Anonymous wrote:Ya - they should have put it straight into van ness, and kept the boundaries of prefernce the same until van ness could have supported the population requirement, ergo making it a neighborhood school.
Alas, that wouldn't have helped LT IB families in any way, and this being the only sound argument for proximity (Reggio works best when community-centered) it seems the best bet is to have the school itself drive the argument.
I agree that the Van Ness plan would have been a good one and I don't really understand why they didn't do this since then a good program could have grown much bigger than it will ever be able to grow at the Prospect location. With a Van Ness IB catchment area, eventually it would have been a real neighborhood school in an emerging neighborhood and when the Cluster parents lost their preference, they would still have had Peabody as a good option. A win-win for two neighborhoods.
But, since DCPS didn't decide to make it a neighborhood school in SE DC, I don't see where the opposition come from to giving preference to the neighbors in its new NE DC location. It is just a regular elementary school, not a magnet school, so there is no real reason to prefer any one kid in DC over any other kid in DC and DCPS runs neighborhood schools. It seems strange that the PP made the argument that the neighbors don't deserve to get seats because they "lucked into" living near the new school site. We all "luck in" to our local schools by that logic. I bought in the Brent district 15 years ago when it was a terrible school and got lucky that it got better in time for my kid to enjoy it. There were parents who helped this happen, but I wasn't one of them until I had a kid at the school and I don't know many people who spent time and energy on a neighborhood school before their kid got in. I did nothing to deserve a good school any more than a person who lives near the new SWS location did to deserve to have the school to relocate near them. But, I do think that they should get preference at a school in their neighborhood just like I do and like all of the rest of the DCPS parents do in this city. I have yet to hear a good rationale for why these people deserve the spots less than others, and that seems like the only reasonable criteria at a non-magnet school. Neighbors should not have to prove that they deserve the seats more than others. We have a system that ranks people by location. If it is good enough for the other DCPS schools, it seems like it should be good enough for this one too.