Reply to Ward 3 - Wilson feeders meeting last night: did anyone attend?

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Reply to "Ward 3 - Wilson feeders meeting last night: did anyone attend?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]And efficiency is a good goal, but when you talk about spending public dollars disproportionately on the weatlhier/whiter kids in DCPS, you need to take a minute to think about optics even if you have no regard for equity.[/quote]

I'm the one who proposed the cash payment idea.

First, I don't necessarily think most of the payments will go to wealthy white kids.  Several people have already posted here that there's no way they'd move from Deal to MacFarland for even $10,000 per year.  A wealthy family will be less motivated because the money is a smaller proportion of their income.  I suspect the people most likely to change schools for a cash payment will be families who have only moderate income, so the money is more enticing.  And to the extent white families are afraid of leaving Deal because of a fear of other neighborhoods and other races (as some have claimed here), I suspect that tilts the payments toward more non-white families that live outside of NWDC.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the family most likely to take this payment for a move to MacFarland is one that lived EOTP and not far from MacFarland, but which managed to get into the Deal feeder system via grandfathering or OOB or because they live someplace like Shepherd Park.  THey're families who would love a functioning MS close to home, but who stick with Deal only because the local MS is not yet safe enough.  The cash payment might be enough to push them over the edge.  The payment program would be open to all eligible for Deal, so there's nothing that limits the payment to wealthy white students.  Wealthy white families that are sick of Deal overcrowding might take it.  But plenty of others will too.

Second, I think the cash payment is all about equity.  [b]It's giving equal opportunity to every family at Deal[/b], regardless of income.  It's aimed at boosting the cohort of students and benefits at an EOTP schools, at the expense of WOTP Deal.  It's exactly the sort of thing DCPS has been doing by spending on programming at EOTP schools, but it's just trusting families to use the cash wisely themselves rather than paternalistically spending it for them on wasted school programs they don't really want. [/quote]

I'm not sure I agree with this statement, but I think it does capture the heart of why I feel this is a very poor idea.  There are many families in DC who would love the opportunity for their child to attend middle school at Deal but who are not at a feeder or in bound.  [b]What makes Deal-eligible students more worthy of public dollars than any other student in DC?[/b]  DC has an obligation to all public school students in the city, why focus more resources on Deal-eligible students which seems to be your only criteria for cash payments?  [/quote]

Nothing makes them more "worthy."  But students who are Deal eligible have something that's valuable - the right to attend Deal.  Maybe they got that right because their parents happen to live IB for Deal, or maybe they got that right because their parents were diligent enough to work the feeder options, or maybe they just got lucky in the lottery.  Regardless of how they got there, DCPS has specifically said they want to convince those students to leave Deal voluntarily to lessen overcrowding.  DCPS is talking about dangling all sorts of fancy programming at other schools to try to lure those students out of Deal, or about spending gobs of money to renovate additional school space in NWDC to pull those students away from Deal.  Is it more "equitable" for DCPS to spend tens of millions of dollars to build new school space in wealthy, white NWDC?  I think that approach is just as subject to criticism.

The bottom line is that DCPS is apparently too scared of the politics to push any students out of Deal, and will only look at options that pull or lure students out of Deal voluntarily.  The only way DCPS has to lure students out of Deal is to offer them something better.  DCPS has limited funds and lots of places they ought to be spending those limited funds for the betterment of students all across the city.  It makes me sick that DCPS is thinking about dropping millions on new school space just because some politicians are too spineless to make hard decisions to clean up their past mistakes that allowed Deal to get overenrolled.   If DCPS is going to spend money to lure students out of Deal, then it should spend as little money as possible, and do it as efficiently as possible.  It may sound ugly and mercenary, but I think some form of cash payment is the most effective and efficient way to lure students out of Deal.  If someone has a more efficient way, I'm all ears.[/quote]

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