Reply to MacFarland Middle & Roosevelt High

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[quote=Anonymous]Article on the closing of Roosevelt, with discussion of MacFarland and the surrounding neighborhood -- http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/45392/rough-ride-roosevelt-high-school/

Only 7% of the public school children from MacFarland's boundary were actually attending MacFarland.

[quote]Finally, some families simply cheat by listing a relative’s address or even renting a basement apartment in boundary for Deal and Wilson, says Jeff Steele, who founded and runs DC Urban Moms and Dads, the leading online discussion forum for local school issues. “Drawing school boundaries isn’t just like drawing voting boundaries,” says Steele, whose lives not far from Roosevelt but whose children attend Deal and a charter school. “If they told me to vote somewhere else, I would. If they told us, ‘Go to Roosevelt,’ we just wouldn’t go.”

The abundance of options for D.C. families highlights “the benefit and the cost of choice,” says Cathy Reilly, a Ward 4 resident and executive director of the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals, and Educators, an education advocacy coalition that’s met monthly since 1998. “We’ve adopted a philosophy of, ‘If you don’t like it, leave.’ When I was growing up, it was, ‘If you don’t like it, how can you make it better?’”

She adds, “I have the right to go to Deal and Wilson, and I live less than a mile from Roosevelt.” This system has likely been a boon for neighborhoods like 16th Street Heights, attracting families who wanted to send their kids to those west-of-the-park schools, but a curse for Roosevelt, depriving it of needed students. The area whose residents are entitled to attend Wilson now consumes nearly half the city, and Wilson’s enrollment tops 1,700 students. Roosevelt’s enrollment is barely a quarter of that.[/quote]

In the words of one person from the article, how can we shift from an attitude of "If you don’t like it, leave," back to an attitude of "If you don’t like it, how can you make it better?"?  Or have most people just decided it's DCPS's responsibility to make things better, and we'll just abandon DCPS until after the schools somehow transform without us?[/quote]

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