to attract middle class families to Eliot Hine, there is no forward momentum.  There is a zero sum game at play with regard to money and middle class families, we can’t simply hold hands and hope for the best.  There are real constraints, and a hornets’ nest of political realities that cannot simply be wished away.

The current set-up pits everyone against one another.  Stuart Hobson, Eliot Hine and Jefferson cannibalize each other trying to become viable options.  Throw in Hardy, Deal feeders, Latin and BASIS, plus Cap Hill Day, GDS, Saint Anselm's, other privates, mobility of affluent families, and what you have is a situation lacking momentum and fraught with infighting.  This affects the elementary schools directly, eliminating incentives to jump in and fix them up.

Or you could make Stuart Hobson a selective admission school and perhaps give it some sort of Ward Six preference.  Or you could add an admission only academy to Eliot Hine, or make Jefferson a magnet school.  But all of these go against the grain too much for the DC body politic to accept.  And they don’t help as much to create the ties that bind.

[b]Tommy could take a bolder stand and try his darndest to get everyone marching to the same tune, but that is easier said than done.  Why blame Tommy for being ineffective – who should he listen to?  Cluster folks, gentrifiers, pro-Eliot Hine advocates, pro-Jefferson people, pro-charter families, econ-disadvantaged, DCPS three school solution people . . .  What exactly do his constituents want?  I suggest that there is no majority approved plan.  The reality is that there are a few small groups of highly motivated and vocal advocates holding sway, and for the uninvolved it is confusing and off-putting.  It’s easy to say we want good schools, but beyond that there is absolutely no consensus amongst voters.  There’s nothing politicians run away from faster than a strongly divided and emotional community, especially when an essential ingredient for success is having confidence that our numbers are many and we are all in this together.[/b]
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NP here. Tommy certainly isn't listening to the Cluster in terms of getting the monies to finalize SH modernization. I think the problem is that Tommy doesn't properly listen to any one constituency, because he knows there is no way for him to whip up wider support from such fragmented support. Plus, I think he was involved in Eliot Hine renovations, and probably feels like he has done his part. I simply think he can't or won't be bothered with the frustrated SES and middle-class parents anymore. Not when he sights are set elsewhere.[/quote]

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