Atlantic Article on Rolling Terrace and Outsized Role of Affluent White Parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're just down the road at ESS. Same problems, but perhaps less amplified because our kid's school doesn't have the immersion program.

Small, excessively vocal group of white, moneyed parents enforcing their values as if those values are indisputably correct. The PTA is trying to better engage the whole community, but these like 6 parents are so loud it just drowns everything else out.

Yah how dare 6 parents try and effect change in an under performing school. Hevens forbid other kids start getting good test scores and make it out of that neighborhood.

Exactly. I am a member of the PTA and give generously to my kids' class as far as crayons, kleenex, hand sanitizer and pencils. Room parent. Mixed SES, some high, some low, a lot of ESOL, huge school. I also volunteer in the classroom once or twice a week where the student teacher ratiio is 26 to 1. I work with kids who are not getting one on one time with the teacher at the moment. Help them learn to read and write. They know me and are excited to see me when I also volunteer at lunch and recess for the whole grade. I love those kids. I also raise money at the aucton for items that benefit all classes at the school. I am not the only parent at the school who does this. There are many who put time in. According to you all, I am a horrible person. This forum is a freaking soul sucker. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I appreciate our PTA members for all that they do, like pp above. If these other voices want to be heard, they need to attend the meetings and volunteer for things in order to be 'represented' at the PTA. I just don't buy the statement that six grown adults drown out any other voices. Speak up. Don't sit on the sidelines and complain you aren't represented.

I'm the PP who originally mentioned the small group of overly vocal parents at ESS. The issue isn't that parents who donate their immaterial and material resources to the school--like myself and the PP who mistakenly understood my comment to be casting her/him as a "horrible person", among many other dedicated families--are not "heard", it's that a handful of parents whine incessantly and advocate unskillfully for minutiae that matters tremendously to them but likely isn't even on the radar for the rest of us. "Being heard" is just a sliver of all that "being involved" comprises. When there are legitimate problems to tackle, then let's give those problems our due attention. But bemoaning indoor recess and sugar in yogurt like it's this huge undermining of your child's human rights is just ridiculous. It sucks up attention and marginalizes all the other work of "being involved". Honestly, avoiding these traps is part of the work that people have to do in terms of recognizing their privilege and making space for more voices.

It doesn't marginalize the "other work being involved", it marginalizes the less important voices clamoring for disproportionate resources. Get to a place where your voice can be held in parity and you will obtain parity. It isn't the other way around! People recognize privilege by maintaining it and propagating it, not by dismantling it after generations and generations of setting it up. There are no shortcuts in life and this laughable notion of absolute parity and fairness is a farce.

Do you hear yourself?!

You tell me which generational benefits are not ok to keep and pass down and which ones are? Do I need to prop up the peasants and working class in other countries too or just the ones inside my borders? I am sorry but the baby of a poor uneducated single parent doesn't really deserve the same access to stuff that a multigenerational good family kid gets. They may want it, the mother working hard at McDonalds may not understand why they will never get it, and no one would accuse the situation of being equal and fair but that doesn't mean they are entitled to it. Just as a child born in a slum in Bangladesh will not have the same life as one born in Los Gatos simply because the people around them didn't build the same environment, why should somebody get to bypass life's strategic positioning just because they want to? What this Bull shit "privilege" talking point is amounts to resource redistribution, plain and simple.

People need to stop thinking with wants and hopes and start treating life like a game of chess and realize that sometimes they might have to put in the work that they might not see the benifits of so that others get the benifits and relize that if you don't have access it is by design, either take it or move on. All lives don't matter and that is the way the world works. A private is not worth the same as a general and if given the choice the system would sacrifice thousands of privates to save one general. Just consider your nuclear unit (as you chose to define) as a bunch of privates. Also take a step back and relize most great things in human history were built on the backs of people who never got to partake in the benifits of them, hell I bet your outfit you are wearing while reading this and the phone or computer you're reading it on was made by borderline slaves. But when oppression happens to you on a smaller scale it is messed up? Hypocrital small thinking by small people at its worse.

How do you know who built what? I think its a huge assumption that in a PTA meeting you can just glance at someone and know what generations before them did and did not do. I know immigrants right now at RT who are well off both in their home country and here and you may not necessarily know that by looking at their appearance. Are you arguing that if you look like some people whose forefathers built something then you should get a benefit? Or can people be taken as individuals and let their own accomplishments stand?

I'm really confused by this argument as you seem to be saying a person can walk into a PTA meeting (or just walking through the world in general), a judgement can be made of what their surrounding community built and they get less or more stuff because of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I don't understand, when I see all these trendy articles winning about this or that, is why no reporter asks the really interesting question:

Where are the Affluent Black Parents?

Because they exist, and I don't see them in public school.

My daughter is in non-religious private and they are there. Many go to catholic school too.

Many affluent families from India, Middle East and Africa pick private. I think there is one Hispanic in the entire school though and she is only half. I bet they would love more but their culture doesn't take education seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to admit that this is right in the sweet spot of things I find fascinating - gentrification, education policy, and how language immersion programs have been co-opted by White families.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/how-marginalized-families-are-pushed-out-of-ptas/491036/

When schools are cash-strapped, the priorities of the members of the parent organization often become the priorities of the school as a whole. Rivera-Blanco says she sees this dynamic play out often at Rolling Terrace with the Spanish-immersion program, which is populated largely by students with means. For example, parents of kids in the program ensure that its teachers receive gift cards at the beginning of the year and during Teacher Appreciation Week to pay for supplies. “There are parents in our school that can’t put enough cents together to get a coat much less give their teacher their supply list,” Rivera-Blanco said. “That imbalance is huge. You can walk into a classroom and know which is a Spanish-immersion classroom and which one isn’t.”

Maybe Rivera-Blanco needs to worry about working and saving for her own family and stop looking at all those that make more than her. She is probably lucky to be in this country. Getting a free education, break breakfast, free lunch, and free english lessons for her kids just aren't enough I guess.

I am so sick of the FARMS and ESOL complaints. Each one of their kids costs more to teach than the affluent kids and most don't go into the few selected programs offered. Be lucky there are still affluent families left in Montgomery County who pay the ridiculous taxes to supply all these programs to the ever increasing poor (and many illegal) immigrant population.

If we get rid of immersion and magnets, let's get rid of ESOL and FARMS too. See how that goes over.

+1

This lady is crazy. How about calling on your own kind to help out and be a little more active. Instead of bashing those that do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I don't understand, when I see all these trendy articles winning about this or that, is why no reporter asks the really interesting question:

Where are the Affluent Black Parents?

Because they exist, and I don't see them in public school.

My daughter is in non-religious private and they are there. Many go to catholic school too.

Many affluent families from India, Middle East and Africa pick private. I think there is one Hispanic in the entire school though and she is only half. I bet they would love more but their culture doesn't take education seriously.

How do you know whose Hispanic and who isn't? Did you take a poll?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I don't understand, when I see all these trendy articles winning about this or that, is why no reporter asks the really interesting question:

Where are the Affluent Black Parents?

Because they exist, and I don't see them in public school.

My daughter is in non-religious private and they are there. Many go to catholic school too.

Many affluent families from India, Middle East and Africa pick private. I think there is one Hispanic in the entire school though and she is only half. I bet they would love more but their culture doesn't take education seriously.

OK, so the question is why doesn't your daughter and those other black kids go to public school? Heck, perhaps many more Affluent Blacks SHOULD send their kids to a DCPS school and have "an Outsized Role" in its PTA, same as some Affluent Whites seem to do!

#RespectWorkNotWhinning

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I don't understand, when I see all these trendy articles winning about this or that, is why no reporter asks the really interesting question:

Where are the Affluent Black Parents?

Because they exist, and I don't see them in public school.

My daughter is in non-religious private and they are there. Many go to catholic school too.

Many affluent families from India, Middle East and Africa pick private. I think there is one Hispanic in the entire school though and she is only half. I bet they would love more but their culture doesn't take education seriously.

DA FUQ???????????????????

[Anonymous]

I think the same racist trolls that have been starting other threads have started this one and/or at least posting some truly sickening stuff.
Geez this country is in a truly sad state of ignorance.
I meant to say HUMAN BEINGS ....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're just down the road at ESS. Same problems, but perhaps less amplified because our kid's school doesn't have the immersion program.

Small, excessively vocal group of white, moneyed parents enforcing their values as if those values are indisputably correct. The PTA is trying to better engage the whole community, but these like 6 parents are so loud it just drowns everything else out.

Another ESS zoned family and this is quite true. On the PTA listserv, which the principal used to be on, that small group of parents pushed for things that arguably were good for the school...more math enrichment for grades 3-5, a replacement of the crappy aftercare provider, they wrote grants for a garden project and all sorts of other things. But there were other things that were seriously based on their own values and priorities. For example, the yogurt sans sugar push was a bit annoying (yes, not good but this is a school with lots of other more pressing needs), overall it was the same handful of parents advocating.

The proof of disparity? In a school with a very large Ethiopian population, a recent post sought someone to translate fliers into Amharic. The person who'd done it in previous years was recommended. If the PTA was more diverse this would not have been an issue because lots of Ethiopian American parents would feel welcome and already be a part of the PTA. But at least the PTA was trying to reach out...

Anyway, the principal dropped off the listserv she says to not impede conversation. I think she just didn't want to have to listen to those parents' constant requests.

[Anonymous]

I am an affluent AA parent at a Silver Spring school. Do you want to know what I am doing? I am sitting on committees with the staff and administration to address the achievement gap, I am advocating with the school board on my own time, I am participating in meetings about behavior and social emotional learning.
No, I am no taking casseroles for staff appreciation, or supervising the moon bounce at a carnival. But don't assume that I am not there and being an active participant in what our family values about education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're just down the road at ESS. Same problems, but perhaps less amplified because our kid's school doesn't have the immersion program.

Small, excessively vocal group of white, moneyed parents enforcing their values as if those values are indisputably correct. The PTA is trying to better engage the whole community, but these like 6 parents are so loud it just drowns everything else out.

Another ESS zoned family and this is quite true. On the PTA listserv, which the principal used to be on, that small group of parents pushed for things that arguably were good for the school...more math enrichment for grades 3-5, a replacement of the crappy aftercare provider, they wrote grants for a garden project and all sorts of other things. But there were other things that were seriously based on their own values and priorities. For example, the yogurt sans sugar push was a bit annoying (yes, not good but this is a school with lots of other more pressing needs), overall it was the same handful of parents advocating.

The proof of disparity? In a school with a very large Ethiopian population, a recent post sought someone to translate fliers into Amharic. The person who'd done it in previous years was recommended. If the PTA was more diverse this would not have been an issue because lots of Ethiopian American parents would feel welcome and already be a part of the PTA. But at least the PTA was trying to reach out...

Anyway, the principal dropped off the listserv she says to not impede conversation. I think she just didn't want to have to listen to those parents' constant requests.

I tend to agree with your criticisms of the handful of families dominating the conversation , but I think it's a little unfair to criticize the request for Amharic translation help. It's the beginning of the school year, the PTA is getting their volunteer roster lined up, and asking for more folks to contribute to a much-needed element of parent outreach seems fine to me. I'd be annoyed if they waited until mid-year to ask for help with translation, but an early in the year request feels very appropriate given that there's a whole new crop of parents.

For what it's worth, I feel like the whole drama over the crappy aftercare provider is a much better example of the kind of thing the Rolling Terrace article points out. Yes, the aftercare provider is crappy. No doubt. But the price differential between the crappy provider and a better one is enormous. So, if the most vocal parents are successful in getting a new care provider in place, there are going to be a lot of families working to make up the cost difference.

The whole point of the Atlantic article was what happens when middle class white parents push for changes that actively harm poor kids and kids of color. Pushing to switch out the aftercare provider to a more expensive option seems like a good example of that phenomenon.

The one other thing I would note about PTA participation is that this year's PTA leadership is the most reflective of the school population in my family's five years at the school. With that said, PTA participation is not the only way to be involved. There's a dad of a (I think) third grader who runs a soccer game almost every day after school, just to keep the kids busy. There are parents who never show up to a PTA meeting, but who turn up every time the garden needs tending. So, while I'd love to see more parents participating through the PTA, I also think it's worth noting all the ways that parents are contributing in less visible ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see what the shock factor is at all. The programs like this where designed to attract higher income white people to voluntarily self intergrate targeted schools for targeted reasons. If the class rooms looked like the normal class rooms in schools such as RT the parents they hoped to use to mix up that satistics would continue to avoid the targeted schools. What part of this is the surprising part?

Blair without the magnet would be Wheaton or Einstein, but since they put a spiffy lab in it that parents hope will help their kids college chances, they accept it as a host. It is no different than language immersion which using a self imposed language barrier to make sure the kids don't mix much if at all.

This x100. Nothing about this is surprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am an affluent AA parent at a Silver Spring school. Do you want to know what I am doing? I am sitting on committees with the staff and administration to address the achievement gap, I am advocating with the school board on my own time, I am participating in meetings about behavior and social emotional learning.
No, I am no taking casseroles for staff appreciation, or supervising the moon bounce at a carnival. But don't assume that I am not there and being an active participant in what our family values about education.

Do you feel like your input is listened to and valued? I have been on so many committees, advocated at the BOE etc., and it just seems like parent input is completely ignored and devalued. Have you seen them actually adopt any of your suggestions or change what they were previously doing? If so, I would love to know some tips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole point of the Atlantic article was what happens when middle class white parents push for changes that actively harm poor kids and kids of color. Pushing to switch out the aftercare provider to a more expensive option seems like a good example of that phenomenon.

I think that this is the key issue for MCPS:

How should schools and parents handle binary decisions that positively affect one group while adversely affecting another group?

Should a poor child be denied access to aftercare because of cost? Or should an affluent child receive inferior aftercare in order to keep program affordable to all?

Should children in lower-achieving schools receive additional public resources to bridge the achievement gap, if that means that students at more affluent schools will receive a lesser education due to larger class sizes?

I think that is important to recognize that this cuts both ways. Whatever is done to benefit one group often carries a cost to the other.

Here's where I come down: I'd like to see ALL kids get an excellent education. I support extra resources going to kids facing extra challenges, provided that my child is receiving an excellent education. I'm just not sure that the resources currently exist for MCPS to do both.

Unfortunately, this probably means that MCPS will do neither successfully. I'm not optimistic about the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a bit sad that the PTA or whom ever focuses on gift cards vs. doing a clothing drive to have a clothing closet for kids who need it.

My kids have been in two different affluent MCPSs that have PTAs that organize coat drives for needy schools.

But what about the kids in your school who need it? That's lovely to do it for another school but there are probably kids in your home school who have equal needs.

NP here.

In our PTA, this is what we do for the families in need at or school:

We send a used books home twice a month with their backpack of food provided by the guidance counselor.
We have volunteers who purchase birthday and holiday presents for family in need. Bring them into the school and the guidance counselor distributes them
We have donations for used sports equipment
Coat and snow boot drive in October.
All extra curricular events are paid for by the PTA (talent show, dance night, storytelling night, etc..) so that they are free and all families can attend.
We have a school supply and book bag donation in the beginning of the year.
$5 vouchers for all FARMS kids to purchase something at the yearly book fair
25 free tickets for the yearly Spring Festival
Free field trips for FARMS

Everything above is paid for or donated by the "mean selfish PTA"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an affluent AA parent at a Silver Spring school. Do you want to know what I am doing? I am sitting on committees with the staff and administration to address the achievement gap, I am advocating with the school board on my own time, I am participating in meetings about behavior and social emotional learning.
No, I am no taking casseroles for staff appreciation, or supervising the moon bounce at a carnival. But don't assume that I am not there and being an active participant in what our family values about education.

Do you feel like your input is listened to and valued? I have been on so many committees, advocated at the BOE etc., and it just seems like parent input is completely ignored and devalued. Have you seen them actually adopt any of your suggestions or change what they were previously doing? If so, I would love to know some tips.

Honestly, I have seen some changes, but it has taken literally years of developing relationships, of showing up, of advocating not just for my kid, but for kids who have issues my child will never have to contend with. It took staying on committees even when they didn't adopt the changes I wanted. things are not perfect, and we may revisit teh idea of private school for high school. But for now, I am still plugging away.