• D.C. to Add Middle School, Shake Up Ward 5 Education [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS is mentioned]
• New Middle Schools to Open in Ward 5 [Center City PCS is mentioned]
• Income Inequality Gap in D.C. One of Nation’s Widest
D.C. to Add Middle School, Shake Up Ward 5 Education [Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Matt Connolly
March 7, 2012
D.C. school officials said this week that they plan to open a new middle school in the Brookland neighborhood, seeking to address community concerns about education options in Ward 5.
Brookland Middle School, officials said, will accommodate 500 students in grades six to eight and offer foreign language and arts integration programs, including student showcases and artists in residence. Officials expect to open the Northeast Washington school in 2013 or 2014.
The plan announced Tuesday also envisions adding a middle school to McKinley Technology High School for the 2013-14 school year, with a focus on science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. In addition, the Browne Education Campus, which serves preschool through eighth grade, will launch an International Baccalaureate program in 2013.
The plan means major change for Ward 5 schools. Currently, there are seven elementary-middle hybrid schools known as education campuses. Low enrollment at some of those hybrid schools, parents have complained, means fewer resources for quality middle school programming.
Under the new arrangement, all of the PS-8 schools except Browne will become traditional elementary schools.
To develop the plan, officials held a series of community meetings and surveyed parents.
Shanita Burney, director of family and community engagement for the school system, said “a slim majority” of parents indicated they wanted conventional middle schools. But many expressed interest in the plan’s other two models.
Details were announced at an evening meeting in the McKinley Tech auditorium.
●Brookland Middle, officials said, will be on the site of an old Brookland school campus on Michigan Avenue NE. The timetable for its opening will depend on whether a new campus is built there.
●McKinley Middle will have 380 students. Its STEM program will feature student competitions and interaction with professionals across STEM-related fields.
“We really see this as an unbelievable opportunity to bring STEM alive,” Carey Wright, chief academic officer for the school system, said. “The exposure they’re going to get to these professionals, I think, is rather amazing.”
●Browne will offer 300 middle grade seats and continue to serve students from preschool to fifth grade. The IB curriculum will be introduced in the 2013-14 school year, although it takes a minimum of three years for a school to become IB-certified, officials said.
Chy McGhee, 32, lives and teaches in Ward 5 but sends her daughter to Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School. She said after the meeting that she likes the new programs the middle schools will offer but will keep her daughter in the charter school.
“I don’t think the charter teachers are any better, but the community of learning is better,” she said. “When you walk in, it’s warm.”
Other parents expressed concern about which elementary schools will feed into which middle school. Under the plan, the Langdon and Burroughs schools, which have a STEM focus in elementary grades, will send their students to Brookland Middle, which has an arts and language focus. Some parents said the STEM elementary program should connect with the STEM middle school.
Officials said students who want to attend a Ward 5 middle school out of their neighborhood boundary must enter a lottery system. The school system hopes new schools and programs will attract students from all over the city.
“Aggressive recruitment is going to be necessary,” Burney said. “We want to be that school that has waiting lists. That’s a good problem to have.”
New Middle Schools to Open in Ward 5 [Center City PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
March 7, 2012
D.C. Public Schools has decided to open three new middle schools in Ward 5 next fall, following community outcry over a lack of quality seats for students.
Since 2008, Ward 5's adolescent students have been served by seven "education campuses," models that lump the middle grades into elementary schools or, less frequently, high schools. Former Chancellor Michelle Rhee's plan was to stave off the enrollment drop that DCPS sees when children finish elementary school and their parents look to private school or charter schools for the older grades, and to potentially increase student performance.
But as enrollment and test scores remained below average -- and extracurricular programs were lost -- parents demanded better middle-school options in Ward 5.
The new schools, to open in fall 2013, include a stand-alone middle school in Brookland, likely at the former Brookland Elementary School near the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center; a science, technology, engineering and mathematics middle school in a vacant wing of McKinley Technology High School; and an International Baccalaureate program at Browne Education Campus.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson said she was "excited" by the new portfolio, and "expect[s] Ward 5 families to agree and respond by filling the seats we're creating."
With the exception of Browne, the education campuses will close their middle grades and become elementary schools; parents were told Tuesday night that any closures wouldn't be announced until the fall.
Lindsay DeHartchuck, a second-grade teacher at Wheatley Education Campus, said there is concern students will choose charter schools when Wheatley's middle grades are closed and those students are rezoned for Browne.
"They're a lot closer to where our students live than Browne is, and even with the new options, I could see a lot of students leaving," said DeHartchuck, pointing out that Center City Public Charter School's Trinidad campus is just down the block.
"Hopeful" is how Laura Lindamood, a Woodridge mother of a 2-year-old, described her reaction to the new plan. She is considering DCPS, charters and private schools, but would prefer to stay at her neighborhood school, Burroughs.
"I think it's going to come down to word of mouth," Lindamood said. "If you know your neighbors and their kids are doing well at the school, you're more likely to be interested in the school and see that school as a potential for you."
Income Inequality Gap in D.C. One of Nation’s Widest
The Washington Post
By Carol Morello
March 8, 2012
The District has one of the highest levels of income inequality among the nation’s cities, with the top fifth earning on average 29 times the income of the bottom fifth.
Only Atlanta and Boston showed higher levels of income inequality in 2010, according to an analysis of census data by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.
Driving the gap is the enormous gulf between a sliver of top earners and a mass of households with paltry incomes. According to the analysis, the top 5 percent of households in the District averaged $473,000 a year, far above the $292,000 averaged by their counterparts in other large cities.
The inequality remains large farther down the income scale. The city’s top fifth of all households pulled in $259,000 on average.
In contrast, the bottom fifth had an average income of $9,100, close to the norm for low earners in big cities.
The institute’s report, to be issued Thursday, said the dichotomy was the result of two vastly different economies in the District. One is populated by college graduates thriving in well-paying information and government jobs. The other is for people lacking higher education, scrambling for even low-paying work.
“In some ways, it’s a sign of what a vital, attractive city this is,” said Ed Lazere, executive director of the institute. “But that means the job market is really hard for anyone who doesn’t have advanced skills.”
The gap in income levels in the District is particularly striking in comparison to the region as a whole.
In census figures released last fall, the region has one of the lowest levels of income equality of any metropolitan area in the country. It also has the lowest poverty rate.
But in the District, the extremes have only grown with time.
According to the report, the median wage for District residents with a high school diploma, about $14 an hour, has increased 1 percent over the last 30 years, adjusting for inflation. The median wage of college graduates, about $30 per hour, is up 30 percent during the same time frame.
D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown (I-At Large) noted that when he attended Shepherd Elementary School in the late 1970s, the public school system was educating 125,000 more children than today.
“It means we lost families, most of them middle class or working class families,” he said.
Brown said the reports point to the need for more affordable housing, jobs programs, community college programs and restoring the safety net.
“We will try to figure out responsible revenue enhancements to restore cuts made in the last several years,” said Brown, one of the chief sponsors of tax increases on people earning more than $350,000.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) also pointed to the need for more job training and education.
“We are working to ensure that every District resident gets a hand up rather than a handout,” Gray said in a statement. “Through programs like ‘One City, One Hire,’ targeted on-the-job training, and a renewed focus on reforming and improving our educational system from birth through postsecondary education, we are providing new tools to help move our most disadvantaged residents out of poverty and into the prosperity that the rest of our city enjoys.”
Peter Tatian, who studies the District for the Urban Institute, said the large number of new, young residents in the city could help even out the inequality.
“The question is whether they’re going to become a more permanent part of the city,” Tatian said, “which might change the overall picture so you don’t have so much of the extremes.”