Despite Growing Neighborhood, Area Children Still Decreasing
Map showing the number of children per census tract in relation to the Park View School (in gold)
Last week the numbers from the 2010 census were released and we learned that the Park View area grew by about 9.7% to 4,913. Yet, in looking at the data it also shows that the number of children in the community continue to decrease, with the largest concentrations in Park View and Petworth. The map to the right shows that the two census tracts with the most children are tract 32, which has 933 children, and tract 25.02, which has 1,135 children. Still, in both cases these numbers indicate a decrease of 20% and 17% respectively.
As school modernization, and in the case of Park View whether or not a new Bruce-Monroe school should be built or not, are important to the community, I thought it would be a good idea to see where the concentrations of children are and what the trends have been between 1980 and 2010. Below is a chart that shows the trends for each census tract in the last 40 years.
Despite the universal loss in all area tracts in the last census, Park View and tract 25.02 (north of Spring Road and west of Georgia) continue to have populations with hundreds more children than the other tracts examined. Perhaps the most interesting thing I noticed is that tracts 31 and 35 were the only two tracts that have continued to show a loss in population during each of the last four censuses. All other tracts showed an increase in the 2000 census. Another interesting thing of note was that Tracts 31, 34 and 35 all had losses between 30%-35%, whereas the other tracts had far more modest decreases that were between 17%-20% … with the exception of census tract 29 which showed a staggering 44% loss of children in the community.
What will be interesting to see is if the growth in the area’s populations will eventually show a growth in area youth. This will depend largely upon how the area grows and the quality of education available in our public schools.
Below are the numbers and the gain/loss percentages per tract.
| Tract 25.02 | Tract 24 | Tract 23.01 | Tract 29 | Tract 31 | Tract 32 | Tract 34 | Tract 35 | |
| 1980 | 973 | 931 | 876 | 1057 | 703 | 1321 | 644 | 766 |
| 1990 | 1034 (3.3%) | 777 (-16%) |
602 (-31%) |
941 (-9.5%) |
669 (-4.3%) |
1118 (-14%) |
469 (-25%) |
527 (-31%) |
| 2000 | 1372 (34%) | 823 (7.5%) | 658 (12%) | 1047 (12%) | 647 (-3%) |
1209 (7.1%) | 552 (13%) | 490 (-5.9%) |
| 2010 | 1135 (-17%) |
651 (-20%) |
536 (-19%) |
594 (-44%) |
433 (-30%) |
933 (-20%) |
352 (-35%) |
340 (-30%) |
Tags: children, Park View, Schools
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Park View, D.C. 
March 28, 2011 at 1:18 pm
[…] between 2000 and 2010. So black folks were trending out of the neighborhood…" Park View D.C. analyzes the number of children in the neighborhood, which decreased despite an overall gain in […]
March 29, 2011 at 8:17 am
This should be good information to help decide if a new school needs to be built at the former Bruce Monroe sight.