Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) was faced Monday with one of the most fraught questions any D.C. parent can be asked: Where will you send your young daughter to school?
“I am trying to figure out who she is going to be,” Bowser said. “Right now, I would like her to go to our neighborhood school.”
The topic was broached during a D.C. Public Charter School Board meeting when a board member asked the mayor about the most pressing issues she is weighing as she searches for a school.
Miranda is still more than a year away from school age — that’s 3 years old in Washington — and Bowser indicated their education plans are not definite.
The Bowser family lives in Colonial Village, a Ward 4 neighborhood lined with large colonial-style homes and directly east of Rock Creek Park.
Shepherd is a well-regarded campus with a student body that is 67 percent black, 17 percent white and 9 percent Hispanic. Seven percent of students identify as two or more races.
The campus feeds into Alice Deal Middle School and Woodrow Wilson High School, two sought-after public schools in a wealthy swath of the city.
Children in the District have guaranteed slots in their assigned neighborhood campuses — after preschool. A citywide school-lottery placement system enables families to enroll their children in charter campuses or schools that are not their assigned neighborhood campus. All preschool slots are also secured through the lottery.
City officials are prohibited from receiving special treatment in the school selection process, although that rule has been breached multiple times in recent years.
If Miranda does enroll in Shepherd, Bowser would be the city’s first elected mayor to send her child to an assigned neighborhood school.
“I would rather not spend an hour commuting,” Bowser said. “I want her to have friends in the neighborhood; I want her to be close to home, and if that school is right for her, that is probably where she is going.”
Bowser’s top education appointees, including Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee, do not send their children to their assigned neighborhood schools.
Former mayors Anthony A. Williams, Sharon Pratt and Vincent C. Gray did not have school-age children when they led the city.
Christopher Barry — son of former mayor Marion Barry, who died in 2016 — attended public schools in the 1990s. But the younger Barry, who was raised in Southeast Washington, attended schools in Upper Northwest.
And Adrian Fenty fulfilled a campaign promise by pulling his twin boys out of a private Montessori school and putting them in the public school system he was trying to improve. He enrolled them in a public elementary school in Upper Northwest Washington, which was not their assigned neighborhood campus.
Bowser would be one of just a few elected D.C. officials to send their children to an assigned neighborhood school.
Most of the 13 D.C. Council members do not have school-age children.
Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) sends his young children to their assigned elementary school in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) sends his children to a private school.
Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) declined to say where his older child attends school. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) could not immediately be reached for comment.
Only one of the nine members on the D.C. State Board of Education has a school-age child. Emily Gasoi, who represents Ward 1 on the board, sends her daughter to a language-immersion charter school.
Bowser has faced criticism from advocates of the charter sector and the traditional public school system during her tenure. Backers of the traditional system say she hasn’t done enough to protect neighborhood schools amid increased competition from charters.
Charter advocates have criticized the administration for not being more willing to surrender vacant city property to charter operators.
“Most people don’t make distinctions between D.C. public charter schools and D.C. Public Schools,” Bowser said at the meeting Monday. “They just want their kids in a great school.”
Now, just one question remains: Will Bowser run for PTO president?