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Anonymous
Watkins has over 100 fewer students than Maury. It was designed to take the feed in from Peabody. Peabody has 4 K classes, so Watkins has 4 1st grade classes. It’s not weirdly bigger than other schools. DME is also planning to shrink Watkins SE boundary and expand its boundary near Brent, so if high SES is your interest, DME is working in your interest. |
Anonymous
I don’t understand how Maury parents say they put in the work? Were they active in the school community before their children started? Have most of tbe families had kids at the school for 10 years? What’s the “work” these posters speak of? Why can’t it be replicated wherever your kid goes? From what I see, owning on the hill since 2009, is that a lot of the success of Maury is because the neighborhood became more gentrified…. |
Anonymous
Maybe. Brent has just 6% at risk and isn't being forced to cluster, but that's because none of the schools around Brent are struggling as much as Miner. I actually think the DME has created a narrow enough set of parameters for this action that it doesn't feel like something likely to happen at our school, assuming we can ever succeed in getting the IB buy in we need to improve. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. |
Anonymous
The Maury parents who were active at the school prior and during the renovation really did put in the work. They did a great job building a school community that was positive and proactive, and that led to an involved PTO when the renovation happened, which resulted in a great school, plus Maury was able to retain IB buy in during the relocation phase, which can be challenging. Hill East used to be considerably less affluent so many of the families who did that work were just middle class families with a passion for public education and neighborhood schools. They really did put in the work. Many of the people now IB for Maury simply had the cash to afford it and the know-how to evaluate schools (though truthfully, you don't need to be a genius to look up test scores and at risk percentages for Hill elementaries and conclude that Maury is a desirable school). This is not a knock on them -- nothing wrong with doing this. But some of the "put in the work" complaints from Maury families angry about this proposal are disingenuous. They didn't do anything but write a check and then choose to send their kid to the already well regarded inbound school in the nice facility. |
Anonymous
+1, the DME's plan seems to be to, quite literally, spread the wealth around on the Hill. As someone who can't afford to buy IB for Maury/LT/Brent and hasn't had lottery luck, this doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world to me. Especially because we're middle class -- not at risk or anything close to it, but not wealthy. On the Hill, this leaves us at a school with a very high at risk percentage, but we don't have the same resources as a wealthy family who might be able to pay for tons of enrichment and programming to make up for the fact that our school is most focused on remedial programs our kid doesn't benefit from. From where I sit, the imbalance of high and low SES families on the Hill is a problem, and I seem to be in line with the DME that we need to address it. |
Anonymous
There are not enough high-income families to do this in DCPS. It’s not a plan at ALL. And in fact I actually do not think all a school needs is “more higher income families.” I think if it’s say a 70-30 split it’s more likely that the needs of the high-risk kids will be sidelined and they will be grouped together in the remedial classes and reading groups, with extreme test score gaps within the school. People who believe UMC families are magic need to get a little more specific. PTA bakesales are nice but they actually do not provide all the support in behavior and academics that at-risk kids need. If anything (and I say this from first had experience) “active” parents in a high SES school gang up on “problem” kids to get them disciplined more harshly. |
Anonymous
Yes the work was done a while ago. Miner parents should reach out to the oldsters to find out. The first place to start is getting a new principal who takes recruiting IB families as a goal. Connecting with former Maury families who are currently “doing the work” at EH could also be good. And look up what was done at Deal and Hardy to increase IB attendance- I believe that the admins literally went door-to-door in the neighborhood. |
Anonymous
Perhaps there are very few of the parents who “put in the work” remaining at Maury. But these parents did put in a tremendous amount to work to benefit their kids, their neighbors’ kids, and frankly their property values going forward. Gentrification of the Maury boundary was absolutely driven by the quality of the school, and not the other way around. But because they happened at around the same time, with one factor reinforcing the other, raw data aren’t going to show this. You need to remember the history. Policymakers would be wise to recognize this before deciding that spreading kids around is a solution. |
Anonymous
Brent and Tyler are a very natural cluster or choice set. Hill families prioritize language so a lot of Brent families would take Tyler. The DME criteria excluding Brent-Tyler was clearly reverse-engineered to exclude them. |
Anonymous
In a world where DCPS actually viewed grade-level instruction as a priority, you wouldn’t have to use tutors to keep your kid up to speed, or there would be gifted programs for your kid. Meanwhile TBH the path of MC families like yours is to move out of DC, not to hope that DCPS breaks up higher income schools. What do you think MC families have been doing for generations? Moving. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Never forget:
- First of all, in the eyes of many DC officials, this is not "your" city. You are merely tolerated for a while because you are useful. - You must keep paying ever higher taxes to atone for your systemic sins, while also having to endure ever more brazen levels of crime, vagrancy and intentionally degraded schools. This is basically city-imposed karma for all your unearned privilege. - Yes, you were profitable to the DC treasury when you were still a single idealistic employee making a high salary. This is why DC handed out cheap trinkets to lure you here in the first place, like bike lanes and scooters that don't really cost much but make you feel cool. - But now that you have a family of your own, you are no longer profitable to the city. And at council meetings you have become a constant nuisance because you started asking questions about the quality of schools or why violent crime is celebrated as part of vibrant city life. That is seriously annoying to DC officials who just want to collect a salary in peace without actually doing anything. - So DC will do what they can to get you to gradually give up and move to the suburbs, so that the next generation of young idealistic taxpayers can take your place. But at least you got to feel really cool riding the DC streetcar on that first date with the other nerd you ended up marrying! |
Anonymous
I really disagree, primarily because Tyler is already doing well. Isn't one of the suggestions for Miner to introduce something like language immersion to attract more IB families? Tyler's IB percentages is still low but it does attract higher SES families from both in and OOB who want immersion, and its at risk percentage is a much more manageable level (40% versus Miner's 65%). I also don't understand how a cluster between an immersion school and a non-immersion school would work. You'd have to introduce a brand new immersion program to one of the schools. In fact, I think that would be the primary objection to a proposed cluster, not a reason Brent would be more interested in combining. It's fine to argue against the Maury/Miner cluster but claims like this just don't make sense. Brent/Tyler does not make sense as a cluster at all, no one had to "reverse-engineer" anything to reject it. |
Anonymous
Deal and Hardy have an extremely affluent inbound that has only become more affluent as the years have progressed-plus they feed into Wilson/Jackson-Reed! My mother in law sent her kids to Hardy-including my husband! It was a good school then! The point is that there is a direct correlation between affluent families moving to the area and school improvement. The way the boundary lines are drawn for Miner, it is not possible. I am happy to connect with Maury parents “doing the work” and I invite every poster on this thread to come visit Miner and see what’s going on there yourself. |
Anonymous
(1) You sound crazy (2) I had other comments but never mind, see #1 |