Reply to Overcrowding and lack of space in Ward 3 Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is about Deal and Wilson, and maybe Janney.

Lafayette and Hearst are not crowded. Murch is no longer crowded. They just did a huge boundary adjustment on Murch (huge chunk shifted to Lafayette and moved the south boundary to only 3 blocks away from the school), and they are rebuilding for 100 spaces over current enrollment. Murch will be fine, even with boundary grandfathering. Besides, any adjustments to Murch will not change Deal or Wilson anyway.

If Eaton is crowded, that is their fault for accepting too many OOB students because the school has (or should have) complete control over that, unlike schools that are crowded due to IB enrollment as of right.

Janney's boundary abuts Lafayette, Murch, Hearst, and Mann. The only boundary change that fixes crowding at Janney and Deal in one move is to shift some of Janney to Mann, which is a small school on a a big lot of land. The ripple effect is that it increases the Hardy boundary, which ends up reducing the number of OOB spots available at Hardy, and so possibly the enrollment at Wilson.[/quote]

Mann, Stoddert and Key are all over-crowded. Stodder turns away in-boundary kids with siblings for pre-K, I think they're the only school in DCPS that does that. Key has over 400 in a school built for 300. None of those schools have significant number of OOB. None have obvious boundary adjustments.[/quote]

Key's two fifth grade classes are in trailers.  Around 15% OOB.  There as a proposal in the boundary discussions a couple/few years ago to move a portion of student living beyond Reservoir Rd to Hyde - and the who neighborhood/school freaked out at that.  Either the boundary shift or cutting OOB would reduce the #s but neither likely to happen & DCPS celebrates the increased enrollment as a big victory.

Many on this thread are rehashing some issues from the last boundary kerfuffles without knowing them.  Most of the involved schools pushed heavily back against proposed boundary changes (including some made no sense - like sending families who lived a block from Murch to Hearst etc).  [b]And there's a big commitment to 10-15% OOB for most WOTP schools as part of a larger equity battle, so good luck with that. [/b]       [/quote]

Two things.

There is a strong desire to not have the Ward 3 schools be both the highest achieving and majority white, high SES schools. Over the years, especially when fewer IB families chose DCPS at all, allowing students from OOB has kept the demographics from being so different in Ward 3 than the rest of the city.

It isn't an official commitment or policy you will find written down anywhere, but people on LSATs have said that there has been real pressure on the principals over the years to take a certain number of OOB students. The sheer crush of IB students is making the lowest grades almost exclusively IB now, but not completely.

The 10% notion also echoes David Catania's legislation requiring 10% of seats at high achieving schools be 'set aside' for at risk students from other wards. The Ward 3 schools are very crowded and haven't had to take on these at risk students yet. But as soon as you remove the OOB students now, these at-risk kids will replace them. I personally think it makes a lot of sense.

The Ward 3 elementary schools got a waiver from this because of their crowded psoitions.

So [/quote]

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