Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:thanks for the update! Great area! I hope you will be able to spend some time volunteering at Amidon-- perhaps if you volunteer you will connect with similar minded folks there or inspire others to join you. Even if you decide that it isn't a good fit for your future child, it is possible that you can help out others. Regardless , I can't think of a better way to get to know your neighbors than by pitching in at the neighborhood school!
Good luck!
Ahem, I can think of a better way. Organize your over-educated selves to lobby to alter structures at neighborhood schools. There is new thinking among the middle-class Hill cohort that at least one of the elementary schools should be closed to avoid spreading the high-SES families doing the heavy lifting on PTAs so thin. The Hill can't turn around all seven up to 5th grade anytime soon, impossible to make each a true neighborhood school, as opposed to a Ward 7 and 8 and PG County transplant institution, in under 20 years. Lobbying DCPS for selective admission programs for advanced learners/gifted and talented would surely be a better use of your time than volunteering at Amidon, which has no chance of becoming a high-performing school under the current arrangement. Just talk to the Payne PTA founders - they've killed themselves for a couple years, only to be voted out by hostile low-SES AA parents, most of whom don't live in the neighborhood.
I'm the PP. If the school really is that bad that it would actually be better for the neighborhood to just close the school, then YES, OP should definately work to make this happen. But I still think it would be in her best interest to actually go down to Amidon and make at least an initial effort to get to know the school. It is her right to do that. If she decides it needs to be shut down, her words will come from a much stronger position if she says "Well, I've been down to the school and this is what concerns me and why I think it needs to be shut down" than if she just says "no, I haven't been there, and, yeah, heard there is a new principal, and other neighbors are working to improve the school, but I still think the school needs to be closed." Maybe you don't think that is fair, but, that is the political reality behind shutting down neighborhood schools. If it is going to happen, it will happen far sooner if there are people with actual experience at the school asking to shut it down.
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