Reply to Banneker and Shaw to co-locate at Shaw?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]An all city middle school MAGNET at the old Banneker site is great idea and long overdue. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t support that. The mayor should announce that for good press honestly. [/quote]

+100!! Centrally located and a shoe-in “feeder” to Banneker. That would be my dream and I’m IB for Deal.[/quote]

This was floated as one possible solution to Deal/Wilson over-crowding. Creating schools to draw people out of that pattern

As I heard it discussed the idea/dream of a city-wide DCPS application MS and hopefully many students continue on to Banneker. They believe this would also pull some kids out fo charters.

However that was before Paul Kihn came to town. And he is strongly pushing his analysis that there is too much capacity, especially in DCPS at the MS level. So it may not get off the ground. [/quote]

I've met Paul Kihn face to face a couple of times and he doesn't strike me as a stupid guy. But I guess he is a good soldier who doesn't speak up when his boss proposes to do something stupid.

His own office just released the latest Master Facilities Plan in February, with population projections from the Office of Planning and enrollment projections for every school.

This article -- https://ggwash.org/view/71802/can-dcps-survive-the-coming-enrollment-surge -- looked at the numbers in the report.

Some excerpts:
[quote]
Eight high schools – McKinley, Ron Brown, Washington Metropolitan, Phelps, Dunbar, Eastern, Woodson and Anacostia—will have a combined 3,005 empty seats. The westernmost of those eight is Washington Metropolitan, at Fourth and Bryant streets NW. Meanwhile, the five DCPS high schools west of Fourth Street NW will have enrollment a combined 1,149 students over capacity.
[/quote]
[quote]
Deal Middle School will have 538 more students than seats, while all five middle schools east of the Anacostia River will have at least 315 more seats than students. Hart Middle School, at the very southern tip of Ward 8, will have 1,105 seats for just 366 students.
[/quote]

To the extent there's a capacity problem, it's too many seats in high school, particularly in the eastern part of the city. Building a new 800-seat high school at 7th and Rhode Island doesn't seem like a very thoughtful thing to do.  To the extent there is excess capacity in middle school, it's in Wards 7 and 8. The rest of the city is going to be quite short of middle school seats in a few years.

One explanation for his position is that he doesn't believe in the work of his own office, or has no faith in the school system he oversees to attract students. An alternative explanation is that he's willing to put politics ahead of the well-being of the students he is supposed to represent. Neither explanation is very flattering to him. [/quote]

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