Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Not sure why no one considered the impact of the cluster on potential buy-in from the Miner side. If the cluster goes through, many Miner families that would have planned to move or lottery out will instead stay IB. That would in turn help maintain an academically enriched environment for the Maury side while including more disadvantaged kids too. This could trickle up to E-H with the combination of Maury and Miner kids - as more of those higher performing kids will strike out in the lottery and go there for MS. That’s how I see it. It’s been pretty clearly through this thread and with how the plan has been discussed that the Miner view point has been completely ignored and dismissed. There are 2 schools involved here, not one.

What makes you think that when matriculation from Peabody to Watkins is so poor?

I'm not a Miner parent, but if I were, I would seriously hate this commute. I would much rather have the DME make improvements to Miner such that more people want to attend. Is this just a problem of residential segregation, or is it also a disparity due to Miner's poor IB capture rate?

Miner inbound parent, MC, here: for what it is worth I would love the commute to Minor and Maury-we walk past these schools nearly daily anyways. Also, I would keep my child in-bound if the schools were combined and while the information has not been formally shared with the Miner inbound community, many parents in the same situation I am in feel the same.

I have always hoped my kids would get the chance to go to Maury-but after reading this thread and hearing the opinions of Maury families during the DME meetings, my sentiments are changing. I am sad that this is how my neighbors talk about the children in their neighborhood and community. The entitlement is frankly outrageous and just snobbish. To the poster worried if you combine schools “Our homes won’t fetch top dollar”: let me remind you-this is about children and not home values!!!

Many if not most Miner families have to drive out of my neighborhood for school (which pointed out by another poster on this thread is tragic for in bound Maury, but acceptable for Miner inbound). If Miner got the community/family support that other schools receive, the school would be a much better place, but unfortunately it does not.
That being said: We as a community can be better! We can combine these children and create an inclusive, nurturing, and educational environment that is more equitable for our community.

I think this is unfair. I have heard overwhelming sentiment from Maury parents, both in person and on this thread, very supportive of DC giving Miner the resources it needs to get on track (not least a stable administration and strong principal), and absolutely no one saying it's okay for Miner families to have to do X but not Maury families.

We disagree on the merits. Among other things, I think this would hurt enrollment of MC and upper MC kids, at least on the Maury side, and that that would have serious negative follow-on effects for EH, which already lags SH.

I also think the cluster model--irrespective of what schools are paired--would make for a materially worse school environment/community for my kids and family. I love having whole school morning meetings where my kid gets to see a bit of what's in store for him as an older student, I love going in to help out and to class events where I can hit both my kids' classrooms with one trip (and for that matter, love dropping them off at and picking them up from the same place, and I love that there is strong grade-wide community because the normal school size makes it possible to get to know almost everyone in their grade (and ditto with families). We deliberately did not move into the Peabody/Watkins boundary to avoid a cluster model -- and that is a much smaller combined population. And I think fundamentally restructuring the school experience will detract a ton from what is good and working at Maury now. It won't be Maury-for-All, but Maury-for-None.

Why is this comment unfair?
Not to get into the semantics here, but yes-someone did state earlier that if Maury/Miner would combine they would be forced to drive to a different school outside Miner. Please read all 60 plus pages of this thread.
Hypothetically, if the MC and UMC leave Maury they will
happily be replaced with MC and UMC families currently inbound to Miner. I am not sure why everyone thinks that every family inbound for Miner is not MC or UMC.

Isnt that what DME is assuming? Otherwise why is it proposing a cluster to achieve SES balance? Why not just encourage more IB participation?

They can’t even get a principal to stay. How do you encourage the families to? Not a shot a Miner, but at DCPS failings.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I think the problem with redrawing boundaries is that the low-income housing in the Miner zone is clustered in a way that makes it very hard to divide between boundaries. Especially when you understand that most low-income housing is multi-family, so you run into the problem of whether to locate an apartment complex on this side or that side of the line, and it totally changes the composition of the zones. There is also the problem that the current Miner boundary actually encompasses a lot of property zoned commercial, whereas Maury's includes almost none. This can make it hard to balance populations if you try to draw the line vertically up to Benning instead of the current line that is horizontal and then flows diagonally southward. If you slice the commercial strip along Benning (which also includes some housing) in half and try to draw the line south, you wind up with population imbalances between the zones.

Oh and finally, one problem with redrawing the zones is the actually physical location of the schools currently. Specifically because they are so close together, you have to draw a boundary between them. This forces a horizontal line and also limits your options unless you are willing to create super jerry-rigged zones where the school in question is located in a weird peninsula of the zone, such that everyone IB for the school lives oddly far from it.

As angry as some people are about the cluster idea, I guarantee you that some of the weird boundary redraws they probably came up with to balance the populations would have made people MUCH more angry. You think people are annoyed about having to walk 4 blocks to drop off PK kids? Well guess what, now you are zoned out of the school you live literally next door to, so that people who live a mile and a half away can attend it. People would have lost their minds about that, too.

Still not understanding why an at-risk set-aside isn't the solution. Get rid of PK3 at Maury if that's what it takes to make room.

Oh, because it won't force high-SES kids to Miner? Wah. There are plenty of other things to do that would improve Miner. Maybe creating a school that people want to go to, I know it sounds crazy.

Reasons the at-risk set aside isn't a good solution:

(1) Maury is required to serve all IB K-5 students, and is currently at or near capacity with a mostly IB student population. Even if you eliminate PK3, you'r talking about maybe 40 spots? Miner has more than 300 kids/
(2) The at risk set aside would presumably be city wide, so there's no guarantee that even a single Miner student would benefit
(3) At-risk set asides elsewhere in the city have struggled to attract applicants in the lottery. It's hard to know exactly why -- could be a marketing issue, a resource issue, something else. But many go unfilled. So it hasn't been a hugely successful strategy previously and there's no evidence it would work here.
(4) Even if an at-risk set aside actually worked, and even if it helped at-risk kids currently attending Miner, it would have no impact on kids at Miner or in Miner's boundary who are not at-risk, who are currently being very poorly served by their IB school.

1) 40 seats plus all OOB offers. Last year Maury offered 12 K seats in the initial lottery. Also, trailers and renovations are maybe possible. And a set-aside at SWS could take some too.

2) It's bizarre to think some Miner students wouldn't benefit.

3) Maybe they can try a little harder, and offering it for more grades at more schools should help.

4) Bummer, but not Maury's problem to solve, and at great logistical cost to both Miner and Maury families. And not necessarily going to be solved by this. High-SES peers are not some magic wand that fixes poor administration and poor teaching and why are you assuming the high-SES kids would stay in this scenario?

1) Okay so 52 spots? Again, Miner has 300+ kids, 65% of whom are at risk. SWS is a tiny school, even if you did a 30% set aside at SWS, you aren't coming close to addressing the needs of at-risk students at Miner.

2) If 5 Miner kids benefit, have you solved the problems at Miner?

3) This is a non-response. No one knows for sure why the EA set asides aren't working. They've already tried "a little harder" and additional schools just added set asides in the last few years. Still they are undersubscribed. Saying "maybe this thing that hasn't worked will suddenly start working" is not an argument.

4) You need to stop looking at this entire process as Maury "solving" anything. I have something maybe surprising for you to hear: you don't own Maury. It's a DCPS school. DCPS can do whatever they want with it, including shift the boundaries, close it, combine it with Miner, turn it into a city-wide, whatever. You can choose whether or not to send your kid there, but no one is saying "Maury community, please solve our problems." Rather, Maury is viewed as one component of an interconnected school system, and there is a process underway to see if resources, students, etc., need to be reallocated among various schools, of which Maury is one. The amount of martyrdom we are hearing from Maury families is ridiculous. Your kids go to public school, in a city where the public school system has major problems you are currently pretty immune from. Good for you? There was never any guarantee that situation would continue.

1) No, 52 spots plus however many can fit in a trailer. So maybe two classrooms of 22 kids each. It depends on the logistics. So could be 52 spots plus 44=96 spots. Also, they can cut back on the number of PK4 classrooms too. And that's just in the first year. The latest data I have says that Maury is 85% in-boundary. Eventually, the effect of this policy is that all OOB kids would be at-risk (current OOB rate is15%). Plus the at-risk kids who are IB, however many kids that is, I don't know. So it would likely add up to something over 15%. https://dme.dc.gov/page/sy2021-22-public-school-enrollments-dcps-boundary

2) No, because the problems at Miner stem fundamentally from leadership and funding. It's a separate project. And it's a worthwhile project. If only the DME were interested!

3) One possible reason the EA set-asides aren't influencing Miner is that they aren't offered for elementary grades and they aren't widespread at schools near Miner. Offering a set-aside at SWS and Maury for all grades would be likely to attract Miner students because of the location. I'm proposing a set-aside at those schools specifically because I think it will help Miner students and improve integration, because I like those ideas. It's unclear to me why they aren't the solution.

4) I just don't think Maury will remain the same high quality it currently is. So this is a plan to create two medium-performing schools instead of just one. You can scold and moralize all you like, but I'm trying to live in the real world and consider actual outcomes. Not wishful thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Maury is too crowded, why can't some of it be rezoned to Watkins or Payne? And wouldn't that improve integration at those schools?

or clustered with Miner...boom.

Because re-zoning a few blocks is preferable in my opinion to creating a difficult commute for so many families, and to causing Miner to lose title I status and Maury's "performance" to decline.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I think the problem with redrawing boundaries is that the low-income housing in the Miner zone is clustered in a way that makes it very hard to divide between boundaries. Especially when you understand that most low-income housing is multi-family, so you run into the problem of whether to locate an apartment complex on this side or that side of the line, and it totally changes the composition of the zones. There is also the problem that the current Miner boundary actually encompasses a lot of property zoned commercial, whereas Maury's includes almost none. This can make it hard to balance populations if you try to draw the line vertically up to Benning instead of the current line that is horizontal and then flows diagonally southward. If you slice the commercial strip along Benning (which also includes some housing) in half and try to draw the line south, you wind up with population imbalances between the zones.

Oh and finally, one problem with redrawing the zones is the actually physical location of the schools currently. Specifically because they are so close together, you have to draw a boundary between them. This forces a horizontal line and also limits your options unless you are willing to create super jerry-rigged zones where the school in question is located in a weird peninsula of the zone, such that everyone IB for the school lives oddly far from it.

As angry as some people are about the cluster idea, I guarantee you that some of the weird boundary redraws they probably came up with to balance the populations would have made people MUCH more angry. You think people are annoyed about having to walk 4 blocks to drop off PK kids? Well guess what, now you are zoned out of the school you live literally next door to, so that people who live a mile and a half away can attend it. People would have lost their minds about that, too.

Still not understanding why an at-risk set-aside isn't the solution. Get rid of PK3 at Maury if that's what it takes to make room.

Oh, because it won't force high-SES kids to Miner? Wah. There are plenty of other things to do that would improve Miner. Maybe creating a school that people want to go to, I know it sounds crazy.

Reasons the at-risk set aside isn't a good solution:

(1) Maury is required to serve all IB K-5 students, and is currently at or near capacity with a mostly IB student population. Even if you eliminate PK3, you'r talking about maybe 40 spots? Miner has more than 300 kids/
(2) The at risk set aside would presumably be city wide, so there's no guarantee that even a single Miner student would benefit
(3) At-risk set asides elsewhere in the city have struggled to attract applicants in the lottery. It's hard to know exactly why -- could be a marketing issue, a resource issue, something else. But many go unfilled. So it hasn't been a hugely successful strategy previously and there's no evidence it would work here.
(4) Even if an at-risk set aside actually worked, and even if it helped at-risk kids currently attending Miner, it would have no impact on kids at Miner or in Miner's boundary who are not at-risk, who are currently being very poorly served by their IB school.

1) 40 seats plus all OOB offers. Last year Maury offered 12 K seats in the initial lottery. Also, trailers and renovations are maybe possible. And a set-aside at SWS could take some too.

2) It's bizarre to think some Miner students wouldn't benefit.

3) Maybe they can try a little harder, and offering it for more grades at more schools should help.

4) Bummer, but not Maury's problem to solve, and at great logistical cost to both Miner and Maury families. And not necessarily going to be solved by this. High-SES peers are not some magic wand that fixes poor administration and poor teaching and why are you assuming the high-SES kids would stay in this scenario?

1) Okay so 52 spots? Again, Miner has 300+ kids, 65% of whom are at risk. SWS is a tiny school, even if you did a 30% set aside at SWS, you aren't coming close to addressing the needs of at-risk students at Miner.

2) If 5 Miner kids benefit, have you solved the problems at Miner?

3) This is a non-response. No one knows for sure why the EA set asides aren't working. They've already tried "a little harder" and additional schools just added set asides in the last few years. Still they are undersubscribed. Saying "maybe this thing that hasn't worked will suddenly start working" is not an argument.

4) You need to stop looking at this entire process as Maury "solving" anything. I have something maybe surprising for you to hear: you don't own Maury. It's a DCPS school. DCPS can do whatever they want with it, including shift the boundaries, close it, combine it with Miner, turn it into a city-wide, whatever. You can choose whether or not to send your kid there, but no one is saying "Maury community, please solve our problems." Rather, Maury is viewed as one component of an interconnected school system, and there is a process underway to see if resources, students, etc., need to be reallocated among various schools, of which Maury is one. The amount of martyrdom we are hearing from Maury families is ridiculous. Your kids go to public school, in a city where the public school system has major problems you are currently pretty immune from. Good for you? There was never any guarantee that situation would continue.

Students aren't like school funding -- DCPS actually can't just "reallocate" them. That's what's being pushed back on here. The success of this plan entirely hinges on the idea that you can make one of a fairly small number of schools in DC that has high in boundary buy-in worse for families and that just stick around for it. You can think they're being entitled, but their kids are the resource here that you need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why no one considered the impact of the cluster on potential buy-in from the Miner side. If the cluster goes through, many Miner families that would have planned to move or lottery out will instead stay IB. That would in turn help maintain an academically enriched environment for the Maury side while including more disadvantaged kids too. This could trickle up to E-H with the combination of Maury and Miner kids - as more of those higher performing kids will strike out in the lottery and go there for MS. That’s how I see it. It’s been pretty clearly through this thread and with how the plan has been discussed that the Miner view point has been completely ignored and dismissed. There are 2 schools involved here, not one.

What makes you think that when matriculation from Peabody to Watkins is so poor?

I'm not a Miner parent, but if I were, I would seriously hate this commute. I would much rather have the DME make improvements to Miner such that more people want to attend. Is this just a problem of residential segregation, or is it also a disparity due to Miner's poor IB capture rate?

Miner inbound parent, MC, here: for what it is worth I would love the commute to Minor and Maury-we walk past these schools nearly daily anyways. Also, I would keep my child in-bound if the schools were combined and while the information has not been formally shared with the Miner inbound community, many parents in the same situation I am in feel the same.

I have always hoped my kids would get the chance to go to Maury-but after reading this thread and hearing the opinions of Maury families during the DME meetings, my sentiments are changing. I am sad that this is how my neighbors talk about the children in their neighborhood and community. The entitlement is frankly outrageous and just snobbish. To the poster worried if you combine schools “Our homes won’t fetch top dollar”: let me remind you-this is about children and not home values!!!

Many if not most Miner families have to drive out of my neighborhood for school (which pointed out by another poster on this thread is tragic for in bound Maury, but acceptable for Miner inbound). If Miner got the community/family support that other schools receive, the school would be a much better place, but unfortunately it does not.
That being said: We as a community can be better! We can combine these children and create an inclusive, nurturing, and educational environment that is more equitable for our community.

I think this is unfair. I have heard overwhelming sentiment from Maury parents, both in person and on this thread, very supportive of DC giving Miner the resources it needs to get on track (not least a stable administration and strong principal), and absolutely no one saying it's okay for Miner families to have to do X but not Maury families.

We disagree on the merits. Among other things, I think this would hurt enrollment of MC and upper MC kids, at least on the Maury side, and that that would have serious negative follow-on effects for EH, which already lags SH.

I also think the cluster model--irrespective of what schools are paired--would make for a materially worse school environment/community for my kids and family. I love having whole school morning meetings where my kid gets to see a bit of what's in store for him as an older student, I love going in to help out and to class events where I can hit both my kids' classrooms with one trip (and for that matter, love dropping them off at and picking them up from the same place, and I love that there is strong grade-wide community because the normal school size makes it possible to get to know almost everyone in their grade (and ditto with families). We deliberately did not move into the Peabody/Watkins boundary to avoid a cluster model -- and that is a much smaller combined population. And I think fundamentally restructuring the school experience will detract a ton from what is good and working at Maury now. It won't be Maury-for-All, but Maury-for-None.

Why is this comment unfair?
Not to get into the semantics here, but yes-someone did state earlier that if Maury/Miner would combine they would be forced to drive to a different school outside Miner. Please read all 60 plus pages of this thread.
Hypothetically, if the MC and UMC leave Maury they will
happily be replaced with MC and UMC families currently inbound to Miner. I am not sure why everyone thinks that every family inbound for Miner is not MC or UMC.

Isnt that what DME is assuming? Otherwise why is it proposing a cluster to achieve SES balance? Why not just encourage more IB participation?

They can’t even get a principal to stay. How do you encourage the families to? Not a shot a Miner, but at DCPS failings.

I think you meant they can't even get a principal to not be fired for misconduct, right?

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-principal-facing-allegation-of-slapping-second-grade-student

[Anonymous]

I just want to note that I have done commutes of between .5 and 1 mile on foot with a 3 year old for both daycare and preschool and it's actually faster than walking with a 6 year old because you use a stroller. Do Maury families not have strollers? I am confused.

We used a stroller for PK4 drop off too, for most of the year, for the same reason. I think I broke it out for a few cold mornings in K when my kid was really dragging. Very handy devices, they come at all price points, I know you can get them used on MOTH for cheap.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Miner does have parents that are trying their hardest to improve the school. All parents automatically join PTA and even donate their entire month’s salary to the PTA.
The PTA at Miner were able to obtain additional faculty because they paid their salary. These folks want the best for their child and their classmates no matter where they attend. So please, can we stop with the Miner parents don’t try hard enough stuff?

This is inaccurate. The Miner PTO has never raised enough money to fund staff.

I was told that the 2nd gym teacher was hired because of PTA funding.

That’s not accurate. He was hired several years ago when the District told the schools that k-5 students had to start having two PE classes a week. The LSAT made hiring that position a budget priority so even PreK students could have PE twice a week. The PTO works very hard but they do not raise $100k per year which is the approximate value assigned to a teacher salary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I think the problem with redrawing boundaries is that the low-income housing in the Miner zone is clustered in a way that makes it very hard to divide between boundaries. Especially when you understand that most low-income housing is multi-family, so you run into the problem of whether to locate an apartment complex on this side or that side of the line, and it totally changes the composition of the zones. There is also the problem that the current Miner boundary actually encompasses a lot of property zoned commercial, whereas Maury's includes almost none. This can make it hard to balance populations if you try to draw the line vertically up to Benning instead of the current line that is horizontal and then flows diagonally southward. If you slice the commercial strip along Benning (which also includes some housing) in half and try to draw the line south, you wind up with population imbalances between the zones.

Oh and finally, one problem with redrawing the zones is the actually physical location of the schools currently. Specifically because they are so close together, you have to draw a boundary between them. This forces a horizontal line and also limits your options unless you are willing to create super jerry-rigged zones where the school in question is located in a weird peninsula of the zone, such that everyone IB for the school lives oddly far from it.

As angry as some people are about the cluster idea, I guarantee you that some of the weird boundary redraws they probably came up with to balance the populations would have made people MUCH more angry. You think people are annoyed about having to walk 4 blocks to drop off PK kids? Well guess what, now you are zoned out of the school you live literally next door to, so that people who live a mile and a half away can attend it. People would have lost their minds about that, too.

Still not understanding why an at-risk set-aside isn't the solution. Get rid of PK3 at Maury if that's what it takes to make room.

Oh, because it won't force high-SES kids to Miner? Wah. There are plenty of other things to do that would improve Miner. Maybe creating a school that people want to go to, I know it sounds crazy.

Reasons the at-risk set aside isn't a good solution:

(1) Maury is required to serve all IB K-5 students, and is currently at or near capacity with a mostly IB student population. Even if you eliminate PK3, you'r talking about maybe 40 spots? Miner has more than 300 kids/
(2) The at risk set aside would presumably be city wide, so there's no guarantee that even a single Miner student would benefit
(3) At-risk set asides elsewhere in the city have struggled to attract applicants in the lottery. It's hard to know exactly why -- could be a marketing issue, a resource issue, something else. But many go unfilled. So it hasn't been a hugely successful strategy previously and there's no evidence it would work here.
(4) Even if an at-risk set aside actually worked, and even if it helped at-risk kids currently attending Miner, it would have no impact on kids at Miner or in Miner's boundary who are not at-risk, who are currently being very poorly served by their IB school.

1) 40 seats plus all OOB offers. Last year Maury offered 12 K seats in the initial lottery. Also, trailers and renovations are maybe possible. And a set-aside at SWS could take some too.

2) It's bizarre to think some Miner students wouldn't benefit.

3) Maybe they can try a little harder, and offering it for more grades at more schools should help.

4) Bummer, but not Maury's problem to solve, and at great logistical cost to both Miner and Maury families. And not necessarily going to be solved by this. High-SES peers are not some magic wand that fixes poor administration and poor teaching and why are you assuming the high-SES kids would stay in this scenario?

1) Okay so 52 spots? Again, Miner has 300+ kids, 65% of whom are at risk. SWS is a tiny school, even if you did a 30% set aside at SWS, you aren't coming close to addressing the needs of at-risk students at Miner.

2) If 5 Miner kids benefit, have you solved the problems at Miner?

3) This is a non-response. No one knows for sure why the EA set asides aren't working. They've already tried "a little harder" and additional schools just added set asides in the last few years. Still they are undersubscribed. Saying "maybe this thing that hasn't worked will suddenly start working" is not an argument.

4) You need to stop looking at this entire process as Maury "solving" anything. I have something maybe surprising for you to hear: you don't own Maury. It's a DCPS school. DCPS can do whatever they want with it, including shift the boundaries, close it, combine it with Miner, turn it into a city-wide, whatever. You can choose whether or not to send your kid there, but no one is saying "Maury community, please solve our problems." Rather, Maury is viewed as one component of an interconnected school system, and there is a process underway to see if resources, students, etc., need to be reallocated among various schools, of which Maury is one. The amount of martyrdom we are hearing from Maury families is ridiculous. Your kids go to public school, in a city where the public school system has major problems you are currently pretty immune from. Good for you? There was never any guarantee that situation would continue.

I don't think it's realistic to expect an idea to benefit the entire Miner population in one go. As many people have explained, it's not clear that the proposed cluster would even do that. These kinds of changes are often gradual over long periods of time. Also, for what it's worth, kids in the Maury zone are every bit as important as kids in the Miner zone, and DC owes them both the same duties.

And, acknowledging that Maury had some demographic factors working in its favor, the fact remains that a lot of people in the community did put in a lot of work to turn Maury into the school it is today. I don't know what it does to the motivation of parents in other boundaries that are turning (or trying to turn) things around so see that if DME thinks you've been too successful, they'll drag you back to square one.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I think the problem with redrawing boundaries is that the low-income housing in the Miner zone is clustered in a way that makes it very hard to divide between boundaries. Especially when you understand that most low-income housing is multi-family, so you run into the problem of whether to locate an apartment complex on this side or that side of the line, and it totally changes the composition of the zones. There is also the problem that the current Miner boundary actually encompasses a lot of property zoned commercial, whereas Maury's includes almost none. This can make it hard to balance populations if you try to draw the line vertically up to Benning instead of the current line that is horizontal and then flows diagonally southward. If you slice the commercial strip along Benning (which also includes some housing) in half and try to draw the line south, you wind up with population imbalances between the zones.

Oh and finally, one problem with redrawing the zones is the actually physical location of the schools currently. Specifically because they are so close together, you have to draw a boundary between them. This forces a horizontal line and also limits your options unless you are willing to create super jerry-rigged zones where the school in question is located in a weird peninsula of the zone, such that everyone IB for the school lives oddly far from it.

As angry as some people are about the cluster idea, I guarantee you that some of the weird boundary redraws they probably came up with to balance the populations would have made people MUCH more angry. You think people are annoyed about having to walk 4 blocks to drop off PK kids? Well guess what, now you are zoned out of the school you live literally next door to, so that people who live a mile and a half away can attend it. People would have lost their minds about that, too.

Still not understanding why an at-risk set-aside isn't the solution. Get rid of PK3 at Maury if that's what it takes to make room.

Oh, because it won't force high-SES kids to Miner? Wah. There are plenty of other things to do that would improve Miner. Maybe creating a school that people want to go to, I know it sounds crazy.

Reasons the at-risk set aside isn't a good solution:

(1) Maury is required to serve all IB K-5 students, and is currently at or near capacity with a mostly IB student population. Even if you eliminate PK3, you'r talking about maybe 40 spots? Miner has more than 300 kids/
(2) The at risk set aside would presumably be city wide, so there's no guarantee that even a single Miner student would benefit
(3) At-risk set asides elsewhere in the city have struggled to attract applicants in the lottery. It's hard to know exactly why -- could be a marketing issue, a resource issue, something else. But many go unfilled. So it hasn't been a hugely successful strategy previously and there's no evidence it would work here.
(4) Even if an at-risk set aside actually worked, and even if it helped at-risk kids currently attending Miner, it would have no impact on kids at Miner or in Miner's boundary who are not at-risk, who are currently being very poorly served by their IB school.

1) 40 seats plus all OOB offers. Last year Maury offered 12 K seats in the initial lottery. Also, trailers and renovations are maybe possible. And a set-aside at SWS could take some too.

2) It's bizarre to think some Miner students wouldn't benefit.

3) Maybe they can try a little harder, and offering it for more grades at more schools should help.

4) Bummer, but not Maury's problem to solve, and at great logistical cost to both Miner and Maury families. And not necessarily going to be solved by this. High-SES peers are not some magic wand that fixes poor administration and poor teaching and why are you assuming the high-SES kids would stay in this scenario?

1) Okay so 52 spots? Again, Miner has 300+ kids, 65% of whom are at risk. SWS is a tiny school, even if you did a 30% set aside at SWS, you aren't coming close to addressing the needs of at-risk students at Miner.

2) If 5 Miner kids benefit, have you solved the problems at Miner?

3) This is a non-response. No one knows for sure why the EA set asides aren't working. They've already tried "a little harder" and additional schools just added set asides in the last few years. Still they are undersubscribed. Saying "maybe this thing that hasn't worked will suddenly start working" is not an argument.

4) You need to stop looking at this entire process as Maury "solving" anything. I have something maybe surprising for you to hear: you don't own Maury. It's a DCPS school. DCPS can do whatever they want with it, including shift the boundaries, close it, combine it with Miner, turn it into a city-wide, whatever. You can choose whether or not to send your kid there, but no one is saying "Maury community, please solve our problems." Rather, Maury is viewed as one component of an interconnected school system, and there is a process underway to see if resources, students, etc., need to be reallocated among various schools, of which Maury is one. The amount of martyrdom we are hearing from Maury families is ridiculous. Your kids go to public school, in a city where the public school system has major problems you are currently pretty immune from. Good for you? There was never any guarantee that situation would continue.

Students aren't like school funding -- DCPS actually can't just "reallocate" them. That's what's being pushed back on here. The success of this plan entirely hinges on the idea that you can make one of a fairly small number of schools in DC that has high in boundary buy-in worse for families and that just stick around for it. You can think they're being entitled, but their kids are the resource here that you need.

DCPS 100% can just reallocate students. What do you think a boundary study and re-draw is?

[Anonymous]

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At the end of the day some of us are trying to engage with human behavior as it actually is and make our predictions data-based and realistic. Are you?

Absolutely and data shows that kids who go to a more diverse school (whether racially, socioeconomically, or academically) can benefit ALL the students.

No it does not. Busing (which is basically what this is) is pretty much universally accepted to be a failure by all sides. In contrast, creating diversity through actual community participation - ie creating schools where IB families chose to go - can result in positive impacts. But at the end of the day there are not enough rich white kids to be the medicine to fix DCPS - and that it what fundamentally makes this a PR exercise and not a legitimate attempt for DCPS to solve its problems.

This is not "basically" busing. If they cluster the schools, no one will be bussed. They will go to their IB, neighborhood school unless they choose to lottery out or go private.

Bussing is when you take kids in one neighborhood and put them on an actual bus to send them to a school in another neighborhood. It has nothing to do with this situation at all.

It’s busing without the buses. Sending kids from one school to another for the sole purpose of demographics.

Oh it's not busing, just a far walk! Totally different!

3-4 blocks is “far”? Really?

It's far for a 3 year old. And the total commute of home-Maury-Miner-work adds up to a lot.

Is there any talk of a shuttle like Watkins used to have?

I would assume that would have to be parent (PTA) funded. I don’t disagree that it’s a bit of a walk for a 3 year old but I do think that when some Miner IB families are actually closer to Maury and some Maury IB are closer to Miner, it makes the distance argument one of the weaker ones.

It's not just the distance, it's having to go to two schools each day instead of one.

Also, this hasn't really come up, but transitioning an IEP from one school to another. Getting used to new related service providers, and getting a kid who struggles with transitions to settle in to a new school. Most kids will take this in stride as the transition is expected and they're moving with peers. But for some kids it'll be a big deal.

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Anonymous wrote:Not sure why no one considered the impact of the cluster on potential buy-in from the Miner side. If the cluster goes through, many Miner families that would have planned to move or lottery out will instead stay IB. That would in turn help maintain an academically enriched environment for the Maury side while including more disadvantaged kids too. This could trickle up to E-H with the combination of Maury and Miner kids - as more of those higher performing kids will strike out in the lottery and go there for MS. That’s how I see it. It’s been pretty clearly through this thread and with how the plan has been discussed that the Miner view point has been completely ignored and dismissed. There are 2 schools involved here, not one.

What makes you think that when matriculation from Peabody to Watkins is so poor?

I'm not a Miner parent, but if I were, I would seriously hate this commute. I would much rather have the DME make improvements to Miner such that more people want to attend. Is this just a problem of residential segregation, or is it also a disparity due to Miner's poor IB capture rate?

Miner inbound parent, MC, here: for what it is worth I would love the commute to Minor and Maury-we walk past these schools nearly daily anyways. Also, I would keep my child in-bound if the schools were combined and while the information has not been formally shared with the Miner inbound community, many parents in the same situation I am in feel the same.

I have always hoped my kids would get the chance to go to Maury-but after reading this thread and hearing the opinions of Maury families during the DME meetings, my sentiments are changing. I am sad that this is how my neighbors talk about the children in their neighborhood and community. The entitlement is frankly outrageous and just snobbish. To the poster worried if you combine schools “Our homes won’t fetch top dollar”: let me remind you-this is about children and not home values!!!

Many if not most Miner families have to drive out of my neighborhood for school (which pointed out by another poster on this thread is tragic for in bound Maury, but acceptable for Miner inbound). If Miner got the community/family support that other schools receive, the school would be a much better place, but unfortunately it does not.
That being said: We as a community can be better! We can combine these children and create an inclusive, nurturing, and educational environment that is more equitable for our community.

I think this is unfair. I have heard overwhelming sentiment from Maury parents, both in person and on this thread, very supportive of DC giving Miner the resources it needs to get on track (not least a stable administration and strong principal), and absolutely no one saying it's okay for Miner families to have to do X but not Maury families.

We disagree on the merits. Among other things, I think this would hurt enrollment of MC and upper MC kids, at least on the Maury side, and that that would have serious negative follow-on effects for EH, which already lags SH.

I also think the cluster model--irrespective of what schools are paired--would make for a materially worse school environment/community for my kids and family. I love having whole school morning meetings where my kid gets to see a bit of what's in store for him as an older student, I love going in to help out and to class events where I can hit both my kids' classrooms with one trip (and for that matter, love dropping them off at and picking them up from the same place, and I love that there is strong grade-wide community because the normal school size makes it possible to get to know almost everyone in their grade (and ditto with families). We deliberately did not move into the Peabody/Watkins boundary to avoid a cluster model -- and that is a much smaller combined population. And I think fundamentally restructuring the school experience will detract a ton from what is good and working at Maury now. It won't be Maury-for-All, but Maury-for-None.

Why is this comment unfair?
Not to get into the semantics here, but yes-someone did state earlier that if Maury/Miner would combine they would be forced to drive to a different school outside Miner. Please read all 60 plus pages of this thread.
Hypothetically, if the MC and UMC leave Maury they will
happily be replaced with MC and UMC families currently inbound to Miner. I am not sure why everyone thinks that every family inbound for Miner is not MC or UMC.

Isnt that what DME is assuming? Otherwise why is it proposing a cluster to achieve SES balance? Why not just encourage more IB participation?

They can’t even get a principal to stay. How do you encourage the families to? Not a shot a Miner, but at DCPS failings.

I think you meant they can't even get a principal to not be fired for misconduct, right?

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-principal-facing-allegation-of-slapping-second-grade-student

Omg that isn’t even the right person, this is from 2017!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

I think the problem with redrawing boundaries is that the low-income housing in the Miner zone is clustered in a way that makes it very hard to divide between boundaries. Especially when you understand that most low-income housing is multi-family, so you run into the problem of whether to locate an apartment complex on this side or that side of the line, and it totally changes the composition of the zones. There is also the problem that the current Miner boundary actually encompasses a lot of property zoned commercial, whereas Maury's includes almost none. This can make it hard to balance populations if you try to draw the line vertically up to Benning instead of the current line that is horizontal and then flows diagonally southward. If you slice the commercial strip along Benning (which also includes some housing) in half and try to draw the line south, you wind up with population imbalances between the zones.

Oh and finally, one problem with redrawing the zones is the actually physical location of the schools currently. Specifically because they are so close together, you have to draw a boundary between them. This forces a horizontal line and also limits your options unless you are willing to create super jerry-rigged zones where the school in question is located in a weird peninsula of the zone, such that everyone IB for the school lives oddly far from it.

As angry as some people are about the cluster idea, I guarantee you that some of the weird boundary redraws they probably came up with to balance the populations would have made people MUCH more angry. You think people are annoyed about having to walk 4 blocks to drop off PK kids? Well guess what, now you are zoned out of the school you live literally next door to, so that people who live a mile and a half away can attend it. People would have lost their minds about that, too.

Still not understanding why an at-risk set-aside isn't the solution. Get rid of PK3 at Maury if that's what it takes to make room.

Oh, because it won't force high-SES kids to Miner? Wah. There are plenty of other things to do that would improve Miner. Maybe creating a school that people want to go to, I know it sounds crazy.

Reasons the at-risk set aside isn't a good solution:

(1) Maury is required to serve all IB K-5 students, and is currently at or near capacity with a mostly IB student population. Even if you eliminate PK3, you'r talking about maybe 40 spots? Miner has more than 300 kids/
(2) The at risk set aside would presumably be city wide, so there's no guarantee that even a single Miner student would benefit
(3) At-risk set asides elsewhere in the city have struggled to attract applicants in the lottery. It's hard to know exactly why -- could be a marketing issue, a resource issue, something else. But many go unfilled. So it hasn't been a hugely successful strategy previously and there's no evidence it would work here.
(4) Even if an at-risk set aside actually worked, and even if it helped at-risk kids currently attending Miner, it would have no impact on kids at Miner or in Miner's boundary who are not at-risk, who are currently being very poorly served by their IB school.

1) 40 seats plus all OOB offers. Last year Maury offered 12 K seats in the initial lottery. Also, trailers and renovations are maybe possible. And a set-aside at SWS could take some too.

2) It's bizarre to think some Miner students wouldn't benefit.

3) Maybe they can try a little harder, and offering it for more grades at more schools should help.

4) Bummer, but not Maury's problem to solve, and at great logistical cost to both Miner and Maury families. And not necessarily going to be solved by this. High-SES peers are not some magic wand that fixes poor administration and poor teaching and why are you assuming the high-SES kids would stay in this scenario?

1) Okay so 52 spots? Again, Miner has 300+ kids, 65% of whom are at risk. SWS is a tiny school, even if you did a 30% set aside at SWS, you aren't coming close to addressing the needs of at-risk students at Miner.

2) If 5 Miner kids benefit, have you solved the problems at Miner?

3) This is a non-response. No one knows for sure why the EA set asides aren't working. They've already tried "a little harder" and additional schools just added set asides in the last few years. Still they are undersubscribed. Saying "maybe this thing that hasn't worked will suddenly start working" is not an argument.

4) You need to stop looking at this entire process as Maury "solving" anything. I have something maybe surprising for you to hear: you don't own Maury. It's a DCPS school. DCPS can do whatever they want with it, including shift the boundaries, close it, combine it with Miner, turn it into a city-wide, whatever. You can choose whether or not to send your kid there, but no one is saying "Maury community, please solve our problems." Rather, Maury is viewed as one component of an interconnected school system, and there is a process underway to see if resources, students, etc., need to be reallocated among various schools, of which Maury is one. The amount of martyrdom we are hearing from Maury families is ridiculous. Your kids go to public school, in a city where the public school system has major problems you are currently pretty immune from. Good for you? There was never any guarantee that situation would continue.

Students aren't like school funding -- DCPS actually can't just "reallocate" them. That's what's being pushed back on here. The success of this plan entirely hinges on the idea that you can make one of a fairly small number of schools in DC that has high in boundary buy-in worse for families and that just stick around for it. You can think they're being entitled, but their kids are the resource here that you need.

DCPS 100% can just reallocate students. What do you think a boundary study and re-draw is?

The PP means DCPS can re-assign the addresses, but they can't make the parents enroll their students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why no one considered the impact of the cluster on potential buy-in from the Miner side. If the cluster goes through, many Miner families that would have planned to move or lottery out will instead stay IB. That would in turn help maintain an academically enriched environment for the Maury side while including more disadvantaged kids too. This could trickle up to E-H with the combination of Maury and Miner kids - as more of those higher performing kids will strike out in the lottery and go there for MS. That’s how I see it. It’s been pretty clearly through this thread and with how the plan has been discussed that the Miner view point has been completely ignored and dismissed. There are 2 schools involved here, not one.

What makes you think that when matriculation from Peabody to Watkins is so poor?

I'm not a Miner parent, but if I were, I would seriously hate this commute. I would much rather have the DME make improvements to Miner such that more people want to attend. Is this just a problem of residential segregation, or is it also a disparity due to Miner's poor IB capture rate?

Miner inbound parent, MC, here: for what it is worth I would love the commute to Minor and Maury-we walk past these schools nearly daily anyways. Also, I would keep my child in-bound if the schools were combined and while the information has not been formally shared with the Miner inbound community, many parents in the same situation I am in feel the same.

I have always hoped my kids would get the chance to go to Maury-but after reading this thread and hearing the opinions of Maury families during the DME meetings, my sentiments are changing. I am sad that this is how my neighbors talk about the children in their neighborhood and community. The entitlement is frankly outrageous and just snobbish. To the poster worried if you combine schools “Our homes won’t fetch top dollar”: let me remind you-this is about children and not home values!!!

Many if not most Miner families have to drive out of my neighborhood for school (which pointed out by another poster on this thread is tragic for in bound Maury, but acceptable for Miner inbound). If Miner got the community/family support that other schools receive, the school would be a much better place, but unfortunately it does not.
That being said: We as a community can be better! We can combine these children and create an inclusive, nurturing, and educational environment that is more equitable for our community.

I think this is unfair. I have heard overwhelming sentiment from Maury parents, both in person and on this thread, very supportive of DC giving Miner the resources it needs to get on track (not least a stable administration and strong principal), and absolutely no one saying it's okay for Miner families to have to do X but not Maury families.

We disagree on the merits. Among other things, I think this would hurt enrollment of MC and upper MC kids, at least on the Maury side, and that that would have serious negative follow-on effects for EH, which already lags SH.

I also think the cluster model--irrespective of what schools are paired--would make for a materially worse school environment/community for my kids and family. I love having whole school morning meetings where my kid gets to see a bit of what's in store for him as an older student, I love going in to help out and to class events where I can hit both my kids' classrooms with one trip (and for that matter, love dropping them off at and picking them up from the same place, and I love that there is strong grade-wide community because the normal school size makes it possible to get to know almost everyone in their grade (and ditto with families). We deliberately did not move into the Peabody/Watkins boundary to avoid a cluster model -- and that is a much smaller combined population. And I think fundamentally restructuring the school experience will detract a ton from what is good and working at Maury now. It won't be Maury-for-All, but Maury-for-None.

Why is this comment unfair?
Not to get into the semantics here, but yes-someone did state earlier that if Maury/Miner would combine they would be forced to drive to a different school outside Miner. Please read all 60 plus pages of this thread.
Hypothetically, if the MC and UMC leave Maury they will
happily be replaced with MC and UMC families currently inbound to Miner. I am not sure why everyone thinks that every family inbound for Miner is not MC or UMC.

Isnt that what DME is assuming? Otherwise why is it proposing a cluster to achieve SES balance? Why not just encourage more IB participation?

They can’t even get a principal to stay. How do you encourage the families to? Not a shot a Miner, but at DCPS failings.

I think you meant they can't even get a principal to not be fired for misconduct, right?

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-principal-facing-allegation-of-slapping-second-grade-student

Omg that isn’t even the right person, this is from 2017!

It's not the principal most recently fired for misconduct, but it's an example of how DCPS has, over and over, screwed Miner with poor leadership choices. Parents have been working SO hard to improve Miner, and they're constantly undermined by DCPS management decisions. Miner could be a great school if it had a competent, permanent principal. Someone who isn't @#$@@#$@ any of the staff.

If Maury parents don't want to be treated the way DCPS treats Miner, is that really so surprising?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure why no one considered the impact of the cluster on potential buy-in from the Miner side. If the cluster goes through, many Miner families that would have planned to move or lottery out will instead stay IB. That would in turn help maintain an academically enriched environment for the Maury side while including more disadvantaged kids too. This could trickle up to E-H with the combination of Maury and Miner kids - as more of those higher performing kids will strike out in the lottery and go there for MS. That’s how I see it. It’s been pretty clearly through this thread and with how the plan has been discussed that the Miner view point has been completely ignored and dismissed. There are 2 schools involved here, not one.

What makes you think that when matriculation from Peabody to Watkins is so poor?

I'm not a Miner parent, but if I were, I would seriously hate this commute. I would much rather have the DME make improvements to Miner such that more people want to attend. Is this just a problem of residential segregation, or is it also a disparity due to Miner's poor IB capture rate?

Miner inbound parent, MC, here: for what it is worth I would love the commute to Minor and Maury-we walk past these schools nearly daily anyways. Also, I would keep my child in-bound if the schools were combined and while the information has not been formally shared with the Miner inbound community, many parents in the same situation I am in feel the same.

I have always hoped my kids would get the chance to go to Maury-but after reading this thread and hearing the opinions of Maury families during the DME meetings, my sentiments are changing. I am sad that this is how my neighbors talk about the children in their neighborhood and community. The entitlement is frankly outrageous and just snobbish. To the poster worried if you combine schools “Our homes won’t fetch top dollar”: let me remind you-this is about children and not home values!!!

Many if not most Miner families have to drive out of my neighborhood for school (which pointed out by another poster on this thread is tragic for in bound Maury, but acceptable for Miner inbound). If Miner got the community/family support that other schools receive, the school would be a much better place, but unfortunately it does not.
That being said: We as a community can be better! We can combine these children and create an inclusive, nurturing, and educational environment that is more equitable for our community.

I think this is unfair. I have heard overwhelming sentiment from Maury parents, both in person and on this thread, very supportive of DC giving Miner the resources it needs to get on track (not least a stable administration and strong principal), and absolutely no one saying it's okay for Miner families to have to do X but not Maury families.

We disagree on the merits. Among other things, I think this would hurt enrollment of MC and upper MC kids, at least on the Maury side, and that that would have serious negative follow-on effects for EH, which already lags SH.

I also think the cluster model--irrespective of what schools are paired--would make for a materially worse school environment/community for my kids and family. I love having whole school morning meetings where my kid gets to see a bit of what's in store for him as an older student, I love going in to help out and to class events where I can hit both my kids' classrooms with one trip (and for that matter, love dropping them off at and picking them up from the same place, and I love that there is strong grade-wide community because the normal school size makes it possible to get to know almost everyone in their grade (and ditto with families). We deliberately did not move into the Peabody/Watkins boundary to avoid a cluster model -- and that is a much smaller combined population. And I think fundamentally restructuring the school experience will detract a ton from what is good and working at Maury now. It won't be Maury-for-All, but Maury-for-None.

Why is this comment unfair?
Not to get into the semantics here, but yes-someone did state earlier that if Maury/Miner would combine they would be forced to drive to a different school outside Miner. Please read all 60 plus pages of this thread.
Hypothetically, if the MC and UMC leave Maury they will
happily be replaced with MC and UMC families currently inbound to Miner. I am not sure why everyone thinks that every family inbound for Miner is not MC or UMC.

Isnt that what DME is assuming? Otherwise why is it proposing a cluster to achieve SES balance? Why not just encourage more IB participation?

They can’t even get a principal to stay. How do you encourage the families to? Not a shot a Miner, but at DCPS failings.

I think you meant they can't even get a principal to not be fired for misconduct, right?

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-principal-facing-allegation-of-slapping-second-grade-student

Haha Miner parent here and I laughed. While you probably aren’t wrong, that’s from 2017. Miner actually got a really good principal after that incident (but his wife got a job in Florida so he moved away).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Miner does have parents that are trying their hardest to improve the school. All parents automatically join PTA and even donate their entire month’s salary to the PTA.
The PTA at Miner were able to obtain additional faculty because they paid their salary. These folks want the best for their child and their classmates no matter where they attend. So please, can we stop with the Miner parents don’t try hard enough stuff?

This is inaccurate. The Miner PTO has never raised enough money to fund staff.

I was told that the 2nd gym teacher was hired because of PTA funding.

That’s not accurate. He was hired several years ago when the District told the schools that k-5 students had to start having two PE classes a week. The LSAT made hiring that position a budget priority so even PreK students could have PE twice a week. The PTO works very hard but they do not raise $100k per year which is the approximate value assigned to a teacher salary.

Thank you, my apologies for spreading misinformation.
I will point out that it is a fact the PTA encourages its members to donate an equivalent to their monthly salary and parents do care and try hard to improve school.