Even just looking at our (one-block) street, it's insane how fast demographic changes. One year, it's all babies, the next it's all toddlers, then it's all preschoolers etc. If our block doesn't change radically in the next couple of years, it'll be about half a classroom of middleschoolers in a few short years, maybe with a late-arriving preschooler thrown in here and there. The point I'm trying to make it this: The demographic fluctuations that any bit and piece of the city is subject to, within a 9 block square, or even a 16 block square, area are huge. I can totally see a city's point in saying that mobile classrooms are a much better way to deal with such fluctuations. Calling them trailers really doesn't do anyone justice. Deal calls the "cottages". They're not the end of the world! Even better would be to design the feeding patterns in such a way that they automatically adjust to such demographic patterns.
And let's not forget that the market can also get working here. If you don't like an over-crowded school, then cash out and buy yourself a house a few blocks over in the Payne district. Or apply OOB to less crowded schools, or go charter. It's not like there aren't any options!

You will get trailers or be reconfigured to make more classrooms (actually reconfigured first then trailers is typical). I know the lot is small but you would be surprised at how adept DCPS is at getting trailers to fit.

You will become overcrowded OP, with DCPS claiming they didn't see it coming. Trailers baby, trailers. Your best hope of real walls is a new mayor.

And remember that Fenty was criticized for allegedly favoring Ward 3 projects over other parts of the city, even though the facts were otherwise. As a result, the Gray administration, which is cautious to begin with, has taken things very sl-o-o-o-w with fully funding new school projects west of Rock Creek Park.

Lafayette has been pushing to expand and modernize forever. It just never happens.

Good question, OP.

The answer is Gray, Kaya and the city council members won't play ball before 2014. With DCPS closing 13 schools in NE and SE, forget it. When they go, additions might be planned, or even a new school. Lafayette might even be renovated at long last.

Janney's recent renovation barely stemmed the tide; action is too little too late.

ASK TO PUT IN FOR AN ADDITION ASAP (you will need at least a 5-year lead).

Down here in the Brent District, parents of little kids are waking up to the reality that the JKLM schools have, in several cases, had classrooms trailers on their grounds for over a decade. We're expecting our school to become similarly crowded as the years roll by, even if re-districting shrinks our 9-block square district.

Tell us, Upper NW folk, why hasn't DCPS put additions onto your schools if they're bursting at the seams, and have been for years? Why won't DCPS build a new ES in Upper NW rather than think in terms of pushing Lafayette families EotP to the Brightwood Ed. campus (where overall DC-CAS proficiency rates are more than 60 points lower), and whatever else they're considering on the boundary revision front?

Why 500 - 700 kids at all your schools, seemingly without plans or budgets to add permanent classroom space to relatively spacious campuses? Is that right? Are obnoxious politics all to blame or what?

How do hot elementary schools look ahead 3-5 years to head off the use of trailers? We don't have room for more than one or two on Brent's postage-stamp sized playground. But we do have a wing that's just one-story and probably could become two with the right inputs. Maury, also staring into the crowding abyss, does have room and will get a permanent addition in one or two years.

Thanks for the advice.