Reply to Janney third grade parents--what do you think of the giant class sizes?

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Reply to "Janney third grade parents--what do you think of the giant class sizes?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I know that some folks would like to see the city buy St. Ann's or use Hearst as the "Janney Annex" or even build another elementary school in upper NW.  Realistically, none of these are going to happen.  They are just not.  That isn't a commentary on the pros or cons of any of these ideas, but the political, budgetary, etc. reality.

The reality is that Janney will grow until it grows so big that it becomes unattractive enough for more families to stop moving in.  Sure, you can reduce the number of PK classrooms, but that only helps a little and the city is not going to let Janney eliminate PK at the school.  Maybe you can convince Janney families to move the boundaries a little to shift some children to Mann or Hearst. But the families who get kicked out will fight like mad. Mann and Hearst are smaller schools with limited capacity to take huge numbers of students.  Even then, a boundary shift will likely have grandfathering which will not help the school much now.  And new families will just move into the now smaller border area.

Those who say that Janney made its own bed are not quite right.  The main problem is that folks, especially in competitive and driven DC, want to send their kids to "the best" school.  Whether you agree or not, many families perceive Janney as that best school, and so move into its boundaries so that their children can attend it.  If the proposed boundary changes had gone through, it certainly wouldn't have changed the situation in 3rd grade right now (see grandfathering) and even once the shift worked its way up to 3rd grade, its effects would have been tiny.  That is not to say that it shouldn't have happened, but one has to acknowledge that not going ahead with the boundary change is not the primary reason for overcrowding.  The overcrowding was already there and the reasons for it are the desirability of the school.  Only making the school relatively less desirable will stop that force.  And let's be clear "making the school less desirable" is NOT an aim.  Nobody *wants* that.  But it is the outcome of the school becoming more and more overcrowded.[/quote]

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