Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years?

Maybe, if they all go to Wilson.

But some will go to SWW. And others may decide to go to Ellington, Banneker, McKinley or dual language high school at Roosevelt (ok that's probably a long shot).

100 isn't so many.

And lots of kids will go private. We've been DCPS since PS3 and will stay in DCPS through 8th but will likely go private for high school.

It's not easy to "go private" for high school out of Deal. Something like 20 kids TOTAL were accepted to ANY private school from Deal this year.
You don't just walk into private school in 9th grade. Your kid has to be the best of the best and even then it's a lottery. I know a large number
of kids with all A's at Deal who were shut out in 9th grade private admissions.

Just an FYI. You just don't "go private" when you decide to not use Wilson.

But how many kids applied and where did they apply to? Blythe-Templeton on Capitol Hill starts at 9th. Oneness Family Montessori in Bethesda is expanding through high school, and the Nora School is growing. Not to mention Jewish, Catholic, and other schools. Of course not everyone's going to get into Sidwell Friends or whatever. But I'm pretty sure that most kids who can pay full tuition can find *somewhere* to go for high school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years?

Maybe, if they all go to Wilson.

But some will go to SWW. And others may decide to go to Ellington, Banneker, McKinley or dual language high school at Roosevelt (ok that's probably a long shot).

100 isn't so many.

And lots of kids will go private. We've been DCPS since PS3 and will stay in DCPS through 8th but will likely go private for high school.

It's not easy to "go private" for high school out of Deal. Something like 20 kids TOTAL were accepted to ANY private school from Deal this year.
You don't just walk into private school in 9th grade. Your kid has to be the best of the best and even then it's a lottery. I know a large number
of kids with all A's at Deal who were shut out in 9th grade private admissions.

Just an FYI. You just don't "go private" when you decide to not use Wilson.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't speak for Key but with regard to Stoddert, they are busting at the seams and this should not increase students who go to Wilson...at least OOB students. Sure, you can argue that more families will move IB because of expansion. But SToddert needs the addition and for the six "demountables" to be GONE.

Good luck with that. There are almost no SFH for sale that are zoned for Stoddert.

What does this mean? There are tons of condos, apartments, and rowhouses in Glover Park and Burleith, and hundreds of kids. Not everyone chooses to or can afford to live in a large, suburban-style house.

This was posted by someone (me) who’d like to live IB for Stoddert and has been frustrated by the lack of homes for sale.

OK, maybe try to step outside of your own bubble and realize that lots more families could move IB for Stoddert because there are lots of options beyond purchasing a single family home or a row house. Condo buildings are everywhere.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't speak for Key but with regard to Stoddert, they are busting at the seams and this should not increase students who go to Wilson...at least OOB students. Sure, you can argue that more families will move IB because of expansion. But SToddert needs the addition and for the six "demountables" to be GONE.

Good luck with that. There are almost no SFH for sale that are zoned for Stoddert.

What does this mean? There are tons of condos, apartments, and rowhouses in Glover Park and Burleith, and hundreds of kids. Not everyone chooses to or can afford to live in a large, suburban-style house.

This was posted by someone (me) who’d like to live IB for Stoddert and has been frustrated by the lack of homes for sale.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to create another by-right HS WoTP, right?

To me, it's only a matter of time.

Or change the feeder pattern and route some students to another by-right high school.

Or stop letting kids who got into an elementary or middle school OOB continue on through the feeder pattern. If you get a lottery spot at Hearst, you're there through 5th grade and that's the only guarantee you get. Deal figures out how many extra spaces it has and does a lottery for them (DCPS could give a preference for OOB kids at feeder schools though personally I'd rather they didn't). Same with high school.

There are fewer than 1000 IB kids at Wilson now. The school is not out of room by any means. Having some of the OOB kids attending their IB high schools (which should get more funding for things like honors and AP classes even if the classes are tiny at first, extracurriculars, guidance counselors, etc.) would be better for those schools and better for traffic and better for the district as a whole.

The way OOB feeder rights work is destabilizing to public education in the rest of the city.

Depends on your POV. Many people would say that decoupling address from school patterns is one of the factors that keeps people invested in public education in one form or another.

Forcing families into schools they don't like and don't trust led to white flight generations ago and then black flight (more of a DC phenomenon). So far, there is massive under-capacity across the system with very few exceptions. You can entice families to try a school they're on the fence about, but you can't force them. Human nature hasn't changed in a decade.

You misunderstand me. I'm not anti-OOB at all, schools are public property and should be for everybody.

What I'm specifically calling out is the feeder process. If a kid gets a seat at a Deal feeder for Pre-K3 this year, under the current policy he is guaranteed a seat at Deal until 2029 and at Wilson until 2033. If a kid gets a seat at a Deal feeder for 5th grade she is guaranteed a seat at Deal until 2021 and at Wilson until 2025. There is a strong motivation for families to lottery into elementary schools with a better feeder pattern, even if the elementary school itself is no better than their current one. That is destabilizing for the school that is left. There is a strong motivation to lottery into a better feeder pattern for 4th or 5th grade, which is destabilizing for both the new school and the old school. Deal and Wilson have effectively lost the ability to control their enrollment, because more students have the right to attend than the schools can hold, and those rights are locked in until 2033. That is destabilizing. Under the current system families who have poor luck in the lottery are out of luck, and need to either move or leave the public school system.

A more rational system would be you lottery into a school and stay as long as you stay at that school, but each new school has a new lottery at the entry year.

The argument that is often made that it is important to preserve class cohorts from elementary to middle school. Unfortunately, the reality is that Deal is the only middle school in the city where that happens already. I'm not IB fo Deal, I put my kids through my IB elementary, and by the time they got to fifth about 60% of the kids who were there in kindergarten were gone. Of that class, a couple went to the IB middle school, a handful got into Deal by hook or by crook, and the rest scattered, going to charter, parochial, or private, or moving. So yeah, preserving cohorts is good, but it isn't happening in most of the city today, and it doesn't outweigh the destabilizing influence of the current OOB feeder rules.

Anonymous wrote:12:40 - you are too late.

New North is already being built now; it will occupy part of the renovated Coolidge building (Coolidge is now in trailers).

The Takoma, LSB, Brightwood and Whittier will all feed to New North MS, and there isn't actually projected to be space for any other schools to feed into it.

This is not insurmountable. Let New North and Coolidge grow over time--if it gets too full, DCPS can convert one of the ECs to a middle school, give Height a boundary, or take back one of the schools it's leased to charters: Paul, Cap City, and Friendship Online (in the Old Brightwood building adjacent to Brightwood EC) all lease DCPS buildings in-bounds for Coolidge according to
https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Formerly%20Closed%20DCPS%20Facility%20Landscape_as%20of%20SY1617_FINAL_Updated%20July2017_0.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't speak for Key but with regard to Stoddert, they are busting at the seams and this should not increase students who go to Wilson...at least OOB students. Sure, you can argue that more families will move IB because of expansion. But SToddert needs the addition and for the six "demountables" to be GONE.

Good luck with that. There are almost no SFH for sale that are zoned for Stoddert.

What does this mean? There are tons of condos, apartments, and rowhouses in Glover Park and Burleith, and hundreds of kids. Not everyone chooses to or can afford to live in a large, suburban-style house.

12:40 - you are too late.

New North is already being built now; it will occupy part of the renovated Coolidge building (Coolidge is now in trailers).

The Takoma, LSB, Brightwood and Whittier will all feed to New North MS, and there isn't actually projected to be space for any other schools to feed into it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As already noted, Shepherd can feed Coolidge via the New North middle school in the DME' plans; Oyster and Bancroft can feed MacFarland and Roosevelt along with the other bilingual programs. Those three schools had 197 5th graders last year.

If DCPS wants to avoid the visual of kicking out only schools with substantial percentages of non-white students, they could also send Lafayette to Coolidge, which would add another 101 5th graders a year out of Wilson's feeder pattern and be more balanced--two schools to Coolidge and two to Roosevelt.

Adams won't be needed as a middle school if Oyster fed MacFarland. One option is to add another 200ish elementary students (Adams' capacity) to Oyster by putting grades PK-2 at Oyster and 3-5 at Adams. That would allow more kids (and potentially high-scoring kids) to go on to MacFarland and Roosevelt. It could pull a few Ward 3 families who want bilingual education away from Wilson (helping overcrowding), allow for more PK spaces in the Oyster boundary (so all the pissed-off parents of big kids could be matched by happy parents of toddlers, giving DCPS cover for the decision), and counteract the decline in OOB lottery places WoTP. No boundary adjustments would be required.

Lafayette is both ward 3&4 and the largest ES in the city with very vocal parents. The political hurdles to this plan are massive.

Then they're going to have to manage having their kid be one of 2000 students at Wilson. Bancroft and Oyster and Shepherd have vocal parents too. So do some of the neighborhoods zoned out of Wilson in the last boundary change.

They don't have 850 students though.

Before they tear them out of Wilson, they'll have to tear them out of Deal. It makes no sense to maintain OOB feeder rights for some from all over the District into, say, Hearst (just an example - not picking on Hearst) but tell Lafayette that after Deal they need to attend Roosevelt. You could end up with a student from Shaw going through Hearst - Deal - Wilson, and a student IB for Lafayette (in a house less than a mile from Deal/Wilson) going through Deal to Roosevelt?

If this is an attempt to ration the resources, it won't work to play with the HS without changing the MS.

I agree. It should be Shepherd and Lafayette to the New North middle school described in the DME plan, and then on to Coolidge. This requires the New North middle school to be built. That could be a whole new building, or another option would be to take one of the existing ECs that feeds into Coolidge (Takoma, LaSalle-Backus, Brightwood, and Whittier) and make it New North middle school, and adjust the boundaries of the remaining 3 schools to accommodate the PK-5 students at all 4 ECs. Oyster (expanded so it serves PK-2 and Adams serves 3-5) and Bancroft should go to MacFarland and then Roosevelt.

At the same time, or even before (since it doesn't require construction), I would like DCPS to end the rule that an OOB spot at elementary qualifies you for a seat at the destination middle and high school. One way to cushion the blow is to start it with the kids who start in PK3 in the 2019-2020 school year, so it won't affect middle school enrollment until 2026. That seems too slow to me though. A better way would be to give a preference in the lottery to kids who are enrolled OOB in a feeder school. Where that preference should go relative to sibling and proximity preference is something DCPS would have to figure out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As already noted, Shepherd can feed Coolidge via the New North middle school in the DME' plans; Oyster and Bancroft can feed MacFarland and Roosevelt along with the other bilingual programs. Those three schools had 197 5th graders last year.

If DCPS wants to avoid the visual of kicking out only schools with substantial percentages of non-white students, they could also send Lafayette to Coolidge, which would add another 101 5th graders a year out of Wilson's feeder pattern and be more balanced--two schools to Coolidge and two to Roosevelt.

Adams won't be needed as a middle school if Oyster fed MacFarland. One option is to add another 200ish elementary students (Adams' capacity) to Oyster by putting grades PK-2 at Oyster and 3-5 at Adams. That would allow more kids (and potentially high-scoring kids) to go on to MacFarland and Roosevelt. It could pull a few Ward 3 families who want bilingual education away from Wilson (helping overcrowding), allow for more PK spaces in the Oyster boundary (so all the pissed-off parents of big kids could be matched by happy parents of toddlers, giving DCPS cover for the decision), and counteract the decline in OOB lottery places WoTP. No boundary adjustments would be required.

Lafayette is both ward 3&4 and the largest ES in the city with very vocal parents. The political hurdles to this plan are massive.

Then they're going to have to manage having their kid be one of 2000 students at Wilson. Bancroft and Oyster and Shepherd have vocal parents too. So do some of the neighborhoods zoned out of Wilson in the last boundary change.

They don't have 850 students though.

Before they tear them out of Wilson, they'll have to tear them out of Deal. It makes no sense to maintain OOB feeder rights for some from all over the District into, say, Hearst (just an example - not picking on Hearst) but tell Lafayette that after Deal they need to attend Roosevelt. You could end up with a student from Shaw going through Hearst - Deal - Wilson, and a student IB for Lafayette (in a house less than a mile from Deal/Wilson) going through Deal to Roosevelt?

If this is an attempt to ration the resources, it won't work to play with the HS without changing the MS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to create another by-right HS WoTP, right?

To me, it's only a matter of time.

Or change the feeder pattern and route some students to another by-right high school.

Or stop letting kids who got into an elementary or middle school OOB continue on through the feeder pattern. If you get a lottery spot at Hearst, you're there through 5th grade and that's the only guarantee you get. Deal figures out how many extra spaces it has and does a lottery for them (DCPS could give a preference for OOB kids at feeder schools though personally I'd rather they didn't). Same with high school.

There are fewer than 1000 IB kids at Wilson now. The school is not out of room by any means. Having some of the OOB kids attending their IB high schools (which should get more funding for things like honors and AP classes even if the classes are tiny at first, extracurriculars, guidance counselors, etc.) would be better for those schools and better for traffic and better for the district as a whole.

The way OOB feeder rights work is destabilizing to public education in the rest of the city.

Depends on your POV. Many people would say that decoupling address from school patterns is one of the factors that keeps people invested in public education in one form or another.

Forcing families into schools they don't like and don't trust led to white flight generations ago and then black flight (more of a DC phenomenon). So far, there is massive under-capacity across the system with very few exceptions. You can entice families to try a school they're on the fence about, but you can't force them. Human nature hasn't changed in a decade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to create another by-right HS WoTP, right?

To me, it's only a matter of time.

Or change the feeder pattern and route some students to another by-right high school.

Or stop letting kids who got into an elementary or middle school OOB continue on through the feeder pattern. If you get a lottery spot at Hearst, you're there through 5th grade and that's the only guarantee you get. Deal figures out how many extra spaces it has and does a lottery for them (DCPS could give a preference for OOB kids at feeder schools though personally I'd rather they didn't). Same with high school.

There are fewer than 1000 IB kids at Wilson now. The school is not out of room by any means. Having some of the OOB kids attending their IB high schools (which should get more funding for things like honors and AP classes even if the classes are tiny at first, extracurriculars, guidance counselors, etc.) would be better for those schools and better for traffic and better for the district as a whole.

Better for traffic is a weak argument at the MS and especially HS level. High schoolers use the metro & buses, their traffic impact is minimal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years?

Maybe, if they all go to Wilson.

But some will go to SWW. And others may decide to go to Ellington, Banneker, McKinley or dual language high school at Roosevelt (ok that's probably a long shot).

100 isn't so many.

And lots of kids will go private. We've been DCPS since PS3 and will stay in DCPS through 8th but will likely go private for high school.

Anonymous wrote:So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years?

Maybe, if they all go to Wilson.

But some will go to SWW. And others may decide to go to Ellington, Banneker, McKinley or dual language high school at Roosevelt (ok that's probably a long shot).

100 isn't so many.

So what you/re saying is Wilson is going to have an extra 100 kids in, say, three years?