Brent rebuild details to know before you accept that lottery spot
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Anonymous
I have no dog in this fight but early school start times are a contentious issue in other districts. For example, if you just peek over at the MCPS forum, people have been trying to change the early school start times there for decades. (MCPS says they can’t because the district is too big/they have to bus kids great distances; parents rightly point out the research on sleep, health, and attentiveness in school. It’s perennially a huge issue.) The DCPS start time is actually humane and reasonable compared to other school districts! |
Anonymous
This. The DCPS start time is much better supported by research on kids' sleep and academic performance than these places with much earlier starts. We are moving to another district (outside the DMV) in two years to be closer to family, and the start time is 8am across all levels. Which is not insane but I will be sad to give up the DCPS schedule which I think is better for kids and families. |
Anonymous
Come on over to the PG County discussion as well! |
Anonymous
The general tenor of some of the comments on this thread is that making things worse for kids whose parents we think are rich is a plus. |
Anonymous
I have not gotten that vibe. Some of you are very sensitive to the implication though. Amidon is going through the exact same issues with swing space location as Brent, though it has very different demographics. This is just how DCPS is, it's not about punishing wealthy families. You need to stop thinking of it that way because it makes you sound ridiculous. People will be sympathetic to the challenges posed by this swing space and likely support you in trying to get it moved, but not if you act like the ONLY reason it's happening is that DCPS hates Brent for having wealthy white kids. DCPS is like this with all schools, all the time. Nothing about Brent's experience is unique here. |
Anonymous
Where did Hardy move for Swing Space? I thought it was near RFK. |
Anonymous
?? Hardy had not had a renovation in eons! |
Anonymous
Whether there's leverage depends on how threatened Charles actually feels by the recall campaign. If he's actually worried about it, then he'll have to appear to be involved in the Brent issue to avoid alienating others (even if he otherwise might not because of those signs). |
Anonymous
The CHML buses did NOT have functioning seatbelts. They also had one single aide who was typically scrolling their phone. Yes, people put their kids on the bus to Potomac (in the summer when traffic isn't quite as bad, so the ride is typically actually shorter)... but not until rising K at the earliest, since there is no PK camp at Potomac. Also, when those kids get to camp, they get to run and play for 8 hours. These kids are going to get off a cramped bus and be forced to follow the discipline and structure of a classroom environment for likely the first time in their lives. It is going to be a disaster for the majority of kids. I really, genuinely suggest you reach out to the parents who lived this at CHML before you dismiss these comments with respect to PK kids as overblown. |
Anonymous
Charles Allen cares about IB DCPSes in his ward and is good at retail politics. He will get involved in this if parents oppose it irrespective of the recall threat. He is already involved/being helpful at Amidon and has gotten the Chancellor's ear on some craziness with the L-T expansion as well. |
Anonymous
| Burroughs swing space was also going to be three miles away. pta fought HARD. I’d suggest Brent fams connect with the Burroughs group to see how they did it. We don’t have kids at burroughs but have friends whose kids attend. |
Anonymous
| The middle school stuff? Brent is less than 1 mile from Stuart-Hobson, and a lot of the boundary is much closer. Easily walkable by middle schoolers. They were told no space to feed there must instead go 2x as far off the hill to a school that is/was rumored to be not as good. Zoning Brent and Tyler to Jefferson has forever after resulted in kids that scatter all over the place after 5th. |
Anonymous
So bussing kids from Glover Park to RFK is not relevant for the conversation because at the time Hardy was mostly OOB kids? What is the time frame that is being used to measure "furthest swing space DCPS has ever assigned"? |
Anonymous
But SH doesn't have room for Brent kids. It already has three feeders. I get the issues with JA being further from Brent than SH or E-H are from its feeders, but that was not really the main issue at the time. Especially when you consider that most Brent families who didn't move were trying to lottery into BASIS or even the original Latin campus at the time, not trying to get into a nearby neighborhood school OOB. When Brent families were proposing making the school a K-8, most of those families did not view S-H as a viable alternative -- back then you could lottery into S-H from Brent pretty reliably, and most Brent families chose not to do so, picking charters/privates/moving over both JA and other neighborhood options. Today, more Brent families view S-H as a decent option, but that was not really true when the K-8 proposal was floated. |
Anonymous
So don’t send your PK kid to Brent. You don’t have to. There are plenty of families who will happily take your place. |