Reply to Deal is tremendously overcrowded

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Deal is tremendously overcrowded - something is to give"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Since the redistricting the Lafayette neighborhood technically may be in Ward 4 but it certainly is not of Ward 4.  Ward 4 has a checkered political history.  It was part of Ward 3 for years and that is how most residents are oriented — west of the Park.  It would be unthinkable if Lafayette no longer fed to Deal and Wilson.[/quote]

Change is hard but not impossible.[/quote]

NP here. It's ridiculous to rezone homes that families likely specifically bought for the school boundaries. It makes a lot more sense to end OOB feeder rights. [/quote]

Well everyone is discussing throwing Shepherd out and I bought in the neighborhood because my child is at Deal.[/quote]

Welcome to the club.  John Eaton fed to Deal for nearly a century and wasn't gerrymandered in.  Yet Mary Cheh was willing to toss deal out like yesterday's dishwater.[/quote]

Why do you all keep saying Shepherd was gerrymandered in? They weren’t a K-8 and there was no New North Middle when the last re-zoning came about. There was no choice but to keep Shepherd in its current path to Deal.[/quote]

Exactly! The school isn’t big enough for a K-8 option and New North is a fantasy.[/quote]

Why is New North a fantasy? Let Shepherd and Lafayette join Ross into feeding it, and you would have a new diverse MS option. [/quote]

New North isn't a fantasy. It's opening in fall 2019 in a portion of the Coolidge building (its permanent home), with about 200 students who are currently in 5th at LaSalle Backus (40), Whittier (40), Takoma (46 students) and Brightwood (88). It will add a grade a year, which is how they built MacFarland.

[b]New North's building capacity is 550.[/b] It cannot absorb Shepherd, Lafayette and Ross in addition to the students coming from the feeder education campuses. [/quote]

First, not all the kids currently in the feeder schools will wind up at New North. Some kids who would have stayed at their K-8 will choose a charter or a different DCPS school over New North. I think attrition from 5th to 6th grade at TEC, Brightwood, LaSalle-Backus, and Whittier will be lower than from 5th grade in those same schools to 6th at New North.

Second, the total MS and HS capacity of the New North/Coolidge renovation is 550+670=1220, with a maximum capacity of 687+842=1529. Right now there are only 346 students at Coolidge HS. They could absorb Shepherd and Lafayette, especially knowing that some kids will not stay for HS but will go to SWW, Banneker, McKinley, charters, etc. Once the schools start to approach capacity, DCPS can again re-evaluate the boundaries and potentially shift some kids to Roosevelt or Dunbar (via Brookland MS, which is quite underenrolled as well).

Ross shouldn't go to New North--that makes no geographic sense. Better to keep it with Francis-Stevens, Thompson, Seaton, Garrison, and Cleveland and have them all go to Cardozo. Those six schools are a pretty strong feeder group, especially if Francis-Stevens becomes a PK-5 school with its own principal and more elementary students, and Cardozo gets a separate middle school principal and some differentiated classes. Ross is already getting bigger (hence the abolition of PK3 there) so it will have more kids to feed to middle school too. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics