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gina a.-- what do you think of Eastern? I'm sure you had good reasons not to send your son there and instead send him to Wilson and I am curious what those reasons are? We live on Captiol hill and our kids curently attend Brent, so we are really hoping eastern will be a great school soon. Do you think there is hope? The building looks fantastic! BUt if people like you are deciding on wilson (such a schlep!) it makes me worry.

Regarding the actual blog, I think for elementary school, the neighborhood needs to be the focus. Don't draw crazy boundries to create diversity. Instead, the city needs to work to create diversity within each neighborhood. I'm less adverse to crazy boundry drawing for older kids as they can take buses and bike, etc. to faraway schools.

But there is no reason that is good enough in this city to make it so that elementary kids are too far away from their school to walk. If that results in a fairly homogeneous population at the school, that is no worse than a "cure" of gerrymandered boundries.

The tough case is stuff like Shepherd feeding Deal. I don't know what the alternative middle school to Deal would be, but maybe DC needs to sit down with Shepherd families and find out what exactly they can do with this alternative middle school to lure them off of Deal, while simultaneously working to improve diversity in the area directly around Deal. It is not something that can happen overnight. People bought in the Shepard area with the expectation that their kids will go to Deal, so the city needs to respect that. OTOH, school boundries are a fluid thing and as long as DC has a valid reason to cut out Shepherd from Deal feeder-- and being the farthest elementary geographically is as fair a factor as any, plus DEal being overcrowded-- I suppose DC should cut Shepherd out of Deal. But do something to make "x" middle school that is closer to Shepherd a really great option-- maybe provide something that could make it even better than Deal.

by christine on Jul 20, 2012 11:00 am • link • report

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