Reply to DC's School Report Cards are up. Any surprises?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Ballou stays open because DCPS provides a by right high school within a certain distance of every address in the city. Merging with Anacostia would not achieve that. [/quote]

I would love to know what you think this “certain distance” is because… have you seen the Dunbar catchment?[/quote]

The distance thing is a planning goal. It's not an entitlement to individuals. They aren't going to open a new school to meet the goal, especially when there are other high schools in the area that are not overcrowded. HD Woodson, Eastern, and McKinley Tech conveniently serve a portion of students zoned for Dunbar, as do charters such as Latin and WLA, and Dunbar is not overcrowded, so DCPS doesn't view this as a problem even those things Dunbar's zone is bigger than technically desirable. But that doesn't mean other schools should also have a massive zone.

DCPS closed a lot of schools in past decades and came to regret it. [b]And DCPS needs to maintain some extra capacity just in case it's needed, and to absorb kids from charters that fail. [/b]If, say, Thurgood Marshall Academy were to close, putting nearly 400 kids out, Ballou and Anacostia would have to absorb many of them. Even on zero notice. [/quote]

Isn't this the DME's problem to figure out, not DCPS's?[/quote]
How? Is the DME going to say that kids enrolled at a charter lose their right to attend DCPS when the charter closes on short notice? [/quote]

This. What is the DME going to do about it? DCPS has to provide a by-right school system for every single child residing in the city, including when charters close.

[b]One could imagine a system in which charters had to take kids in this situation. But charters wouldn't like that, so it gets dumped in DCPS' lap.[/b][/quote]

We have a set-up in which it is known and foreseen that failure by one entity can cause a crisis for another--and all the students of both of those entities--then hell yeah the DME as head of that set-up better have a plan to avoid avoidable crisis.

Sending kids to other charters may be one such option, assuming it's legal.  Who cares if charters don't like it?[/quote]

Oh, honey bun. The DME's plan is that DCPS takes them. And if individual charters want to take some, fine-- tends to be the ones who are underenrolled and likely lower-quality. That's the DME's plan.

Who cares if charters don't like it? The DME does! The Mayor does! The councilmembers do! Charter schools have lots of political influence in this city. Accept it.

Now, to be fair, the system has never truly been tested by a sudden failure of a large school. If, God forbid, a large school were to burn down or something, perhaps the DME would formulate some sort of plan that's different from everyone going to their IB, whatever it happens to be. But until that happens, the DME's plan is definitely, definitely, definitely to just let the chips fall however they fall and DCPS has to deal with it. So don't say they don't have a plan.[/quote]

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