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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]Here's one: Amidon-Bowen.  It's not overcrowded now, but 82% of the kids there are from in-boundary, and its current boundary has literally thousands of housing units under construction.  They had to add a 3rd section of 2nd graders this year and take over classrooms that had been used by Appletree.  PK3 and PK4 had waitlists including in-bounds students (not sure how much these waitlists cleared after the  second round of the lottery) and since it's a Title 1 school, all the in-bound families would have a right to attend PK there in 2015-6.  Shrinking its boundaries was a good choice because it prevents overcrowding and allowed for a school to open in the Navy Yard area.  [/quote]

Thank you. I don't know a thing about this school so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.
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They shrunk Amidon's boundaries so that they would have enough kids to make Van Ness viable (says so quite clearly in the dme report). Regardless, any growth at amidon is probably due to more competition for oob/charter spots and people having to give up and go their inbound school. Let's be honest, the navy yard was never going to make amidon overenrolled, since nobody would have sent their kids there in the first place. Amidon's high in-bound rate is purely a function of all the public housing in the neighborhood, nothing else.[/quote]

Regardless of what reasons the DME gave, Amidon is filling up and this plan keeps it from getting over-full.  Even if Amidon is not everyone's first choice, there are enough kids enrolling that shrinking the boundary prevented overcrowding, which was the question asked.  It will be worth seeing how many kids stay past the early grades and how test scores move in the next few years.  [/quote]

Wasn't it not even 10 years ago that they shut down Bowen, and combined the 2 schools because they were underenrolled with almost the exact same boundaries? I would suspect that this will end up creating 2 underenrolled title 1 schools where the middle to high ses families will seek out other alternatives (i.e. no change from the status quo). I'm not saying it doesn't make sense to have 2 schools for this general area or what the right answer for either of those neighborhoods is, but trying to say that this proposal fixed an overcrowding issue at Amidon is ridiculous. If anything it will hurt the school, since there will be less students there, which equals less money/resources, etc.
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