Taking license here to cite entire letter by Leslie Zupan to a City paper as it is so spot on and pertinent to this discussion.


School Board Must Tackle Redistricting
JANUARY 27, 2014
Published in Letters/Opinions

To the Editor:

Alexandria’s School Board has spent a year dodging decisions about Jefferson-Houston School, including opportunities to pause and evaluate whether the new $44 million building was needed given documented east-side classroom overcapacity and the school’s academic slump since 2008.

But this avoidance must give way in the face of an emerging crisis. Enrollment estimates for the new building in FY2015 are now so low that the Board must embrace the nuclear option – redistricting – or face grave questions about their fiduciary duty to taxpayers. Without decisive School Board action, Council would be justified in cutting the ACPS capital budget to the bone this spring and in the future.

On November 14, ACPS staff told the Board that enrollment in the new building "designed for 740 to 850 PK-8 students" would total only 386 when the doors open in eight months. Then in mid-January the joint ACPS-Planning & Zoning Long Range Educational Facilities Plan work group unveiled new estimates that predict only 336 students in fall 2014 (FY2015) and a mere 414 by fall 2019 (FY2020), when the group also projects that peak enrollment in Alexandria public schools will begin to decelerate.

School Board members want to believe that forcing parents who opted out of Jefferson-Houston under No Child Left Behind in years past to return will be a no-pain way to make up the numbers. But in November ACPS staff released a neighborhood school analysis finding only 99 students living in the Jefferson-Houston zone who attend other Alexandria public schools. Repatriating these kids won’t boost enrollment to full utilization. Rapid build-up in Potomac Yard isn’t swelling Jefferson-Houston’s numbers either, and two sites are already set aside for a future school in the Yard.

Some believe the new Jefferson-Houston building was meant to lure parents into the middle school at Jefferson-Houston, with this vanguard then paving the way for a similar, voluntary socioeconomic transformation of grades 1-5. That isn’t likely to happen. According to ACPS staff estimates, enrollment for grades 6-8 will only increase by 25 students by FY2020.

Academic performance in Jefferson-Houston’s middle school grades in subjects like reading are as unimpressive as those in the struggling lower grades, small class size is not a persuasive sell, and there are more electives and activities at George Washington Middle School. With District A board member William Campbell telling others his own child will be attending GW, few are taking to heart his exhortations to enroll their middle schoolers at Jefferson-Houston.

ACPS now appears to be rethinking building a PK-8 building at Patrick Henry but is clinging to the model at Jefferson-Houston to stabilize the population. That euphemism means ACPS leaders are sticking to PK-8 lest the student population fall to an even more embarrassing low.

On top of all this comes news that in February ACPS will be seeking Planning Commission and Council approval to add a trailer at Douglas MacArthur School to handle overcrowding. Does the School Board seriously believe they can install trailers at schools close by while leaving Jefferson-Houston half-occupied?

There is only one viable alternative: redistricting. A 2007 Virginia Department of Education efficiency audit of ACPS stressed that "each attendance boundary should be analyzed for irregularities and inefficiencies." Steps to correct deficiencies should be outlined. If a school is not 85% occupied by core ACPS student populations – not by adult Zumba classes and bagpipe bands or non-reimbursing programs like Head Start – then the Board must tackle comprehensive redistricting that properly realigns population with unused capacity.

Leslie Zupan

http://www.alexandrianews.org/2014/school-board-must-tackle-redistricting/

Anonymous wrote:Op don't do it. The group of JH parents who committed to improving the school (including former school board parents) are or have left JH. The school is a travesty.

*are leaving or have left.

The JH principal is that bad. No desire focus on pushing up the top. It's all about the bottom.

Op don't do it. The group of JH parents who committed to improving the school (including former school board parents) are or have left JH. The school is a travesty.

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that some of the other Alexandria Elementary schools had problems like JH (well...maybe not quite as bad as JH) and that parents banded together in these schools and forced changes. I am specifically thinking about Maury Elementary. That school still has a good chunk of disadvantaged kids, but parents from more affluent backgrounds decided they were all going to send their kids there and that created positive changes. The rising tide lifted all boats.

Given that the JH district now also includes all of those upper income townhomes in Potomac Yards and Potomac Greens, not to mention the ongoing gentrification in North Old Town, do you think something like at Maury will happen for JH?

The new school building is only a building, but it sure is nice...

More parents started sending their kids to Maury which reduced the number of transfers the school could accept from other schools thereby reducing the FARMs rate at the school to lower than 40% thus the school improved.
And kudos to them for pushing for a new playground.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It is crazy that our tax dollars go to house people in such a tiny little City such as Alexandria.

They need to end the generational poverty. I know people whine about the illegals but 9 times out of 10 in the City the illegals and legal immigrants are living in cheap, old market rate apartments. They pull full rent for crappy properties but in the long run that will be better for their kids who will learn to rely on themselves and not govt housing.

I looked at some City docs and they had a poll of residents a public housing community meeting. 26% had lived in public housing for 20+ years!!! That's crazy.

20 years is hardly multi generational, and that suggests 3/4 were in public housing for less time than that.

I also do not see the connection between the size of the City (which is over 150,000 and growing) and the presence of public housing. Alexandria has had a community of poor african americans since the end of slavery (and some were ex-slaves who had already lived in Alexandria) The notion that all should be pushed out of the City seems unduly harsh, IMO.

Conversion to vouchers would simply add to the demand for the limited stock of older and cheaper market rate apts, or would push people out of the City. Given that Alexandria has a lower percentage of poor than DC does, and that percentage is going to drop with the redevelopment of the Beauregard area (and with new construction elsewhere in the City) I cannot see pushing more people out as a priority for housing policy.

Yes and Alexandria has nicely kept them in poverty with mind sets like yours. I mean why is it that you need poor low income people living in the City? Because then you feel like you are living in diversity? Do you think it's cute or fun to walk by the housing projects and see the laundry lines in Old Town filled with laundry because the owners don't have washer/dryers and can't afford multiple loads at the laundromat because the HCOL in the area sucks up any income they do have? Poverty doesn't exist so people like you can visit it. That's all that keeping the public housing does. It's just another form of discrimination and segregation. It's not diversity and it's not helping anyone. If the City, instead of spending 20 years propping someone up in public housing, gave them the cash to put as a down payment on a property, that would have made many of those individuals far better off today.

I have heard that some of the other Alexandria Elementary schools had problems like JH (well...maybe not quite as bad as JH) and that parents banded together in these schools and forced changes. I am specifically thinking about Maury Elementary. That school still has a good chunk of disadvantaged kids, but parents from more affluent backgrounds decided they were all going to send their kids there and that created positive changes. The rising tide lifted all boats.

Given that the JH district now also includes all of those upper income townhomes in Potomac Yards and Potomac Greens, not to mention the ongoing gentrification in North Old Town, do you think something like at Maury will happen for JH?

The new school building is only a building, but it sure is nice...

Anonymous wrote:
It is crazy that our tax dollars go to house people in such a tiny little City such as Alexandria.

They need to end the generational poverty. I know people whine about the illegals but 9 times out of 10 in the City the illegals and legal immigrants are living in cheap, old market rate apartments. They pull full rent for crappy properties but in the long run that will be better for their kids who will learn to rely on themselves and not govt housing.

I looked at some City docs and they had a poll of residents a public housing community meeting. 26% had lived in public housing for 20+ years!!! That's crazy.

20 years is hardly multi generational, and that suggests 3/4 were in public housing for less time than that.

I also do not see the connection between the size of the City (which is over 150,000 and growing) and the presence of public housing. Alexandria has had a community of poor african americans since the end of slavery (and some were ex-slaves who had already lived in Alexandria) The notion that all should be pushed out of the City seems unduly harsh, IMO.

Conversion to vouchers would simply add to the demand for the limited stock of older and cheaper market rate apts, or would push people out of the City. Given that Alexandria has a lower percentage of poor than DC does, and that percentage is going to drop with the redevelopment of the Beauregard area (and with new construction elsewhere in the City) I cannot see pushing more people out as a priority for housing policy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

They hired a principal who went to Regent (the Pat Robertson radical-right religious college). Even long-time JH loyalist parents have pulled their kids. JH enrollment at the elementary level is proportionally shrinking, believe it or not. Test scores are going down (even further), not up. These all result from the intentional segregation decision ('99) and the more recent actions of the current school board.

Enrollment is up 25% from last year. Yes, most of that jump was at the middle school level, since this is the first year where they actively sought out rising 6th graders from other elementary schools. But elementary enrollment is not shrinking, in fact it has also grown.

And where did you get your test score information? How do you know that test scores are going down? They have not released any test scores since the new administration took over the school. The test scores did go down quite significantly last year under the previous administration.

In jan or feb at a school board meeting, J-H presented mid year test scores. The tests were conducted internally.

And enrollment may be up but it's still way under enrolled.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No it was wrecked by the city council who created the housing ghettos.

The public housing projects were built back in the 1940's and they reflected a concentration of poverty that occurred as the middle class fled Old Town (and the poor did not) in the period from 1910 or so to 1940. So the blame is really with all the conditions leading to housing segregation in the first half of the 20th century.

There was nothing preventing them from tearing down the public housing. Well until they passed that stupid local law in the 70's. But back then, no one wanted to live in Old Town anyway.

You said "created" and you were wrong. Whether tearing down public housing that had not reached the end of its useful life, at a time when the demand for the land was not that great, would have been good public policy, I will not venture to discuss.

In the last 20 years they have torn down a bunch of public housing, scattered the replacement units around the city, encouraged the building of new market rate units around Old Town. If your desire is to deconcentrate low income people in Old Town, you really do not have a lot to complain about, in terms of City Council actions.

I guess this would not be DCUM if people were not complaining, especially about the presence of the poors.

well yes and no, yes, the moved whole buildings and blocks of it from Old Town but is it really scattered if they are simply putting up rows and rows of the same type of housing elsewhere or whole building. They should have actually scattered it meaning they should have disbanded the entire public housing network and gone to a voucher system.

It is crazy that our tax dollars go to house people in such a tiny little City such as Alexandria.

They need to end the generational poverty. I know people whine about the illegals but 9 times out of 10 in the City the illegals and legal immigrants are living in cheap, old market rate apartments. They pull full rent for crappy properties but in the long run that will be better for their kids who will learn to rely on themselves and not govt housing.

I looked at some City docs and they had a poll of residents a public housing community meeting. 26% had lived in public housing for 20+ years!!! That's crazy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No it was wrecked by the city council who created the housing ghettos.

The public housing projects were built back in the 1940's and they reflected a concentration of poverty that occurred as the middle class fled Old Town (and the poor did not) in the period from 1910 or so to 1940. So the blame is really with all the conditions leading to housing segregation in the first half of the 20th century.

There was nothing preventing them from tearing down the public housing. Well until they passed that stupid local law in the 70's. But back then, no one wanted to live in Old Town anyway.

You said "created" and you were wrong. Whether tearing down public housing that had not reached the end of its useful life, at a time when the demand for the land was not that great, would have been good public policy, I will not venture to discuss.

In the last 20 years they have torn down a bunch of public housing, scattered the replacement units around the city, encouraged the building of new market rate units around Old Town. If your desire is to deconcentrate low income people in Old Town, you really do not have a lot to complain about, in terms of City Council actions.

I guess this would not be DCUM if people were not complaining, especially about the presence of the poors.

Anonymous wrote:

They hired a principal who went to Regent (the Pat Robertson radical-right religious college). Even long-time JH loyalist parents have pulled their kids. JH enrollment at the elementary level is proportionally shrinking, believe it or not. Test scores are going down (even further), not up. These all result from the intentional segregation decision ('99) and the more recent actions of the current school board.

Enrollment is up 25% from last year. Yes, most of that jump was at the middle school level, since this is the first year where they actively sought out rising 6th graders from other elementary schools. But elementary enrollment is not shrinking, in fact it has also grown.

And where did you get your test score information? How do you know that test scores are going down? They have not released any test scores since the new administration took over the school. The test scores did go down quite significantly last year under the previous administration.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is what is needed on June 2015 SOL's for Jefferson Houston:

Attachment A4
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 8% on the Math SOL to 54% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 9% on the English SOL to 56% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 11% on the Science SOL to 47% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 6% on the Social Studies SOL to 57% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2015/01_jan/agenda_items/item_k.pdf

What I can't find in he report is what happens if they don't make the benchmarks. Nothing? So why bother with benchmarks.

Worse the scores took a huge dip last year.

Which is why they changed the principal and made all of the other changes to instruction spelled out in the Superintendent's brief attached to that report.

They hired a principal who went to Regent (the Pat Robertson radical-right religious college). Even long-time JH loyalist parents have pulled their kids. JH enrollment at the elementary level is proportionally shrinking, believe it or not. Test scores are going down (even further), not up. These all result from the intentional segregation decision ('99) and the more recent actions of the current school board.

I'm sorry to read this. A shrinking elementary student body in a massive school. Not good.

How do you think the planned IB program will work out at JH, pp? What's your take on it. And thanks for your comment.

It appears that this year, they have had the largest student body to date in quite a few years. But yes, there mid term score reports weren't very good. I will not be surprised if they don't meet the benchmarks but I guess it doesn't matter because if they don't, nothing happens.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

No it was wrecked by the city council who created the housing ghettos.

The public housing projects were built back in the 1940's and they reflected a concentration of poverty that occurred as the middle class fled Old Town (and the poor did not) in the period from 1910 or so to 1940. So the blame is really with all the conditions leading to housing segregation in the first half of the 20th century.

There was nothing preventing them from tearing down the public housing. Well until they passed that stupid local law in the 70's. But back then, no one wanted to live in Old Town anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is what is needed on June 2015 SOL's for Jefferson Houston:

Attachment A4
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 8% on the Math SOL to 54% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 9% on the English SOL to 56% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 11% on the Science SOL to 47% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 6% on the Social Studies SOL to 57% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2015/01_jan/agenda_items/item_k.pdf

What I can't find in he report is what happens if they don't make the benchmarks. Nothing? So why bother with benchmarks.

Worse the scores took a huge dip last year.

Which is why they changed the principal and made all of the other changes to instruction spelled out in the Superintendent's brief attached to that report.

They hired a principal who went to Regent (the Pat Robertson radical-right religious college). Even long-time JH loyalist parents have pulled their kids. JH enrollment at the elementary level is proportionally shrinking, believe it or not. Test scores are going down (even further), not up. These all result from the intentional segregation decision ('99) and the more recent actions of the current school board.

I'm sorry to read this. A shrinking elementary student body in a massive school. Not good.

How do you think the planned IB program will work out at JH, pp? What's your take on it. And thanks for your comment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is what is needed on June 2015 SOL's for Jefferson Houston:

Attachment A4
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 8% on the Math SOL to 54% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 9% on the English SOL to 56% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in the pass rate of at least 11% on the Science SOL to 47% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.
? By June 2015, Jefferson-Houston will have an increase in pass rate of at least 6% on the Social Studies SOL to 57% or more students scoring proficient on the SOL.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2015/01_jan/agenda_items/item_k.pdf

What I can't find in he report is what happens if they don't make the benchmarks. Nothing? So why bother with benchmarks.

Worse the scores took a huge dip last year.

Which is why they changed the principal and made all of the other changes to instruction spelled out in the Superintendent's brief attached to that report.

They hired a principal who went to Regent (the Pat Robertson radical-right religious college). Even long-time JH loyalist parents have pulled their kids. JH enrollment at the elementary level is proportionally shrinking, believe it or not. Test scores are going down (even further), not up. These all result from the intentional segregation decision ('99) and the more recent actions of the current school board.