Reply to Capitol Hill Middle School and High School situation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yep.  I'd bet on Eastern over Dunbar for sure.  But have you considered the Coolidge feeder group, OP?  I know it's farther north, but you get more house for your money and I think the middle and high schools up there show promise.

It's important to understand that you can live near Wheatley and go to a charter or a nearby DCPS too.  Maybe not for PK3 but after that it is pretty easy to get into Langdon, Langley, and Burroughs just to name a few.  The thing about Ward 5 is there are a ton of charters and acceptable DCPS elementaries too, so something is sure to work out. I think Brookland Middle is on the upswing as well.[/quote]

Langdon, Langley, and Burroughs are not particularly close to the IB Wheatley territory (which I think is just Trinidad/Ivy City?). You'd probably be better off aiming for JO Wilson, and maybe hoping to get lucky with a spot at Ludlow-Taylor, CHML, or one fo the Two Rivers Campuses. All of those are much more convenient to Trinidad than any of the other Ward 5 DCPS schools. It's actually a shame Wheatley is a K-8, because with the development in that neighborhood, I think a PK-5 campus there could probably do very well with some time and attention, and then feed to Eliot Hine, Eastern. But yes, it's very hard to turn around a K-8. It makes for a very unwieldy dynamic and who will constantly lose students whose parents look at the 6-8 grades and realize they can't stick around. That impacts your early grades, too. One reason some of the CH elementaries have done a better job retaining students through 5th is that MS is a natural breaking point for kids to leave the feeder if that's what families want, allowing kids to stay with their original cohort at least through elementary.

It's actually weird at this point that Trinidad is zoned for Ward 5. It's cut off from most of the rest of the Ward. I get that Florida Ave makes a natural boundary, but it would make a lot more sense for Trindidad to be zoned for Eastern than Dunbar. Eastern is a 20 minute walk, Dunbar is a 40-60 minute walk or a bus ride/drive through some of the worst traffic in the city. I can't imagine making that commute daily.[/quote]

In the 2014 boundary review process there was talk of having Wheatley and Browne feed to McKinley Middle.  Not sure what happened but the idea was dropped.  I think it is hard to run a small PK-8th because there aren't enough kids in each grade to support a lot of choices and activities that tweens tend to want.  But it does provide some sibling convenience and gives elementary parents and the elementary principal lot more control over the middle school grades.  Pros and cons.[/quote]

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