School Within a School

[Anonymous]

SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

[Anonymous]

SWS has a very clubby feel. Some would say cult-y. I learned early on as a parent never to question their methods because it would lead only to frustration. At least in the past, the administration had a tight group of parents it could count on the circle the wagons when questions were raised.

That said, there are families who seem extremely happy there, and I take them at their word, even though that was not our experience.

If you went to an open house and were turned off, the same things will probably bother you if you enroll. And they won’t change. If you loved what you saw at the open house then you will probably love the school.

The academics are not particularly strong given the demographics of the school. For our family, we would sacrifice academic quality only for a school culture that made up for that loss. SWS wasn’t it for us. (For reference, we are a pretty typical-for-dc white UMC dual-career family and our kids are pretty smart and resilient, and don’t have any special needs).

[Anonymous]

Former SWS parent of 2 - I would like to push back on the idea that the academics aren't strong.

If by academics you mean homework and testing, then you are right. SWS is much more project based, with a lot of art and nature/science thrown in without the kids noticing too much! Over the years, SWS grads have gone on to be top performers at their more "traditional" middle and high schools (Stuart Hobson to Walls, Latin, BASIS and various privates).

My personal experience is that the math curriculum, which was VERY different from what I had when I was a child, teaches the students WHY and HOW math works and gives them a very strong foundation. It has served my DCs well in Algebra, Trig, Calculus. Much better than my math education.

The school encourages and promotes a love of reading and storytelling.

Now the foreign language component is laughable, but if you really care about elementary foreign language instruction, you would be better off at Mundo or Stokes or Yu Ying or the like.

I don't understand why POC are so turned off by the school but it does seem like parents self-segregate at the elementary level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

This is absolutely true, plus 5th grade is half the size of 4th enrollment. The number of upper ES kids connected to Peabody/Cluster boundary is small. Those families have mostly aged out. The younger grades are far more diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

+1 POC family here and we’re very happy with the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

This is absolutely true, plus 5th grade is half the size of 4th enrollment. The number of upper ES kids connected to Peabody/Cluster boundary is small. Those families have mostly aged out. The younger grades are far more diverse.

This feels contradictory. If it is only the 4th and 5th grades that retain the Peabody preference siblings (and thus, by your logic, tend to be whiter), and the 5th grade class is small, why is the school still 60% white? If PK3-3rd is diverse, this would be reflected in the numbers, right?

I'm the PP who originally brought this up and this conversation is why I say no one has ever sufficiently explained this to me. The Peabody connection really cannot explain on its own why the school has remained so white. I think blaming it on Peabody and sibling preference at this point sort of proves why this is an issue -- if 10 years on, the school is still so predominantly white, that it really looks like the community has not tried that hard to diversify. It also raises the question as to why this weird DCPS school (remember SWS is not a charter) exists to essentially serve a small, affluent, white community. Particularly when so few SWS students go on to Stuart Hobson.

It just gives me an unpleasant impression. I'm sure everyone there is well meaning, but this seems bad.

[Anonymous]

Isn’t this the school Charles Allen’s kids go to? Amazing the council member got a spot at such a coveted school…

[Anonymous]

To the PP that said Brent is the only white school in addition to Peabody, Maury is definitely well over 60 percent white.

[Anonymous]

No, Charles Allen’s kids do not attend.

For many political reasons, DCPS does not care what SWS does. Pros and cons to that.

The legacy white thing based on the school’s history is real. I wasn’t there and can’t speak to whether the racial divide was intentional, but it certainly was the result. My kids are much older now but when we joined the administration was very vocal about preferring families with a stay at home parent because the school, at least at the time, depended heavily on parent volunteers and made it very very difficult for working moms. Not overtly racial, but not low-income friendly for sure.

That said, I agree with others who have commented that a lot of this has changed over the years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the PP that said Brent is the only white school in addition to Peabody, Maury is definitely well over 60 percent white.

Yeah, and looking back at my kids’ class photos from SWS (they’re now in high school/middle school), I’m confirmed in my remembering that SWS was definitely not 60 percent white in the earliest days at Goding. Try 80-90 percent. It sounds to me like the school is actually improving in that regard.

The whiteness of the school always bothered me when our kids were there. We were among the very few that didn’t have Peabody preference—we’d lotteried in completely by chance.. But it was a good experience for the kids, and all these years later my kids are still close to their SWS friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

This is absolutely true, plus 5th grade is half the size of 4th enrollment. The number of upper ES kids connected to Peabody/Cluster boundary is small. Those families have mostly aged out. The younger grades are far more diverse.

This feels contradictory. If it is only the 4th and 5th grades that retain the Peabody preference siblings (and thus, by your logic, tend to be whiter), and the 5th grade class is small, why is the school still 60% white? If PK3-3rd is diverse, this would be reflected in the numbers, right?

I'm the PP who originally brought this up and this conversation is why I say no one has ever sufficiently explained this to me. The Peabody connection really cannot explain on its own why the school has remained so white. I think blaming it on Peabody and sibling preference at this point sort of proves why this is an issue -- if 10 years on, the school is still so predominantly white, that it really looks like the community has not tried that hard to diversify. It also raises the question as to why this weird DCPS school (remember SWS is not a charter) exists to essentially serve a small, affluent, white community. Particularly when so few SWS students go on to Stuart Hobson.

It just gives me an unpleasant impression. I'm sure everyone there is well meaning, but this seems bad.

It's really not that big a mystery. DC's black child population is 56%, so based on that alone, the school isn't that far off from the population citywide. The neighborhoods surrounding and accessible to SWS have a much higher population of white children than the city overall, so that's one factor. SWS's location is not particularly metro accessible, and there are a ton of charters in the surrounding wards, so people have a lot of more accessible options, with a lot longer runway than SWS, which doesn't have a great middle school feed. Plus the 4th and 5th grade have legacy inbound preference. All of those combined result in the school's demographics, which as stated above, are a lot more diverse in the lower grades.

Your ignorance of the school is really showing given that you think there's some vast racist conspiracy going on. SWS leans hard into diversity, equity and inclusion.

[Anonymous]

You can’t expect the sun, the moon and the stars from any DCPS school academically, OP. Writing instruction tends to particularly weak. We’re not at SWS but share a writing tutor with a 5th grade family at SWS. There just isn’t much emphasis on teaching spelling, grammar and usage in this school system, along with insufficient practice at school. Not a huge deal but we couldn’t make another Hill DCPS program work through the upper grades without supplementing significantly at some cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, Charles Allen’s kids do not attend.

For many political reasons, DCPS does not care what SWS does. Pros and cons to that.

The legacy white thing based on the school’s history is real. I wasn’t there and can’t speak to whether the racial divide was intentional, but it certainly was the result. My kids are much older now but when we joined the administration was very vocal about preferring families with a stay at home parent because the school, at least at the time, depended heavily on parent volunteers and made it very very difficult for working moms. Not overtly racial, but not low-income friendly for sure.

That said, I agree with others who have commented that a lot of this has changed over the years.

I’m sure Chuck sends his kids somewhere else that’s pretty fancy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity.

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference. 3rd and below looks a lot different. The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

This is absolutely true, plus 5th grade is half the size of 4th enrollment. The number of upper ES kids connected to Peabody/Cluster boundary is small. Those families have mostly aged out. The younger grades are far more diverse.

This feels contradictory. If it is only the 4th and 5th grades that retain the Peabody preference siblings (and thus, by your logic, tend to be whiter), and the 5th grade class is small, why is the school still 60% white? If PK3-3rd is diverse, this would be reflected in the numbers, right?

I'm the PP who originally brought this up and this conversation is why I say no one has ever sufficiently explained this to me. The Peabody connection really cannot explain on its own why the school has remained so white. I think blaming it on Peabody and sibling preference at this point sort of proves why this is an issue -- if 10 years on, the school is still so predominantly white, that it really looks like the community has not tried that hard to diversify. It also raises the question as to why this weird DCPS school (remember SWS is not a charter) exists to essentially serve a small, affluent, white community. Particularly when so few SWS students go on to Stuart Hobson.

It just gives me an unpleasant impression. I'm sure everyone there is well meaning, but this seems bad.

It's really not that big a mystery. DC's black child population is 56%, so based on that alone, the school isn't that far off from the population citywide. The neighborhoods surrounding and accessible to SWS have a much higher population of white children than the city overall, so that's one factor. SWS's location is not particularly metro accessible, and there are a ton of charters in the surrounding wards, so people have a lot of more accessible options, with a lot longer runway than SWS, which doesn't have a great middle school feed. Plus the 4th and 5th grade have legacy inbound preference. All of those combined result in the school's demographics, which as stated above, are a lot more diverse in the lower grades.

Your ignorance of the school is really showing given that you think there's some vast racist conspiracy going on. SWS leans hard into diversity, equity and inclusion.

It is surprising for a school with no IB preference given the demographics of nearby elementariness like Ludlow-Taylor, JO Wilson, Miner, Payne, Tyler, etc. The demographics of the neighborhood explain the populations at Peabody, Brent, and Maury. But the Hill itself, and adjoining neighborhoods, is still very diverse. There is no obvious reason to me why more families from these other schools, including the many, many, POC families there, would not be putting SWS on their lottery list. Look at the demographics at Capital Hill Montessori at Logan and Two Rivers. SWS is an outlier for this kind of school in this neighborhood.

It's interesting to hear that it was as much as 80-90% white when the school started. I'm glad they've gotten more diverse with time but wow -- how that must have looked (and felt) when they created SWS. I now understand some of the racial politics at the Hill Cluster school a little better. We have friends there and some of the drama in the last few years has been weird to me based on my own DCPS experience. But no wonder there is so much tension. Basically a bunch of white families got together and created a special little school for themselves. I cannot even imagine.