Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sadly, I think you probably are right about the lack of political willpower. DC is in for a pretty rough ride though if the only time our city's leaders are willing to make tough decisions is when they're lame ducks. I don't see this lack of courage as a reason to stop advocating for change. Think of all the other difficult decisions some of our nation's leaders have made. We should encourage those tough leaders - and elect more of them - not let them off the hook by shrugging our shoulders and looking the other way when they're being craven. If Mayor Bowser hears from enough people that she needs to address this issue, I'd like to think she'd do something.

"Craven", "lack of courage", because they don't want to revisit an issue two years after it was resolved in a lengthy citywide process... right. This sounds like sour grapes to me.

No, not sour grapes at all. I'm OK with my kids' schooling situation. Just looking at how my community might fare better.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that DCPS would revisit the entire long process it did a few years ago. Mayor Bowser managed to tweak the process less than two months after she took office, so surely she or another leader could make similar small course-corrections without restarting the whole long process. For example, Mayor Bowser could simply announce that the DME's office has determined that Deal is already 25% over capacity, and that the audited enrollment data suggests that if some change isn't made, then Deal's enrollment threatens to exceed 30% over capacity within a couple years. So to stem the problem, she is going to make an interim tweak to the boundary plan to limit OOB feeder rights for 2017-18 to apply only if Deal is within its max capacity. That's a far cry from a lengthy process, and it gives affected families well over a year to adjust. It also would go a long way to control the crowding problem at Deal.

What community is this that might fare better? IB area for CHEC? MacFarland?

Bowser tweaked it to extend rights to popular schools, not end those rights. The latter isn't going to happen without a process similar to the last time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

One previous PP did. Middle schoolers get shafted in ECs. The elementary kids suck up the resources. Middle schoolers don't get the things they should (electives, clubs, sports, multiple sections of classes).

The ECs do not individually have the critical mass needed for robust middle school programming. Combined as the MS level, they would.

Robust MS programming = choice of foreign language, advanced math tracks for students who are ready for them, extra curriculars with depth of instruction, humanities / social studies, a range of extra curricular sports or clubs, and enough faculty to support them.

Offering more courses requires more teachers than a class size of 30 or 45 (typical 6th grade at an EC) can support. The EC buildings don't have room even if they had enough students.

MS is a different world developmentally and socially from elementary and high school. Having these kids on campuses with 3 and 4 yo's isn't ideal for either group. Finally it's hard to do school-wide events or programming that work for all. It does work for some privates and parochial schools but most public systems are moving in the other direction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

One previous PP did. Middle schoolers get shafted in ECs. The elementary kids suck up the resources. Middle schoolers don't get the things they should (electives, clubs, sports, multiple sections of classes).

The ECs do not individually have the critical mass needed for robust middle school programming. Combined as the MS level, they would.

Not to mention Shepherd is an IB school, EC would not be able to support that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sadly, I think you probably are right about the lack of political willpower. DC is in for a pretty rough ride though if the only time our city's leaders are willing to make tough decisions is when they're lame ducks. I don't see this lack of courage as a reason to stop advocating for change. Think of all the other difficult decisions some of our nation's leaders have made. We should encourage those tough leaders - and elect more of them - not let them off the hook by shrugging our shoulders and looking the other way when they're being craven. If Mayor Bowser hears from enough people that she needs to address this issue, I'd like to think she'd do something.

"Craven", "lack of courage", because they don't want to revisit an issue two years after it was resolved in a lengthy citywide process... right. This sounds like sour grapes to me.

No, not sour grapes at all. I'm OK with my kids' schooling situation. Just looking at how my community might fare better.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that DCPS would revisit the entire long process it did a few years ago. Mayor Bowser managed to tweak the process less than two months after she took office, so surely she or another leader could make similar small course-corrections without restarting the whole long process. For example, Mayor Bowser could simply announce that the DME's office has determined that Deal is already 25% over capacity, and that the audited enrollment data suggests that if some change isn't made, then Deal's enrollment threatens to exceed 30% over capacity within a couple years. So to stem the problem, she is going to make an interim tweak to the boundary plan to limit OOB feeder rights for 2017-18 to apply only if Deal is within its max capacity. That's a far cry from a lengthy process, and it gives affected families well over a year to adjust. It also would go a long way to control the crowding problem at Deal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

One previous PP did. Middle schoolers get shafted in ECs. The elementary kids suck up the resources. Middle schoolers don't get the things they should (electives, clubs, sports, multiple sections of classes).

Why not? Because the people running the schools just don't care about middle schoolers? It seems like that would not be a problem if the middle schoolers are all from the nearby neighborhood of Shepherd Park, because the community has such strong connections to the school [see the SP Gala thread] and will make sure it is accountable.

I guess I can see how having a large middle school might give more options, such as different levels of classes or multiple sports teams. But as some other poster pointed out, there are also benefits to a small neighborhood middle school.

I don't know much about DC's ECs, other than the fact that many are in difficult neighborhoods and have low enrollment. Seems like lots of strong reaction against them, so I'm just trying to understand why. It's especially odd because I've read that lots of people really like the K-8 model in private schools, so not sure why people dislike it in public schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

One previous PP did. Middle schoolers get shafted in ECs. The elementary kids suck up the resources. Middle schoolers don't get the things they should (electives, clubs, sports, multiple sections of classes).

The ECs do not individually have the critical mass needed for robust middle school programming. Combined as the MS level, they would.

There are 12 education campuses in the District and if you took the time to really look at the data you'd see that the outcomes pretty much prove this is not a great model for middle school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:13:03 again. Let me highlight one sentence from what I already quoted.

DCPS shall then identify whether any action on boundaries, co-locations, consolidations, grade configuration changes, or educational interventions are required to address the utilization concerns coming out of Recommendations 35, 36, and 37.

Sure sounds to me like DCPS has the power under this language to make interim adjustments whenever capacity/utilization/participation requires it. No need to wait 10 years.

The question is whether DCPS will hear from enough people to think interim adjustment is necessary, and whether DCPS/DME will have the political willpower and support to make needed changes on an interim basis.

This mayor (and no future mayor) isn't going open this can of worms unless she decides not to run for re-election (or loses in a primary). The only reason it got done last time is because Gray lost the primary.

Sadly, I think you probably are right about the lack of political willpower. DC is in for a pretty rough ride though if the only time our city's leaders are willing to make tough decisions is when they're lame ducks. I don't see this lack of courage as a reason to stop advocating for change. Think of all the other difficult decisions some of our nation's leaders have made. We should encourage those tough leaders - and elect more of them - not let them off the hook by shrugging our shoulders and looking the other way when they're being craven. If Mayor Bowser hears from enough people that she needs to address this issue, I'd like to think she'd do something.

"Craven", "lack of courage", because they don't want to revisit an issue two years after it was resolved in a lengthy citywide process... right. This sounds like sour grapes to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

One previous PP did. Middle schoolers get shafted in ECs. The elementary kids suck up the resources. Middle schoolers don't get the things they should (electives, clubs, sports, multiple sections of classes).

Anonymous wrote:Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Why the hatred for ECs? No one has explained that.

Note the "phase out middle grade programming" in those recommendations. That is closing ECs.

Excerpts from the "Final Recommendations on Student Assignment Policies and DCPS School Boundaries":

Recommendation 17: DCPS shall open a stand-alone Ward 4 south middle school at the MacFarland site and phase out middle grades programming at the geographic feeder schools in order to:
• Improve middle grade academics and programming;
• Relieve current and projected crowding at nearby PK-8th schools;
• Support the expansion of early childhood access in neighborhood schools; and
• Provide a dual-language middle school feeder pathway.

Recommendation 18: DCPS shall identify a site for a Ward 4 North middle school no later than summer 2015 and plan to open a Ward 4 North middle school and phase out middle grades programming at the geographic feeder schools. The siting, planning and design of a new middle
school should occur in concert with the Coolidge modernization process and focus on:
• Improving middle grade academics and programming;
• Relieving current and projected crowding, particularly at Brightwood and La Salle; and
• Supporting the expansion of early childhood access in neighborhood schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe one option for a school like Shepherd Elementary where the neighborhood is not supplying enough elementary students to keep the school occupied (only 34% in-bounds) is to convert it to a PK-8 school. The school infrastructure is already in place. If DCPS sends in some middle school teachers, them Shepherd could use its extra building capacity to truly serve that neighborhood's population of students all the way through high school. Could be implemented very quickly since the school and neighborhood infrastructure is already in place.

I know that's an outside-the-box idea, and people will probably hate it on principle. But what's wrong with it?

Shepherd is a small school that only has capacity of 360 students and is currently at 360 students. Where would these other grades be housed?

Only one-third of Shepherd is currently in-bounds students. With a shift, the in-bounds neighborhood students would fully occupy the school for PK-8, which means fewer OOB students would be needed to fill in the excess space. Making a shift like this takes pressure off Deal, and focuses Shepherd on its strong neighborhood. Why wouldn't Shepherd Park families want their children to have an option to attend middle school in their very own neighborhood? Seems like a huge win for Shepherd Park.

No one wants this. Please see the current ECs that are being dismantled. Save yourself the keystrokes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe one option for a school like Shepherd Elementary where the neighborhood is not supplying enough elementary students to keep the school occupied (only 34% in-bounds) is to convert it to a PK-8 school. The school infrastructure is already in place. If DCPS sends in some middle school teachers, them Shepherd could use its extra building capacity to truly serve that neighborhood's population of students all the way through high school. Could be implemented very quickly since the school and neighborhood infrastructure is already in place.

I know that's an outside-the-box idea, and people will probably hate it on principle. But what's wrong with it?

There are lots of young families moving in who are sending--or planning to send--their kids to Shepherd. The last two years, PK3 has been all IB, and IB kids have been waitlisted each year. They're adding a 2nd PK3 class next year to meet demand. Given this, the above idea probably doesn't make sense.

Except there are also those of us who tried Shepherd for prek3 and prek4 and truly wish we could but no longer see it as a path for our children past that. And yes, I I live in the neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:13:03 again. Let me highlight one sentence from what I already quoted.

DCPS shall then identify whether any action on boundaries, co-locations, consolidations, grade configuration changes, or educational interventions are required to address the utilization concerns coming out of Recommendations 35, 36, and 37.

Sure sounds to me like DCPS has the power under this language to make interim adjustments whenever capacity/utilization/participation requires it. No need to wait 10 years.

The question is whether DCPS will hear from enough people to think interim adjustment is necessary, and whether DCPS/DME will have the political willpower and support to make needed changes on an interim basis.

This mayor (and no future mayor) isn't going open this can of worms unless she decides not to run for re-election (or loses in a primary). The only reason it got done last time is because Gray lost the primary.

Sadly, I think you probably are right about the lack of political willpower. DC is in for a pretty rough ride though if the only time our city's leaders are willing to make tough decisions is when they're lame ducks. I don't see this lack of courage as a reason to stop advocating for change. Think of all the other difficult decisions some of our nation's leaders have made. We should encourage those tough leaders - and elect more of them - not let them off the hook by shrugging our shoulders and looking the other way when they're being craven. If Mayor Bowser hears from enough people that she needs to address this issue, I'd like to think she'd do something.