Most down-to-earth schools?

[Anonymous]

We pack out kids' lunches, but I do feel bad for kids who depend on the meals there. I think parents have to be less than down to earth with certain things. School lunches in the 70s and part of the 80s were at least real food. Budget cuts have led to everything being sent in as frozen foods that need to be heated up, so now it's heavily processed food.

I guess it's not "down to earth" to want better nutrition for America's kids but things are different. We can put our heads in the sand or we can try to make things better. Again, it's not about my kids. But I feel like as a taxpayer, parents do have some say and if they can make things better through advocating, or offering up ideas, etc., why is that bad?

Same with reduced recess because of focus on standardizing testing, the lunch time cuts where in some districts kids don't have time to eat....lots of problems in today's school that our generation didn't face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

But were the rural & migrant farmworker kids in your classes? They weren't, in mine, at least not in high school. The faculty kids were in the college tracks, and the rural kids were -- well, I don't know where they were, which shows you how much we mingled. And in elementary school, there were neighborhood schools, and the neighborhoods were not very diverse.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

Maybe. Basically, I don't want to go to a school where I have to "do advocacy" or where other parents have the notion that they are customers and that the school system needs to conform to them. And I say this as a parent who has had serious, serious problems with her current school system. I just want functional, and normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

But were the rural & migrant farmworker kids in your classes? They weren't, in mine, at least not in high school. The faculty kids were in the college tracks, and the rural kids were -- well, I don't know where they were, which shows you how much we mingled. And in elementary school, there were neighborhood schools, and the neighborhoods were not very diverse.)

Well, I don't think this discussion for me is really about diversity per se. Except for that it seems like (and I could be wrong) that the schools I went to managed to have high quality programs AND a degree of diversity. We had a full-on auto shop and 4H clubs that seemed to prep people along a decent vocational track, and kids going to the university to take advanced math, at the same time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

Maybe. Basically, I don't want to go to a school where I have to "do advocacy" or where other parents have the notion that they are customers and that the school system needs to conform to them. And I say this as a parent who has had serious, serious problems with her current school system. I just want functional, and normal.

So you are looking for a school where parental advocacy is not necessary? Because is sure seems like your complaint is with the parent advocates themselves. Which is really odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

Maybe. Basically, I don't want to go to a school where I have to "do advocacy" or where other parents have the notion that they are customers and that the school system needs to conform to them. And I say this as a parent who has had serious, serious problems with her current school system. I just want functional, and normal.

So you are looking for a school where parental advocacy is not necessary? Because is sure seems like your complaint is with the parent advocates themselves. Which is really odd.

It's both. I don't want to go to a school with such huge issues that parents have to "do advocacy." And I don't want to go to a school where parents feel like they are obliged to do advocacy for every little thing like yogurt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We pack out kids' lunches, but I do feel bad for kids who depend on the meals there. I think parents have to be less than down to earth with certain things. School lunches in the 70s and part of the 80s were at least real food. Budget cuts have led to everything being sent in as frozen foods that need to be heated up, so now it's heavily processed food.

I guess it's not "down to earth" to want better nutrition for America's kids but things are different. We can put our heads in the sand or we can try to make things better. Again, it's not about my kids. But I feel like as a taxpayer, parents do have some say and if they can make things better through advocating, or offering up ideas, etc., why is that bad?

Same with reduced recess because of focus on standardizing testing, the lunch time cuts where in some districts kids don't have time to eat....lots of problems in today's school that our generation didn't face.

I remember school lunches in the 70's/80's. Fries (if they were even real potatoes) were cooked in lard; cheese on pizza was not real. School food now a days is more real food compared to back then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

But were the rural & migrant farmworker kids in your classes? They weren't, in mine, at least not in high school. The faculty kids were in the college tracks, and the rural kids were -- well, I don't know where they were, which shows you how much we mingled. And in elementary school, there were neighborhood schools, and the neighborhoods were not very diverse.)

Well, I don't think this discussion for me is really about diversity per se. Except for that it seems like (and I could be wrong) that the schools I went to managed to have high quality programs AND a degree of diversity. We had a full-on auto shop and 4H clubs that seemed to prep people along a decent vocational track, and kids going to the university to take advanced math, at the same time.

MCPS does not like tracking because the closing the gap thing. The goal instead is to get all kids take algebra at 8th grade. Too early for many, too late for a few. Lots of unhappy people who feel like their kids' needs aren't met.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

Maybe. Basically, I don't want to go to a school where I have to "do advocacy" or where other parents have the notion that they are customers and that the school system needs to conform to them. And I say this as a parent who has had serious, serious problems with her current school system. I just want functional, and normal.

So you are looking for a school where parental advocacy is not necessary? Because is sure seems like your complaint is with the parent advocates themselves. Which is really odd.

It's both. I don't want to go to a school with such huge issues that parents have to "do advocacy." And I don't want to go to a school where parents feel like they are obliged to do advocacy for every little thing like yogurt.

I'm not involved in school lunch "advocacy" or any other kind of advocacy in my DC's schools, but I think selling Trix yogurt in school is crazy as hell. Why not just give the kids Twizzlers and be done with it -- but them in bulk and save our tax dollars. Or better yet, why can't people who know something -- anything -- about nutrition make decisions about what is being sold in the cafeteria? In other words, I don't think Twix yogurt is "every little thing" and personally I would be grateful if parents at my MCPS schools would "do advocacy" by trying to make lunch options healthier and more sensible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I remember school lunches in the 70's/80's. Fries (if they were even real potatoes) were cooked in lard; cheese on pizza was not real. School food now a days is more real food compared to back then.

Of course the cheese on pizza was real. It was commodity cheese. School lunches were one way to use up commodity cheese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is an MCPS principal I gather, at a close-in school that doesn't want parental involvement unless it's stuffing folders alone in a back room.

Nah. I think OP tells us the truth from her first post. She grew up in a college town where everyone was middle class and well educated, and where people weren't freaking out about education because they had the privilege of knowing that their kids were likely to be just fine, as the kids of college professors and instructors.

She's trying to recreate that, but in a very different city.

The thing she is looking for doesn't really exist here. Maybe Takoma Park 15 years ago. If she doesn't care about racial or socioeconomic diversity and has $1 million to throw at the problem, maybe AU Park.

But the exact thing she is looking for (Madison in the mid-80s) isn't found here.

Ha ha, not Madison, but good guess. The thing is the schools actually did have social & economic diversity - rural & migrant farmworker kids. It wasn't some kind of bubble.

I guess you grew up in a more racially homogeneous place and closing the gap is not in the everyday vocabulary yet. MCPS is too diverse for parents to chill.

Another feature of MCPS is the huge presence of highly-educated immigrant/foreign parents community who are used to more rigor in schools. The east Asians, Russians, etc, they brought a lot of angst because they did not think school is demanding enough.

In some ways, you might actually be better off living in Bethesda and Potomac, because if you can avoid talking to other parents, you can probably just ride on their coattail and never do any advocacy on your own. Why do you care what other parents are doing anyway?

Maybe. Basically, I don't want to go to a school where I have to "do advocacy" or where other parents have the notion that they are customers and that the school system needs to conform to them. And I say this as a parent who has had serious, serious problems with her current school system. I just want functional, and normal.

So you are looking for a school where parental advocacy is not necessary? Because is sure seems like your complaint is with the parent advocates themselves. Which is really odd.

It's both. I don't want to go to a school with such huge issues that parents have to "do advocacy." And I don't want to go to a school where parents feel like they are obliged to do advocacy for every little thing like yogurt.

I'm not involved in school lunch "advocacy" or any other kind of advocacy in my DC's schools, but I think selling Trix yogurt in school is crazy as hell. Why not just give the kids Twizzlers and be done with it -- but them in bulk and save our tax dollars. Or better yet, why can't people who know something -- anything -- about nutrition make decisions about what is being sold in the cafeteria? In other words, I don't think Twix yogurt is "every little thing" and personally I would be grateful if parents at my MCPS schools would "do advocacy" by trying to make lunch options healthier and more sensible.

Agreed. Making it a battle about yogurt trivialized the debate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pack out kids' lunches, but I do feel bad for kids who depend on the meals there. I think parents have to be less than down to earth with certain things. School lunches in the 70s and part of the 80s were at least real food. Budget cuts have led to everything being sent in as frozen foods that need to be heated up, so now it's heavily processed food.

I guess it's not "down to earth" to want better nutrition for America's kids but things are different. We can put our heads in the sand or we can try to make things better. Again, it's not about my kids. But I feel like as a taxpayer, parents do have some say and if they can make things better through advocating, or offering up ideas, etc., why is that bad?

Same with reduced recess because of focus on standardizing testing, the lunch time cuts where in some districts kids don't have time to eat....lots of problems in today's school that our generation didn't face.

I remember school lunches in the 70's/80's. Fries (if they were even real potatoes) were cooked in lard; cheese on pizza was not real. School food now a days is more real food compared to back then.

They used to actually cook food in the cafeteria and slop it onto a tray, then the trays were washed in the school kitchen. Ever wonder why there are huge kitchens in public schools? That's why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I remember school lunches in the 70's/80's. Fries (if they were even real potatoes) were cooked in lard; cheese on pizza was not real. School food now a days is more real food compared to back then.

Of course the cheese on pizza was real. It was commodity cheese. School lunches were one way to use up commodity cheese.

Lard is good for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Well, I don't think this discussion for me is really about diversity per se. Except for that it seems like (and I could be wrong) that the schools I went to managed to have high quality programs AND a degree of diversity. We had a full-on auto shop and 4H clubs that seemed to prep people along a decent vocational track, and kids going to the university to take advanced math, at the same time.

I'm the PP who grew up in a Midwestern college town. And I've had this same argument with my father about tracking at his Midwestern high school in the 1950s. He was in the college track. "Everybody got along fine, and everybody got a good-quality education according to their needs, without economic-class conflict," he says. Well, if you asked the people who were not in the college track, maybe they'd remember things the same way -- or maybe they wouldn't. When I was in school, there were certainly disputes and resentments, just less overt than they are today. And they're not overt only in MCPS; they're also overt in that Midwestern college-town school system.