Has Bancroft's rapid gentrification ruined its chances to have its current feeder rights preserved?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are plenty of upper middle class families who will send their kids to MacFarland if that is established as the pattern for Bancroft. I think it's true that some will avoid it, but there are already some upper middle class kids at MacFarland now, and plenty of other parents will simply do what's in front of them knowing that the system has set this up for them. Requiring that feeder pattern rather than making it optional will create a significant cohort of MacFarland families from what is becoming an extremely mixed neighborhood.

The catchment of MacFarland certainly includes large and small apartment buildings of low-income Spanish-only families. However, it contains a very large number of single family homes that cost $850K plus. I believe that while few families want to send their kid to be the "only white kid" or "only Asian" or only anything, norming MacFarland as the neighborhood middle school with the only way out onerous will make those who don't want it move, and be replaced, or decide whether they'll take risky steps like lotterying every year. And for many, the cohort that the path-of-least-resistance will create will be enough to send their kid too.

It's not magic, it's public policy.

Yes, and this is exactly the point with feeding Shepherd and Lafayette into Ward 4. It will improve the cohorts. And Shepherd has more white students than Bancroft. Public policy should favor economically and racially diverse schools. As the Shepherd boosters point out - their school does not reflect the economic diversity of the city, but they don't want to mix with Brightwood or Whittier are Takoma -because they are lighter and brighter (in their own humble opinions).

I thought the master facilities plan slides showed wells/coolidge at or near capacity?

That is correct. You can check the slides from the Spring presentation. Deal was in green representing 80-95% capacity. Wells was in orange representing 95-120% capacity. JR/Coolidge were also in orange, but I don't believe it takes into account the MacArthur shift.

It's not an simple solution to just say shift Shepherd/Lafayette to Wells if Wells can't accommodate the students.

No, the long term projections is that declining birth rates and other factors will create declining enrollment for MS. Boundary decisions also allow for expanding school footprints - they just put together a new high school in essentially 10 minutes. If the city wants to, they can make buildings accommodate more students. They have continually said that. They can also get rid of OOB automatic feeder patterns - Coolidge is majority OOB.

[Anonymous]

I disagree that DC does not care about socioeconomically diverse public schools. DC has a lot of schools with rather miniscule numbers of at-risk students and a lot of schools where at-risk students are the majority and not very many schools that fall in-between. This is largely due to school choice (clustering and opt-out effects) and geographic boundaries. There is research that pretty heavily supports schools that fall in-between these extremes.

DCPS absolutely does not care. Eastern could be another JR---a strong large gen-ed high school---IF DCPS cared to make it so. If they did, then they would get most of the IB Capitol Hill families who currently shun it, as well as significant amount of OOB applications from middle and upper middle class families in Wards 1, 4 and 5, where there are no strong gen-ed high schools. DCPS doesn't want to do that, because 2/3 of Eastern HS is OOB kids who are fleeing worse high schools in wards 7 and 8 and the school is 75% at-risk. So DCPS could create a socio-economically diverse HS at Eastern but has chosen not to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are plenty of upper middle class families who will send their kids to MacFarland if that is established as the pattern for Bancroft. I think it's true that some will avoid it, but there are already some upper middle class kids at MacFarland now, and plenty of other parents will simply do what's in front of them knowing that the system has set this up for them. Requiring that feeder pattern rather than making it optional will create a significant cohort of MacFarland families from what is becoming an extremely mixed neighborhood.

The catchment of MacFarland certainly includes large and small apartment buildings of low-income Spanish-only families. However, it contains a very large number of single family homes that cost $850K plus. I believe that while few families want to send their kid to be the "only white kid" or "only Asian" or only anything, norming MacFarland as the neighborhood middle school with the only way out onerous will make those who don't want it move, and be replaced, or decide whether they'll take risky steps like lotterying every year. And for many, the cohort that the path-of-least-resistance will create will be enough to send their kid too.

It's not magic, it's public policy.

Yes, and this is exactly the point with feeding Shepherd and Lafayette into Ward 4. It will improve the cohorts. And Shepherd has more white students than Bancroft. Public policy should favor economically and racially diverse schools. As the Shepherd boosters point out - their school does not reflect the economic diversity of the city, but they don't want to mix with Brightwood or Whittier are Takoma -because they are lighter and brighter (in their own humble opinions).

I thought the master facilities plan slides showed wells/coolidge at or near capacity?

That is correct. You can check the slides from the Spring presentation. Deal was in green representing 80-95% capacity. Wells was in orange representing 95-120% capacity. JR/Coolidge were also in orange, but I don't believe it takes into account the MacArthur shift.

It's not an simple solution to just say shift Shepherd/Lafayette to Wells if Wells can't accommodate the students.

No, the long term projections is that declining birth rates and other factors will create declining enrollment for MS. Boundary decisions also allow for expanding school footprints - they just put together a new high school in essentially 10 minutes. If the city wants to, they can make buildings accommodate more students. They have continually said that. They can also get rid of OOB automatic feeder patterns - Coolidge is majority OOB.

They can also shift boundaries so under-enrolled schools are filled before overcrowding other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I disagree that DC does not care about socioeconomically diverse public schools. DC has a lot of schools with rather miniscule numbers of at-risk students and a lot of schools where at-risk students are the majority and not very many schools that fall in-between. This is largely due to school choice (clustering and opt-out effects) and geographic boundaries. There is research that pretty heavily supports schools that fall in-between these extremes.

DCPS absolutely does not care. Eastern could be another JR---a strong large gen-ed high school---IF DCPS cared to make it so. If they did, then they would get most of the IB Capitol Hill families who currently shun it, as well as significant amount of OOB applications from middle and upper middle class families in Wards 1, 4 and 5, where there are no strong gen-ed high schools. DCPS doesn't want to do that, because 2/3 of Eastern HS is OOB kids who are fleeing worse high schools in wards 7 and 8 and the school is 75% at-risk. So DCPS could create a socio-economically diverse HS at Eastern but has chosen not to do it.

They absolutely could, and this Ward 4 family would commute to it. If they can stand up MacArthur as a strong JR-alternative, it’s a question of will not ability. Caveat that they would need to do the same for the feeder middle school(s) at the same time, which possibly is beyond their reach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


DCPS absolutely does not care. Eastern could be another JR---a strong large gen-ed high school---IF DCPS cared to make it so. If they did, then they would get most of the IB Capitol Hill families who currently shun it, as well as significant amount of OOB applications from middle and upper middle class families in Wards 1, 4 and 5, where there are no strong gen-ed high schools. DCPS doesn't want to do that, because 2/3 of Eastern HS is OOB kids who are fleeing worse high schools in wards 7 and 8 and the school is 75% at-risk. So DCPS could create a socio-economically diverse HS at Eastern but has chosen not to do it.


They absolutely could, and this Ward 4 family would commute to it. If they can stand up MacArthur as a strong JR-alternative, it’s a question of will not ability. Caveat that they would need to do the same for the feeder middle school(s) at the same time, which possibly is beyond their reach.

They could totally fix it with the feeder schools. One of the big problems is that the strongest elementary schools on the Hill do not all feed to the same MS. If DCPS would funnel all the Hill ES into two MS and create enough academic rigor at both that families with a focus on education would be willing to apply OOB to fill in the slots, then you could build a feeder pattern to Eastern. Right now, the Hill ES are dispersed into 3 MS and IB families peel off at 5th for the charter world because they do not see a path to HS. But doing that means accepting that those pesky demanding MC and UMC parents are not, in fact, the enemy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

To be fair, she didn't say that to the press. She said it at a panel discussion at Georgetown University, the video of which is online on Facebook for anyone to watch: https://www.facebook.com/edtransform/videos/913462802948648

DCPS wouldn't make the principal available for comment to the journalist.

But yeah, the principal getting to pick and choose families on the PK lottery list based on their their home language - which is simply a proxy for ethnicity - is insane in a by-right public school. And, perversely, it harms lower income English-speaking black kids the most. There absolutely should be a lawsuit about this - if you want to advantage certain ethnicities by focusing on primary language, do it at a charter school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

To be fair, she didn't say that to the press. She said it at a panel discussion at Georgetown University, the video of which is online on Facebook for anyone to watch: https://www.facebook.com/edtransform/videos/913462802948648

DCPS wouldn't make the principal available for comment to the journalist.

But yeah, the principal getting to pick and choose families on the PK lottery list based on their their home language - which is simply a proxy for ethnicity - is insane in a by-right public school. And, perversely, it harms lower income English-speaking black kids the most. There absolutely should be a lawsuit about this - if you want to advantage certain ethnicities by focusing on primary language, do it at a charter school.

well, then Oyster and Marie Reed, who do the same thing, should be sued as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

To be fair, she didn't say that to the press. She said it at a panel discussion at Georgetown University, the video of which is online on Facebook for anyone to watch: https://www.facebook.com/edtransform/videos/913462802948648

DCPS wouldn't make the principal available for comment to the journalist.

But yeah, the principal getting to pick and choose families on the PK lottery list based on their their home language - which is simply a proxy for ethnicity - is insane in a by-right public school. And, perversely, it harms lower income English-speaking black kids the most. There absolutely should be a lawsuit about this - if you want to advantage certain ethnicities by focusing on primary language, do it at a charter school.

well, then Oyster and Marie Reed, who do the same thing, should be sued as well.

Do they hold more than 50% of spots? I think you can justify the 50% on educational policy grounds for a bilingual school, more than that is tricky. Although I would also say that it would be a hard case to win because you have to prove the decision maker had actual animus. But in this article *she* says that she moved it to 70/30 & aims to move it to 80/20 and she says a lot of things that look a lot like animus. Absolutely though, this school should have an at risk preference if they're going to have this scheme, because the idea that you're intentionally making it more difficult for at-risk non-Spanish speaking kids to get in than not-at-risk Spanish speaking ones seems incredibly problematic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

To be fair, she didn't say that to the press. She said it at a panel discussion at Georgetown University, the video of which is online on Facebook for anyone to watch: https://www.facebook.com/edtransform/videos/913462802948648

DCPS wouldn't make the principal available for comment to the journalist.

But yeah, the principal getting to pick and choose families on the PK lottery list based on their their home language - which is simply a proxy for ethnicity - is insane in a by-right public school. And, perversely, it harms lower income English-speaking black kids the most. There absolutely should be a lawsuit about this - if you want to advantage certain ethnicities by focusing on primary language, do it at a charter school.

well, then Oyster and Marie Reed, who do the same thing, should be sued as well.

Do they hold more than 50% of spots? I think you can justify the 50% on educational policy grounds for a bilingual school, more than that is tricky. Although I would also say that it would be a hard case to win because you have to prove the decision maker had actual animus. But in this article *she* says that she moved it to 70/30 & aims to move it to 80/20 and she says a lot of things that look a lot like animus. Absolutely though, this school should have an at risk preference if they're going to have this scheme, because the idea that you're intentionally making it more difficult for at-risk non-Spanish speaking kids to get in than not-at-risk Spanish speaking ones seems incredibly problematic.

I believe Oyster is 100% spanish speaking for prek4 spots. https://oysteradamsbilingual.org/page/about/enrollment

[Anonymous]

Do kids at any of these schools have another non-bilingual school they get IB preference for (including in the ECE lottery)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do kids at any of these schools have another non-bilingual school they get IB preference for (including in the ECE lottery)?

Not for ECE, but yes for K and up if they don't want bilingual school.

[Anonymous]

Why do white people complain so much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Wow, she sounds pretty hostile.

She is setting DCPS up for a lawsuit. They need a poor AA plaintiff who loses their ECE seat to a Spanish-speaking ambassador's kid to challenge whether their 70/30 language preference policy is actually racially motivated, because she's given a lot of quotes in here that make it sound like... yes. I cannot believe DCPS approved this interview.

Also forcing all kids to eat inside during COVID on the grounds that some of the families might have a cultural objection to eating outdoors? I like that she tried to claim it was about not all kids having warm enough clothing (a legitimate concern) and then when the parents were like, oh we can definitely fix that, she was like, I'm not going to let them buy their way out of the cultural problem... as though she hadn't tried to blame poverty seconds earlier.

Yeah, that comment really bothered me too. I just can't imagine if the african immigrants in say, Sweden, were like, no, we don't culturally do winter so we don't want our kids going outside from October to April because it's cold. That's not how it works! You move to a different climate and you adjust, you don't claim that culturally you can't deal with it.

Um, no. The principal’s point was that her culture was there first and that the white folks came in and want to change it to theirs. So your analogy is a$$ backwards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Wow, she sounds pretty hostile.

She is setting DCPS up for a lawsuit. They need a poor AA plaintiff who loses their ECE seat to a Spanish-speaking ambassador's kid to challenge whether their 70/30 language preference policy is actually racially motivated, because she's given a lot of quotes in here that make it sound like... yes. I cannot believe DCPS approved this interview.

Also forcing all kids to eat inside during COVID on the grounds that some of the families might have a cultural objection to eating outdoors? I like that she tried to claim it was about not all kids having warm enough clothing (a legitimate concern) and then when the parents were like, oh we can definitely fix that, she was like, I'm not going to let them buy their way out of the cultural problem... as though she hadn't tried to blame poverty seconds earlier.

Yeah, that comment really bothered me too. I just can't imagine if the african immigrants in say, Sweden, were like, no, we don't culturally do winter so we don't want our kids going outside from October to April because it's cold. That's not how it works! You move to a different climate and you adjust, you don't claim that culturally you can't deal with it.

Um, no. The principal’s point was that her culture was there first and that the white folks came in and want to change it to theirs. So your analogy is a$$ backwards.

Her culture wasn't there first. Hispanics started to move to Mt Pleasant in 1970s, and anyway - the only constant in cities is change - neighborhoods change, demographics change!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

To be fair, she didn't say that to the press. She said it at a panel discussion at Georgetown University, the video of which is online on Facebook for anyone to watch: https://www.facebook.com/edtransform/videos/913462802948648

DCPS wouldn't make the principal available for comment to the journalist.

But yeah, the principal getting to pick and choose families on the PK lottery list based on their their home language - which is simply a proxy for ethnicity - is insane in a by-right public school. And, perversely, it harms lower income English-speaking black kids the most. There absolutely should be a lawsuit about this - if you want to advantage certain ethnicities by focusing on primary language, do it at a charter school.

well, then Oyster and Marie Reed, who do the same thing, should be sued as well.

All bilingual DCPS schools have this preference for pre-K. However, immersion charters are not allowed to do it.