Tag Archives: Hyde-Addison

January 29, 2013 · 10:00 am

Out of Boundary Lottery Begins for Hyde

Monday was the beginning of the out of boundary lottery process for DC public schools. This is the process by which students who don’t want to attend their designated local school can get a slot at another school.

As discussed here before, for several decades Hyde has been a school mostly filled with students from other neighborhoods. This started to change over the past decade as more Georgetowners decided to send their children to the local school. This has, in turn, reduced the number of slots available to students from other neighborhoods trying to attend Hyde.

One thing parents new to the system might not realize is that even children in the neighborhood have to apply through the lottery for a slot in the pre-Kindergarten program. They are not guaranteed a slot. They do, however, get priority in the lottery. In recent years, some neighborhood children have ended up on the wait list, but GM believes most, if not all, eventually got off the wait list. Continue reading →

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November 15, 2012 · 10:00 am

Should Foggy Bottom Kids Go to Hyde?

 

On Tuesday, DC Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced the planned closure of 19 DC public schools. Thankfully (but not surprisingly) Hyde-Addison was not on the list. But a school just a stone’s throw from Georgetown was included: Francis-Stevens.

Francis-Stevens is a school that was formed into its current state only a few years ago. In 2008, DC closed the historic Stevens School at 21st and K St. The elementary school program it offered was shifted to the Francis Middle School at 24th and N. Since then, the combined Francis-Stevens has offered Pre-School through grade 8. After it is closed, the School Without Walls High School will get even more walls by using Francis -Stevens as a satellite campus.

But what happens to the kids at Francis-Stevens? Under the current plan, the middle-school aged kids would be moved to Hardy. The elementary-school aged kids would go to Marie Reed in Adams-Morgan.

On one level it makes sense to shift the elementary age kids to Marie Reed. It’s got a lot of capacity, and the majority of kids attending Francis-Stevens are out-of-boundary, so Marie Reed might even be closer to their home.

But what about that quarter of kids who are actually from Foggy Bottom? Should they have to option to choose a more local option than Adams Morgan? GM thinks they should. And that option should be Hyde-Addison here in Georgetown. Continue reading →

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May 30, 2012 · 10:00 am

ANC Preview: Hyde Gym Edition

The ANC will meet next Monday for its June session. It will take place at its normal place and time: Visitation at 6:00 pm.

Two potentially interesting items are near the top of the agenda, both relating to schools.

First, the ANC will discuss the plans to add a new addition to Hyde-Addison. Right now, the kids take most of their gym classes on the playground. The kids really enjoy this, but when the weather is too cold or wet to go outside, they only have a hallway in which to play.

Plans have been gestating for a while in the school to add a new building to the complex to finally provide a gym. The most likely plan would call for the new building to be built where the parking lot is now. Parking would be moved underground.

GM has learned that there’s actually money in place for this project and it could be underway relatively soon. Anyone who has seen the beautiful additions to schools like Janney and Stoddert has reason to be hopeful that the Hyde addition would be a wonderful addition to the school and drive up local interest even more.

On the other end of the school spectrum, the ANC will also be giving an update on the GU campus plan. As they announced a while back, the ANC and other parties to the Zoning Hearing are in mediation right now trying to come up with a negotiated settlement. GM doubts the ANC will have any earth-shattering announcement, but you may be able to read the tea leaves.

Here is the rest of the agenda: Continue reading →

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May 10, 2012 · 10:00 am

Hyde Produces Best English Gains in the City

A recent study by the American Institutes of Research found that students at Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison demonstrated the best gains in reading performance versus every other school in the DCPS system.

The study ranked the schools by “median growth percentile”, which quantifies the growth an average student at each school has against the average for the whole system. In other words, how much better or worse do students perform year-over-year versus other students at their grade level. Continue reading →

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February 1, 2012 · 10:00 am

Out Of Boundary Lottery Begins for Hyde-Addison

Monday was the beginning of the out of boundary lottery process for DC public schools. This is the process by which students who don’t want to attend their designated local school can get a slot at another school.

As discussed here before, for several decades Hyde has been a school mostly filled with students from other neighborhoods. This started to change over the past decade as more Georgetowners decided to send their children to the local school. This has, in turn, reduced the number of slots available to students from other neighborhoods trying to attend Hyde.

One thing parents new to the system might not realize is that even children in the neighborhood have to apply through the lottery for a slot in the pre-Kindergarten program. They are not guaranteed a slot. They do, however, get priority in the lottery. And last year there was such a groundswell of interest from neighborhood parents for the pre-K program that all the slots went to neighborhood kids. Some neighborhood kids didn’t even get a slot in the lottery, but all neighborhood kids that wanted a pre-K slot eventually got one off the waitlist. Continue reading →

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August 23, 2011 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

Photo by Ruth Flickr.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

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August 18, 2011 · 10:00 am

What Cheh’s Proposal Would Mean For Georgetown Families

Last week, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh publicly floated a proposal to create a new middle school for Ward 3.  This would dramatically affect Georgetown families, as discussed below.

Citing overcrowding, Cheh wrote in a letter to the Current this week that “the problem at the middle school level seems to be a lack of capacity.” She suggests as a solution the construction of a new school at the Palisades Recreation Center. She also mentioned the possibility of expanding the Mann School. It’s so early at this point, though, that Cheh doesn’t really have a “plan” so to speak and is open to other suggestions for locations.

The good news for Georgetown: the plan would lump them in with the Ward 3 elementary schools that currently feed in Hardy like Hyde-Addison does (Mann, Key, and Stoddert). So if this theoretical new middle school is constructed, Georgetown students would have a right to attend it, even though it would be in another ward (ward boundaries don’t really have much to do with school boundaries). This seems somewhat obvious, but there is always a remote possibility that DCPS would break Hyde off from the other schools and have Hyde students flow up to Francis-Stevens in the West End (which would be a much closer school than a Palisades-based school).

The story behind this story has already been well told by Mike Debonis:

While parents at Lafayette and Janney and Hearst have some comfort in knowing their kids are entitled to a spot at Deal, parents at Mann and Key and Stoddert have less certainty that Hardy is the right place for their kids…That was the subtext of Michelle Rhee’s effort to remake Hardy (which is actually in Ward 2) from an application-only [GM note: Hardy was never application only] arts-focused school attended mostly by out-of-boundary kids to a more traditional neighborhood middle school. At this point, after all the fury, some Ward 3 parents just don’t want to mess with Hardy any more.

Cheh puts a different spin on this dynamic. She states that what Hardy has become to out-of-boundary students is too precious to take away by making it more into a neighborhood-serving school:

[Hardy’s] arts-focused curriculum does not appeal to a sufficient number of Ward 3 parents. If the school’s structure were changed to attract Ward 3 families, then Hardy would no longer have room for many of the out-of-boundary students who thrive there and benefit from the school’s quality education.

In other words: “it looks good on you though“. Continue reading →

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May 25, 2011 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

Oak Hill Cemetery by Ontheborderland.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

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May 12, 2011 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

Canal dandelion by Marichica88 

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

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March 9, 2011 · 10:00 am

DCPS Releases Hyde and Hardy 2010-11 Budgets

UPDATE: GM is an idiot. He wrote this article looking at last year’s budgets. He’s now updated the article with the right numbers.

Late last week, DCPS released proposed budgets for each school, including Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison Elementary and Hardy Middle School.

For Hyde, DCPS proposes to set aside $2,615,100$3,092,942. The budget predicts an enrollment of 260315. If those numbers hold up, that would mean $10,058.07 $9,819 per student. The enrollment numbers, however, don’t seem quite right to GM. For instance, the budget projects a Pre-K enrollment of 40. But as of right now, next year Hyde is only offering one Pre-K class of 20. Additionally, Hyde’s current Kindergarten class is 58, but the budget only calls for a first grade class of 42.

Setting aside that confusion, Hyde’s per student budget compares well to other sought after NW elementary schools. Here’s their per student budget allocations (with last year’s numbers struck out):

  • Janney: $7,798.39$8,408
  • Key: $8,661.48$8,842
  • Stoddert: $9,762.66$9,649
  • Mann: $9,349.57$8,767
  • Murch: $8,936.39$8,985

Part of the reason Hyde has such a high per student budget compared with these other schools is that it’s smaller than all of those schools. Also note that the per pupil budget didn’t not move in a uniform direction from last year across these schools; some went up, some down, and Murch is almost exactly the same.

As for Hardy, DCPS is proposing $4,143,363$4,334,677 for the middle school. This is based upon a projected enrollment of 474516. This also seems like an overestimate. The pre-audited numbers for Hardy this year are 418. (Deal similarly has a disparity of 891945 budgeted with a 866 pre-audited ’10-’11 enrollment). Either way that works out as a $8,741.27$8,401 per student budget for Hardy (Deal’s will be $8,843.11$8,400).

The bigger news this week for Hardy is that Mayor Gray is keeping Kaya Henderson as school’s chancellor. After Jack Evans proposed a bill to bring Patrick Pope back as principal of Hardy, Henderson and Gray made it crystal clear that they were uninterested in Evans’ meddling and reiterated that Pope was not going to return to Hardy. With Gray making Henderson’s appointment permanent, it seems that the administration’s position on Pope is unlikely to change.

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