Peer Pressure to enroll in your IB?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:About five or six years ago I remember going to Upshur Pool every weekend with my son and there was this Uber booster from West EC who would always be there going on and on about how great West is, blah, blah, blah. The first couple times was OK, but by the third time I somehow knew that I did not want my child to go to West. At some point too much boosting makes you wary.

You knew you didn't want to go to a school because of one annoying parent? Are you homeschooling now?

[Anonymous]

My kids attend a charter but we are friendly with our neighbors, and I can say I have never caught the peer pressure vibe at all. My IB is West, and the parents I've met have always been friendly and welcoming and left a good impression of their school.

One caveat is that I could not give less of a shit about any peer pressure over where my kids go to school and would have trouble not laughing at anyone who tried such a tactic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a person who has done a lot of work at a poorly regarded school to improve its reputation in the community, I have always been confused about what the booster parents of 2 year olds are actually doing in schools. They talk about the school, they write emails about the school, they come to a PTA meeting or two, and they make much about how they will be sending their child there. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they're really sad to say that they accepted a spot at a charter, or OOB, or have decided to relocate to Dallas, or whatever else. People at struggling schools face uphill battles on a number of issues. At this point, I don't really trust the commitment of parents without children in the school beyond a short term set of helpful assists, if only because at some point, those people will be fairly apologetic that their kid got into MV or something and their support can no longer be relied on.

Yup. You said it much better than I did. This is why it's not helpful to boost a school you aren't enrolled in/at.

Actually neither of you really said anything at all to support your point. Isn't their help enough? Why do you need to trust their commitment in the long-term? Do they hurt something or someone by stepping in to help?

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

That's largely true of parents of enrolled children too. Granted, the DCPS funding from enrolling a child is very helpful. But many parents contribute in less than helpful ways, as you pointed out. Good PTA leadership should encourage meaningful help and sideline people who are all talk but no action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

That's largely true of parents of enrolled children too. Granted, the DCPS funding from enrolling a child is very helpful. But many parents contribute in less than helpful ways, as you pointed out. Good PTA leadership should encourage meaningful help and sideline people who are all talk but no action.

Thanks for the brutally honest feedback! Let me be brutally honest right back. I absolutely am that mom who wants healthy organic snack options for my child, as well as School-wide Enrichment Model (SEM) staff for kids who need additional challenge (lest my snowflake gets bored and disruptive). I am the mom who donates a couple dozen books to the school library a year before visiting it and realizing that it is brand new and stacked to the gills with brand new books. Etc Etc. But in a way, you might as well hear from me about my priorities now, 3 years before my kid enrolls, because the school is for all of our children, including mine, and I can probably be "managed" into a productive useful PTA member, and my kid will probably contribute some damn good scores to the school's testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

That's largely true of parents of enrolled children too. Granted, the DCPS funding from enrolling a child is very helpful. But many parents contribute in less than helpful ways, as you pointed out. Good PTA leadership should encourage meaningful help and sideline people who are all talk but no action.

Thanks for the brutally honest feedback! Let me be brutally honest right back. I absolutely am that mom who wants healthy organic snack options for my child, as well as School-wide Enrichment Model (SEM) staff for kids who need additional challenge (lest my snowflake gets bored and disruptive). I am the mom who donates a couple dozen books to the school library a year before visiting it and realizing that it is brand new and stacked to the gills with brand new books. Etc Etc. But in a way, you might as well hear from me about my priorities now, 3 years before my kid enrolls, because the school is for all of our children, including mine, and I can probably be "managed" into a productive useful PTA member, and my kid will probably contribute some damn good scores to the school's testing.

I'm the first PP who mentioned feeling like the help of the parents of 2 year olds is not particularly reliable. I understand that this applies to enrolled families as well, believe me. I have spent all year attempting to increase parent engagement and involvement at our school, and it's been very difficult. I completely agree with the PP who mentions the potential parent who asks about healthy snack options - that's a pretty concise example of what I'm talking about. Yes, healthy snack options are important and it is a good barometer of school culture to ask about things like what kind of snacks kids eat and whether there is any screen time. My feeling, however, is that those things are basically secondary or tertiary priorities. When your child actually attends our school, you will realize that there are a number of other things that are more important than whether or not the carrots are organic or if your child saw 20 minutes of Dora the Explorer in a long discussion of how children should really get a snack of fresh fruit and vegetables every day overlooks the reality that those things need to be refrigerated and there are no refrigerators in the classrooms. It also overlooks the reality that in our class at least, snacks are provided by parents. There is a rotating schedule. I, as the HHI $140k family in that room, can afford to bring in a different fruit or vegetable every day, along with cheese sticks (again, every day), but the next person on the schedule may need to stick to pretzels and Goldfish crackers because those things are easy to buy in bulk and easy to store. Our school is 50%+ at risk kids. Their families cannot afford to bring in individually wrapped packaged of hummus and organic baby carrots for 20 students for 5 days.

Spending a lot of time talking about stuff like this ends up feeling very dilettante-ish. I know that these families mean well, but there is often a failure to understand the situation on the ground that is directly tied to not having any experience of the school other than going to a few PTA meetings. If your main priorities are snack time, my suspicion is that you will be in for a rude awakening if your child actually enrolls in a high poverty school. I'm not saying that those things are of no importance at all. But as has been pointed out in every thread about "gentrifiers" in high poverty schools, it's a good idea to learn as much about what the school's actual needs are before going down the organic snack rabbit hole. Recognize that not everyone has your same priorities and that walking in with a toddler saying "you may as well hear about my priorities now" makes the whole conversation about you. It's not about the needs of the children, except in so far as that you believe that "organic snacks" are more important than the other things that the school is focused on. That will not make you any friends and my personal experience has been that for the last 2 years, more than a few parents who come in stridently soapboxing about that kind of thing has left the school when their kid scored a seat at MV or somewhere WOTP. Which makes the soapbox feel even more like wasted time.

Lest it sound like I'm not grateful to community members who show enthusiasm for our poorly regarded neighborhood school, I am. We have several community members who do great stuff for our school from helping with facilities stuff to supervising various field trips to publicizing our externally-facing events.

I am pretty sure I know what the OP was talking about, though, and if it's what I think it is, I'm in agreement. I suspect that the person involved will stay involved, if only because the chances of her child getting in anywhere else that meets her criteria is incredibly small.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

That's largely true of parents of enrolled children too. Granted, the DCPS funding from enrolling a child is very helpful. But many parents contribute in less than helpful ways, as you pointed out. Good PTA leadership should encourage meaningful help and sideline people who are all talk but no action.

Thanks for the brutally honest feedback! Let me be brutally honest right back. I absolutely am that mom who wants healthy organic snack options for my child, as well as School-wide Enrichment Model (SEM) staff for kids who need additional challenge (lest my snowflake gets bored and disruptive). I am the mom who donates a couple dozen books to the school library a year before visiting it and realizing that it is brand new and stacked to the gills with brand new books. Etc Etc. But in a way, you might as well hear from me about my priorities now, 3 years before my kid enrolls, because the school is for all of our children, including mine, and I can probably be "managed" into a productive useful PTA member, and my kid will probably contribute some damn good scores to the school's testing.

I'm the first PP who mentioned feeling like the help of the parents of 2 year olds is not particularly reliable. I understand that this applies to enrolled families as well, believe me. I have spent all year attempting to increase parent engagement and involvement at our school, and it's been very difficult. I completely agree with the PP who mentions the potential parent who asks about healthy snack options - that's a pretty concise example of what I'm talking about. Yes, healthy snack options are important and it is a good barometer of school culture to ask about things like what kind of snacks kids eat and whether there is any screen time. My feeling, however, is that those things are basically secondary or tertiary priorities. When your child actually attends our school, you will realize that there are a number of other things that are more important than whether or not the carrots are organic or if your child saw 20 minutes of Dora the Explorer in a long discussion of how children should really get a snack of fresh fruit and vegetables every day overlooks the reality that those things need to be refrigerated and there are no refrigerators in the classrooms. It also overlooks the reality that in our class at least, snacks are provided by parents. There is a rotating schedule. I, as the HHI $140k family in that room, can afford to bring in a different fruit or vegetable every day, along with cheese sticks (again, every day), but the next person on the schedule may need to stick to pretzels and Goldfish crackers because those things are easy to buy in bulk and easy to store. Our school is 50%+ at risk kids. Their families cannot afford to bring in individually wrapped packaged of hummus and organic baby carrots for 20 students for 5 days.

Spending a lot of time talking about stuff like this ends up feeling very dilettante-ish. I know that these families mean well, but there is often a failure to understand the situation on the ground that is directly tied to not having any experience of the school other than going to a few PTA meetings. If your main priorities are snack time, my suspicion is that you will be in for a rude awakening if your child actually enrolls in a high poverty school. I'm not saying that those things are of no importance at all. But as has been pointed out in every thread about "gentrifiers" in high poverty schools, it's a good idea to learn as much about what the school's actual needs are before going down the organic snack rabbit hole. Recognize that not everyone has your same priorities and that walking in with a toddler saying "you may as well hear about my priorities now" makes the whole conversation about you. It's not about the needs of the children, except in so far as that you believe that "organic snacks" are more important than the other things that the school is focused on. That will not make you any friends and my personal experience has been that for the last 2 years, more than a few parents who come in stridently soapboxing about that kind of thing has left the school when their kid scored a seat at MV or somewhere WOTP. Which makes the soapbox feel even more like wasted time.

Lest it sound like I'm not grateful to community members who show enthusiasm for our poorly regarded neighborhood school, I am. We have several community members who do great stuff for our school from helping with facilities stuff to supervising various field trips to publicizing our externally-facing events.

I am pretty sure I know what the OP was talking about, though, and if it's what I think it is, I'm in agreement. I suspect that the person involved will stay involved, if only because the chances of her child getting in anywhere else that meets her criteria is incredibly small.

Well said.

[Anonymous]

Look, I get it. The 2-year-old parents are sometimes super clueless and annoying. Daycare is their frame of reference, and they are not very knowledgeable about education or high-poverty schools generally.

BUT. We did not all leap from the womb with this knowledge, did we? We were all clueless once. When I have someone like this, I ask them to coffee and we have a nice chat about the school. I listen to them so that they feel heard, and then I talk to them about what's going on at the school. This often results in a big improvement. Parents like this will do a lot of work, if you have the right projects to give them. It's just a matter of bringing them along, and some of them will end up enrolling and being pretty solid. They're just on a learning curve. We were all clueless newcomers at one point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look, I get it. The 2-year-old parents are sometimes super clueless and annoying. Daycare is their frame of reference, and they are not very knowledgeable about education or high-poverty schools generally.

BUT. We did not all leap from the womb with this knowledge, did we? We were all clueless once. When I have someone like this, I ask them to coffee and we have a nice chat about the school. I listen to them so that they feel heard, and then I talk to them about what's going on at the school. This often results in a big improvement. Parents like this will do a lot of work, if you have the right projects to give them. It's just a matter of bringing them along, and some of them will end up enrolling and being pretty solid. They're just on a learning curve. We were all clueless newcomers at one point.

PP here. I agree with this, partially. I think figuring out what people's strengths are is very important. I think it's important also to recognize that you're clueless. The PP in particular made it pretty clear that her priorities are things that we should pay attention to years before her child actually attends the school. That is the kind of arrogance I'm talking about, not the well meaning but excited new parents who just don't understand the different system they're part of now. I don't know if the PP is the person that I believe this thread was started about, but that person definitely has the same attitude.

[Anonymous]

I think the parents of two-year-olds are really important. Sure, they're clueless. But if you want to have a strong PK3 class to work with, it's important that the school have a good reputation among that group. So that means meeting them where they are, listening to their concerns no matter how clueless, and helping them feel engaged. The school's relationship with these people is a huge factor in determining PK3 enrollment. So I say, suck it up and deal with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the parents of two-year-olds are really important. Sure, they're clueless. But if you want to have a strong PK3 class to work with, it's important that the school have a good reputation among that group. So that means meeting them where they are, listening to their concerns no matter how clueless, and helping them feel engaged. The school's relationship with these people is a huge factor in determining PK3 enrollment. So I say, suck it up and deal with them.

THANK YOU!

In response to earlier PPs:
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And just as a reminder, someone allegedly from DCPS has said in this thread that it was good for parents and prospective parents to have high standards and put pressure on the schools to provide what parents want.

This thread has gone from prospective parents perceiving they are being bullied to enroll their kids in their DCPS, to a few current engaged parents expressing frustration at too much improperly channeled community engagement in the school by prospective parents. This ends up sounding a little more like politics, power trips, and territoriality than anything else. "Newcomers please be quiet, some of us have been here a while, and worked hard to get to this point, so don't tell us what you want, just do what you're told." Are you considering hazing new parents too, before indoctrinating them into your PTA?

You might find me dense, but it looks to me that in a classroom of 20, if there only are 1-2 higher SES families, they might be of the more easy-going disposition. I think the more picky parents who are not OK with 20 minutes of Dora the Explorer during class time (me) and want healthy snacks (me) will generally be leery of having their kid join the classroom until they are more or less confident that their SES will take up a quarter or third of the seats in the classroom, specifically because they want their voice and their values to be relevant (healthy foods, minimal screen time, positive discipline, outdoor time, differentiation, enrichment, etc...) (and not because of racism so hold that sarcastic jab right there - my AA friends would be rightfully offended by the suggestion that these priorities didn't match theirs). And by then, aren't their needs and priorities, that are generally pretty unanimously shared by that SES (again regardless of race), completely relevant?

Also, sorry about the tangents, but:
- Do the classrooms need refrigerators? Do WOTP classrooms have refrigerators?
- earlier PP, does your school really ask FARMS parents to bring in snacks for a whole classroom for a whole week??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the parents of two-year-olds are really important. Sure, they're clueless. But if you want to have a strong PK3 class to work with, it's important that the school have a good reputation among that group. So that means meeting them where they are, listening to their concerns no matter how clueless, and helping them feel engaged. The school's relationship with these people is a huge factor in determining PK3 enrollment. So I say, suck it up and deal with them.

THANK YOU!

In response to earlier PPs:
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And just as a reminder, someone allegedly from DCPS has said in this thread that it was good for parents and prospective parents to have high standards and put pressure on the schools to provide what parents want.

This thread has gone from prospective parents perceiving they are being bullied to enroll their kids in their DCPS, to a few current engaged parents expressing frustration at too much improperly channeled community engagement in the school by prospective parents. This ends up sounding a little more like politics, power trips, and territoriality than anything else. "Newcomers please be quiet, some of us have been here a while, and worked hard to get to this point, so don't tell us what you want, just do what you're told." Are you considering hazing new parents too, before indoctrinating them into your PTA?

You might find me dense, but it looks to me that in a classroom of 20, if there only are 1-2 higher SES families, they might be of the more easy-going disposition. I think the more picky parents who are not OK with 20 minutes of Dora the Explorer during class time (me) and want healthy snacks (me) will generally be leery of having their kid join the classroom until they are more or less confident that their SES will take up a quarter or third of the seats in the classroom, specifically because they want their voice and their values to be relevant (healthy foods, minimal screen time, positive discipline, outdoor time, differentiation, enrichment, etc...) (and not because of racism so hold that sarcastic jab right there - my AA friends would be rightfully offended by the suggestion that these priorities didn't match theirs). And by then, aren't their needs and priorities, that are generally pretty unanimously shared by that SES (again regardless of race), completely relevant?

Also, sorry about the tangents, but:
- Do the classrooms need refrigerators? Do WOTP classrooms have refrigerators?
- earlier PP, does your school really ask FARMS parents to bring in snacks for a whole classroom for a whole week??

(PP here. Right now I wish this forum wasn't all anonymous, so I can come back in 4 years to read what I wrote this week and see if I smack my forehead in awe of my own cluelessness.)

[Anonymous]

You do realize you're talking to multiple people here? So if you're hearing different messages, it's probably reflective of different perspectives. And that's exactly what you'll see in a school in person.
Some people will be appreciative, some will blow you off, and some will be offended by you. More so if you come off as strong in person as you do in your posts.
My opinion: Be respectful (we all should), but speak your mind AND put your actions behind your words (i.e., help out, don't just criticize).

To answer one of your questions:
-all families in my PK class (~60% FARMS) are asked to bring in snacks for the class to supplement. Not all do, and the higher SES probably bring in more snacks.
-Refrigerators would be nice, but when we bring in snacks that need refrigeration, we put them in a cooler with freezer blocks so they don't need to worry about them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You do realize you're talking to multiple people here? So if you're hearing different messages, it's probably reflective of different perspectives. And that's exactly what you'll see in a school in person.
Some people will be appreciative, some will blow you off, and some will be offended by you. More so if you come off as strong in person as you do in your posts.
My opinion: Be respectful (we all should), but speak your mind AND put your actions behind your words (i.e., help out, don't just criticize).

To answer one of your questions:
-all families in my PK class (~60% FARMS) are asked to bring in snacks for the class to supplement. Not all do, and the higher SES probably bring in more snacks.
-Refrigerators would be nice, but when we bring in snacks that need refrigeration, we put them in a cooler with freezer blocks so they don't need to worry about them.

PP here who originally mentioned the refrigeration/snack issue.

1. Yes, every child's family is designated a week to bring in snack. If we did not bring in snacks, I'm not sure what the kids would end up eating for snack. I try to bring in large amounts of snacks that are non-perishable so that the teacher can supplement from that stash during the weeks that families forget/are unable to provide snacks/etc. That has happened a couple of times this year. I also witnessed a fairly heartbreaking conversation between our classroom teacher and the parent of the child whose week it was to bring snacks in which the teacher was explaining, yes, you need to bring snack for all the children, yes, all week. The woman was saying, "I don't know if we can afford that..." and the teacher was apologetic, suggesting relatively cheap options, etc. I basically go to Costco every other month and buy an entire trunk full of various kinds of crackers, fruit leather, fruit gummies (organic, 100% juice, which is about as good as those things get). It's difficult to work protein into those snacks. It's difficult to work in fresh fruit, but for our week, I try to bring a bag/box of apples or oranges, which keep well. I mention all these specifically as examples of what the kids in my child's Title 1 school get for snack at least one week of the month so that the PP who is worried about snack time doesn't think it's all Cheetos and Twizzlers or whatever.

2. I don't know about fridges. Our school has a kitchen so that probably helps with the amounts of fresh fruit/veggies that the kids get generally, but that's not for snack.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am not the first (longer) PP. I'm a NP, but I know what sort of "help" s/he means.

It's actually not all that "helpful" to have neighbors with toddlers donate their leftover pansies that they can't use because they bought too many and then come over and plant them in front of the school in unimproved soil -- then never come back to water them. It's completely not "help"ful for this young new mom to attend a PTA meeting at a school her 14 month old doesn't attend and ask a bunch of pointed questions during open mic about "Healthy Organic Snack Options" and supports for an "accelerated" child (who won't be reading for 4 years, mind you).

It's *moderately* "help"ful for this young couple to organize the first and second year new associates at their firm to come to IB School and "read with the children" 1 to 3 times during one school year, then let that idea fizzle out because nobody can keep the commitment with work and stuff. It's *moderately* "help"ful to donate a few books, once, that you put in your cart as an afterthought when buying Flora a bunch of new board books on Amazon.

These are the kinds of "help" that I've seen myself and of course it's all well intended. It's also to no actual lasting effect and mostly serves to make Dan and Jessica feel better about themselves, if we are being truthful here.

That's largely true of parents of enrolled children too. Granted, the DCPS funding from enrolling a child is very helpful. But many parents contribute in less than helpful ways, as you pointed out. Good PTA leadership should encourage meaningful help and sideline people who are all talk but no action.

Thanks for the brutally honest feedback! Let me be brutally honest right back. I absolutely am that mom who wants healthy organic snack options for my child, as well as School-wide Enrichment Model (SEM) staff for kids who need additional challenge (lest my snowflake gets bored and disruptive). I am the mom who donates a couple dozen books to the school library a year before visiting it and realizing that it is brand new and stacked to the gills with brand new books. Etc Etc. But in a way, you might as well hear from me about my priorities now, 3 years before my kid enrolls, because the school is for all of our children, including mine, and I can probably be "managed" into a productive useful PTA member, and my kid will probably contribute some damn good scores to the school's testing.

I'm the first PP who mentioned feeling like the help of the parents of 2 year olds is not particularly reliable. I understand that this applies to enrolled families as well, believe me. I have spent all year attempting to increase parent engagement and involvement at our school, and it's been very difficult. I completely agree with the PP who mentions the potential parent who asks about healthy snack options - that's a pretty concise example of what I'm talking about. Yes, healthy snack options are important and it is a good barometer of school culture to ask about things like what kind of snacks kids eat and whether there is any screen time. My feeling, however, is that those things are basically secondary or tertiary priorities. When your child actually attends our school, you will realize that there are a number of other things that are more important than whether or not the carrots are organic or if your child saw 20 minutes of Dora the Explorer in a long discussion of how children should really get a snack of fresh fruit and vegetables every day overlooks the reality that those things need to be refrigerated and there are no refrigerators in the classrooms. It also overlooks the reality that in our class at least, snacks are provided by parents. There is a rotating schedule. I, as the HHI $140k family in that room, can afford to bring in a different fruit or vegetable every day, along with cheese sticks (again, every day), but the next person on the schedule may need to stick to pretzels and Goldfish crackers because those things are easy to buy in bulk and easy to store. Our school is 50%+ at risk kids. Their families cannot afford to bring in individually wrapped packaged of hummus and organic baby carrots for 20 students for 5 days.

Spending a lot of time talking about stuff like this ends up feeling very dilettante-ish. I know that these families mean well, but there is often a failure to understand the situation on the ground that is directly tied to not having any experience of the school other than going to a few PTA meetings. If your main priorities are snack time, my suspicion is that you will be in for a rude awakening if your child actually enrolls in a high poverty school. I'm not saying that those things are of no importance at all. But as has been pointed out in every thread about "gentrifiers" in high poverty schools, it's a good idea to learn as much about what the school's actual needs are before going down the organic snack rabbit hole. Recognize that not everyone has your same priorities and that walking in with a toddler saying "you may as well hear about my priorities now" makes the whole conversation about you. It's not about the needs of the children, except in so far as that you believe that "organic snacks" are more important than the other things that the school is focused on. That will not make you any friends and my personal experience has been that for the last 2 years, more than a few parents who come in stridently soapboxing about that kind of thing has left the school when their kid scored a seat at MV or somewhere WOTP. Which makes the soapbox feel even more like wasted time.

Lest it sound like I'm not grateful to community members who show enthusiasm for our poorly regarded neighborhood school, I am. We have several community members who do great stuff for our school from helping with facilities stuff to supervising various field trips to publicizing our externally-facing events.

I am pretty sure I know what the OP was talking about, though, and if it's what I think it is, I'm in agreement. I suspect that the person involved will stay involved, if only because the chances of her child getting in anywhere else that meets her criteria is incredibly small.

Agree with everything in this post!