The Pride of Capitol Hill?

The Washington Post reported this morning that the Superintendent of Schools intends to close Eastern High School, which was once the Pride of Capitol Hill, and reopen it as the new DC Latin School, which will serve 6^th through 12^th grades. The school will be modeled after the famed Boston Latin School, of which Superintendent Janney is an alum.

Perhaps you have to live on the Hill to understand how exciting this is. Our neighborhood options for public middle school are limited and our neighborhood options for public high school are nonexistent. Our neighborhood elementary school is dismal, with 59 percent of students scoring "below basic" on the Stanford 9 reading test, so I take my third grader to Georgetown every morning to attend an excellent public school in that neighborhood. We have been thrilled with Anthony J. Hyde Elementary School, but I salivate at the thought of shedding this commute. (I live on the Hill in no small part because I have no interest in daily driving.) My little one will start public pre-K at Hyde next year and will continue there until his brother finishes 5^th grade and moves on to middle school. At that point, I hope a few Hill elementary schools will have seen improvement and we can consider transfering #2 son closer to home (I’ve got my eye on Brent), while #1 son will get to middle school on his own steam. Then I will gleefully hang up my car keys. Of course, I had thought that #1 son would probably take a city bus to Hardy Middle School. How cool if he could walk to Eastern, and get a classical education besides!

The larger question, of course, is how this will help the students who currently attend Eastern (or who are on track to enroll). It's great that motivated families with academically successful children will have more options. But what's going to be done to meet the needs of underperforming students?