Reply to SWS - as an IB School? L-T prospects?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Making SWS a neighborhood school is not the answer.  There are too many elementary schools on the Hill.  That's the issue.  The reason you see such large numbers of OOB is because (as in the case of L-T) the school has space for them.  With fewer schools, the nucleus of IB families would grow and sustain itself.  As of now the IB nucleus at a school like L-T just can't get up to the tipping point.[/quote]

To play devil's advocate - Why not make L-T a city-wide school? It basically is already since it has so many OOB students.  Although given the discussion earlier, it seems like any city-wide school option without proximity preference might be a violation of the law. [/quote]

How would DCPS gain by making LT city-wide?  All schools that aren't full with IB students already are effectively city-wide anyway, [b]without DCPS having to create any new categories, regulations[/b], etc.  There's absolutely no benefit to this proposal.[/quote]

I agree.  That's why I said I was playing devil's advocate.  There is no reason to make any school city-wide because the seats at underenrolled schools are filled city-wide through the OOB process anyway.   This is true for seats at L-T and it is true for seats at SWS.  Why be against proximity preference at SWS when we have a system for filling seats at schools already that can be applied equally to all schools? Why is it a better outcome to have students from other neighborhoods filling seats at SWS than at L-T? Why should DCPS create "new categories, regulations, etc" to fill seats at SWS, to use your language? [/quote]

Because in the case of SWS, allowing OOB with proximity would effectively make it a Hill, ergo it would not be city-wide.  DCPS stands to gain by offering another city-wide school.  Meanwhile, as long as the Hill can't support (fill with IB students) the elementary schools it already has, there is absolutely no justification for giving it another.  The school it is replacing (Prospect) was city-wide, and SWS becomes city-wide.  There is no net loss of seats to the Hill, because Peabody expands to fill SWSs space.

The only "winners" in allowing OOB with proximity at SWS are the immediate neighbors on the Hill.  DCPS as a system loses, the schools SWS will poach from lose, and the rest of the city loses.

Leave LT as it is, make SWS city-wide - this is the winning scenario for DCPS & the rest of the city.  Meanwhile, LT (and everyone else surrounding SWS) lose nothing.  You can't lose what you haven't got.[/quote]

You seem to think that this is about winning and losing.  The law doesn't really care about winning and losing.  The law is concerned about establishing equal treatment of all people under the law so that no group is unduly favored or unduly burdened by a system.  That is how the law defines a win.  I understand why you feel the way that you do and why you feel that creating another school on the Hill would have downsides. You are not wrong about some of the downsides. I am simply pointing out another angle from which to see the problem.  Creating a new and unique enrollment system for this one school (or really these two schools since the city-wide lottery nature of CHM is the same) in such a way that does not comport with the DCPS definition of a "specialty school, program, or academy" creates a legal problem. Giving OOB w/proximity preference is not the only way to solve this problem if that outcome is objectionable to DCPS.  It can return to an interview system at CHM or create an interview system at SWS so that students likely to uniquely benefit from the program are admitted.  This would be akin to the beginning of a magnet school program in DC, something that I think that many of us would very much welcome.  But, a city-wide lottery that doesn't have another selection criteria does not satisfy the criteria that is listed in this part of the law on its own to establish programs such as SWS or CHM as specialty schools. I have to imagine that the lawyers who work at DCPS are well aware of this and are working on this problem right now. It will be interesting to see what information is released when we start getting information about the coming changes.  Until we have concrete information from DCPS about what is to come, we are all just doing speculative, if interesting, mind exercises about the what ifs.   [/quote]

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