Reply to Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current

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Reply to "Ward 2/3 High School proposal in the NW Current"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
At the same time you narrow the Wilson/Deal/Hardy boundaries, you could put a soft cap on the enrollment at Deal, Wilson, and Hardy (including the feeder schools) to be exceeded only to accommodate neighborhood students who have a right to attend there.  To the extent there is capacity less than the soft cap, OOB kids could enroll.  But if the soft cap is low enough at each of the feeder schools, there would not be an overcrowding problem within a few years.  Unless new 2/3 BR condos are built in the neighborhoods -- but that's another topic.[/quote]

If I understand you what you're calling a "soft cap" is what others call converting the OOB feeder right to a preference -- the OOB kids from feeders participate in the OOB lottery, but in a new preference category.  The number of seats in the lottery is determined by the actual capacity of the building.

Question: which is higher preference: feeder school, or non-feeder with sibling?[/quote]

The way I was thinking about it was, the soft cap applies when the school reaches its pre-determined capacity.  That is, once the soft cap is met, no more OOB students are allowed in.  You could make an exception for siblings; and once you're in, the OOB students are not excluded from the feeder track.  As long as DCPS narrows the boundaries for all of the schools and the feeder schools, and creates the soft cap, over-subscription problem would be resolved after a few years.[/quote]

What you're describing is the current system. It's been years since Wilson or Deal admitted anyone in the OOB lottery, they are already far beyond their "pre-determined capacity." The kids who are attending Deal and Wilson OOB are doing so because they attended feeder schools, which would still be the case in your proposal. The root cause of crowding is that the Wilson feeders -- Deal and Hardy -- have more seats per grade than Wilson does. The Deal feeders have more seats per grade than Deal does.  In each case there are feeder schools -- Hardy for Wilson, Eaton, Hearst, Bancroft and Shepherd for Deal -- that don't attract enough IB kids to fill the building, and are required to accept OOB kids to capacity. Shrinking the boundaries of any of the schools won't affect crowding, every seat will still be filled. It just means that more of those seats will be filled with OOB students.

To solve crowding at Deal you need to reduce the total number of seats in the feeder schools. You could do that by removing one or more schools as feeders, or by reducing the number of seats in the feeder schools. Similarly, to reduce crowding at Wilson you need to reduce the number of seats at Hardy and Deal combined. That can be done by removing one as a feeder, or by cutting seats at one or both.

Moving boundaries without cutting seats in the feeders has no impact on crowding.

I'll conclude by saying this is all fantasy, DCPS has shown zero willingness to take anything away from anyone, so cutting seats is a non-starter too.[/quote]

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