Reply to Deal is tremendously overcrowded

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Deal is tremendously overcrowded - something is to give"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why do these threads always devolve into who gets a piece of Deal/Wilson?  [b]Where are the threads about improving schools in other wards so these kids (my kids) can have a good neighborhood school?[/b][/quote]

No one (read: UMC white people) willingly wants to be the first-mover to send THEIR kids to the new school. No one wants their kid to be the guinea pig.

We live in the Hyde-Addison catchment and are expecting our first kid. As I see it, there are two options to solve the soon-to-be crisis at Deal/Wilson: (1) create a new by-right high school for Hardy MS or (2) carve out at lease two elementary schools from Deal/Hardy in conjunction with stopping OOB feeder rights.

Personally, I think #1 is more politically feasible. People get angry and organized when you take something of value away from their kids (option #2). Plus, Option #1 allows more OOB spots to remain open for savvy and politically influential folks who live in Hillcrest and NE DC; Bowser won't abandon this constituency.[/quote]

You are right of course.

There needs to be a bridge between the elementary schools (which people all over the city generally seem to be happy with) and the under enrolled high schools EOTP which is where I somewhat disagree because it really is crazy to try to build a new high school when there are literally half a dozen DC High Schools that are grossly under enrolled, most of which have had $100 million plus modernizations.

The city needs an excellent new middle school to do this and the logical place for this school is in Ward 4.  And there is a person on this thread who keeps screaming that only Shepherd kids would potentially get moved to such a new school but that is outright wrong as there are kids from a lot of other neighborhoods that currently are going to Deal/Wilson who logically would get moved to a school closer to their neighborhood.

BTW the same thing actually happened in Ward 3.  It used to be lots of Ward 3 residents pulled their kids out of DCPS after Elementary school.  Then Deal got turned around starting about 15 years ago and 10 years ago the trend reversed and lots of Ward 3 families kept their kids in DCPS, including through HS to Wilson and this sort of gets glossed over but Wilson is not a perfect high school by any stretch - I think if problems equivalent to the ones Wilson has were the same at Deal lots of Ward 3 families wouldn't enroll but by high school the families are ok with the imperfections.

If the schools are good and people have confidence in them the political problem will be solved and EOTP parents will be thrilled to have shorter commutes.

But the courage for this has to come from politicians - there is too much status quo bias for this to ever come from parents.  And unspoken in this thread is the problem of charters poaching a lot of the kids who would make up the critical mass needed for this new middle school to work and with some charters being for profit they no doubt are expending resources to lobby for the status quo as well which is to their benefit.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics