Reply to Option B best for Ward 3?

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Reply to "Option B best for Ward 3?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here is Policy Example B:  http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/local/policy-example-b/920/

Geographical preference comes first, so if you live near the school you have have a right to attend.  Next comes feeder preference.  Whether you're IB or OOB, you have a right to attend the MS and HS if you attended the feeder elementary school, ditto for MS to HS.

Then comes the 10% set aside for OOB families and here's where it gets murky. They say the 10% (thats 15% for MS) is specifically for students from low performing schools.  Later they say those students will also have to compete with siblings first, then twins or "multiples" admitted to the school, and it would seem that whatever is left over after that goes to the low performing refugees.

But the bottom line is that no one from Ward 3 is going to get kicked out of Wilson.  More than that, many of the OOB kids who would have otherwise attended Deal, Hardy and/or Wilson will now have very limited access to those schools.  Perhaps they'll have other options in other parts of the city, perhaps not, but Option B is net positive for Ward 3.[/quote]

True. Option B hands Ward 3 an even bigger schools premium on home values. Unless you are IB for a failing school, the only way to get access to Deal and Wilson is to live in bounds, and with the new boundaries, the number of homes inbounds falls substantially. The lottery options start to look pretty good.

SF has a similar system, and [b]real estate agents now tout proximity to housing projects as selling points to UMC families[/b]. The UMC families buy places near failing schools, and then do really well in the lottery. Poorer families can't take advantage of the spots, since the city doesn't provide transportation.[/quote]

Maybe in theory. Maybe a handful of people buy into the projects. But this is not the trend in SF.  I have a close relative (who also happens to be a real estate broker) with a child in San. Fran. public schools. She said that middle class famlies either move to the 'burbs, go parochial or charter. Her friends are all gone from SFPS.
The city wide lottery did not work in SF. People (rich, poor, in between) want neighborhood schools. Noone wants their young children bused to another part of the city for kindergarten. 
What has worked in SF is the infusion of assistance to low income schools. She mentioned a program in our equivalent of "title 1 schools" (not sure if they use the same terms.) where they hold class size down to about 15 students along with other supports to families (tutoring, after care, meals, etc). It's working. 
Help the kids in ways that will make them successful....shuffling kids around the city won't work for many reasons, including the fact that UMC families don't have to allow their kids to be shuffled, they will opt out. 
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