Reply to Why Does Van Ness Elementary School Not Have a Boundary

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Why Does Van Ness Elementary School Not Have a Boundary"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] By the way, contrary to what you may believe, there are not "a lot" of poor kids living in Near SE (Navy Yard).  Capper/Carrollsburg has been replaced by Capitol Quarter and nearby high-end condos and apartments, which are out of reach of the working poor and far from optimal for most UMC families with school-aged children.  What happens to Greenleaf, Syphax and James Creek now that the HOPE VI program is dead-in-the-water holds the key to the future of Amidon and Jefferson, particularly when the DME cuts the feed to Wilson.  Call me pessimistic, but the days when there will be enough high-SES families south of the Eisenhower Freeway to compromise two-thirds of the student bodies at Amidon and Van Ness (about 500 students) are still years away.[/quote]

Nobody said there were lots of poor kids in Near SE.  There are lots of poor kids in the current Amidon boundary, and which portion of that boundary gets sent to Van Ness is the question we're all discussing.  DCPS could draw a boundary that keeps all the poor kids at Amidon.  A lot of people in Near SE would love that.  Some folks in SW would love it too--perhaps because they hope Van Ness will then have OOB seats for their kids, or because Amidon is closer, or because they don't like the VNPG's attitudes, or plenty of other reasons.

I actually don't think SW lacks for non-poor kids.  It lacks for non-poor kids who are enrolled in Amidon.  In 2010, there were 1,530 kids under age 18 in SW and 471 of them were under age 5, according to http://bit.ly/1ktmkwV (it also shows 758 kids in Navy Yard, with 256 under age 5).  Since then, tons more babies and toddlers in the area.  There are not nearly that many kids in public housing.  If everyone in the neighborhood sent their kid to Amidon, the FARMs rate there would probably be cut at least in half.  With that said, there are some low-income families who go to PTA meetings, focus a lot on education, and raise really high-achieving kids.  Most of them, like their richer neighbors, are sending their kids to charters, OOB, or private/religious schools (with scholarships and vouchers).  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics