Reply to HARDY MIDDLE SCHOOL: Record numbers from feeder schools for 2014-2015

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Which DCPS MS once served your neighborhood, PP?

Was it shut down due to under-enrollment? What were the enrollment and the enrollment target for the last few years of operation? Did IB families flee for charters and OOB spots at other MSs or where there simply not enough families with middle schoolers? Has gentrification solved the problems that likely led to under-enrollment and closure of your neighborhood school in the first place?

If your IB school reopened this fall and all of the IB middle schoolers enrolled, would you send your DC? Which would be the likely feeder schools? What is the OOB rate at those feeder schools? What would the likely FARMs rate be? What would the DC CAS scores likely be?

Would you still send your DC if, in order to meet a high DCPS enrollment target, 60%, 70% or 80% of the kids were OOB? Which schools would those OOB kids be fleeing?

You talk of building good neighborhood schools across the city as if all that is required is for DCPS to provide a building, a principal and a few teachers. The missing ingredient is a critical mass of neighborhood families willing to send their kids to school with the kids of other neighborhood families. It looks as if the neighborhood families at Hardy are approaching that critical mass, and they deserve the opportunity to be successful.

You'll still have the opportunity to lottery into many other DCPS and charter middle schools. Better yet, you could rally your neighbors, lobby your ANC and council member, and put pressure on DCPS to re-open your neighborhood school. Wouldn't you and your neighbors prefer the certainty and cohesion of a strong neighborhood school over taking your chances in the lottery?[/quote]

Hey, thanks for your interest.  According to this map, low quality in other neighborhoods obviously has an impact on yours:  http://edu.codefordc.org/#!/school/246

The middle school that once served my neighborhood is MacFarland.  It's been combined with Roosevelt High School.  Yes, both were/are under-enrolled.  The reason for under-enrollment is not low number of students in the neighborhood, it's the low quality of the school/s.  Families go to one of several PS3 thru 8 "education campuses" where early education absorbs most of the funds and programming; or they go elsewhere--Deal, Hardy, charters.  You can see the number of middle school kids in my cluster and where they go to MS on this map:http://edu.codefordc.org/#!/neighborhood/18

Options for high school are even more grim, so the families who make education a priority are seeking other options well before grade 9.  Again, that's elsewhere.

And that's the situation all over the city.

You talk of a "critical mass of neighborhood families willing to send their kids to school with the kids of other neighborhood families."  We've got the mass, but what's really critical is a school they're willing to attend.  The projected growth of school aged children in this cluster for the next 20 years is among the highest in the city.  Parents are flocking to the IB elementary schools in droves for PS/PK and K, but the question of what happens after 5th grade dissipates that critical mass.  Every parent I've talked to would be thrilled to have an in-boundary, stand alone middle school option.  They're already going to schools with high numbers of FARMS, ELL and OOB--at charters--so that's not the worry here.  The charters show that the "low SES" argument is a straw man up in flames.

So my argument stands and I'll ask you in reply: if all the OOB families at Hardy were happy enough to stick with their neighborhood schools, would there be enough IB middle schoolers to keep Hardy open?  It's already under capacity and the map I linked to above doesn't show a lot of students coming out of the Georgetown/Burleith/Hillandale cluster.[/quote]

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