UPDATED, Thursday, Dec. 14, 12:21
Amid rumors about John Philip Sousa Middle School’s closure, hundreds of students, teachers, faculty, parents, and alumni converged on the campus last week to attend a school boundary and student assignment meeting that the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) hosted.
That meeting, initially about potential recommendations coming out of an ongoing boundary study, quickly pivoted to a conversation about Sousa. For more than an hour on Dec. 6, community members expressed their thoughts about the Southeast middle school and how its closure, or movement to Winston Education Campus in Southeast, would detrimentally affect students in the surrounding community.
While Dr. Marla Dean, chair of the Ward 7 Education Council, one of 26 advisory committee members, acknowledged the cause for concern about Sousa, she said that a bevy of schools east of the Anacostia River (not just Sousa) face enrollment challenges that jeopardize the future of Ward 7’s public education infrastructure.
With Ward 7 parents sending their children to nearby charter schools or schools west of the Anacostia River early in their child’s school career, neighborhood elementary and middle schools aren’t sustaining enrollment that ensures their viability, Dean noted.
This phenomenon, she said, has even affected Anacostia High School, a Ward 8 school that’s in the feeder pattern for Sousa.
Since February, Dean and other school boundary study committee members have mulled over ideas to boost enrollment at not only Sousa and Anacostia, but Moten Elementary School, Kramer Middle School, Johnson Middle School, and Hart Middle School in Southeast, and Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Northeast.
For the most part, Dean said she rejects a co-location scenario in which schools facing low enrollment share their building with a charter school. However, she expressed support for the inclusion of an academic program, like the Advanced Technical Center, that’s funded and supported by DME or the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
Dean and other Ward 7 and Ward 8 committee members are demanding that schools located east of the Anacostia River, after decades of divestment, receive resources like what their counterparts west of the Anacostia River and west of Rock Creek Park enjoy.
Topping her list, Dean said, is the infusion of a dual-language program inside a middle school.
She also touted the need for a feeder pattern that supports an International Baccalaureate (IB) program by placing the IB program inside Randle Highlands and reopening Winston Education Center as an IB middle school that feeds into Eastern High School’s IB program, currently located in Ward 7.
Such changes, she said, could stop the hemorrhaging of Ward 7 youth from neighborhood schools.
“Parents… start early [in the school lottery] to get multiple chances,” Dean said. “They want to get into feeder patterns that provide access to certain types of programming. A lot of schools [west of Rock Creek Park] would not be overcrowded if we served children living east of the Anacostia River well.”
The Informer unsuccessfully attempted to gather comment from DCPS about the mechanisms put in place to ensure that children from east of the Anacostia River receive equitable access to selective public schools located west of the Anacostia River and west of Rock Creek Park.
Digging Into the Findings of the School Boundary Study
This week, DME is scheduled to conduct two virtual town halls along with another in-person town hall at Anacostia High School. The school boundary advisory committee is scheduled to release its final recommendations in March.
Feedback collected from Sousa and Anacostia, along with other meetings with elementary schools, will inform the advisory committee’s recommendations.
In years past, parents, especially those living east of the Anacostia River, applied to enroll their children in public elementary schools in a feeder pattern that led them to public middle schools and high schools with niche academic programming. These programs are usually located outside of their neighborhood.
During their presentation at Sousa, DME representatives said this trend caused the in-boundary participation rate for Beers Elementary School, Kimball Elementary School, Plummer Elementary School, and Randle Highlands Elementary School to stand at below 30%. They went on to note that parents from the surrounding communities who didn’t enroll their children in the aforementioned schools instead enrolled them in Tyler Elementary School on Capitol Hill or Lawrence E. Boone Elementary School, the former of which has dual-language Spanish immersion and a resident artist program.
If students didn’t attend Tylere or Boone, they went to one of several charter schools in the surrounding area — including Rocketship Public Charter School, a KIPP DC campus, a Friendship campus, Lee Montessori Public Charter School, Cedar Tree Academy Public Charter School and Elsie Whitlow Stokes Public Charter School – East End Campus.
The My School DC Lottery: A Ticket to a Quality Education for Some
This winter, parents have yet another chance to decide their child’s educational trajectory, at least to some degree.
The My School DC Lottery for the 2024-2025 school year opened on Monday, Dec. 11. Families can apply to as many as a dozen public and public charter schools from now up until Feb. 1 for high schoolers, and until March 1 for students going to pre-K-3 to 8th grade.
New students entering pre-K, dual language programs, citywide, out-of-boundary, and selective DCPS schools, or public charter schools require a My School DC Lottery application. Since My School DC’s launch a decade ago, more than 150,000 District students enrolled in local public and public charter schools through the portal.
Recent changes include an equitable access preference that 53 public and public charter schools offer for foster children and unhoused students, high school students who are at least one year older than the expected age for the grade in which they’re enrolling, and students who qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
On Dec. 2 and Dec. 9, more than 8,000 people flocked to EdFest, an annual public school fair at the DC Armory and Eastern High School respectively. Most families attended the Dec. 2 iteration at the DC Armory to learn about pre-K-8 public and public charter school offerings.
With the high school showcase taking place at Eastern High School, a relatively smaller setting, some parents, like Bruce J. Holmes found it cumbersome waiting in line with his son to enter EdFest.
Once inside though, Holmes and his son, an eighth grader at a District public charter school, found EdFest informative. Throughout much of this school year, the father-son duo attended open houses that informed how they would navigate EdFest. They spent hours listening to students representing Banneker High School and School Without Walls in Northwest, and McKinley Technology High School and Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Northeast.
Holmes, a school counselor with experience teaching in District public, public charter and private schools, said McKinley Technology High School piqued his son’s interest.
If Holmes’ son attends and graduates from McKinley, then he would’ve spent his entire K-12 career outside of his Ward 7 neighborhood, an outcome that Holmes said he has made peace with over the last decade.
Holmes, a native Washingtonian, made a similar decision when he decided to make the trek from his Ward 7 neighborhood to School Without Walls in Foggy Bottom during his adolescent years. He did so after his parents, yearning for quality education options, spoke to other parents who told them about the selective high school.
With the My School DC Lottery and EdFest at their disposal, parents don’t have to go through such trouble to find a school that fits their child, Holmes told The Informer. He, however, expressed his concern that, despite OSSE’s best efforts, high-quality schools in portions of Northwest have become even more inaccessible to his son and other children hailing from east of the Anacostia River.
“I don’t like the fact that a random computer is [choosing] where a child goes to school,” Holmes said. “I had to interview in person. There was more of a shot,” he added. “Now it seems like schools in upper Northwest are much more exclusive. The more we have this lottery system, the more it puts my child at a disadvantage as we figure out how to make it to different parts of the city to get a better education.”
In addition to Banneker, School Without Walls, and McKinley Technology High School, DCPS offers application high school programming at Bard Early College High School in Southeast, Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC), Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and Coolidge High School’s early college academy in Northwest, and Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School in Northeast.
These schools require supplemental materials with a My School DC Lottery application. A DCPS spokesperson told The Informer that, out of all of these selective schools, only CHEC offers a preference for a group of students.
Those students, CHEC eighth graders, can enroll in the high school without a lottery application.
The DCPS spokesperson also mentioned that the District’s selective public high schools strive for a student body representing all eight wards by engaging District middle school counselors, hosting virtual and in-person parent information sessions and launching email campaigns.
In regards to the possibility of certain students being marginalized, the spokesperson cited what they described as District leaders’ annual review of selective high schools’ application processes to account for criteria that does that.
A Ward 8 Mother Analyzes Her Reality
The current boundary study is the first that DME conducted since the 2013-2014 school year. That study, done under then-D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray, was the first comprehensive review of D.C. student school assignments in 40 years.
The goals of the 2023-2024 study, as expressed by DME, center on equitable access to high-quality public schools, adequate capacity in DCPS facilities, and clear assignments for students based on feeder patterns and attendance zones.
Brandi Reese, another boundary study advisory committee member, said that DME could better realize these goals by conducting boundary studies more frequently, not just in 10-year intervals.
Reese, a Ward 8 mother of two elementary school students, said she came into her own as a parent advocate during the pandemic. She told The Informer that it was while serving the community that she realized how demanding schedules and lack of knowledge about systems, in part, prevent Ward 8 parents from effectively advocating for more resources.
The frustration about subpar school conditions, Reese said, ultimately compels parents living east of the Anacostia River to send their child across the District for higher quality education, what she described as a seemingly easy solution.
Currently, Reese’s children attend an out-of-boundary elementary school in Ward 8. She said she enrolled her son in a school that can accommodate his autism. Reese’s daughter’s privilege as sibling automatically earned her a spot at the same institution.
Though her children aren’t going to middle school for a few years, Reese said she continues to mull her choices, one of which is private school. She also said she sees her daughter attending a dual-language public middle school.
Even with what she calls an ideal educational situation for her children, Reese admitted that her children — her daughter especially — sit in classrooms with teachers who have to tend to a wide spectrum of students’ needs.
Reese, however, isn’t quick to blame school officials. She told The Informer that oftentimes, principals and other administrators stand alongside parents demanding adequate resources for their underserved schools. She said it can be overwhelming to fight conditions in Ward 8 cemented by decades of divestment.
“Historically, parents east of the Anacostia River have had to settle for less programming or send their child to another neighborhood for good programming,” Reese said.
“At two hours per day for travel, you’re taking 20 hours a week, a full work day, just to get to and from school. Parents do make an effort to improve but a lot of them don’t know how to advocate for themselves. They’ve accepted that they have to work harder to get their child access to quality education.”