- The 2014 FOCUS Gala [FOCUS, DC Prep PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Cesar Chavez PCS, and Friendship PCS]
- Maybe paying for good grades is not so bad [E.L. Haynes PCS and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
- D.C. parents await school lottery results
- Can The Success Of D.C.'s Best Middle Schools Be Replicated? [DC Prep PCS mentioned]
- D.C. mayoral race injects uncertainty into school boundary overhaul
- School boundary review, part 1: Committee grapples with a changed DC, while parents worry
- School boundary review, part 2: Parents at two Northwest DC schools want to keep current boundaries
The 2014 FOCUS Gala [FOCUS, DC Prep PCS, Washington Latin PCS, Cesar Chavez PCS, and Friendship PCS]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 31, 2014
Last Thursday night my wife Michele and I attended the annual Friends of Choice in Urban Schools Gala at the elegant Meridian House International. It is always a thrill for us to return to this setting because Michele’s first job out of college was at this historic home as she assisted running orientation programs about life in this country for foreign visitors to the United States.
After enjoying the company of some of our local charter school movement's finest leaders including Emily Lawson of D.C. Prep, Martha Cutts of Washington Latin, and Irasema Salcido the founder of Cesar Chavez, it was time for a few remarks from the parlor. Leading the night’s program was Mary Procter, a member of the FOCUS Board of Directors, and the woman who helped Donald Hense create the Friendship network of charters as his first chief of staff. She introduced the guests to the history of these alternative schools which was the perfect prelude to Robert Cane, FOCUS’s executive director, addressing the crowd.
Mr. Cane talked about the progress that charters have made since they first opened 18 years ago in the nation’s capital. He then spoke passionately about the struggles they have faced including accusations that they “were part of a conspiracy to gentrify the District,” that they controlled their student bodies by persuading difficult students not to attend, and that they were draining money that belonged to the traditional schools. The battle has included threats to place a moratorium on their number.
But the biggest hurdle these schools have experienced, asserted Mr. Cane, had to do with attempts to restrict their autonomy. These have included efforts to have each charter use the same reading program, “impose uniform truancy and disciplinary policies,” to have each school subscribe to uniform values, and to mandate curriculum around financial and environmental literacy.
Mr. Cane then went on to speak about the endless data that charters are required to supply to government and non-governmental bodies. He informed us that this has caused schools to have to hire compliance officers to satisfy all of the demands for information. He said that his group is now fighting legislation that would allow the government to request any information from any school for any reason. But Mr. Cane warned against this effort by providing a recent quotation from California Governor Jerry Brown when he was speaking about another matter. “There’s a tendency to totalism, total information, and once you have total information you’re making it easier for total control.”
New encroachments to charter school autonomy are coming, according to the FOCUS executive director, from the controlled choice movement which is trying to have the government statistically engineer who gets to go to a particular school. In addition, the recent efforts by the Gray Administration to update school boundaries include the notion of have having fixed feeder arrangements between DCPS and charter schools. I would add that at least one leading candidate for Mayor is already calling for charters to provide a neighborhood admission preference.
The bottom line for Mr. Cane was that all of these attempts at restricting freedom take away from charters efforts to provide a quality education for all children who need one. He concluded by pointing out astutely that the “discontinuity between the charter schools and the school system is the very thing that enables charter schools to be charter schools. The idea that central planning of any kind should be applied to the charter schools is in some ways more frightening than any moratorium on chartering.”
FOCUS, Mr. Cane added, will continue its drive to protect charters school independence. With that comment, he thanked the large audience for their support. It was then off to dancing to the beautiful music of the Glenn Pearson Orchestra.
Maybe paying for good grades is not so bad [E.L. Haynes PCS and KIPP DC PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
March 30, 2014
I have been compiling data on college-level courses and exams at every public high school in the Washington area since 1998. It’s fun, like collecting baseball cards. Sometimes schools make progress. Sometimes they slip. Sometimes I find weird and exciting statistical jumps.
This year, the numbers from Stafford County triggered my curiosity. Three of its schools had big increases in Advanced Placement tests given last May. Those are difficult three-hour exams at the end of tough courses. Many students who would do well in them don’t take them, even though they help prepare for college. But at Colonial Forge High School, the number of AP tests jumped 25 percent. Tests at North Stafford High were up 56 percent. At Stafford High, the increase was 105 percent, from 543 to 1,113 tests. The passing rates declined slightly from the previous year, but the number of tests with passing scores was much higher.
I sought an explanation from Valerie Cottongim, the Stafford school system’s spokeswoman. She said a nonprofit organization called Virginia Advanced Studies Strategies had given those three schools a big grant to strengthen AP. That sounded familiar. After a few moments, I remembered.
Uh-oh.
Virginia Advanced Studies Strategies, funded by the nonprofit National Math and Science Initiative, are the backers of a movement I have been warning against for years. They pay bonus money to students and teachers for good AP exam scores. This is the first time this initiative has reached the Washington area.
The dollars involved are astonishing, at least to me. Every English, math or science AP test at the three Stafford schools with a passing grade from independent College Board readers meant a $100 check for the student and another for the teacher. Checks totaling $90,800 went to students and $145,370 to teachers.
“My daughter got a check for $500,” Cottongim said. One school in Prince William County, Woodbridge High, had a 29 percent jump in AP tests and similar bonuses. How far will this spread?
The initiative has already reached 560 schools in 22 states. This year, three D.C. schools will participate — Wilson High and charter schools E.L. Haynes and KIPP College Prep. The program began with seed money from ExxonMobil but now has many funders, including the federal government.
My Depression-bred parents would never have paid me for good grades. My wife and I felt the same way about our kids’ work. I knew some parents paid such bonuses, but it felt like bribery to me. Education author Alfie Kohn has revealed much research showing how material rewards kill intrinsic motivation. I preferred to have students focus on the thrill of learning and bettering themselves.
But the National Math and Science Initiative is not just luring kids with money. It is spending to train teachers and give students more time to learn, after school, on Saturdays and online. A study of such incentives in D.C. schools showed no significant achievement gains, but that program did not support students and teachers as the initiative does.
Northwestern University economist C. Kirabo Jackson found that in Texas, the bonuses and extra support sparked an increase in AP and IB test takers primarily among black and Hispanic students. The portion of students scoring above 1100 on the SAT or above 24 on the ACT increased 80 percent for black students and 50 percent for Hispanic students.
Stafford County accounted for 8 percent of the increase in all public school AP passing scores in Virginia and 13 percent of the gains by minority students. There is so far no sign that students who have received initiative checks have lost their desire to learn.
So no more finger-waving rants from Grandpa Jay, at least for awhile. If the National Math and Science Initiative wants to offer your children and their teachers money for hard work, I say take it, and see what happens.
D.C. parents await school lottery results
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 30, 2014
Thousands of D.C. parents are anxiously awaiting the results of the city’s school enrollment lottery, which are expected to be posted online Monday and will determine where children are able to enroll next fall.
“I’m hopeful. I did my part,” said Tekia Harrod, a Southeast D.C. mother who is seeking a preschool spot for her three-year-old daughter. “I did as much research as I could.”
More than 17,000 students entered the lottery, which for the first time this year included all traditional schools and most charter schools. In the past, each of the District’s dozens of charter schools conducted its own lottery, and traditional schools held a separate lottery for students seeking preschool and out-of-boundary seats.
This year, parents ranked up to 12 schools in order of preference. D.C. officials used a computer algorithm, patterned on the work of a Nobel Prize-winning economist, to match each child with only one school and to match as many children as possible with their highest-ranked choice.
Families can log onto myschooldc.org on Monday to find out where they have been admitted, and they have until May 1 to submit enrollment paperwork in order to secure their seats. They will also be able to see Monday where they have been waitlisted and how far down the waiting list they are.
Families who don’t get admitted anywhere, or who did not complete an application earlier this year, can apply for the lottery’s second round by May 15. The second round allows schools to fill seats that are still open or add to their waitling lists.
D.C. residents who are in kindergarten or older also have a right to attend their assigned neighborhood school without entering the lottery.
Can The Success Of D.C.'s Best Middle Schools Be Replicated? [DC Prep PCS mentioned]
WAMU
By Kavitha Cardoza
March 27, 2014
D.C.'s mayoral race is in its final days, and polls show Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser is in a dead heat with incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray. Bowser has repeatedly said there is an increased urgency around education reform in D.C. She’s been short on details, but has highlighted the successes of one school in particular: Alice Deal Middle School in Ward 3.
This is Bowser at a WAMU debate last month: "What I want to see is a plan that would replicate the success of Alice Deal Middle School across the District."
A good Deal
So, what is it that makes Deal successful, and can those achievements be copied elsewhere?
"Good morning! Morning girls! We have some kids who are hip height and some who are a foot taller than me," says Deal Middle School Principal James Albright, greeting students as they walk to class.
Albright says a successful middle school needs to be structured, but also allow students the space to explore.
They're shifting from very, very concrete thinkers to the abstraction and independence in high school. And so middle school is a transition," Albright says. "But middle school can be powerful because this a time when kids are interested in asking really challenging questions but they're not jaded enough to be put off by teacher responses."
Deal Middle School is located in a beautiful brick building, in one of the wealthiest parts of D.C. Students in this school follow the rigorous International Baccalaureate curriculum. They learn foreign languages such as Chinese and take art, music and P.E. classes. Eighty-eight percent are proficient in Math, 83 percent in Reading.
In addition, Deal has more than 60 after-school clubs to choose from anime to Minecraft to cooking to board games. Students can participate in Science Olympiad, several musicals and even classes on the stock market and more.
"Field hockey, swim team, basketball, lacrosse… whatever we can come up with, we will support it," Albright says.
These programs have helped Deal become one of the most attractive options for D.C. families. In just five years it has added approximately 500 students and currently houses one-fifth of all middle schoolers in D.C.’s traditional public school system. And students such as Connor Yu and Charley Mestrich say they love it.
"There are a lot of schools where kids don't feel like they're having fun but at Deal it’s a lot of fun," Yu says.
"People are really supportive," Mestrich says. "I have friends who are gay or bi and have come out and people are really supportive."
A model for some, but not all
Principal James Albright is proud of what the school has accomplished but says replicating its success is not that simple.
"Just saying we can take this and plop it down someplace and do the exact same thing is not necessarily accurate," Albright says. "Every kid, every teacher, every community is totally different . So you can’t say we're going to take this school and clone it. By virtue of moving it, you've changed what it is."
DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson agrees.
Do I think that some of those various elements can be replicated? Many yes, some no," Henderson says. "Deal might be the model for some of our families but it’s not the model for all of our families."
Henderson says she doesn't know how much of Deal’s success is due to demographics. And that’s why she wants to focus on building great middle schools instead of simply replicating Deal.
"I don't think every middle school needs to be like Deal," he says. "We're trying to build a portfolio of different options for parents and Deal is one of those options."
Deal is definitely not representative of D.C.’s population. Just about 20 percent of Deal’s student population is low-income. Overall in District schools, it’s more like 75 percent. This matters because research shows low-income students need a lot more help in school. They enter kindergarten knowing fewer words, and are often behind in reading and math. They are also less likely to get help with homework from their parents. These conditions put a lot more pressure on schools to catch them up.
So how do low-income students at Deal do? When you separate their test scores, they don't do as well as the top eight public charter middle schools like D.C. Prep Edgewood Middle School in Northeast D.C. It’s not in a very safe neighborhood. Eighty percent of its students are low-income, receiving free or reduced-cost lunches, but 91 percent are proficient in math and 77 percent in Reading.
DC Prep offers another model
At DC Prep, students excitedly raise their hands to answer questions in Isi Ojeabulu's Fifth Grade math class. Neither the teacher nor students looks up at visitors. It’s part of what they call an “unapologetic” focus on academics.
"We demand they need to be in their seats by 8 a.m. or they are considered tardy. And if you’re tardy we’re in constant communication with their parents," says DC Prep Principal Cassie Pergament. "But, we’ll buy you an alarm clock. We’ll text you every morning, we’ll buy your bus fare if that’s what it takes."
And she says DC Prep is relentless about focusing on just two things — academics and building character.
"They have a very long school day. They have an extended school year. They have two or three hours of homework every night after being in school until five o'clock," she says. "And we're unapologetic about it because we want families to know that that’s our major focus."
Students here don't have recess. Pergament says many years ago DC Prep used to have many activities.
"Shakespeare theatre, baseball, ice skating and golf a lot of great opportunities. In a sense it spread us too thin because it made our focus not on the right things that we believe are the most important things to be in high school and do well," Pergament says.
She says they already ask teachers to be on call to teach until 8 p.m. and many students who come in to DC Prep are significantly below grade level.
"If you're a 6th grade math teacher you're creating different lesson plans. Sometimes 20 a week. We can’t ask teachers to do that and then teach dance or coach. It’s too much," Pergament says.
RuKiyah Mack, 14, say she loves knowing teachers are there for her anytime and that students are celebrated for being smart. Sometimes though, she wishes they could have more extracurriculars.
"It would be more interesting if we have more clubs and activities to choose from," May says.
But she says it’s worth the payoff knowing she'll get into a good high school.
"We do have those moments where we wish we had the days DCPS had off. But in the end its worth it," May says. "We're going to excellent high schools and it’s worth it."
Principal Cassie Pergament says students here get into selective DCPS schools and private schools, including Sidwell Friends and St Albans.
"We can't do everything. The approach we've taken works for our kids," Pergament says.
No one-size-fits-all
Pergament says she wouldn't replicate DC Prep in a different part of the city.
"I would replicate the mission and philosophy and vision but not the approach and execution," she says. "Because we've changed every year because we have different students every year."
Students at both DC Prep and Alice Deal say they love their teachers, and it’s clear both places have a lot to be proud of. But they are very different populations and it’s not at all clear how each school model would work in a different neighborhood, with different children in different communities. So while the sentiment “Alice Deal for everyone” sounds good, many educators say it’s far too simplistic a slogan to meet the needs of the range of children who study in D.C. schools.
D.C. mayoral race injects uncertainty into school boundary overhaul
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
March 28, 2014
As the District begins its first overhaul of school boundaries in four decades, parents have been flocking to community meetings, voicing anxiety about what the changes might mean for their children and their property values. The teeth-gnashing could intensify next week, when officials plan to release the first set of proposals for changing where city students attend school.
Even as the proposals are about to become public, there is no guarantee that the boundary process will yield any change at all. The final say will rest with whichever mayoral candidate wins election in November, meaning it could be Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) or someone else.
Gray is slated to announce new boundaries in September, but they would not take effect until fall 2015, months after the next mayor is inaugurated. And none of Gray’s challengers in Tuesday’s closely contested Democratic primary is willing to commit to any plan — or a timetable — sight unseen.
“We’re going to have to make some decisions around boundaries. Does it have to be by 2015? I don’t think so,” said D.C. Council member Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), Gray’s leading primary challenger.
Gray administration officials say the city must redraw its school boundaries because they have grown increasingly unworkable as traditional schools have closed, charter schools have flourished and demographics have shifted dramatically.
Some schools, such as H.D. Woodson High in Northeast, have tiny boundary zones that, compounded with other issues, make it difficult to draw enough students. Almost all Northwest schools are overcrowded, some to the verge of not being able to accommodate the students who have a right to attend them.
“It simply needs to done,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, who is leading the overhaul, adding that if done right, it could help accelerate school improvement.
Even if Gray prevails Tuesday, he would face a challenge from council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) in the general election. And Catania, describing himself as “very skeptical” of the boundary overhaul, said he would focus on improving schools before revising attendance zones and feeder patterns. Only about one-quarter of the city’s students attend their assigned school.
“I won’t support a plan that moves children from a higher-performing to a lower-performing school,” Catania said. “Out of fairness to the work that has been done, I would be willing to look at the plan. But I think the emphasis should have been on improving programming, not on redrawing boundaries.”
The boundary overhaul is shot through with tensions over race and class, and it has spurred something close to a panic among parents who believe the changes could cut off access to well-regarded schools, particularly Alice Deal Middle and Woodrow Wilson High in Northwest.
Smith has faced many parents at recent community meetings who have threatened to leave the city if they don’t like the outcome of the process. She has acknowledged that it is not going to be popular or easy.
An advisory group has been meeting with Smith for four months and is scheduled to unveil several concrete policy proposals, complete with maps, on April 5, four days after the D.C. primary.
“This has to be the worst time to do this process,” said Faith Hubbard, a Ward 5 activist who serves on the advisory group. She said she hopes the next mayor honors the work that goes into building a final plan.
While the proposals could redraw lines on a map, they also could fundamentally change the policies that determine which schools city students can attend. One policy proposal could, for example, emphasize that students attend their neighborhood schools, while another could focus more on giving families the choice of several schools.
Residents will have a chance to give feedback on those proposals before the committee settles on a preliminary decision in May and again before the panel makes final recommendations to the mayor in July.
Matthew Frumin, a Ward 3 parent who is also on the advisory group, acknowledged that the mayoral race hangs over the group’s work. But no matter who wins, Frumin said, it’s important that the boundary discussion continues.
“At long last, we are poised to have a vigorous citywide debate about the shape of the education infrastructure we seek,” he said. “The alternative is just to drift where the river is taking us whether we want to go there or not.”
Bowser said she’d want to show parents a plan for improving schools before signing off on boundary changes. She also has endorsed requiring charter schools to offer a neighborhood enrollment preference. She said while she appreciates choice, she wants to see a policy adopted that will ensure predictability for parents.
“I wouldn’t say stop it now, because it’s already so far along,” Bowser said of the boundary process. “But I’m going to look at the recommendations with a fresh set of eyes.”
Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), a mayoral candidate who has polled a distant third behind Bowser and Gray , said he would consider whatever Gray recommends. But he wants to see a policy that ensures quality neighborhood elementary schools, and he wants more predictable routes to good middle schools, including policies that allow traditional elementaries to feed into charter middle schools.
Among other mayoral candidates, council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) declined requests for an interview, and council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large) said that while he would respect the work of the boundary advisory committee, he would like to see the city pay more attention to improving chronically low-performing schools.
Restaurateur Andy Shallal was more blunt: “I would put the whole boundary thing on hold. We need to not focus on boundaries but on fixing schools.”
Some parents have pushed for such a delay, while others say that the issue needs attention now.
Josh Louria would like to see the boundary discussion continue, even though he said it has spurred great anxiety in his Mount Pleasant neighborhood — one of a few areas east of Rock Creek Park whose students are sent to Deal and Wilson.
“I hope that it works out for us, but it’s more important that it works out for the city,” Louria said, adding that it is unfortunate that the discussion is playing out against the backdrop of a mayoral contest.
“The timing of this is absolutely horrid,” he said. “It would be a shame to chuck it and start from scratch.”
School boundary review, part 1: Committee grapples with a changed DC, while parents worry
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
March 27, 2014
The committee that has been reviewing DC's school boundaries and feeder patterns will unveil several possible scenarios for a new assignment system on April 5. In the meantime, anxiety abounds in some neighborhoods.
DC's school assignment system hasn't been revised since 1968. A lot has changed since then, and DC officials say it's necessary to adjust school attendance zones to accommodate those changes. But some parents and prospective parents say existing boundaries and feeder patterns should stay in place until schools across the District have improved.
The Deputy Mayor for Education (DME), Abigail Smith, is in charge of the boundary overhaul process. A 23-member advisory committee, composed of parents and community members representing every ward in the District, has been meeting since October. The DME's office has also convened focus groups to get feedback and has held community meetings.
The next phase of the process will begin April 5, when several proposed school assignment scenarios will be presented, and working groups will begin to meet to discuss them. The presentations will be open to the public, and community members can sign up to participate in the working groups.
Three different community meetings will be held in three different sectors of the District: Center City (at Dunbar HS), East End (at Anacostia HS), and Upper NW & NE (at Coolidge HS). While residents are free to attend any of the meetings, and the presentations will be the same, the working groups will focus on schools in the area where the meeting is located.
The committee plans to release its recommendations in July, and the mayor will announce a final plan in September. Changes won't go into effect until the 2015-16 school year.
The case for change
In a presentation to the Chevy Chase ANC on March 10 that was similar to those she has given elsewhere, Smith made a case for revising the assignment process without further delay. Current attendance zones are based on housing and school attendance patterns of the 1970s, she said, resulting in imbalances and inequities.
The lines were drawn when many in Ward 3 weren't sending their kids to neighborhood schools, and as a result the Wilson High School boundary includes 40% of the District's land mass. Smith said that Wilson now has about 500 8th-graders destined to become its entering freshman class. But Roosevelt High School only has around 50, even though 2000 high-school-age kids live within the Roosevelt boundaries.
The current zones and feeder patterns also don't take account of the existence of charter schools and the closures of many DCPS schools. Since 1996, 58 such schools have closed. In other cases, such as the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown, schools have changed from being neighborhood schools to magnet schools.
The result, Smith said, is that some schools are overcrowded while others are half empty. To make matters more complex, 23% of all DCPS students attend schools that aren't the schools they're assigned to, and only 25% do attend their in-boundary school.
Whether or not students attend their in-boundary school also varies greatly from ward to ward. In Ward 3, nearly all students attend their in-boundary school. But in Wards 7 and 8, nearly 80% either go to out-of-bounds DCPS schools or to charters.
The committee is also considering feeder patterns that would cross between DCPS and charter schools, with certain charter schools possibly giving a preference to students coming out of certain DCPS schools or vice versa. But, says Claudia Lujan, a senior policy adviser to the DME, the DC Council would need to change the law before charters could be required to admit particular students.
Different assignment models
The advisory committee has been looking at school assignment policies in 7 different cities. The models vary in the degree of choice allowed. At one end of the spectrum, a district may rigidly assign each family to a certain sequence of schools. At the other, as in San Francisco, there are no attendance zones, and families can express preferences but have no right to attend any particular school.
"The assumption," Smith said, "is that we won't end up at either extreme."
But it's still unclear exactly where we will end up. Smith and others on the committee have said repeatedly that "everything is on the table." While that phrase conveys open-mindedness, it's also so open-ended that it's caused anxiety among parents who don't know what to expect.
Tomorrow, in the next part of this post, we'll look at parents and prospective parents at two elementary schools in Northwest DC who are urging officials to retain the boundaries and feeder patterns we have now, at least until all schools in the District have reached a higher level of quality.
School boundary review, part 2: Parents at two Northwest DC schools want to keep current boundaries
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie Wexler
March 28, 2014
As a committee works to redesign DC's school assignment policies, some parents who are happy with the status quo are urging caution.
In yesterday's post we looked at issues the Advisory Committee on Student Assignment is grappling with as it reviews school boundaries and feeder patterns, which haven't been overhauled since 1968. Today we'll look at two groups affiliated with schools in Northwest DC that like the attendance zones they're in and don't want them to change.
One group is made up of parents and prospective parents at Bancroft Elementary in Mt. Pleasant. The other is affiliated with Lafayette Elementary in Chevy Chase DC. Both have sent letters to the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) and other DC officials expressing their hope that the schools' current boundary and feeder patterns will be maintained. The DME, Abigail Smith, is in charge of the boundary overhaul process.
Both Bancroft and Lafayette currently feed into Deal Middle School and Wilson High School in Ward 3. Bancroft students also have the choice of attending the Columbia Heights Education Campus, but few do so.
The Mt. Pleasant Family Association sent its letter about Bancroft, with 137 signatures, earlier this month. The letter said that many young families move to the area in part because of its "access to excellent schools," and predicted those families would go elsewhere if the feeder pattern changed.
Josh Louria, a spokesperson for the group, said that a majority of its members are prospective Bancroft parents like himself, since the DME's office has said that current students would be exempt from a change in policy.
Lafayette letter has 700 signatures
The Lafayette School Boundary Working Group has about 700 signatures on its letter, which the group originally sent to both Mayor Vincent Gray and DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson in May 2013, when DCPS was in charge of the review process. Leadership of the process was later transferred to the DME's office, and the group has since sent their letter directly to that office twice.
The letter speaks of the "central role" that Deal and Wilson "have long played in our community's history and daily life." The group said it hopes those conducting the review will uphold "the principles of proximity and community that have long guided" enrollment rules in DC.
Claudia Lujan, a senior policy advisor to the DME, said her office and the advisory committee "are considering all the issues raised by these communities, as we are doing with the proposals and petitions we have received from across the city."
Jenny Backus, a spokesperson for the Lafayette group, said it has been meeting for about a year and a half and has a core group of about 35 people, with several hundred attending larger meetings. About half are current parents at the school and half are prospective ones. Community members and alumni of the schools have also signed the letter.
Backus said that parents feel confused about the goals of the boundary review. She and others from the community have participated in focus groups led by the DME's office, and she said the discussions have largely addressed qualitative issues, like what parents value in a school, rather than boundaries per se.
Both Backus and Louria also said the process feels rushed, and the fact that it's happening with a mayoral election looming is another source of concern. And both said that DCPS should improve schools across the District before engaging in the process of redrawing boundaries.
"It seems like it's being proposed as a way to improve schools elsewhere," Backus said.
Diversity and school boundaries
Some argue that one way to improve weaker schools, most of which are also high-poverty, is to increase the number of middle-class families attending them. But Louria said that middle-class parents at Bancroft "need DCPS to meet them halfway." If the District provided more help to high-poverty schools, he said, "folks wouldn't feel that the school's improvement would be all on their backs."
The issue of diversity is one that frequently comes up in boundary review discussions. As more neighborhood parents send their kids to Ward 3 schools, the out-of-boundary students, who are generally less affluent and are more likely to be racial minorities, are being squeezed out.
Keeping Bancroft, which is 73% Hispanic and 71% low-income, within the Deal and Wilson boundaries would at least help ensure some diversity there. Lafayette is geographically closer, but its population is 73% white and only 7% low income.
Some have suggested that a proportion of slots at Deal and Wilson should be reserved for out-of-bounds students. But Louria says Bancroft parents wouldn't want to have to take their chances in a lottery. And Backus says that Lafayette parents value diversity, but that "everyone wants proximity to good schools," including parents in other wards.
"We don't want the city to become divided in this process," Backus said. "We want to come together to make all the schools stronger, but we have questions about whether drawing lines is the way to do that."
Overcrowding at Wilson
One immutable fact is that Wilson, whose boundaries include almost half of DC, is seriously overcrowded. Recently modernized to accommodate 1,550 students, it currently houses almost 1700.
But Louria and Backus say there are other solutions that wouldn't require their schools to be zoned out of Deal and Wilson. One that both mentioned was turning the building that now houses Duke Ellington High School of the Arts in Georgetown back into a neighborhood high school. That would relieve some of the pressure on Wilson.
That proposal has been floated for the last several years. Some say it would make sense to put a magnet school like Ellington in a more central location and closer to Metro.
Louria and Backus seem to feel that idea isn't on the advisory committee's table (although committee members frequently say that indeed everything is). But they may be surprised.
"Some people are anxious about things they might not need to be anxious about," said Matthew Frumin, a member of the committee. "And some people have yet to focus on options that if they did might make them anxious."
He says "the real debate and discussion will begin after April 5th," when the committee will unveil several draft scenarios for student assignment. At that point, Frumin says, people will "have something much more concrete to react to."