Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: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.

I never used a stroller to walk my pre-K kids to school. It's not developmentally appropriate at that age.

I can’t tell you how many strollers I see at Maury. Maybe you don’t but everyone else does, even for the short commute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have yet to see a single counterproposal to the cluster that addresses this specific issue:

Maury and Miner are neighborhood DCPS elementaries within very close proximity (.5) miles but have vastly different student outcomes. That disparity is almost certainly closely related to a large imbalance in two populations who historically have disparate and negative educational outcomes -- children of color and children in poverty. There is larger than 50% difference in the at risk populations at the two schools, with Maury having 12% at risk students and Miner having 65% at risk students, despite the school's close proximity and similar size. The overwhelming size of Miner's at risk population makes it very hard for the school to gain traction to address the problem of low performance as indicated by low test scores on district-wide testing.

How might this clear disparity in educational experience and outcomes for students at these closely located schools be addressed?

Until you can answer that question in a way that actually directly addresses the problem, I do not think complaining about how the cluster is going to mess up your morning commute is going to cut it in terms of objections. Much as I relate to commute challenges! It's just not that important when you look at the paragraph above and understand that addressing those disparities is THE purpose of the cluster proposal.

Choice sets.

[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.

All of which would still be issues if they redraw boundaries, which is the alternative solution. These are not arguments against the cluster, they are things that would need to be addressed by families and DCPS no matter how this problem is solved.

What? How would those be issues if they redraw boundaries? Kids that currently attend would be permitted to stay, if you're thinking they would be kicked out.

In order to redraw the boundaries such that it addresses the massive imbalance in at risk populations at two closely located schools, a signifiant portion of Maury's existing boundary would be re-assigned to Miner or another school. Thus a large number of families who currently commute to Maury would be commuting to Miner or another school (or commuting to a charter or private school located even further away).

Once you understand this, you get why the "but my commute!" objections don't hold water. Maury families think the options are continue to go to Maury or combine with Miner and send their kids to Miner for early grades. Nope. The options are combine with Miner or undergo a potentially *even more painful* redistricting process that could have significantly worse outcomes for them personally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I never used a stroller to walk my pre-K kids to school. It's not developmentally appropriate at that age.

I can’t tell you how many strollers I see at Maury. Maybe you don’t but everyone else does, even for the short commute.

This, lol. And you see the same at Brent and Ludlow and almost every other high IB school on the Hill. Give me a break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have yet to see a single counterproposal to the cluster that addresses this specific issue:

Maury and Miner are neighborhood DCPS elementaries within very close proximity (.5) miles but have vastly different student outcomes. That disparity is almost certainly closely related to a large imbalance in two populations who historically have disparate and negative educational outcomes -- children of color and children in poverty. There is larger than 50% difference in the at risk populations at the two schools, with Maury having 12% at risk students and Miner having 65% at risk students, despite the school's close proximity and similar size. The overwhelming size of Miner's at risk population makes it very hard for the school to gain traction to address the problem of low performance as indicated by low test scores on district-wide testing.

How might this clear disparity in educational experience and outcomes for students at these closely located schools be addressed?

Until you can answer that question in a way that actually directly addresses the problem, I do not think complaining about how the cluster is going to mess up your morning commute is going to cut it in terms of objections. Much as I relate to commute challenges! It's just not that important when you look at the paragraph above and understand that addressing those disparities is THE purpose of the cluster proposal.

Here is the clearest answer I can give you.

Miner's high at-risk percentage stems directly from its low in-boundary capture rate. If Miner had a better in-boundary capture rate, it would be far less at-risk because there would be far fewer OOB students, who are disproportionately at-risk. This is partially a problem of residential segregation patterns, yes, but it's also the result of Miner's lack of appeal to high-SES families (or any families) living IB. So the disparity may be addressed by 1) Additional funding for Miner to improve services; 2) Leadership change at Miner (already underway due to firing of principal!); 3) Programming changes at Miner to improve quality and attract families; 4) At-risk set-aside for Maury, SWS, and all other nearby schools to bring up their at-risk percentage closer to Miner.

Another option is to re-zone a few blocks of Maury to Miner, but the impact would depend on the incomes of the affected households specifically and whether they chose to attend, so I'm not able to assess what the impact would be.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You have to look at it from the DME standpoint: There is lots of literature about the problems/disadvantages associated with schools that have a high concentration of poverty. It even includes things like greater difficulties associated with attracting high quality leadership and staff and less PTO money/engagement. There is literature that economically disadvantaged students do better academically in schools when the majority of their peers are not similarly disadvantaged. The district focused on best serving all students would probably prefer to have most of its schools be 25-50% economically disadvantaged. Demographics do not often shake out like that in the real world.

This is precisely what Howard County schools do. The redistrict frequently with the goal of rebalancing boundaries in order to spread around lower income families. It's unpopular in certain pockets of the county, but people are largely very happy with the quality of schools from elementary to high school, and while there are sometimes controversy about specific boundary shifts, most of the time it's accepted and people move on.

If we accept we are talking about race, it’s not possible to rebalance the white kids in DC. They only make up 10% of the kids. In HoCo white and asian kids are 50%. DME is fiddling on the deck of the Titantic when it acts like “we just need to spread the white kids around, that will fix it!”

Wow!! This is as offensive as it gets, and I've seen some real doozies on this thread. White does not equal high SES anymore than black equals low SES. The PTA at Maury has disproportionately advantaged the students and staff at that school, and I don't blame the DME for trying to leverage that engagement and "spread the wealth around." As a parent of students in another Hill elementary who toured Maury I was absolutely flabbergasted that DCPS permits the PTA to essentially buy extra staffing and resources for its students. There's a vast difference between funding uniforms for sports teams and putting additional personnel in classrooms. I see so many complaints about what goes on in upper NW schools vs. Hill schools, but we've got a prime example of that excessive privilege right here in the middle of our community.

I think PP's statement "if we accept we are talking about race" pretty clearly flagged that s/he was responding to others in the thread making that assumption and that s/he didn't necessarily credit it. The point remains when you just focus on SES -- half the kids in DCPS now are at-risk.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s actually the equivalent of the cost of one month of daycare. It’s suggested but of course not required of the PreK families who would be paying for daycare (which we all know is $$$$ in DC). Only a small portion actually do it sadly, as many argue they don’t want to give money to the whole school since they aren’t staying beyond PreK.

Not a Miner family but we go to a Title 1 school and are not at risk but are MC (not wealthy). I will tell you I would find that recommendation off-putting because family finances are complicated. We would not have paid for daycare if free Pk were not available in DC -- we would either have moved out of the district or I would have stayed home an extra year (I worked PT from home before PK). Also, even though the PK is free in the sense you don't pay tuition, if you pay taxes in DC, you still pay for it.

The thing is, we probably did donate about equivalent to a month of preschool tuition to our school anyway. I just would have found that framing really obnoxious, like I personally owe it to the school. That's not how I think about PTA donations at all. To me it's about providing funding for kids who don't have the same resources, and about providing general resources to the school and teachers to improve the school for all students, including mine. Plus being able to fund community events that help us connect and come together. Making it sound like payment for something is really obnoxious to me.

I don’t think parents think of it that way, and it’s not the actual ask. Someone brought it up in this thread to share the work the PTO does in response to a comment that indicated the Miner families aren’t actually making any efforts. We do a fundraiser that lists suggested donation levels staring at $5. For the PreK families the highest donation level is “a month for miner” or the equivalent of one month of day care. This thread is misconstruing it very much.

PP here and thank you for clarifying, that actually makes a lot of sense.

I think partly the problem was that someone originally said that parents who joined the Miner PTO donated a month of INCOME to the PTO, and that sounded insane to me and my subsequent objections were still sort of responding to the idea that any public school parent could be asked or expected to donate 1/12th of their annual income to a public school. But now I see it was just a misunderstanding. Sorry!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You have to look at it from the DME standpoint: There is lots of literature about the problems/disadvantages associated with schools that have a high concentration of poverty. It even includes things like greater difficulties associated with attracting high quality leadership and staff and less PTO money/engagement. There is literature that economically disadvantaged students do better academically in schools when the majority of their peers are not similarly disadvantaged. The district focused on best serving all students would probably prefer to have most of its schools be 25-50% economically disadvantaged. Demographics do not often shake out like that in the real world.

This is precisely what Howard County schools do. The redistrict frequently with the goal of rebalancing boundaries in order to spread around lower income families. It's unpopular in certain pockets of the county, but people are largely very happy with the quality of schools from elementary to high school, and while there are sometimes controversy about specific boundary shifts, most of the time it's accepted and people move on.

If we accept we are talking about race, it’s not possible to rebalance the white kids in DC. They only make up 10% of the kids. In HoCo white and asian kids are 50%. DME is fiddling on the deck of the Titantic when it acts like “we just need to spread the white kids around, that will fix it!”

Wow!! This is as offensive as it gets, and I've seen some real doozies on this thread. White does not equal high SES anymore than black equals low SES. The PTA at Maury has disproportionately advantaged the students and staff at that school, and I don't blame the DME for trying to leverage that engagement and "spread the wealth around." As a parent of students in another Hill elementary who toured Maury I was absolutely flabbergasted that DCPS permits the PTA to essentially buy extra staffing and resources for its students. There's a vast difference between funding uniforms for sports teams and putting additional personnel in classrooms. I see so many complaints about what goes on in upper NW schools vs. Hill schools, but we've got a prime example of that excessive privilege right here in the middle of our community.

DC already spreads the wealth around. People in the Maury boundary pay more in DC taxes than people in the Miner boundary. More DC money goes to Miner than to Maury. Which is fine, that's the way it should work, but I don't get the conniptions people have about the PTA. Affluent families will always be able to spend more money on their kids, whether you let that money go through a PTA or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have yet to see a single counterproposal to the cluster that addresses this specific issue:

Maury and Miner are neighborhood DCPS elementaries within very close proximity (.5) miles but have vastly different student outcomes. That disparity is almost certainly closely related to a large imbalance in two populations who historically have disparate and negative educational outcomes -- children of color and children in poverty. There is larger than 50% difference in the at risk populations at the two schools, with Maury having 12% at risk students and Miner having 65% at risk students, despite the school's close proximity and similar size. The overwhelming size of Miner's at risk population makes it very hard for the school to gain traction to address the problem of low performance as indicated by low test scores on district-wide testing.

How might this clear disparity in educational experience and outcomes for students at these closely located schools be addressed?

Until you can answer that question in a way that actually directly addresses the problem, I do not think complaining about how the cluster is going to mess up your morning commute is going to cut it in terms of objections. Much as I relate to commute challenges! It's just not that important when you look at the paragraph above and understand that addressing those disparities is THE purpose of the cluster proposal.

Here is the clearest answer I can give you.

Miner's high at-risk percentage stems directly from its low in-boundary capture rate. If Miner had a better in-boundary capture rate, it would be far less at-risk because there would be far fewer OOB students, who are disproportionately at-risk. This is partially a problem of residential segregation patterns, yes, but it's also the result of Miner's lack of appeal to high-SES families (or any families) living IB. So the disparity may be addressed by 1) Additional funding for Miner to improve services; 2) Leadership change at Miner (already underway due to firing of principal!); 3) Programming changes at Miner to improve quality and attract families; 4) At-risk set-aside for Maury, SWS, and all other nearby schools to bring up their at-risk percentage closer to Miner.

Another option is to re-zone a few blocks of Maury to Miner, but the impact would depend on the incomes of the affected households specifically and whether they chose to attend, so I'm not able to assess what the impact would be.

This is incorrect. Miner has a very high percentage of IB students who are at risk. There is a lot of low-income housing in Miner's boundary, including a lot of Section 8 units. The percent of at risk might shift somewhat if they increased their IB percentage, but way less than you think. The DME addressed this at one point -- there is not a large difference in at-risk percentage between Miner's current population and a theoretical all-IB population.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You have to look at it from the DME standpoint: There is lots of literature about the problems/disadvantages associated with schools that have a high concentration of poverty. It even includes things like greater difficulties associated with attracting high quality leadership and staff and less PTO money/engagement. There is literature that economically disadvantaged students do better academically in schools when the majority of their peers are not similarly disadvantaged. The district focused on best serving all students would probably prefer to have most of its schools be 25-50% economically disadvantaged. Demographics do not often shake out like that in the real world.

This is precisely what Howard County schools do. The redistrict frequently with the goal of rebalancing boundaries in order to spread around lower income families. It's unpopular in certain pockets of the county, but people are largely very happy with the quality of schools from elementary to high school, and while there are sometimes controversy about specific boundary shifts, most of the time it's accepted and people move on.

If we accept we are talking about race, it’s not possible to rebalance the white kids in DC. They only make up 10% of the kids. In HoCo white and asian kids are 50%. DME is fiddling on the deck of the Titantic when it acts like “we just need to spread the white kids around, that will fix it!”

Wow!! This is as offensive as it gets, and I've seen some real doozies on this thread. White does not equal high SES anymore than black equals low SES. The PTA at Maury has disproportionately advantaged the students and staff at that school, and I don't blame the DME for trying to leverage that engagement and "spread the wealth around." As a parent of students in another Hill elementary who toured Maury I was absolutely flabbergasted that DCPS permits the PTA to essentially buy extra staffing and resources for its students. There's a vast difference between funding uniforms for sports teams and putting additional personnel in classrooms. I see so many complaints about what goes on in upper NW schools vs. Hill schools, but we've got a prime example of that excessive privilege right here in the middle of our community.

DC already spreads the wealth around. People in the Maury boundary pay more in DC taxes than people in the Miner boundary. More DC money goes to Miner than to Maury. Which is fine, that's the way it should work, but I don't get the conniptions people have about the PTA. Affluent families will always be able to spend more money on their kids, whether you let that money go through a PTA or not.

Miner gets more money because of its higher percentage of SpEd and at-risk students, who qualify for special services that, with regards to SpEd, are required by the ADA. The average Miner student is not getting more funding from DCPS than the average Maury family (they may get more funding from Title 1, but those are federal funds and not paid out of DC property taxes).

I won't comment on the PTA debate, just want to correct this misconception about school funding in DC. The per pupil spending numbers you see don't actually reflect per pupil spending. Maury gets less DCPS funding because it has fewer SpEd and at risk kids. The high funding numbers you see going to Miner are largely going to pay for multiple self-contained SpEd classrooms, 1:1 aids, and some programming designed for at-risk kids (like additional summer programming to address remedial learning needs, for instance).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have yet to see a single counterproposal to the cluster that addresses this specific issue:

Maury and Miner are neighborhood DCPS elementaries within very close proximity (.5) miles but have vastly different student outcomes. That disparity is almost certainly closely related to a large imbalance in two populations who historically have disparate and negative educational outcomes -- children of color and children in poverty. There is larger than 50% difference in the at risk populations at the two schools, with Maury having 12% at risk students and Miner having 65% at risk students, despite the school's close proximity and similar size. The overwhelming size of Miner's at risk population makes it very hard for the school to gain traction to address the problem of low performance as indicated by low test scores on district-wide testing.

How might this clear disparity in educational experience and outcomes for students at these closely located schools be addressed?

Until you can answer that question in a way that actually directly addresses the problem, I do not think complaining about how the cluster is going to mess up your morning commute is going to cut it in terms of objections. Much as I relate to commute challenges! It's just not that important when you look at the paragraph above and understand that addressing those disparities is THE purpose of the cluster proposal.

Here is the clearest answer I can give you.

Miner's high at-risk percentage stems directly from its low in-boundary capture rate. If Miner had a better in-boundary capture rate, it would be far less at-risk because there would be far fewer OOB students, who are disproportionately at-risk. This is partially a problem of residential segregation patterns, yes, but it's also the result of Miner's lack of appeal to high-SES families (or any families) living IB. So the disparity may be addressed by 1) Additional funding for Miner to improve services; 2) Leadership change at Miner (already underway due to firing of principal!); 3) Programming changes at Miner to improve quality and attract families; 4) At-risk set-aside for Maury, SWS, and all other nearby schools to bring up their at-risk percentage closer to Miner.

Another option is to re-zone a few blocks of Maury to Miner, but the impact would depend on the incomes of the affected households specifically and whether they chose to attend, so I'm not able to assess what the impact would be.

This is incorrect. Miner has a very high percentage of IB students who are at risk. There is a lot of low-income housing in Miner's boundary, including a lot of Section 8 units. The percent of at risk might shift somewhat if they increased their IB percentage, but way less than you think. The DME addressed this at one point -- there is not a large difference in at-risk percentage between Miner's current population and a theoretical all-IB population.

I think the idea is to combine improvements to Miner with an at-risk set-aside at Maury and SWS to appeal to some current Miner at-risk kids. And to potentially re-zoned a few blocks of Maury to Miner,which could be higher income.

[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.

Another option is to reduce Maury's boundary, increasing availability for at-risk students through a set-aside. These may not all be from Miner, but a lot would have proximity preference. Miner is below capacity, so it's boundary could expand south.

or you know - instead of focusing on Maury as the cause of Miner’s problems, we could work on Miner directly! Just a thought.

The whole point here is that as long as Miner has more than 60% at risk kids, it's incredibly hard to improve the school. The consequences of that concentration of at-risk students are not overcome-able with some new programs or additional funding.

You need a solution that would decrease Miner's at-risk population by half (which would bring it more in line with at-risk populations citywide). Maury is implicated because it's 4 blocks away and has a 12% at risk population.

This is a math problem.

It’s only a “math problem” if you think diluting the percentage of at-risk kids is some kind of magic fix. “improving the school” has to mean more than that.

[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.

Combining schools like this to redistribute demographics is just busing on a small scale. Obviously.

Busing as a concept requires that the district physically transport kids to another school. If you can walk to the school in question, it's not busing.

When opponents to the cluster plan say stuff like "this is basically busing" in outrage, it becomes harder to argue that there is not a racial component to their objections. Read a freaking book about desegregation.

I mean, this is a plan intended to move kids around to change the racial demographics of the school. It’s the same thing. There’s absolutely NOTHING racist in questioning whether this helps black kids. What does seem oddly racist is the DME’s belief that a majority black school cannot be a good school, and that the only way for it to be “improved” is to add white kids. PS Maury is desegregated.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It’s actually the equivalent of the cost of one month of daycare. It’s suggested but of course not required of the PreK families who would be paying for daycare (which we all know is $$$$ in DC). Only a small portion actually do it sadly, as many argue they don’t want to give money to the whole school since they aren’t staying beyond PreK.

Not a Miner family but we go to a Title 1 school and are not at risk but are MC (not wealthy). I will tell you I would find that recommendation off-putting because family finances are complicated. We would not have paid for daycare if free Pk were not available in DC -- we would either have moved out of the district or I would have stayed home an extra year (I worked PT from home before PK). Also, even though the PK is free in the sense you don't pay tuition, if you pay taxes in DC, you still pay for it.

The thing is, we probably did donate about equivalent to a month of preschool tuition to our school anyway. I just would have found that framing really obnoxious, like I personally owe it to the school. That's not how I think about PTA donations at all. To me it's about providing funding for kids who don't have the same resources, and about providing general resources to the school and teachers to improve the school for all students, including mine. Plus being able to fund community events that help us connect and come together. Making it sound like payment for something is really obnoxious to me.

I don’t think parents think of it that way, and it’s not the actual ask. Someone brought it up in this thread to share the work the PTO does in response to a comment that indicated the Miner families aren’t actually making any efforts. We do a fundraiser that lists suggested donation levels staring at $5. For the PreK families the highest donation level is “a month for miner” or the equivalent of one month of day care. This thread is misconstruing it very much.

PP here and thank you for clarifying, that actually makes a lot of sense.

I think partly the problem was that someone originally said that parents who joined the Miner PTO donated a month of INCOME to the PTO, and that sounded insane to me and my subsequent objections were still sort of responding to the idea that any public school parent could be asked or expected to donate 1/12th of their annual income to a public school. But now I see it was just a misunderstanding. Sorry!

Glad we clarified. Guess it comes with the territory of not actually speaking, right?! And that poster was doing an awesome job of being a cheerleader for our PTO. I wanted to clarify while also giving her (or him) a virtual hug for lifting us up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

they encourage them to donate their *monthly salary”??! that cannot possibly be true.