Ludlow-Taylor getting a new a new Principal

[Anonymous]

Whatever. The white in-boundary parents I know don't avoid L-T, or bail on it after Prek, because they assume that all black kids in DC public schools are an "obstacle" to their children's academic progress. They interact with black professionals as a matter of course, without making a thing of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not as simple as "white vs. black." It's more "white culture" vs. "black culture." In addition to the culture class, there is an economic class that breeds a lot of resentment. This resentment comes from both 1) entitled white people who want to attend their school of right and make it a high-SES and tier 1 (like the other gentrified schools in nearby communities) and 2) disenfranchised black people who have deep ties to the school community and feel the heat coming from white people who clearly want them out. The principal was in group 2 and was very defensive about it, which group 1 used to further their cause.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people in the middle (lie myself) that don't fit either stereotype who are frustrated by the race discussion and just want everyone to focus on educating our kids.

"White culture vs Black culture"? What is this 1955? In the age where we have a African-American President & a First Lady who are both Ivy League educated with Law degrees, it's interesting how some people still want to look at white people as being entitled, higher SES type people, and black people as "disenfranchised".

It's also interesting how on this thread people are genuinely expressing there desire for more white kids at this school, when I think what people really want is more kids at the school that come from higher SES. If not, then would the people on this thread, who claim to want more white families at the school, welcome a more white kids from families like "Honey Boo Boo"? I think not. Alternatively, what if the school was majority black, but the black kids came from families like the Obamas (Ivy league educated lawyers)? Would this not be Ok?

In my opinion, if you want higher SES families at your school, then just say that. Don't say "Black", "White", "Latino", "Asian", etc.

BTW, I'm an African-American currently doing my master's at Johns Hopkins Univ and my wife is an African-American with a master's from George Washington University, we have two kids, and hopefully we won't be looked down upon if we decide to enroll our kids at Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School.

Another high SES AA here. I also wondered about my child being judged negatively in Cap Hill schools after reading comments on this forum.

Don't be naive. It doesn't matter how many degrees you have or your HHI, some of these people will see your DC and immediately think another "obstacle"

Undiluted horseshit. Go play the race card somewhere else.

Anyone who uses the term race card gets an immediate side eye

[Anonymous]

Again. Comments like this really don't build community. But apparently, you're not interested in building a unified community. I'm going to have to call this one the way it sounds...you just want the black families out. But here's a newsflash for you--many of those little black children are IB for LT, and they aren't going anywhere. I know newcomers think that every black person they see at their school is sneaking in here from PG county, but that is an urban myth. It happens, but not on a level anywhere near DCUMers believe it does. When it does, it's a case of separation or divorce. Moreover, there aren't a whole lot of PG county residents who are sneaking into DC schools to attend LT. No offense, but I can name two dozen other schools (including charters) that they would go to before they would ever think of LT. .

Some good points above but even more counterproductive palaver. On my little street alone, near Ludlow, there are half a dozen grandmothers who've been passing off their grandchildren, now in the upper grades, as IB kids since preschool without fear.

With more and more of the elderly people in the neighborhood, almost all of whom arrived in the 60s, leaving for nursing and retirement homes, and passing away, rampant address cheating is dying a death of attrition. There were at least twice as many families on the street playing the game at L-T five years ago. Brent isn't a Ward 3 school either, but it's FARMs rate has dropped from 3/4 to under 10% in just over a decade. Maury just shed its Title 1 status, with its FARMs rate halving in five years.

Demographers estimate that at least two-thirds of the children under age 5 in the L-T catchment area are white and high SES. The rest are a mix of races and classes. . .

PPs sound horrified by the prospect of neighborhood families, who are mostly white, collectively embracing the school and staying through the upper grades, causing L-T to become majority high SES. This is being on the wrong side of history, like the states fighting gay marriage. Demographic sea change has already arrived, with a flood of affluent families choosing to raise their kids in the L-T District

.


I know that the few children now living on my IB block are all white or mixed race and the 2 children who are AA are "living" with their grandparents and are not around on the weekend because they are picked up by adults with MD plates on Friday night. I do not report them because I figure their grandparents will sell/move and we will still live here. I also am not so super liberal that I did not send my children to LT years ago because I did not trust the school and did not want them to be the only non-AA children in their grade. I think that the population boom on the Hill is going to fill LT with IB children, but don't pretend that it will remain majority AA if it does.

Someone earlier in the thread said that we shouldn't act like we are in Ward 3 with only IB populated schools -- why not?!? I think Ward 6 and non-NW DC in general should have higher expectations. Doesn't mean that we need to be lily-white or only the 1%, but we need to stopped being pushed around by people from outside our Ward that want to use us as their experiment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. The white in-boundary parents I know don't avoid L-T, or bail on it after Prek, because they assume that all black kids in DC public schools are an "obstacle" to their children's academic progress. They interact with black professionals as a matter of course, without making a thing of it.

Kids don't walk around carrying their parents' resumes with an acceptable address in the header.

If there's an assumption made about black kids at the school, a black parent has reason to be concerned that their child will be treated differently. White parents may have gotten that feeling from their interactions with the former principal. That's the slippery slope of assumptions on the treacherous field of race/class issues.

This is a mostly anonymous forum where people express feelings they wouldn't say out loud. I wouldn't assume that every white parent believes every black student is a problem for the school they attend. But it's unsettling, to say the least, to read over and over in this and other threads that it's black kids who are hindering progress and everything will be better if we could replace them with white kids. More than that, it's disturbing to read that parents holding that assumption also believe that a white principal will allow them to "call the shots" and "turn" the school by diminishing the percentage of black kids.

You can cloak it by rolling out your rolodex of black associates, or by saying you're simply concerned about advanced curriculum offerings, or preserving the school for the neighborhood only. But it is what it is, and everyone knows what it is.

I wouldn't even say it's racism, because I don't believe that to be so (in most cases), but it IS poor and lazy reasoning about what makes school quality, it's pernicious, and it's extremely damaging. The fact that so many can't see it as damaging makes it even moreso.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Again. Comments like this really don't build community. But apparently, you're not interested in building a unified community. I'm going to have to call this one the way it sounds...you just want the black families out. But here's a newsflash for you--many of those little black children are IB for LT, and they aren't going anywhere. I know newcomers think that every black person they see at their school is sneaking in here from PG county, but that is an urban myth. It happens, but not on a level anywhere near DCUMers believe it does. When it does, it's a case of separation or divorce. Moreover, there aren't a whole lot of PG county residents who are sneaking into DC schools to attend LT. No offense, but I can name two dozen other schools (including charters) that they would go to before they would ever think of LT. .

Some good points above but even more counterproductive palaver. On my little street alone, near Ludlow, there are half a dozen grandmothers who've been passing off their grandchildren, now in the upper grades, as IB kids since preschool without fear.

With more and more of the elderly people in the neighborhood, almost all of whom arrived in the 60s, leaving for nursing and retirement homes, and passing away, rampant address cheating is dying a death of attrition. There were at least twice as many families on the street playing the game at L-T five years ago. Brent isn't a Ward 3 school either, but it's FARMs rate has dropped from 3/4 to under 10% in just over a decade. Maury just shed its Title 1 status, with its FARMs rate halving in five years.

Demographers estimate that at least two-thirds of the children under age 5 in the L-T catchment area are white and high SES. The rest are a mix of races and classes. . .

PPs sound horrified by the prospect of neighborhood families, who are mostly white, collectively embracing the school and staying through the upper grades, causing L-T to become majority high SES. This is being on the wrong side of history, like the states fighting gay marriage. Demographic sea change has already arrived, with a flood of affluent families choosing to raise their kids in the L-T District

.

I know that the few children now living on my IB block are all white or mixed race and the 2 children who are AA are "living" with their grandparents and are not around on the weekend because they are picked up by adults with MD plates on Friday night. I do not report them because I figure their grandparents will sell/move and we will still live here. I also am not so super liberal that I did not send my children to LT years ago because I did not trust the school and did not want them to be the only non-AA children in their grade. I think that the population boom on the Hill is going to fill LT with IB children, but don't pretend that it will remain majority AA if it does.

Someone earlier in the thread said that we shouldn't act like we are in Ward 3 with only IB populated schools -- why not?!? I think Ward 6 and non-NW DC in general should have higher expectations. Doesn't mean that we need to be lily-white or only the 1%, but we need to stopped being pushed around by people from outside our Ward that want to use us as their experiment.

Did it ever occur to you that the children that you witness leaving in a MD car on the weekend are children of divorce, separation or perhaps even a deceased parent where the grandmother has custody and the other side of the family takes them on the weekend? Aside from that you are truly nosey to be in their business that way.

Second, I said if you are trying to emulate Ward 3 schools, the LAST thing you want to take from them is the IB/OOB distinction where kids are made to feel less than because they don't live in the immediate community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I know that the few children now living on my IB block are all white or mixed race and the 2 children who are AA are "living" with their grandparents and are not around on the weekend because they are picked up by adults with MD plates on Friday night. I do not report them because I figure their grandparents will sell/move and we will still live here. I also am not so super liberal that I did not send my children to LT years ago because I did not trust the school and did not want them to be the only non-AA children in their grade. I think that the population boom on the Hill is going to fill LT with IB children, but don't pretend that it will remain majority AA if it does.

Someone earlier in the thread said that we shouldn't act like we are in Ward 3 with only IB populated schools -- why not?!? I think Ward 6 and non-NW DC in general should have higher expectations. Doesn't mean that we need to be lily-white or only the 1%, but we need to stopped being pushed around by people from outside our Ward that want to use us as their experiment.

+1000. We also need to stop being pushed around by people from outside our elementary school district.

[Anonymous]

I'm not being "nosey", just observant since most kids in the neighborhood are more visible on the weekend instead of less. And you can stop the divorce/deceased/whatever trope, because that's not what it is -- it's called young single mothers leaving their children in the city with their parents (to go to the same schools they did when they were young), and then having the child live with them on the weekends.

Maybe the grandparents have official custody, who knows who claims whom on their taxes, etc., but this is what happens on the Hill and bothers the people who buy their homes, live in them with their children, and don't feel like they can really be part of their IB school without being called "gentrifiers" in a derisive way.

Again, I'm not reporting them, but it's hard to ignore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. The white in-boundary parents I know don't avoid L-T, or bail on it after Prek, because they assume that all black kids in DC public schools are an "obstacle" to their children's academic progress. They interact with black professionals as a matter of course, without making a thing of it.

Kids don't walk around carrying their parents' resumes with an acceptable address in the header.

If there's an assumption made about black kids at the school, a black parent has reason to be concerned that their child will be treated differently. White parents may have gotten that feeling from their interactions with the former principal. That's the slippery slope of assumptions on the treacherous field of race/class issues.

This is a mostly anonymous forum where people express feelings they wouldn't say out loud. I wouldn't assume that every white parent believes every black student is a problem for the school they attend. But it's unsettling, to say the least, to read over and over in this and other threads that it's black kids who are hindering progress and everything will be better if we could replace them with white kids. More than that, it's disturbing to read that parents holding that assumption also believe that a white principal will allow them to "call the shots" and "turn" the school by diminishing the percentage of black kids.

You can cloak it by rolling out your rolodex of black associates, or by saying you're simply concerned about advanced curriculum offerings, or preserving the school for the neighborhood only. But it is what it is, and everyone knows what it is.

I wouldn't even say it's racism, because I don't believe that to be so (in most cases), but it IS poor and lazy reasoning about what makes school quality, it's pernicious, and it's extremely damaging. The fact that so many can't see it as damaging makes it even moreso.

Oh grow up, the poor and lazy reasoning comes from DCPS in pretending that differentiation within the classroom by excellent teachers is all that's needed to market L-T, and dozens of other minimally integrated schools like it around the city, to most in-boundary high SES families. They won't budge from this policy stance, even as DC welcomes hordes of high SES families year after year.

When Maury got a group of in-boundary kids, mostly white and high SES, to a testing grade this past school year, for the first time reading scores jumped 29 points (without allegations of cheating, since the reason for the score hike was as plain as day). If L-T offered a test-in GT program or at least paid for serious pullout instruction from grade 1 (with DCPS funding since the L-T PTA can't afford to hire staff yet, unlike at Maury and Brent), school quality wouldn't be the issue. Everybody knows what it is: lack of taking the achievement gap bull by the horns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not being "nosey", just observant since most kids in the neighborhood are more visible on the weekend instead of less. And you can stop the divorce/deceased/whatever trope, because that's not what it is -- it's called young single mothers leaving their children in the city with their parents (to go to the same schools they did when they were young), and then having the child live with them on the weekends.

Maybe the grandparents have official custody, who knows who claims whom on their taxes, etc., but this is what happens on the Hill and bothers the people who buy their homes, live in them with their children, and don't feel like they can really be part of their IB school without being called "gentrifiers" in a derisive way.

Again, I'm not reporting them, but it's hard to ignore.

Exactly, but not just young single mothers. Also the parents of the drugged-out, incarcerated and generally under-employed and dysfunctional if the experience of our block is in any way representative. The in-boundary grandparents and great-grandparents almost never have official custody, or rent or own jointly with the "lost generation" of parents - they don't need to bother to get custody, not with DCPS happy to let them furnish their offspring with in-boundary addresses for schools. Maury has cracked down on the practice and L-T should follow suit.

No point in reporting them when there's no chance in hell that DCPS will tangle with the elderly folk, who vote in droves coming off church buses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not being "nosey", just observant since most kids in the neighborhood are more visible on the weekend instead of less. And you can stop the divorce/deceased/whatever trope, because that's not what it is -- it's called young single mothers leaving their children in the city with their parents (to go to the same schools they did when they were young), and then having the child live with them on the weekends.

Maybe the grandparents have official custody, who knows who claims whom on their taxes, etc., but this is what happens on the Hill and bothers the people who buy their homes, live in them with their children, and don't feel like they can really be part of their IB school without being called "gentrifiers" in a derisive way.

Again, I'm not reporting them, but it's hard to ignore.

Exactly, but not just young single mothers. Also the parents of the drugged-out, incarcerated and generally under-employed and dysfunctional if the experience of our block is in any way representative. The in-boundary grandparents and great-grandparents almost never have official custody, or rent or own jointly with the "lost generation" of parents - they don't need to bother to get custody, not with DCPS happy to let them furnish their offspring with in-boundary addresses for schools. Maury has cracked down on the practice and L-T should follow suit.

+100
No point in reporting them when there's no chance in hell that DCPS will tangle with the elderly folk, who vote in droves coming off church buses.

[Anonymous]

I know that the few children now living on my IB block are all white or mixed race and the 2 children who are AA are "living" with their grandparents and are not around on the weekend because they are picked up by adults with MD plates on Friday night. I do not report them because I figure their grandparents will sell/move and we will still live here. I also am not so super liberal that I did not send my children to LT years ago because I did not trust the school and did not want them to be the only non-AA children in their grade. I think that the population boom on the Hill is going to fill LT with IB children, but don't pretend that it will remain majority AA if it does.

Someone earlier in the thread said that we shouldn't act like we are in Ward 3 with only IB populated schools -- why not?!? I think Ward 6 and non-NW DC in general should have higher expectations. Doesn't mean that we need to be lily-white or only the 1%, but we need to stopped being pushed around by people from outside our Ward that want to use us as their experiment.

You know, I can think of all sorts of reasons why grandparents would legitimately be taking care of their grandkids on a regular basis. Maybe they're keeping that kid out of foster care. Maybe the kid has a single parent who can't afford a babysitter. Maybe the parent works odd hours or has a long commute.

You have no idea what's going on with other families, except that they decided that L-T is the best option for their kid. Not having a six-figure salary in a two-parent household doesn't preclude whatever means necessary to ensure their well-being, which may center on the simple continuity of a safe, familiar and predictable school day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread serves as a fine reminder of why we lotteried into Maury, without the stress of wondering how many years we could last at L-T as a high SES, mixed-race, in-boundary family with few kumbaya leanings. L-T seems to serve a small number of granola crunchie high SES neighbors, a dwindling group of low SES neighbors, and a profoundly, and weirdly, entitled OOB population.

this sounds intriguing. Tell me more.

It's a truth universally acknowledged in the L-T District among "old timers" like us (a decade in the neighborhood) that the more hippie/granola/kumbaya you are as a high SES parent, the more likely you are to stick around L-T past K. Few can stand it - the moral and PC demands are too high. At Maury, Brent, SWS, Cap Hill Montessori and Tyler Spanish Immersion, seeking a decent elementary school education is enough. At L-T, you need to turn a blind eye to rampant address cheating and being part of a school community that looks very little like the one on your block in the name of unity. You're either with the PTA parents or against them and it's a drag.

I am an empty nester who currently lives in NoVa, and am interested in buying in DC. I would love to flee boring suburbanites, but hardly want to go to a place in DC filled with equally obnoxious if less auto obsessed bourgeois. Petworth is not well located for my work, and Anacostia is still a bridge too far. I never thought of the Hill as crunch granola, but if there are really folks like that there, I might try to find something there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. The white in-boundary parents I know don't avoid L-T, or bail on it after Prek, because they assume that all black kids in DC public schools are an "obstacle" to their children's academic progress. They interact with black professionals as a matter of course, without making a thing of it.

Kids don't walk around carrying their parents' resumes with an acceptable address in the header.

If there's an assumption made about black kids at the school, a black parent has reason to be concerned that their child will be treated differently. White parents may have gotten that feeling from their interactions with the former principal. That's the slippery slope of assumptions on the treacherous field of race/class issues.

This is a mostly anonymous forum where people express feelings they wouldn't say out loud. I wouldn't assume that every white parent believes every black student is a problem for the school they attend. But it's unsettling, to say the least, to read over and over in this and other threads that it's black kids who are hindering progress and everything will be better if we could replace them with white kids. More than that, it's disturbing to read that parents holding that assumption also believe that a white principal will allow them to "call the shots" and "turn" the school by diminishing the percentage of black kids.

You can cloak it by rolling out your rolodex of black associates, or by saying you're simply concerned about advanced curriculum offerings, or preserving the school for the neighborhood only. But it is what it is, and everyone knows what it is.

I wouldn't even say it's racism, because I don't believe that to be so (in most cases), but it IS poor and lazy reasoning about what makes school quality, it's pernicious, and it's extremely damaging. The fact that so many can't see it as damaging makes it even moreso.

Oh grow up, the poor and lazy reasoning comes from DCPS in pretending that differentiation within the classroom by excellent teachers is all that's needed to market L-T, and dozens of other minimally integrated schools like it around the city, to most in-boundary high SES families. They won't budge from this policy stance, even as DC welcomes hordes of high SES families year after year.

When Maury got a group of in-boundary kids, mostly white and high SES, to a testing grade this past school year, for the first time reading scores jumped 29 points (without allegations of cheating, since the reason for the score hike was as plain as day). If L-T offered a test-in GT program or at least paid for serious pullout instruction from grade 1 (with DCPS funding since the L-T PTA can't afford to hire staff yet, unlike at Maury and Brent), school quality wouldn't be the issue. Everybody knows what it is: lack of taking the achievement gap bull by the horns.

I don't get what you're trying to say about the achievement gap. Is it that DCPS should stop trying to close it and just focus on raising white enrollment with GT programs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I think for many white families, it's not about SES -- it really is about color. They want a critical mass of white children so their kids won't stick out as the only white ones.

I would have been concerned about my DC being the only non-Polish Catholic kid at a school in Baltimore, even had none of them been low SES Polish kids.

I realize blacks have more experience being "the only one in the room", and may resent white's concern about being the only one in the room. But I'm not sure its fair to consider that concern to be racism.

This is insane. Why wish for a classroom where your child is comfortable and others are not? Why not wish for a truly diverse classroom made up of many different kinds of kids - a classroom that focuses on everyone feeling loved and respected?

We don't need to teach our kids to find friendship, comfort and/or safety in aligning with the same skin color. That's so 1960s, folks. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I know that the few children now living on my IB block are all white or mixed race and the 2 children who are AA are "living" with their grandparents and are not around on the weekend because they are picked up by adults with MD plates on Friday night. I do not report them because I figure their grandparents will sell/move and we will still live here. I also am not so super liberal that I did not send my children to LT years ago because I did not trust the school and did not want them to be the only non-AA children in their grade. I think that the population boom on the Hill is going to fill LT with IB children, but don't pretend that it will remain majority AA if it does.

Someone earlier in the thread said that we shouldn't act like we are in Ward 3 with only IB populated schools -- why not?!? I think Ward 6 and non-NW DC in general should have higher expectations. Doesn't mean that we need to be lily-white or only the 1%, but we need to stopped being pushed around by people from outside our Ward that want to use us as their experiment.

+1000. We also need to stop being pushed around by people from outside our elementary school district.

This is really pernicious thinking. Are you all saying that because family structures don't look exactly like yours that they are unworthy per se? It may very well be that the grandparents/GG are the main people raising this generation and it seems self-evident to them that the school closest to where the children are the most and are cared for the most, i.e., where they live, is where the kids should attend. You know, just like you, they want to go their neighborhood school. Do you make the same noise about your neighbors with weekend cabins in West Virginia or summer houses at the beach? They aren't in the neighborhood much on weekends either.