Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 15:20     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
I disagree. The problem has been attracting academically ambitious families of all races to cap hill middle schools, mostly because it is hard to mass enough of them together to give the sense that the school wouldn't be all about remediation.

Given that dcps is ok with magnet, specialized and test in programs at elementary and high school, but won't hear of them at middle school, the idea was to create a new pod of well pre pared ( I.e. on garde level students ) to ADD to an already existing middle school.

There was no way this talked about displacing students. It talked about ADDING students of all backgrounds who will/would/did leave the dcps system for charter and private and suburban schools.

Your knee jerk horror is unwarranted and unhelpful.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 15:09     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:
Brent parents have come to the conclusion that this solution will create the necessary confidence to retain current students, will not disrupt current feeder patterns and is the most viable way to create a successful program quickly within the DCPS system. Parents have clearly expressed their ideas for what constitutes a successful middle school program including:

• A program operating from a position of strength: a student body made up of a minimum of 75% of students already performing on grade level and ready to soar higher.
• IB Middle Years Program (perhaps paired with an IB Primary Years program at Brent).
• Continuation of our current school community and climate: A high degree of control over the administration and operation of the program.
• "Whole child" development - academic, social, artistic and physical.
• Academic rigor, including summer bridge programs and accelerated learning opportunities to meet the needs of struggling and advanced students.
• A vibrant school life without the need for excessive control measures by staff.
• A strong partnership with the Smithsonian and other institutions incorporating aspects of a School Without Walls concept to capitalize on rich local resources.




Holy sh*t, lady! Do you realize how out of touch that is? Here's a little picture of the citywide population:

The state average for Math was 49% in 2012. The state average for Reading was 41% in 2012.

75% at grade level would exclude a majority of public school students from the school. Gee, I wonder what color all those excluded students will be? This is your "Stage One Pilot" Then in 3-5 years you want to take over another school? You're not creating a test-in magnet, you're suggesting kicking them out of a place where they already are: i.e., Ward 6 schools. That's a political nightmare that could wind you up in front of the Supreme Court (oh wait - it's already been there, 50 years ago, and it lost). "White schools only, no blacks need apply"

Deal gets to do things that you don't because it's working with the students it already has - high SES ones which have always been the majority in Ward 3. You don't get to do that in Ward 6. The poor may leave on their own, but you don't get to kick them out.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 15:09     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:

Good luck with that. Tommy Wells has political ambitions, and they won't be realized by satisfying the whims of upper SES white folks on the Hill. A school such as that is a zero/sum game, and lower SES residents will see it for exactly what it is. Kaya Henderson also has to look at the entire system from a similar perspective, they are allied in this.

Also, it gets old hearing about what won't fly in Upper Caucasia. That part of DC has always been white and upper or at least middle SES. The political dynamics and school histories are COMPLETELY different. Stop comparing apples to submarines.


A school like what? One most of the actual neighborhood residents send their kids to? Horrible. Where's the zero sum game if low-income residents attend, too, as at Brent? Poor families there are complaining bitterly about the well-stocked music and art rooms, the lovely playground, the pullout math groups for advanced and struggling learners alike? SWS is poised to become the next Brent or Maury, and so it should.

Wells' political ambitions will get him nowhere. He is disliked and distrusted by too many of his own constituents, and fellow council members. Being white is the least of his problems as a pol. Kaya has no future beyond Gray, he may not run again and, if he does, he'll go down if he faces a challenger with a pulse.









Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 14:44     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
I wonder how charters would do proximity. Hopefully, with a broader area than the DCPS walking distance.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 14:41     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Capitol Hill has too many elementary school seats. If we don't want to be citywide elementary schools, some Cap Hill schools need to close.

No one said that at the recent school closing meetings.


Fine. Close the crappy ones and keep the rest local schools. Any neighborhood school can choose a specialty approach. DCPS is not in the business of city-wide schools. That is the job of the charters, which have been barred from becoming neighborhood schools. If SWS and Cap Mont. want to be charter schools, so be it. If not, find an IB catchment area.



For now. There is political movement to create proximity preference in their lotteries. The schools, the PCSB, and the council are interested. The councilmembers are tired of having their constituents claim that a new school just moved in around the block, and they can't get in. Every councilmember who has a charter in his/her ward (which includes all but Ward 3) is listening.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 14:37     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote: LT in-bounds families are not willing to stay, we all know that, but more important that that, what could we voice to DCPS? That the current principal "doesn't support us"? Sounds too vague. Maybe the better approach is for all in-bounds LT families to continue to avoid the school and hope that it lands on the closure list.All I know is that I can see Prospect LC from my window, and I won't like having to pass it by each day on my way to LT...


Make it clear to DCPS that we want an IB school for IB families, who are mostly affluent vs. FARMS, a la Maury and Brent.

I note that high-SES have largely avoided L-T since I moved to the Stanton Park neighborhood a decade ago yet the practice hasn't landed it on the closure list, not even close. When the principal was selected in 2005 she represented a big improvement over her predecessor (no kidding! that bad! it used to be that if a white parent turned up to ask about enrolling the principal would say "you know, there are schools for children like yours") and our hopes were raised. A new principal picked with input from this particular PTA is unlikely to change much.

What incentive does Wells have to alter the status quo at L-T? The IB grandmothers who facilitate the address cheating vote and the yuppies almost always land somewhere else by K without complaint. The charter and OOB lottery works 95% of the time. Moving the Montessori from Watkins to the L-T District, and now an expanded SWS, has been to rub salt in our wounds. But then maybe we deserve it for having tolerated DCPS' shenanigans, which wouldn't fly in Upper NW. One great hurdle to clear is the big OOB special needs programs - the kids are bused in, no address cheating needed.


Good luck with that. Tommy Wells has political ambitions, and they won't be realized by satisfying the whims of upper SES white folks on the Hill. A school such as that is a zero/sum game, and lower SES residents will see it for exactly what it is. Kaya Henderson also has to look at the entire system from a similar perspective, they are allied in this.

Also, it gets old hearing about what won't fly in Upper Caucasia. That part of DC has always been white and upper or at least middle SES. The political dynamics and school histories are COMPLETELY different. Stop comparing apples to submarines.


Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 09:43     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:What proof do you have that Ludlow is full of PG students?

Proof is hard to come by, because it's so easy to game the DCPS school registration process. All you need is a friend or relative to put a utilities bill in the your name and you're probably into LT for PreS3 to PreK4 and definitely in from K to 5th, no questions asked. If you've lived in the LT district for years, like I have, you know how it all works. You see your elderly AA neighbors taking care of MD grandchildren in the afternoons, you see the MD plate cars dropping them off at LT in the morning, and picking them up from local homes in the afternoons. How many are in there, you can't say, but you guess around 1/4 of the kids, maybe even 1/3. A lot of them are in a gray area in terms of residence. They camp out at grandma's house a good deal, who's to say where they really "live."

But two things are certain, their parents don't file DC taxes and their parents control the PTA, which influences hiring decisions at the school. So the lousy princpal, beloved of the MD parents, stays, and almost all the teachers remain AA, which does nothing to draw in the gentrifiers. The gentrifiers want SWS, where the head and most teachers speak their language.
If they get proximity preference (within 1500 feet of the new location at F and 9th) and find a way into SWS, they won't touch LT.




Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 09:05     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
The neighborhood is not that diverse -- i.e., I would venture to guess that there are at least as many white children as black under the age of 7. Which proves the point about LT and OOB and the rejection by many neighbors. The principal plays a major role in all of this.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 08:40     Subject: Re:SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
If you just step into LT and look at their classrooms you can see that something is off and that the neighborhood is largely not staying at that school. My child began the year there in a very non-diverse, almost all white PS3 classroom. Much less diverse there (in this and the other PS classrooms at LT) than the school where we are now. PK at LT has the diversity you would expect (maybe 50/50 white/non-white) and by K there is hardly a white child in class. This is not to say (in ANY way) that white children make a school better, but it is very telling about which kids start there and which kids come in later and fill out the elementary classes. Clearly the IB neighborhood is diverse but the stark contrast between the PS-PK and elementary makes it very obvious that the kids who start school there are not staying past PK.
Anonymous
Post 02/01/2013 05:42     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Ludlow Taylors scores are the result of erasing in the regular classrooms and portfolio scores in the special ed classrooms.
Anonymous
Post 01/31/2013 22:53     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
What proof do you have that Ludlow is full of PG students?


In any case I looked at Ludlow Taylor's CAS results and they were pretty good. If it's the result of boundary cheating Maybe DC needs more PG kids to drive their test scores up.
Anonymous
Post 01/31/2013 05:58     Subject: Re:SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Sort of. Only Brent is retaining most high-SES kids to 4th grade and no Hill ES is doing it for 5th. If you ignore the preschool/free daycare population, LT, Payne and Miner can't even field majority IB kindergartens and many of the supposedly IB kids, or OOB with walking distance proximity, are PG County address cheaters with elderly relatives locally. The bona fide Hill middle-class cohort is spread too thin for a succesful neighborhood MS to emerge, even if a good one was attracting most IB families. In the big picture, SWS with a city-wide draw isn't going to help, although the Hill families who lottery in will surely like it, at least in the lower grades. When you consider how many affluent and higly educated families we have around here, paying serious taxes to the city, the school scene remains pathetic.



Anonymous
Post 01/30/2013 17:19     Subject: Re:SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
Anonymous wrote:You would need to close 2 or 3 Hill DCPS elementary schools to get where you want to go - not just LT but Payne and/or Miner!!

Everybody's just dreamin' on this thread. Until the Mayor goes, the Chancellor goes, and Wells goes, the LT District parents have as much chance as feeding into SWS as into Janney. And none of us has any chance of feeding into a stellar middle school program. Plan accordingly because time and demographics won't fix these problems.


underenrolled? you're mistaken -- the schools are enrolled, but some with significant out of bound populations -- notice only only 1 Ward 6 school hit by closures and it's a special needs school. The % of oob students is a worthless stat tossed around freely by skeptics. Some of the OOB are students with proximity fwiw. Look at the IB by GRADE and you'll see the % pretty low for EC and early ES and increases with grade level. The better Hill schools are retaining these students until they jump ship for MS.

There is absolutely no problem with enrolling Hill families -- it's retaining them where DCPS fails
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2013 16:56     Subject: Re:SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
You would need to close 2 or 3 Hill DCPS elementary schools to get where you want to go - not just LT but Payne and/or Miner!!

Everybody's just dreamin' on this thread. Until the Mayor goes, the Chancellor goes, and Wells goes, the LT District parents have as much chance as feeding into SWS as into Janney. And none of us has any chance of feeding into a stellar middle school program. Plan accordingly because time and demographics won't fix these problems.


Anonymous
Post 01/30/2013 16:22     Subject: SWS moving to Prospect LC building?
As I said several pages ago, getting a Ward 6 MS to have a high concentration of Ward 6 students means:

CLOSING A WARD 6 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!

Except for perhaps Brent (& maybe Maury?), the Ward 6 elementary schools are ~25% inbounds.

The other way to get a Ward 6 MS is to:

END THE RIGHT TO ATTEND A MS BASED ON BEING OOB IN THE FEEDER ELEMENTARY

Then, inbounds students from more Ward 6 ES could feed into Stuart Hobson.

As it is now, SH has 6 classrooms of 5th graders feeding into their 6th grade -- 4 Watkins, 1 LT, 1 JO Wilson. All of those classrooms are in schools that are about 25% inbounds students, the % inbounds tends to be higher in the lower grades.