Reply to Janney third grade parents--what do you think of the giant class sizes?

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Reply to "Janney third grade parents--what do you think of the giant class sizes?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Folks did not by rights to J K L or M - they bought rights to D C P and S.  We're about the achievement gap these days ya know.[/quote]

This is complete B and S.  If one thinks that people who buy in DC (and are amenable to trying the public schools) are buying into DCPS generally (like buying into the Grenwhich CT public schools, for example), that is flatly nuts.  Think what would happen if DCPS moved to a citywide system with random or lottery enrollment, the way San Francisco did it.  There would be a riot, just this time all clad in Brooks Brothers.[/quote]

NP (at least to this point).  I don't think the point is completely nuts (as I sit here in my Brooks Brothers suit).  The sense in which it is not is that while folks certainly have strong preferences about which school their kids go to (perhaps extreme preferences), and likely bought in a certain neighborhood with the strong expectation they could send their children to that school, they do not in fact have a right.  Municipalities can and do change boundaries, and folks should appreciate that when they buy a home anywhere.  People can, do, and perhaps even should get very upset when boundaries and feeders change.  But legally they do not have rights, and municipalities do have to change boundaries and feeder patterns from time to time.

As a related point, honestly I think a majority of Janney and Murch families would actually be happy if DC did shift some families out to neighboring schools to relieve overcrowding as long as they weren't the ones being moved.  They just don't want to be the ones to speak up and say it because their friends and neighbors will hate them.[/quote]

This may be correct as a legal matter.  But in life, whether or not something is legal is not the end of the matter, but rather the beginning.  The question is what is the right course.  And when people invest in a neighborhood (through their money, their volunteer work, their civic involvement), there are settled expectations about where their kids will go to school, particularly into the medium term.  I'm not taking sides on whether a switch from Janney to Murch violates those expectations, but certainly a cross-town switch to Marion Barry Elementary School would.[/quote]

And indeed I am not disputing that folks have entrenched expectations.  But we are, in fact, talking about a switch from one upper NW school to another, and not across town.  That, of course, still likely will upset folks a lot given their expectations, but is well within the city's and the community's remit to change.  [/quote]

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