Reply to Feeding Bancroft and Shepherd across park undermines efforts

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Reply to "Feeding Bancroft and Shepherd across park undermines efforts"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Don't get me wrong.  I've got nothing against the Shepard Park or Bancroft neighborhoods.  I want them to have great schools.  And (unfortunately) I'm not in any neighborhood that benefits from any of these boundary changes, so I've got no personal stake in the outcome.  But I get frustrated when I see people (like some PPs) making strident demands, and hurling insults at anyone who dares to disagree, while failing to present any logical support for their positions.  Maybe you can provide the logical support that some other PPs have omitted?[/quote]

PP here, I agree with the need to choose logic over invective. Yes, I can make a stab at it, but there is so much to say, so here is my best effort for now. The data is all from DCPS school profiles and the DME materials that you can see in the sticky thread.

First off, there are a few key facts that not everyone seems to know. The first fact is that Deal currently has the following seven feeder schools: Bancroft, Eaton, Janney, Murch, Hearst, Lafayette, and Shepherd. Eaton currently has a dual feed to Hardy and Deal. The DME proposal is to make Eaton a Hardy-only school. I think there are some PPs up thread who believe that Bancroft/Shepherd are being added - not true.

Second, a lot of people don't realize the extent of the poverty in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. There are hundreds or thousands of people living below the poverty line in rent-controlled apartments. The fertility rate among those households is higher than that of the million-dollar rowhouse demographic. The majority of the &quot;age-appropriate in-boundary child population&quot; of Mount Pleasant for ES, a key DME metric, is both latino and low-income. Bancroft is, consequently, approx 70% FARM and 70% latino overall and the graduating class is 90-100% latino and FARM, varies year by year. Deal MS is 21% FARM, or 85 students per class, and 14% latino, or 57 students per class. Bancroft graduating class is 45. [u]Thus, Bancroft accounts for half of the FARM students at Deal and 80% of the latinos at Deal.[/u] Shepherd is more affluent, only 33% FARM, but it is 4% white, 10% latino, 80% black. Shepherd accounts for perhaps 25% of the black students at Deal, and some number of FARM. If you remove Bancroft and Shepherd from Deal then Deal becomes &lt;10% FARM, &lt;25% black and &lt;2% latino in a city school system that is &gt;75% poor and racial minority. Note that Bancroft and especially Shepherd have significant OOB populations but, crucially, the demographics would not change much if they became all IB, especially Bancroft. This is a big contrast with WOTP schools where diversity generally comes via OOB lottery.

Third, there is a DCUM legend that Eaton is very racially and economically diverse. True, when you are comparing with Janney. But Eaton actually has the same demographics as Deal. Here are the [Eaton/Deal] percentage numbers: [17/21] FARM, [29/31] black, [13/13] latino. Thus, if you remove Eaton from Deal, the Deal demographics are unchanged (and if you add Eaton to Hardy then Hardy becomes instantly whiter and more affluent - I'll let you look up the Hardy data). Plus, Eaton is two third OOB and much of Eaton's diversity comes from OOB. The IB neighborhood for Eaton is affluent. So as more IB parents choose Eaton every year, which we are observing, the school's diversity, and its diversity contribution to any MS, declines.

Ok, with those three facts in mind, here is the logical progression that you go through in deciding how to reduce overcrowding at Deal:

1) Incremental change is the best approach to education policy. This rules out big ideas like choice sets, removing Hardy from Wilson, removing 3-4 feeders from Deal and adding 2-3 more for academic programmatic reasons, etc. You stick with the by-right geographical feeder model used across America and try to disturb the status quo as little as possible and solve the actual boundary/assignment problems, not aim for some utopia. The actual boundary/assignment problem regarding Deal is minor overcrowding. Deal is currently 4% (four percent) over capacity but could get worse without action.

2) In the traditional by-right geographic model you need to ensure that the boundary of the receiving school equals the aggregated boundaries of the feeder schools, and every school has exactly one by-right geographical feed (optional programmatic feeds are a separate issue). This means that you remove Oyster, Crestwood from Deal and remove SW DC from Wilson. Obviously, not popular with those parents! But the rationale is that with too many by-right choices, attendance is unpredictable and this hurts planning. This is the same rationale for assigning one school where currently 2-3 are assigned due to school closures (parts of Bloomingdale, Columbia Heights). BTW this gets you a maximum 16% reduction at Deal. Maximum because that's the % of non-feeder students at Deal, though some could come from within feeder boundaries, attending private or charter.

3) Eliminating OOB feeder rights to Deal is not only unpopular among those who benefit; it actually would not work. WOTP schools become more and more IB every year. Unless you remove a feeder or reduce the physical capacity of several feeders, the OOB just get eventually replaced by IB and the crowding is not solved. Amazing how often this simple point is ignored in DCUM debates.

4) Reducing physical capacity at feeders means demolishing buildings that you previously paid to build or expand. This is crazy, plus, the IB kid population in some areas is growing. So you need to remove a feeder or feeders, again, the minimum possible. In a geographical by-right system you should remove a school that is on the border with another MS, except arguably where the border is Rock Creek Park. This rules out Murch, Hearst, Lafayette and leaves you with, counterclockwise order, Janney, Eaton, Bancroft, and Shepherd.

5) When deciding which feeder to remove, many factors come into play, including the size and diversity of the school...

Janney, with its 90%+ non-FARM and 90%+ IB, is a political powerhouse, organized like the Borg, I mean that in a respectful way. Did you see how many Janney parents were active in the process when the only thing realistically at stake for them was a 10% OOB set aside? But politics aside, it's also by far the largest, sending 75 to Deal. Removing Janney is overkill. As discussed above, Bancroft is very poor and Bancroft and Shepherd are both very racially diverse. Eaton, less so. Thus on the diversity criterion, you maintain Bancroft and Shepherd at Deal. Is there also a political consideration for this? Bancroft and Shepherd do not have the same $$$ as Janney parents but those neighborhoods have a history of social justice activism and racial integration, reaching across racial and class lines to advocate for the common good. Indeed, this is a reason why some of us choose these neighborhoods in what can otherwise be a very segregated city. Whereas Eaton is affluent IB, like Janney, but two thirds OOB, very unlike Janney. Does this political stuff play a role? Who knows, maybe in the back of people's minds. But as you can see in this post, it's not necessary to jump to the political - there are enough policy reasons. What about civil rights law suits, as some have suggested, including most notably Catania? My bet is that Mount Pleasant and Shepherd Park would likely win, but hopefully it won't have to come to that.

6) ... and what other options those families will have.

If you remove Eaton from Deal, they get Hardy, which for some on DCUM is apparently a death sentence from the way people talk. I mean, did you hear, they wear [u][i]uniforms[/i][/u] at Hardy, shock horror! But by DC standards, Hardy is pretty darn good and getting better all the time (and, FWIW, more IB), and is under capacity. Hardy's boundary area is nearly 100% affluent, so it's just a matter of time for IB to replace OOB and, absent OOB set-aside, Hardy could easily be whiter and richer than Deal in the not too distant future. I don't say that as a good thing, just making an observation based on IB demographics. Remember that Post editorial about schools &quot;flipping&quot;? Hardy seems poised for this, because it is a geographical by-right school with relatively little IB poverty or racial diversity. If you remove Shepherd, we don't even know what they'd get - &quot;New North&quot; isn't built yet. For Bancroft, it would likely be CHEC.

So..... it's a difficult choice and not everyone will be happy, but this is the logic behind maintaining all the Deal feeders except Eaton, which goes to Hardy, and aligning the Deal boundaries with the combined boundaries of its feeders, and then doing the same for Wilson. You have done the minimum to reduce overcrowding at Deal and Wilson, you've done it according to the principles that you stated at the beginning of the process, and you have avoided any civil rights lawsuits that could result from making Deal even more white and affluent than it currently is, in an urban school system that is overwhelmingly racial minority and poor.

That's the logic, as far as I can tell. Feel free to critique!

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