ludlow-taylor

[Anonymous]

Well, an obvious first order of business is to crack on the PG county kids. (assuming it is correct that many are at LT) If there is room in the school and they want to attend, they have to pay. Period. Not doing so is illegal and the school should certainly be held accountable.

[Anonymous]

Not that I don't understand the frustration that I believe causes you to say this, but using your logic, all the OOB kids should also be kicked out of Deal and Hardy.

I'm not the PP who argued that Hill schools should be for IB families, but since I agree with him/her I'll point out that you're painting with too broad a brush. S/he said "phase out" and that doesn't sound unreasonable. In Chicago in the 90s, Mayor Daley often aruged that IB property taxpayers had the right to feel so comfortable with local schools that MOST would seriously consider sending their children to them. His position on IB rights helped transform dozens of inner city schools. From what I've read and heard about Chicago, it wasn't that "all the OOB" kids were kicked out, it was that IB families came flooding in, improving almost everybody's lot. In NW, the OOB population is mainly comprised of DC taxpayers. On the Hill, a good chuck of ours used to be local, but now reside where rents are cheaper (MD). IB parents have almost no recourse and the pols are remiss in leaving us to our own devices to fight back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, an obvious first order of business is to crack on the PG county kids. (assuming it is correct that many are at LT) If there is room in the school and they want to attend, they have to pay. Period. Not doing so is illegal and the school should certainly be held accountable.

Sounds good, but it's far too easy for address cheaters to come up with a single utility bill in their name when they register. Individual schools don't have the incentives, or resources to push back effectively, even if a PTA gets down and dirty in the fight (little chance of that at LT). Grandmothers off Stanton Park even chuckle about how easy it is to get grandchildren displaced by rising rents into LT. DCPS needs to tighten up its registration system in a big way. So what's an IB parents to do? Tattle on suspected MD cheaters knowing that nobody much gives a damn that they're there, not at Ward 6, at LT, or in Central Administration? I, too, am down on Tommy Wells; he's been passive on the issue. Nobody wants to talk about race, but when almost all the administrators, teachers and parents are AA, non-blacks run a high risk of being accused of racism in challenging. The crux of the problem is that LT isn't a very diverse community in a very diverse neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the PP who argued that Hill schools should be for IB families, but since I agree with him/her I'll point out that you're painting with too broad a brush. S/he said "phase out" and that doesn't sound unreasonable. In Chicago in the 90s, Mayor Daley often aruged that IB property taxpayers had the right to feel so comfortable with local schools that MOST would seriously consider sending their children to them. His position on IB rights helped transform dozens of inner city schools. From what I've read and heard about Chicago, it wasn't that "all the OOB" kids were kicked out, it was that IB families came flooding in, improving almost everybody's lot. In NW, the OOB population is mainly comprised of DC taxpayers. On the Hill, a good chuck of ours used to be local, but now reside where rents are cheaper (MD). IB parents have almost no recourse and the pols are remiss in leaving us to our own devices to fight back.

Obviously the population of school age kids attending DCPS on the hill has increased and may continue to increase. Test scores at LT don't look awful and the school feeds into a better middle school.

If there are problems with out of state students or a lackluster principal than those issues should be addressed directly. Suggesting that DCPS should kick out the kids you don't like is politically infeasible, no wonder Tommy Wells doesn't seem responsive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: From what I've read and heard about Chicago, it wasn't that "all the OOB" kids were kicked out, it was that IB families came flooding in, improving almost everybody's lot.

That's funny because from what I've read and heard about Brent, that is what is happening there. So what is stopping LT IB families from enrolling at LT? Is it their golden hearted nature stopping them from displacing the OOB students--- unlike those evil Brent IB families that have the nerve to enroll their child in their neighborhood school?

[Anonymous]

15:12 I heard about the Lexington Place push and I saw the e-mails and read them first-hand. Of course, Tommy didn't support that, and I wouldn't have supported it either. It was stemming from a very narrow self-interest that was not well-founded and didn't represent any type of sincere effort to give LT a chance. It was a very micro level argument, if you will.

I think Tommy, Kaya, DM for Education, etc would find it quite reasonable to shutter LT for macro reasons - such as too many schools and IB community unfortunately is not interested in buying into the school putting the effort in like Brent, Maury, Tyler SI parents have (as evidenced by the school's inability to hold onto parents after pre-k).

I think LT should be closed. I don't think it should be closed and then re-opened just for the sake of clearing out OOB families. I'm not as clear on my feelings about whether SWS should be allowed to move there. SWS doesn't want to move somewhere that it's not wanted, and SWS doesn't want to have to deal with a 'legacy' population. However, SWS does really want to stay on the Hill.

[Anonymous]

I've heard the LT principal is pretty awful. My family has been at Brent for several years under 3 principals and none have been bad - actually all have had definite strengths.

[Anonymous]

Suggesting that DCPS should kick out the kids you don't like is politically infeasible, no wonder Tommy Wells doesn't seem responsive.

If it's politically infeasible to kick out kids who parents don't live in DC, or pay taxes here, or charge their parents, we're all in trouble.

To my knowledge, nobody's talked to Wells about closing LT. He wasn't responsive in 2010 when a group of two dozen IB parents petitioned DCPS to shift the Cluster boundary to include the block between D & E and 6th and 7th NE for two reasons. The block is closer to Peabody than LT, and nobody much felt comfortable enough with LT to send their children there. DCPS told us that Peabody is oversubscribed, so get lost. The Wells people were fine with that.

Fed up parents have started thinking in terms of wiping the slate clean only because, after a good 5 years of reform, LT essentially doesn't serve IB parents above PreK and doesn't seem like it ever will. If you have Brent, Maury or the Cluster to turn to, think twice about judging us.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean it doesn't serve IB parents well?

I can only go on scores and they seem pretty good when looking at the other schools you mentioned. What are the specifics that makes upper level IB parents go elsewhere?

[Anonymous]

+1. Yes, easy to judge. Not to take anything away from the incredibly hard work that some Hill PTAs have done to build sizeable IB populations. But since LT doesn't seem able to follow suit, why not think in terms of helping the school by changing the status quo? Shut it down and reinvent it and you might achieve something great. Slamming angry IB parents does no good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apples & oranges. Call me a bridge person on these issues. I'm a "rising" Brent parent who can assure you that the LT and Brent situations aren't comparable. We bought in SE last year to escape LT as much as anything else.

The address cheater issue at LT is no joke - there's a strong sense of ownership at LT by a gaggle of PG Country people (yes, AA) who should no longer be in the picture. Parents talk about closing LT because concentrating energies on expanding Peabody might actually be a practical & reasonable solution. It's easy to blame IB parents for whining when DCPS hasn't listened for a good five years now.

My understanding was that, when Brent started turning around, DCPS was hardly on the radar for most IB families. Times have changed and with Peabody drawing in so many LT families again, LT parents will probably not build the critical mass of IB families, and the momentum, to change much. Wiping the slate clean isn't always the way to go, but sometimes it is. Michelle Rhee got that one.

I hope something changes radically at LT for the sake of friends left behind - housing the Peabody SWW there sounds like a terrific idea. If that means "closing" and re-opening, so be it.

If it closes, I assure you it will not reopen. Forget about it. It is too close to union station and perfect for condo renovation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean it doesn't serve IB parents well?

I can only go on scores and they seem pretty good when looking at the other schools you mentioned. What are the specifics that makes upper level IB parents go elsewhere?

I certainly can't speak for the others, but just this spring, I talked to the principal, half a dozen teachers, and attended a PTA meeting before deciding to look for greener pastures.

I saw lesson outlines using poor grammar posted in classrooms. It's a dumpy school compared to the others on the Hill (the windows always look dirty, even when they're clean) and who knows if DCPS will really fix it up next year. I've seen used condoms and broken glass on the playground a number of times, and creepy teenagers hopping the fence after dark. The principal assured me that, under her watch, the school would never offer an accelerated learning program, or seek grant monies for one, because this would be "elitist and uncessary." A plan to implement an AL program would have been a big selling point for me - my kid seems advanced. The entire 2nd grade was on a field trip one day when I visited, and the principal couldn't remember where the kids had gone. I learned that my kid would probably have been the only child of East Asian descent above preK. The PTA seemed dysfunctional with tense racial and address cheater-IB politics bogging activity down. More than enough for me to say forget it.

[Anonymous]

LT is a difficult case - you've got people who want to shut the school down for unfounded, somewhat verging on racist reasons, and then you've got people who think the school should be closed for legitimate reasons. The first group makes a very easy target for those who want LT to stay open and allows LT supporters to dodge the actually legitimate, not at all racist reasons for why the school should close.

The first group also makes it really hard for Wells, Henderson and anyone else to rally behind closing it because they'll be accused of doing it for the wrong reasons.

So for those who want it closed for the wrong reasons, you're really not helping yourselves by continuing to put forth your misguided reasons - especially when there are valid reasons that you could be articulating.

[Anonymous]

If it closes, I assure you it will not reopen. Forget about it. It is too close to union station and perfect for condo renovation.

And maybe that would be a good thing. Maury and Peabody could absorb the IB population, serving it better than LT.

[Anonymous]

So for those who want it closed for the wrong reasons, you're really not helping yourselves by continuing to put forth your misguided reasons - especially when there are valid reasons that you could be articulating.

Sure, but then one parent's valid reason is another's misguided/wrong reason. The fact remains that the IB population is largely shunning the school. Nobody wants to be accused of anything, helping explain why parents are a lot more likely to fly off under the radar than enroll, or even speak out. Is that good for the Hill? Tell us what a valid reason looks like at DCPS and we'll go from there.