Reply to Pre-K 3: Free in DC, but seems like a real lack of schools, especially in NW!

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Reply to "Pre-K 3: Free in DC, but seems like a real lack of schools, especially in NW!"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There's no free PK-3 and limited PK-4 (space allowing - not by right) in Ward 3 because the funding to start PK in DC (law passed in 2008) was funded in part with federal funding from Head Start targeted to better education for low income children. Ten years ago virtually all schools EOTP were majority low income.

That said, the time may be coming that DC has the income to fund universal PK3. One could also fairly comment that the lack of PK3 in Ward 3 means PK3 spots EOTP are taken by families who will leave later for their in bounds school.  There aren't sufficient seats to meet the demand for PK in all locations, but meanwhile home prices and taxes mean DC's revenue is going up, up, up.
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DC's revenue is down this year, in part due to the shutdown. If you want PK3 in WOTP schools are you going to build additions to them (which costs a lot and takes away from the playing field and your kids will spend years in the swing space at Meyer) or are you going to shrink the boundaries so fewer people have rights to the more crowded schools WOTP?[/quote]

I'm not endorsing any particular plan. The [b]overcrowding indicates schools need to expand or additional schools should be built or both[/b]. There are also[b] not a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand.[/b] The government shutdown this year is but a blip on the 20 year trend of housing, property and income taxes in DC. The population increases combined with redevelopment and infill development of many parts of the city mean there are far more properties and incomes being taxed and at a much higher rate. The trend is still up, up, up over the long term. At some point the city can decide it can afford more schools or expand access to preschool and as a city we can likely afford it. Certainly the renovation and construction of schools all over the city could have never happened in the DC of the 1990s (for example - Roosevelt, Dunbar, Burroughs, MacFarland, DCI, Powell - these are just a few I can think of that combines are probably a $1 billion investment). In the 1990s the city could barely get the garbage picked up and even stopped recycling due to cost...not our world anymore.[/quote]

Nope and nope. The overcrowding indicates that boundaries and feeder patterns should shift so that more kids are assigned to less crowded schools.

And there are a sufficient number of PK spots across the city to meet demand: each year after the lottery there are PK seats that are still available. [/quote]

There needs to be some consideration of location and also quality in this - children aren't equally dispersed across the city. The extra PK seats are almost all in lower performing schools and outside NW DC. [/quote]

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