Anonymous wrote:Feeders are important to schools. Having feeders only come from similar profile neighborhoods is completely not cool. It is segregation--economic and otherwise.
What is one factor that makes Deal and Wilson so successful is that it IS diverse --both racially and by income. The thought that Wilson should be a school serving only ward 3 students is absurd. Especially in a city as diverse as DC is.
And yet with feeder patterns the schools manage to self-segregate at lower levels, even where families have choice. Don't know where you get "similar profile neighborhoods" -- draw a map around any given school and that's its neighborhood. It should just have greater weight than using the arcane feeders to achieve a social goal. The boundaries are skewed to accomodate feeders when it should be the other way around.
Let's flip that argument around. Eastern has diversity in its catchment neighborhood yet 100% AA kids. The successful and competitive Banneker and McKinnley are test in and still essentially segregated with virtually no white kids. It's not ok for one school to be de facto segregated based purely on neighborhood demographics but not ok for others? By your logic of creating diversity, shouldn't Ward 3 kids get bussed to other Wards too?
Regardless, some of the Ward 4 Wilson feeders are going to be changed whether some people like it or not. It didn't expand enough and it's bursting at the seams. Maybe Wards 3 & 4 will get another good HS option. Some of us would settle for one.