Shaw Middle School Community Meeting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn't the middle school at Cardozo supposed to be a temporary thing ?

YES

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I have no idea what bespoke middle school means. It currently says Shaw Junior High on the building. This is such a strange discussion.

NP. Bespoke means custom. PP is suggesting that Shaw parents think they have the right to demand exactly what they want without respect to the needs of the entire school system, and ignoring the fact that you have a school waiting for you that everyone assumes is unsatisfactory (Cardozo MS), without ever meeting a single administrator or teacher at that school.

Are you trying to say that Cardozo Middle is satisfactory? Good luck. I do know people who work there, and I know that they have churned through Assistant Principals at an alarming rate. Ask yourself why so few students attend who are not in the International Academy. It isn't just DCUM who finds it unsatisfactory. It's pretty much everyone.

And if all of you went there it would almost immediately change. Schools are about the students who attend them. If your 5 yo and all their classmates go, it will be a radically different place.

So what? They won't. How about DCPS deal with the actual problems? It needs a permanent leader and the academic and behavior problems of the kids need to be adequately remediated. For their own sake and not to attract gentrifiers.

Downtown evidently does not give a cr*p about Cardozo Middle. Until they do, what hope is there?

+1. It really angers me when people.blame parents for not sending their children to a seriously underperforming school amd say it is because of avoiding minority kids. The adults who work for DCPS are the problem here. I don't want my child to be treated the way DCPS treats most of its middle school students. The end.

If that is what you believe, then it doesn't matter whether DCPS creates a Shaw Middle or not. Creating Shaw Middle isn't going to change "the way DCPS treats most of its middle school students." If, at the end of the day, you will be sending your kids to charter or private, or moving, then you really have no dog in this fight.

I completely understand and am fine with people admitting they prefer the Charter/Private options. I don't like the implication that the creation of Shaw middle will alleviate all of their fears and they will suddenly go DCPS. Are you seriously telling me that you would take a school, with zero reputation, zero test scores, zero observations and commit to going there over the Charter/Private/Moving options? Unless you know there is guaranteed to be a strong cohort of children you know your child will "fit in" with, you will not send your kid to that school. Whether it is Shaw or Cardozo doesn't matter.

I think a freestanding middle school would get its own principal, rather than a rapid churn of APs. That is an important difference in my view. Running Cardozo high school is a full time job and it is a bad idea to stretch one principal across high school and middle schools. I am telling you that if DCPS gave Shaw Middle its own principal at that level on the payscale, it would make a difference to me. Can that happen in the Carodozo building? Maybe, but they have not implemented it.

If you want a ms principal at cardozo, fight for that. No need to build a whole school just to get a principal. And sww attracts a lot of interest and decent test scores with one principal for pk3-12 across two campuses. Would the ms families with a right to sww want to switch to a shaw ms with its own principal?

[Anonymous]

Abolish all middle schools, outdated concept just get going and move on to high school. Separate out at the higher levels as students with college prep and college classes.

[Anonymous]

Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

Marie Reed --> CHEC makes sense bc of the dual language program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

Um, you just stated yourself geography has nothing to do with it since you'd send your kid across town for a private or charter. A little honesty would help.

[Anonymous]

Hundreds of 6th (and 5th) graders commute across town via public transit every day. You prep them for it, and they learn the route.

It seems unfathomable when they are in 2nd grade but they can handle it and most relish the freedom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

You need to get over the location is too far. There are plenty of elementary schools/neighborhoods that are much farther away from their destination middle school. DCPS doesn't want to hear that from you. If you don't like Cardozo because of scores, principal, etc then stick with that. But saying you aren't sending your 6th grader by herself to a school in an "unfamiliar part of town" is not a strong argument.

[Anonymous]

Honestly this discussion is exactly what is wrong with DCPS. "Just do nothing because nothing will work or be fixed. Just sacrifice like every one else for shitty schools and commutes." You all deserve this crap system and the people who run it. Thankfully I highly doubt you'll be at this meeting or engage in this issue beyond anonymous poo pooing on an internet board, so really doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

Um, you just stated yourself geography has nothing to do with it since you'd send your kid across town for a private or charter. A little honesty would help.

NP. I get what this poster is trying to say. If a nearby middle school is gone, then the value that you give to not shlepping your kids no longer weighs in your school choices. So other factors start to gain more weight, like school reputation, % of kids doing well, charter v's public. This is a weighting that many of us do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Neighborhood parent, can we get one thing straight please? Cardozo is NOT close for a huge sector of the zone- Ross and Seaton neighborhoods especially. Marie Reed is much closer, yet goes up to Col Heights- that makes no sense. It's one thing to have high schoolers commute up there- they can handle the trip solo, but I'm not sending my 6th grader by herself to school in an unfamiliar part of town she never goes to. So I'm stuck commuting in the opposite direction from work. I don't count that area at all as part of the neighborhood for those of us who live around Logan, or even more so Dupont. So if this is truly meant to be a lasting decision, then re-zoning has to happen. But we all know it won't. So again, neighborhood parents start to consider charters or private because hell, if we're already shlepping our kids across town, might as well be for a better school. SO STOP CALLING IT "A VIABLE OPTION."

Um, you just stated yourself geography has nothing to do with it since you'd send your kid across town for a private or charter. A little honesty would help.

It's 1.1 miles from Seaton to Cardozo and 0.9 miles from Logan Circle to Cardozo. If a kid doesn't want to walk that far, taking the bus or going one stop on the metro will reduce it. Not everyone's going to have a middle school within a five-block radius...and if they did the schools would be tiny and wouldn't be able to offer differentiated classes or sports teams and then you'd complain about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Abolish all middle schools, outdated concept just get going and move on to high school. Separate out at the higher levels as students with college prep and college classes.

I do think this makes perfect sense. Many country's only have elementary grade 1-7, then high school 8-12.

Not sure how the huge investment in early childhood that DC is into would work, but why not?

DCPS is of the belief that this is not a popular design, otherwise people would be loving to the "education campuses" like Cardozo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wasn't the middle school at Cardozo supposed to be a temporary thing ?

YES

Is that written down somewhere?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Abolish all middle schools, outdated concept just get going and move on to high school. Separate out at the higher levels as students with college prep and college classes.

I do think this makes perfect sense. Many country's only have elementary grade 1-7, then high school 8-12.

Not sure how the huge investment in early childhood that DC is into would work, but why not?

DCPS is of the belief that this is not a popular design, otherwise people would be loving to the "education campuses" like Cardozo.

Michelle Rhee tried to implement this with an expansion of the EC concept --- and now DCPS is moving the other direction. At this point I don't think another switch is helpful

[Anonymous]

A few points to consider here:

-Co-locating a middle and high school shouldn't be a deal-breaker. While they do share a building, the students are kept apart from each other in a variety of ways (e.g., schedules, classrooms on different floors, uniforms, etc.). DC already has combined MS/HS at CHEC and some charters. Others have said they are willing to consider a combined Banneker middle/high school, so why not for Cardozo? Many middle schools are already right next to high schools anyway, so it's not like you can ever completely separate kids anyway (e.g., Eastern/Eliot-Hine, Wilson/Deal, Woodson/Kelly Miller).

-Cardozo middle school is not the same as Cardozo high school. It's hard to tell from much of the data that's reported, but the middle school grades are the best performing in the school. Already. Without strong feeders from the neighborhood elementary schools. As previous posters have pointed out, providing more economic and racial integration to the school will be likely to positively influence outcomes for all students, while creating the kind of school that many profess to want and value about schools like Seaton (i.e., diverse). Since funding is based on number of students, increasing the enrollment would lead to more economies of scale there to improve the programming.

-If AP turnover at the Cardozo middle school is a problem, then use this energy to lobby DCPS to hire a full principal for the middle school that already exists. There is precedent for two schools in the same building with each having their own principal (e.g., Ballou and Ballou STAY, Roosevelt and Roosevelt STAY), so it wouldn't be unprecedented. It would also be a hell of a lot cheaper than renovating a new building and it wouldn't anger all the people who are excited about expanding Banneker to more students (e.g., the Mayor, the DCPS Chancellor, etc.).

It just seems like going up against the juggernaut that is an already approved plan to move forward with renovating Banneker is such an uphill battle when there's an easier solution that would work just fine as well.