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Anonymous
Its not that simple! |
Anonymous
Middle school kids walk a lot faster, can sometimes cross streets safely, and can take the bus unaccompanie. |
Anonymous
People care about their finances. You do too. Pretending that you don’t is just some kind of pious nonsense for appearances. I personally always accepted that factors outside my control could impact my home price but I’m hardly going to pretend it makes someone evil to care about it. But anyway, the reason people even mention it is because of the underlying assumption that the cluster will make things worse, possibly for BOTH schools, not better. So yeah, losing home equity because DC decided to randomly dismantle two schools is kind of something that will attract comment. |
Anonymous
There are 60 plus pages and the majority are disgusting, repulsive, and racist. Maury parents are the majority posting and doing this to themselves! |
Anonymous
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Sorry but preferring an at-risk set-aside at Maury rather than a cluster does not make me a racist. Same outcome, better commute for both communities.
And thinking DCPS needs to better fund Miner and give it a good principal also does not make me a racist. Heck, I would support a UPSFF that produced a net loss for Maury and a net gain for Miner. I just think screwing people on the commute without addressing anyone's actual needs is not the answer. |
Anonymous
This tells me you weren't on the Maury call on Dec. 4. Multiple people chimed in with "those children", "dilution", "uneducated and unecuated parents", "I didn't live There to be around Them" comments. Which received applause. Literal applause vocally and with the applause feature in the chat. *EVERY* person who had those statements started with, "I'm all for diversity BUT, and then went full NIMBY and racist. One person had the decency (ironically) to blatantly state they didn't want poor people affecting their family's socioeconomic status. It was horrendous but that person was at least honest. |
Anonymous
Well it’s certainly not that simple that taking apart the two schools will help either. If DCPS wanted, it could absolutely increase IB participation in Miner by giving carrots to high SES families and communicating that IB buy-in is a goal. DCPS will never do that. Because white high SES kids exist in this bizarre conceptual space where they are both magic and also anathema. |
Anonymous
Agreed. And I even support redrawing the boundaries even though that probably means my house would be zoned out of Maury. The cluster makes absolutely zero sense. |
Anonymous
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A lot of these comments from non-Miner parents about how Miner parents should just invest in the school and fix it are ignorant.
First, as was explained quite early in this thread to explain why Maury and Miner have such different demographics to begin with, Miner has a significant amount of low income housing that Maury does not have. Even if every high-SES family IB for Miner sent their kids to Miner, it would still have a much higher percentage of low income and at-risk kids. Maury has little to no low-income housing in its boundary, which means that as it grew its IB percentage, it greatly shrank the at risk population. The same thing would not happen at Miner. Second, Miner's location close to Benning road means that it is an attractive lottery option for kids coming from across the river. Thus, without buy-in from IB families, the school has a lot of kids from Wards 7 and 8 who statistically are more likely to be at risk. Maury used to get more Ward 7/8 students back when it was Title 1 with a lower IB percentage, but not nearly as much as Miner because it's location is a much less convenient commute, especially if you are taking public transportation. Having a large low-income IB contingent and having a history of being a Ward 7/8 destination school can make the kind of upward trajectory that Maury has been on hard if not impossible. There is often fear that improving the school in a way that is appealing to higher SES families will destroy what these families value about the school. The most obvious concerns revolve around Title 1 status and access to free before/after care and free school lunch. That's not a small thing for a low-income family -- these benefits can be essential. Even if they were assured that the school would keep these services free for low income families, there is not a lot of trust there and also no one wants to have to jump through hoops for something they currently get without even having to sign up. Often MC and UMC families will stick it out until K or 1st, but then they start running into other issues, especially regarding teaching approach and classroom management. School with large at risk populations tend to attract teachers who are okay teaching large at risk populations. These teachers are not always thrilled about having an increasing number of higher SES kids in their class, and in particular are often very wary of the increased involvement and sometimes demands of these parents. Yes, there is a racial component here. But it's also just a culture clash. What seems like "being a good parent" to an UMC white person can seem like "overbearing, demanding ahole" to a teacher in this position. At this point parents start making choices both for their own comfort (it can be emotionally tiring to constantly be trying to bridge these racial, economic, and cultural divides with sensitivity and self-awareness -- it is work) and for the sake of their kids, who they may worry will not always get the support or welcome in the classroom or the school that every parent wants for their kids. So they go. For Maury parents to waive this off and say "just do what we did at Maury" like Maury did not have demographic advantages that made their success easier, is going to piss off Miner parents who have been working on this for years, whether they are still at Miner or not. Because it is SO EASY for Maury parents, especially those who are not PTA members or people who really worked to turn the school around, to just tell Miner parents to "do it yourself." The truth is that "turning around" a struggling school with more than 60% at risk kids is not something that your average parent or even group of parents can do, especially not if you have a job and literally any other issues in your life. It is a steep uphill battle with low changes of success, and for most parents, any success will likely come after their kids are done with elementary. It is a different, and harder, challenge than what was accomplished at Maury. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
things that never happened for $1000, Alex. |
Anonymous
I don't know. Most of them aren't willing to go to Miner now. |
Anonymous
A lot of comments assuming that increasing the IB participation rate at Miner would change it's at-risk percentage. DME specifically addressed this in one of their meetings. They said that while Miner is largely OOB, it's IB population mirrors its school population in terms of demographics. |
Anonymous
It was recorded. So, which comment was yours? |
Anonymous
Good post but none of what you wrote makes a cluster seem more feasible. I wonder again why DME claims that it is impossible to just redraw the boundaries? Also I think the Miner zone has enough SFH that the school would be much more balanced on SES if the IB rate went up. But as you correctly note, DC has no interest in taking steps to voluntarily attract high SES IB families. |