Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

Ward 3 kids are basically interchangeable in terms of competence. Hardy has better scale than Deal's college campus. Main difference, that.

The main difference is that Hardy has a 40 year history of being a racial flashpoint. Everything else pales in comparison.

Eh? Race? Isn't race irrelevant to the query? I was talking about the neighborhood writ large deciding to go to its neighborhood school, thereby improving its academic quality. I don't know what you're talking about.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

Ward 3 kids are basically interchangeable in terms of competence. Hardy has better scale than Deal's college campus. Main difference, that.

The main difference is that Hardy has a 40 year history of being a racial flashpoint. Everything else pales in comparison.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

Um. You will not find such bungalows in Georgetown. 2 million dollar condos? Yes.

Um, get to know the feeder pattern for the um MS you are um talking about. Um. Empty nesters in the 2m condos in Gtown don't send kids to middle school um because um their kids are in Argentina and they're um 30 years old. And um, Key has plenty of moderately sized (but not priced) bungalows in its boundary and um Key feeds to um Hardy. And um so does Eaton now and um there are a LOT of 1920s era homes IB for um Eaton. Um ok?

Anonymous wrote:You build it where the demand is and there's clearly demand for a top notch general middle school WOTP. Anyway, by the time it's built Janney will already be on its fourth renovation !

Only if your customers are paying directly for the good or service. And profit on the sales is your only goal. DC does not want to encourage more long distance school commuting, and it DOES want a a network of neighborhood schools - in particular middle schools to help deal with the upper grade problem at rising EOTP elementary schools.

And since Hardy is, arguably (SH fans chime in here) the second best DCPS MS, and its rising, under a principle chosen to promote its rise as a neighborhood school, it seems unlikely they would spend money they need elsewhere to undermine Hardy as a neighborhood school, and to promote it as a school for EOTP students. That train left the station already. There is no going back.

Anonymous wrote:On the flip side, enrollment at Deal is larger than many colleges, and many kids at middle school age are likely to get lost in those numbers. Deal will always have that problem (at least until the next DME boundary review in 20 years), while Hardy will always have smaller class sizes. So, Hardy is already better than Deal in that respect, and will be for decades.

Deal has small enough class sizes. They don't put the entire grade in one English class, did you know?

Right, so they hire enough teachers to keep the class size at X.. Then they build additional square footage to house all of those appropriately sized English classes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

Ward 3 kids are basically interchangeable in terms of competence. Hardy has better scale than Deal's college campus. Main difference, that.

A highly symbolic fresh start for Hardy woukd be to tear out the parking and expand the field. Then they should hold a celebratory bonfire to kick the season off and burn all the old and discontinued school uniforms!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

Um. You will not find such bungalows in Georgetown. 2 million dollar condos? Yes.

Anonymous wrote:If even half of folks in-boundary for Hardy sent their kids to Hardy, that scholastic year would be better quality than Deal, overnight. With a few exceptions, like sports and (ahem) uniforms, that is. Just send your kids there, all of you, and you'll never lose any sleep over it.

Was this intended to be hyperbole? Is there something about the 5th graders living in a bungalow IB for Key that are better quality than the fifth graders living in an identical Sears kit house bungalow IB for Lafayette?

If so, please tell! We are looking to buy just such a home (1920s era wood Sears kit house bungalow with porch) and are open to location w/in DC. I would love to hear how the kids at Stoddert bring "better quality" to a middle school than the kids at Murch or Janney do.

You build it where the demand is and there's clearly demand for a top notch general middle school WOTP. Anyway, by the time it's built Janney will already be on its fourth renovation !

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people obsessed with the field just kill me. Hardy is a TINY school. It also has a tiny amount of land. Deal is a ginormas (and getting bigger by the year) school. It has more land. NEXT.

So then what do you do if your kid is I B for Hardy and is serious about outdoor sports?

You kindly explain to him the reasons why a tiny school within an historical district cannot have unlimited fields for him to play baseball. He will understand. If he does not, well , that's not an Hardy's failure.

And you also explain to him that even though Hardy does not have a full-size field on site, it still is able to field athletic teams that travel (in some cases only a few blocks) to practice and play, and that he will be none the worse for the experience.

Your kids will be "none the worse for the experience" is not a very appealing slogan to sell a school to skeptical parents in wards 2 and 3!

And "we should build a brand new MS in W3 because some W3 parents think Hardy is not perfect, and because some OOB parents want to keep their OOB access to it" is probably not very appealing to a DC council that has to fund 3 new middle schools EOTP and a test in middle school EOTR.

Anonymous wrote:Could someone clarify for me -- does Hardy not have many sports or do they have sports but travel farther to participate? I don't mind the latter -- especially if the school transports them. For example, Wilson has a girls crew team, Wilson Crew, and 8th graders from Deal are invited to participate. Are 8th graders from Hardy invited to participate as well? Does anyone have experience with this?

The latter: Hardy has many sports, but travels farther to participate. The field teams in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, track, volleyball, and others. Full list here: http://www.hardyms.org/ath.jsp

Just like the kids at Deal, the 8th graders are invited to participate with the Wilson Crew teams.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The people obsessed with the field just kill me. Hardy is a TINY school. It also has a tiny amount of land. Deal is a ginormas (and getting bigger by the year) school. It has more land. NEXT.

So then what do you do if your kid is I B for Hardy and is serious about outdoor sports?

You kindly explain to him the reasons why a tiny school within an historical district cannot have unlimited fields for him to play baseball. He will understand. If he does not, well , that's not an Hardy's failure.

And you also explain to him that even though Hardy does not have a full-size field on site, it still is able to field athletic teams that travel (in some cases only a few blocks) to practice and play, and that he will be none the worse for the experience.

Your kids will be "none the worse for the experience" is not a very appealing slogan to sell a school to skeptical parents in wards 2 and 3!

Could someone clarify for me -- does Hardy not have many sports or do they have sports but travel farther to participate? I don't mind the latter -- especially if the school transports them. For example, Wilson has a girls crew team, Wilson Crew, and 8th graders from Deal are invited to participate. Are 8th graders from Hardy invited to participate as well? Does anyone have experience with this?

Anonymous wrote:On the flip side, enrollment at Deal is larger than many colleges, and many kids at middle school age are likely to get lost in those numbers. Deal will always have that problem (at least until the next DME boundary review in 20 years), while Hardy will always have smaller class sizes. So, Hardy is already better than Deal in that respect, and will be for decades.

Good - so Hardy should market it and compete as such so that people affirmatively choose it - ie, opt in. Hardy's problem is that it doesn't work as a compulsory general middle school where -- because of its size, location and other challenges, it cannot offer the same academic and athletic offerings of a Deal, which is what most of the local school population (IB) seems to want.