Feedback on Eaton Elementary School in Cleveland Park, NW

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the Bancroft vs. OOB debate, I'd like to point out that many of my Mt. Pleasant friends whose kids go to Eaton or Hearst or a charter live on Hobart or Irving. Those kids were in bounds for HD Cooke up until this year, so parents opted to try to lottery elsewhere. Some of those parents actually tried to send their kids to HD Cooke when it returned to the neighborhood, but found it to be unwelcoming and hostile, with a disorganized aftercare program and odd dropoff practices (PS 3 and PS 4 kids were dropped off in the gymnasium and were at risk of being trampled by the largely unsupervised 4th & 5th graders).

We are at Cooke and are very happy. Terrific principal who is turning things around. Please stop disparaging our school when you gave up on it long ago before the change in administration.

+1 I truly wish people on this board would try and remember that every school they trash is some family's school, is some teacher's school. And unless you have personal experience (preferably recent too...2-3 years ago quickly looks like ancient history in DC) these people don't usually know what their talking about. They are just blindly regurgitating rumors and assumptions. Can't you just talk about your school on its own merits and leave everyone else's out of it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

Involvement by neighbors in neighborhood institutions is what saved the area from being cut by freeways in the 70s, created historic protections in the 80s, pushed for DC government reforms in the 90s, preserved parks as conservancies in the last decade and created Cleveland Park Village for aging in place in this decade. It's a very active community that works hard to make and keep the neighborhood a good place to live.

[Anonymous]

Eaton and CP have been great for our family. The OOB families are just as involved as the IB families. It's a friendly, warm place full of happy and bright, curious kids. Both IB and OOB are diverse groups economically, professionally, racially ethnically religiously, and in terms of nationality. The IB families come from single family homes on Newark, Highland, Lowell, Macomb, Ordway, and Garfield, etc to apartments on Conn Ave and Wisconsin Ave. to homes in McLean Gardens. Current parents are professors, law firm partners, teachers, Hill staffers, lobbyists, personal trainers, journalists, SAH parents, non profit types, architects, diplomats, World Bank, taxi drivers, White House alums, business execs, a former FCC Chairnan, a federal district court judge, etc. The parents care about their kids' education and are very involved. Mr Mann the principal is fantastic. The teachers are engaged, caring and energetic. Very happy IB Eaton family here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

No lots of younger people were rude too. I have no doubt that a WHITE, RICH LOOKING person would have a great time in Cleveland Park. But I've never lived in such a rude, horrible place. Very happy we moved. Glad that you're staying there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

Involvement by neighbors in neighborhood institutions is what saved the area from being cut by freeways in the 70s, created historic protections in the 80s, pushed for DC government reforms in the 90s, preserved parks as conservancies in the last decade and created Cleveland Park Village for aging in place in this decade. It's a very active community that works hard to make and keep the neighborhood a good place to live.

Really? What have you done recently? How's that leaf blower petition going? Hahaha!

I noticed lots of posts about lack of trick or treaters. Perhaps it's because it's so unfriendly families no longer want to live there?

[Anonymous]

There are lots of different groups to get involved with in Cleveland Park: the CP Citizens Association, the CP Historical Society, The Cleveland Park Club (which sponsors a fun Halloween party for kids and classes and many other events), Friends of Macomb Park (Halloween parade, ice cream social), Rosedale (hosts pumpkin carving event, annual Easter egg hunt), Trageron, CP Village. Plus great playgrounds in walking distance: Macomb Park, McLean Gardens playground, Guy Mason, Beauvoir playground, NCRC playground, Rosedale and Trageron and Melvin Hazen park and Rock Creek park hiking and walking paths. We never use our backyard.

[Anonymous]

And the Eaton and Hearst playgrounds and fields of course!

[Anonymous]

And all the young kids reading and other events at the CP library. Plenty of places to meet people if you're interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the Bancroft vs. OOB debate, I'd like to point out that many of my Mt. Pleasant friends whose kids go to Eaton or Hearst or a charter live on Hobart or Irving. Those kids were in bounds for HD Cooke up until this year, so parents opted to try to lottery elsewhere. Some of those parents actually tried to send their kids to HD Cooke when it returned to the neighborhood, but found it to be unwelcoming and hostile, with a disorganized aftercare program and odd dropoff practices (PS 3 and PS 4 kids were dropped off in the gymnasium and were at risk of being trampled by the largely unsupervised 4th & 5th graders).

We are at Cooke and are very happy. Terrific principal who is turning things around. Please stop disparaging our school when you gave up on it long ago before the change in administration.

+1 I truly wish people on this board would try and remember that every school they trash is some family's school, is some teacher's school. And unless you have personal experience (preferably recent too...2-3 years ago quickly looks like ancient history in DC) these people don't usually know what their talking about. They are just blindly regurgitating rumors and assumptions. Can't you just talk about your school on its own merits and leave everyone else's out of it?

+1. Even if the experience is true, try to remember that, for every bad experience, there was a good one. We had some unfortunate experiences at our elementary school, but also some great ones. If all I talked about were the bad experiences, it would create an impression of the school that would be horrible, and also unfair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

No lots of younger people were rude too. I have no doubt that a WHITE, RICH LOOKING person would have a great time in Cleveland Park. But I've never lived in such a rude, horrible place. Very happy we moved. Glad that you're staying there.

Glad that you've found somewhere that seems more suitable for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a pretty vigorous discussion going on right now about indoor/outdoor cats. Seems like the neighborhood discussion is still there.

Definitely agree with you on the too many advertisements. I'm so done with hearing about Cake Pops that I avoid the store out of principle.

I think if someone posted "I'm going out to buy a gas-powered lead blower- any recommendations?" You would gets tons of "neighborhood" postings.

I am glad you like CP, but I was happy to leave it behind. My building was awful but I hated the neighborhood as well. I could tell more anecdotes but I think that those would not be helpful to others.

Also .. they're just anecdotes. for every "but a old person was mean to me! :thumb down: wahhhh!" there is a counter story of a family with kids < 18 living there, year after year, invested in the community and involved with the neighbors and neighborhood institutions.

Involvement by neighbors in neighborhood institutions is what saved the area from being cut by freeways in the 70s, created historic protections in the 80s, pushed for DC government reforms in the 90s, preserved parks as conservancies in the last decade and created Cleveland Park Village for aging in place in this decade. It's a very active community that works hard to make and keep the neighborhood a good place to live.

Really? What have you done recently? How's that leaf blower petition going? Hahaha!

I noticed lots of posts about lack of trick or treaters. Perhaps it's because it's so unfriendly families no longer want to live there?

As someone who works at home, personally I hate the constant roar of leaf blowers. They are especially disruptive now, but some people use them in the summer to blow specks of dust off of their walks. DC needs to join the ranks of progressive jurisdictions that have banned the noisy, fume-creating gas blowers in favor of the quieter battery or electric ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still deafening silence on the great efforts around the planned Eaton renovation.

I know virtually nothing about the renovation efforts, but since you keep asking I'll share the few morsels I do know. David Grosso put together criteria for prioritizing modernizations and then allocated funding in line with those priorities. I don't know the details, but Eaton's modernization was apparently delayed for two years. I don't know off the top of my head when those two years began or when they end. But, someone up thread posted something about 2017 which is coincidentally two years from now. So, maybe the modernization is now expected in 2017. If so, nobody could tell you about what is being planned because at this point, nothing would be planned.

A PP claimed there had been lots of meetings and other great efforts in connection with a renovation of Eaton. And normally a renovation process would start with the teachers, principal, HSA, parents and community representatives identifying priorities and preferences, long before preliminary budgets are drawn up and architects start work on concept designs. Such priorities might include indoor play/gym space separate from the lunch room, a new library, light-filled rather than dark common spaces, community gathering space, etc., and be informed by a review of what peer schools have done. Or maybe Eaton is just waiting passively as usual for DCPS to tell it what will do unilaterally. But as another PP suggested, the reference to efforts underway may have been just vaporware to shut down discussion at this point.

This.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I'm an Eaton parent and modernization is just quite frankly not on the top of my priorities list. I agree that the library is sort of dark and I wish the gym/multipurpose room was a little better. However, prior to our kids enrolling in Eaton, I toured several other schools of Eaton's 1920s vintage which had been substantially remodeled and I thought that the modernizations had stripped away the warmth and charm that some of these high-ceilinged, big window'ed old ES school buildings have.

I am much more concerned with what my kids are learning and the people imparting it to them than I am with buildings. Our MS thrived at Washington Latin when the school was in truly awful space.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I'm an Eaton parent and modernization is just quite frankly not on the top of my priorities list. I agree that the library is sort of dark and I wish the gym/multipurpose room was a little better. However, prior to our kids enrolling in Eaton, I toured several other schools of Eaton's 1920s vintage which had been substantially remodeled and I thought that the modernizations had stripped away the warmth and charm that some of these high-ceilinged, big window'ed old ES school buildings have.

I am much more concerned with what my kids are learning and the people imparting it to them than I am with buildings. Our MS thrived at Washington Latin when the school was in truly awful space.

Eaton is a registered landmark in a national register historic district. Any renovation to it would have to be sensitive to the building and would require approval by several local committees and the Historic Preservation Review Board. DH and I would love to see a renovation, and hopefully one would "clean up" the front addition that was added pre-historic district and is not very attractive compared with the original building. I agree that the library is sorely in need of renovation, and enhanced science, music and indoor play spaces would be useful.