Reply to Overcrowding and lack of space in Ward 3 Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Shrinking boundaries (i.e., cutting out the 50 kids a year at bancroft and shepherd that attend Deal) is not enough. It will not address over crowding at Eaton, Janney, Mann, Lafayette, and now Hearst. It will barely throw a stitch at Deal and Wilson. There obviously needs to be a new elementary, new middle and new high school WOTP at the very least. New elementary should primarily pull from Janney and Lafayette.[/quote]

Maybe all three steps are necessary ...  First, reduce OOB students who have [b]somehow lotteried into overcrowded schools[/b].  Second, if removing OOB students doesn't eliminate overcrowding, then shrink the boundaries.  Third, if the first two steps don't work, then build new capacity.  Makes sense to approach in that order because removing OOB students can be done within 1 year.  Shrinking boundaries ought, in fairness, to be done with at least 2-3 years notice.  Building new capacity is a very complex and expensive step that could take 7-15 years or more.[/quote]

Somehow lotteried?? -- they played by the rules governing school choice, and the principals at the schools they attend were the ones who decided how many spaces were open. The same way that there was grandfathering for people whose feeder pattern changed, DC should not uproot these families in one year. It's disruptive and not in students' best interest.

There are no quick fixes -- this will be resolved in a few years. In the meantime add trailers if necessary. DCPS class sizes are still far smaller than those in Mont Co. This is not a crisis. [/quote]

Hope I didn't offend you.  By "somehow lotteried" I was just being vague to cover all the different mechanisms by which a student can get access to an OOB school.  For example, you can lottery in at various different grades, or IIRC an older sibling can lottery in and the younger sibling gets preference.  There may be other mechanisms too.

If you want to have a slower transition for OOB students, that's fine by me.  Just require OOB students to transition as soon as shift from one school to the next.  In other words,  if you get OOB status via lottery, then your OOB status does not give you feeder rights to the next school.

I'll agree with you that it's not a crisis on the scale of some other problems, but it's definitely a significant problem.  Many of these schools are extremely overcapacity, and it's getting more crowded.  Kicking the can down the road doesn't help anyone.  Someone in DC government needs to take the potentially unpopular, but necessary, steps to solve this problem.  As one example, Wilson's capacity is 1490 students, but it's enrollment 2016-17 was 1823.  That's 333 students over max capacity, or 22% overcapacity.[/quote]

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