Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Dear person obsessed with strollers:

You can’t stick a 7 year old in a stroller, and they walk slow.

Dear you -- I have a 6 year old who I walk 6.5 blocks to school every day and she has no trouble keeping up with me pushing her sister in a stroller. Also, I used to do the dreaded "split drop off" every day for 3 years to two schools that were more than .5 miles apart, on my own, and then hoof it the reverse direction 1.5 miles. It was fine.

Are you seriously now arguing that you couldn't possibly be expected to walk a 7 year old 4 blocks?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.

http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf

Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.

Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?

#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know

By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.

No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.

Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.

I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.

That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?

+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.

It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?

This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.

No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!

Arguing that integrated schools are good is not the same as calling anyone a racist.

Also, while I don't send kids to either school, I actually think moving kids from Miner to LT is consistent with the argument that integrated schools are good. Miner is NOT an integrated school. It's overwhelming black and at risk. Meanwhile, LT has no majority racial group and while it's at risk numbers are lower they are still higher than Miner's.

So there's nothing hypocritical about his statement. He's saying he values integrated schools, that studies show kids benefit from integration, AND he made decisions in his life to ensure his own kids attended a school that was more integrated than their previous school. Notice he didn't decide to send his kids to Maury over Miner -- he could have tried moving IB for Maury. But perhaps he actually views it as a problem that Maury and Miner are so close and have such diametrically opposed demographics, and sought a lottery spot at a school that had more balance.

He is an absolute rank hypocrite. He came here to superciliously lecture about how much better he is than Maury parents because he embraced Miner. Meanwhile he *actually* moved his kids out of Miner to a school that is basically the same demographics as Maury. Pure hypocrisy, second only to the scold who moved his kids to Bethesda!

1. You don't know what supercilious means.
2. He never claimed to have embraced Miner nor did he say he was better than Maury parents. He stated that he is a housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration and then made a brief argument, with citation, in favor of integrated schools.
3. LT does not have the same demographics as Maury. LT is minority white. It has a higher at risk percentage. And notably, it has better PARCC results for its at risk kids than either Miner or Maury. LT is a good example of a successful integrated school and I'm not surprised that someone who values integration decided to lottery his kids there.

I don't know Billy but these ridiculous accusations that anyone who can read can see are false make it clear that he really got under your skin. Ask yourself why you are so defensive about this.

Is your argument actually that Billy gets to come here and claim Maury violates civil rights law then make a smarmy comment about “integrationists, I see you” DESPITE having deliberately pulled his kids from Miner for LT - just because LT has 5 percent more at-risk than Maury? Really? That 5 percent makes him an “integrationist” and Maury parents objecting to the cluster presumably segregationists to him? Come ON.

Billy definitely didn't allege that Maury violates civil rights law. Learn to read.

Miner demographics: 80% black, 13% white, 3% hispanic/latino, 2% multi-racial, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

Maury demographics: 58% white, 21% black, 9% hispanic/latino, 9% multi-racial, 3% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT demographics: 49% white, 34% black, 9% multi-racial, 6% hispanic/latino, 1% Native/Alaskan, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT is more diverse and integrated than either Miner or Maury, thus it makes sense that someone who values integrated schools, as Billy asserts he does, would prefer LT to Miner, in particular. He at no point calls Maury families segregationists. In fact, he didn't call anyone any names at all, which is more than I can say for the people who have been criticizing his frankly mild statement and totally logical educational choices for the last however many pages.

That makes zero sense. By that argument Maury is more integrated than Miner too. But he was obviously coming here to bash Maury parents resisting the cluster with Miner.

Racially, Maury IS more integrated than Miner. That's an argument in favor of the cluster. It would integrate Miner.

I thought Maury parents were supposed to be well-educated, but this is like explaining physics to a herd of cats.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Dear person obsessed with strollers:

You can’t stick a 7 year old in a stroller, and they walk slow.

Dear you -- I have a 6 year old who I walk 6.5 blocks to school every day and she has no trouble keeping up with me pushing her sister in a stroller. Also, I used to do the dreaded "split drop off" every day for 3 years to two schools that were more than .5 miles apart, on my own, and then hoof it the reverse direction 1.5 miles. It was fine.

Are you seriously now arguing that you couldn't possibly be expected to walk a 7 year old 4 blocks?

Glad you had the schedule to do that. Doesn’t work for most people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Some people don’t want their good school to turn into a bad school. Sorry if that offends you.

*whispers* it's not THEIR school, it belongs to the district *whispers*

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.

http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf

Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.

Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?

#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know

By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.

No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.

Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.

I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.

That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?

+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.

It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?

This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.

No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!

Arguing that integrated schools are good is not the same as calling anyone a racist.

Also, while I don't send kids to either school, I actually think moving kids from Miner to LT is consistent with the argument that integrated schools are good. Miner is NOT an integrated school. It's overwhelming black and at risk. Meanwhile, LT has no majority racial group and while it's at risk numbers are lower they are still higher than Miner's.

So there's nothing hypocritical about his statement. He's saying he values integrated schools, that studies show kids benefit from integration, AND he made decisions in his life to ensure his own kids attended a school that was more integrated than their previous school. Notice he didn't decide to send his kids to Maury over Miner -- he could have tried moving IB for Maury. But perhaps he actually views it as a problem that Maury and Miner are so close and have such diametrically opposed demographics, and sought a lottery spot at a school that had more balance.

He is an absolute rank hypocrite. He came here to superciliously lecture about how much better he is than Maury parents because he embraced Miner. Meanwhile he *actually* moved his kids out of Miner to a school that is basically the same demographics as Maury. Pure hypocrisy, second only to the scold who moved his kids to Bethesda!

1. You don't know what supercilious means.
2. He never claimed to have embraced Miner nor did he say he was better than Maury parents. He stated that he is a housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration and then made a brief argument, with citation, in favor of integrated schools.
3. LT does not have the same demographics as Maury. LT is minority white. It has a higher at risk percentage. And notably, it has better PARCC results for its at risk kids than either Miner or Maury. LT is a good example of a successful integrated school and I'm not surprised that someone who values integration decided to lottery his kids there.

I don't know Billy but these ridiculous accusations that anyone who can read can see are false make it clear that he really got under your skin. Ask yourself why you are so defensive about this.

Is your argument actually that Billy gets to come here and claim Maury violates civil rights law then make a smarmy comment about “integrationists, I see you” DESPITE having deliberately pulled his kids from Miner for LT - just because LT has 5 percent more at-risk than Maury? Really? That 5 percent makes him an “integrationist” and Maury parents objecting to the cluster presumably segregationists to him? Come ON.

Billy definitely didn't allege that Maury violates civil rights law. Learn to read.

Miner demographics: 80% black, 13% white, 3% hispanic/latino, 2% multi-racial, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

Maury demographics: 58% white, 21% black, 9% hispanic/latino, 9% multi-racial, 3% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT demographics: 49% white, 34% black, 9% multi-racial, 6% hispanic/latino, 1% Native/Alaskan, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT is more diverse and integrated than either Miner or Maury, thus it makes sense that someone who values integrated schools, as Billy asserts he does, would prefer LT to Miner, in particular. He at no point calls Maury families segregationists. In fact, he didn't call anyone any names at all, which is more than I can say for the people who have been criticizing his frankly mild statement and totally logical educational choices for the last however many pages.

That makes zero sense. By that argument Maury is more integrated than Miner too. But he was obviously coming here to bash Maury parents resisting the cluster with Miner.

Racially, Maury IS more integrated than Miner. That's an argument in favor of the cluster. It would integrate Miner.

I thought Maury parents were supposed to be well-educated, but this is like explaining physics to a herd of cats.

I know that but this dude is trying to claim he is better than Maury parents who don’t want to merge with Miner because he moved his kids from Miner to LT because LT is more diverse thab Miner. Nonsensical all around.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Dear person obsessed with strollers:

You can’t stick a 7 year old in a stroller, and they walk slow.

Dear you -- I have a 6 year old who I walk 6.5 blocks to school every day and she has no trouble keeping up with me pushing her sister in a stroller. Also, I used to do the dreaded "split drop off" every day for 3 years to two schools that were more than .5 miles apart, on my own, and then hoof it the reverse direction 1.5 miles. It was fine.

Are you seriously now arguing that you couldn't possibly be expected to walk a 7 year old 4 blocks?

Glad you had the schedule to do that. Doesn’t work for most people.

Then move closer, I guess. Most people don't have these choices.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Some people don’t want their good school to turn into a bad school. Sorry if that offends you.

*whispers* it's not THEIR school, it belongs to the district *whispers*

I believe most democratic philosophies would say it belongs to the people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Dear person obsessed with strollers:

You can’t stick a 7 year old in a stroller, and they walk slow.

Dear you -- I have a 6 year old who I walk 6.5 blocks to school every day and she has no trouble keeping up with me pushing her sister in a stroller. Also, I used to do the dreaded "split drop off" every day for 3 years to two schools that were more than .5 miles apart, on my own, and then hoof it the reverse direction 1.5 miles. It was fine.

Are you seriously now arguing that you couldn't possibly be expected to walk a 7 year old 4 blocks?

Glad you had the schedule to do that. Doesn’t work for most people.

I am confident you will find a way to get your children to school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.

http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf

Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.

Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?

#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know

By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.

No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.

Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.

I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.

That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?

+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.

It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?

This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.

No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!

Arguing that integrated schools are good is not the same as calling anyone a racist.

Also, while I don't send kids to either school, I actually think moving kids from Miner to LT is consistent with the argument that integrated schools are good. Miner is NOT an integrated school. It's overwhelming black and at risk. Meanwhile, LT has no majority racial group and while it's at risk numbers are lower they are still higher than Miner's.

So there's nothing hypocritical about his statement. He's saying he values integrated schools, that studies show kids benefit from integration, AND he made decisions in his life to ensure his own kids attended a school that was more integrated than their previous school. Notice he didn't decide to send his kids to Maury over Miner -- he could have tried moving IB for Maury. But perhaps he actually views it as a problem that Maury and Miner are so close and have such diametrically opposed demographics, and sought a lottery spot at a school that had more balance.

He is an absolute rank hypocrite. He came here to superciliously lecture about how much better he is than Maury parents because he embraced Miner. Meanwhile he *actually* moved his kids out of Miner to a school that is basically the same demographics as Maury. Pure hypocrisy, second only to the scold who moved his kids to Bethesda!

1. You don't know what supercilious means.
2. He never claimed to have embraced Miner nor did he say he was better than Maury parents. He stated that he is a housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration and then made a brief argument, with citation, in favor of integrated schools.
3. LT does not have the same demographics as Maury. LT is minority white. It has a higher at risk percentage. And notably, it has better PARCC results for its at risk kids than either Miner or Maury. LT is a good example of a successful integrated school and I'm not surprised that someone who values integration decided to lottery his kids there.

I don't know Billy but these ridiculous accusations that anyone who can read can see are false make it clear that he really got under your skin. Ask yourself why you are so defensive about this.

Is your argument actually that Billy gets to come here and claim Maury violates civil rights law then make a smarmy comment about “integrationists, I see you” DESPITE having deliberately pulled his kids from Miner for LT - just because LT has 5 percent more at-risk than Maury? Really? That 5 percent makes him an “integrationist” and Maury parents objecting to the cluster presumably segregationists to him? Come ON.

Billy definitely didn't allege that Maury violates civil rights law. Learn to read.

Miner demographics: 80% black, 13% white, 3% hispanic/latino, 2% multi-racial, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

Maury demographics: 58% white, 21% black, 9% hispanic/latino, 9% multi-racial, 3% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT demographics: 49% white, 34% black, 9% multi-racial, 6% hispanic/latino, 1% Native/Alaskan, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT is more diverse and integrated than either Miner or Maury, thus it makes sense that someone who values integrated schools, as Billy asserts he does, would prefer LT to Miner, in particular. He at no point calls Maury families segregationists. In fact, he didn't call anyone any names at all, which is more than I can say for the people who have been criticizing his frankly mild statement and totally logical educational choices for the last however many pages.

That makes zero sense. By that argument Maury is more integrated than Miner too. But he was obviously coming here to bash Maury parents resisting the cluster with Miner.

Racially, Maury IS more integrated than Miner. That's an argument in favor of the cluster. It would integrate Miner.

I thought Maury parents were supposed to be well-educated, but this is like explaining physics to a herd of cats.

I know that but this dude is trying to claim he is better than Maury parents who don’t want to merge with Miner because he moved his kids from Miner to LT because LT is more diverse thab Miner. Nonsensical all around.

NO. Please point to where Billy said any of that. He didn't. He didn't actually mention Miner, Maury, or LT at all. It's just that people dug up info on his children to attack him and then tried to say he was a hypocrite for sending his kids to LT.

ALL he said was that integrated schools are good and provided a link to back up that claim. And then we found out he sends his kids to *GASP* a school that is more integrated than the one he used to send his kids to. Those of you working yourselves into a snit over this are embarrassing yourselves.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Some people don’t want their good school to turn into a bad school. Sorry if that offends you.

*whispers* it's not THEIR school, it belongs to the district *whispers*

I believe most democratic philosophies would say it belongs to the people.

Agreed. All the people. My tax dollars help pay for Maury -- it belongs to me too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.

http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf

Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.

Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?

#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know

By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.

No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.

Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.

I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.

That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?

+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.

It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?

This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.

No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!

Arguing that integrated schools are good is not the same as calling anyone a racist.

Also, while I don't send kids to either school, I actually think moving kids from Miner to LT is consistent with the argument that integrated schools are good. Miner is NOT an integrated school. It's overwhelming black and at risk. Meanwhile, LT has no majority racial group and while it's at risk numbers are lower they are still higher than Miner's.

So there's nothing hypocritical about his statement. He's saying he values integrated schools, that studies show kids benefit from integration, AND he made decisions in his life to ensure his own kids attended a school that was more integrated than their previous school. Notice he didn't decide to send his kids to Maury over Miner -- he could have tried moving IB for Maury. But perhaps he actually views it as a problem that Maury and Miner are so close and have such diametrically opposed demographics, and sought a lottery spot at a school that had more balance.

He is an absolute rank hypocrite. He came here to superciliously lecture about how much better he is than Maury parents because he embraced Miner. Meanwhile he *actually* moved his kids out of Miner to a school that is basically the same demographics as Maury. Pure hypocrisy, second only to the scold who moved his kids to Bethesda!

“the scold.” Grandpa Maury coming in hot.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.

http://school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo10.pdf

Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.

Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?

#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know

By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.

No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.

Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.

I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.

Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.

That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?

+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.

It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?

This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.

No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!

Arguing that integrated schools are good is not the same as calling anyone a racist.

Also, while I don't send kids to either school, I actually think moving kids from Miner to LT is consistent with the argument that integrated schools are good. Miner is NOT an integrated school. It's overwhelming black and at risk. Meanwhile, LT has no majority racial group and while it's at risk numbers are lower they are still higher than Miner's.

So there's nothing hypocritical about his statement. He's saying he values integrated schools, that studies show kids benefit from integration, AND he made decisions in his life to ensure his own kids attended a school that was more integrated than their previous school. Notice he didn't decide to send his kids to Maury over Miner -- he could have tried moving IB for Maury. But perhaps he actually views it as a problem that Maury and Miner are so close and have such diametrically opposed demographics, and sought a lottery spot at a school that had more balance.

He is an absolute rank hypocrite. He came here to superciliously lecture about how much better he is than Maury parents because he embraced Miner. Meanwhile he *actually* moved his kids out of Miner to a school that is basically the same demographics as Maury. Pure hypocrisy, second only to the scold who moved his kids to Bethesda!

1. You don't know what supercilious means.
2. He never claimed to have embraced Miner nor did he say he was better than Maury parents. He stated that he is a housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration and then made a brief argument, with citation, in favor of integrated schools.
3. LT does not have the same demographics as Maury. LT is minority white. It has a higher at risk percentage. And notably, it has better PARCC results for its at risk kids than either Miner or Maury. LT is a good example of a successful integrated school and I'm not surprised that someone who values integration decided to lottery his kids there.

I don't know Billy but these ridiculous accusations that anyone who can read can see are false make it clear that he really got under your skin. Ask yourself why you are so defensive about this.

Is your argument actually that Billy gets to come here and claim Maury violates civil rights law then make a smarmy comment about “integrationists, I see you” DESPITE having deliberately pulled his kids from Miner for LT - just because LT has 5 percent more at-risk than Maury? Really? That 5 percent makes him an “integrationist” and Maury parents objecting to the cluster presumably segregationists to him? Come ON.

Billy definitely didn't allege that Maury violates civil rights law. Learn to read.

Miner demographics: 80% black, 13% white, 3% hispanic/latino, 2% multi-racial, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

Maury demographics: 58% white, 21% black, 9% hispanic/latino, 9% multi-racial, 3% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT demographics: 49% white, 34% black, 9% multi-racial, 6% hispanic/latino, 1% Native/Alaskan, 1% Asian/Pacific/Hawaiian

LT is more diverse and integrated than either Miner or Maury, thus it makes sense that someone who values integrated schools, as Billy asserts he does, would prefer LT to Miner, in particular. He at no point calls Maury families segregationists. In fact, he didn't call anyone any names at all, which is more than I can say for the people who have been criticizing his frankly mild statement and totally logical educational choices for the last however many pages.

That makes zero sense. By that argument Maury is more integrated than Miner too. But he was obviously coming here to bash Maury parents resisting the cluster with Miner.

Racially, Maury IS more integrated than Miner. That's an argument in favor of the cluster. It would integrate Miner.

I thought Maury parents were supposed to be well-educated, but this is like explaining physics to a herd of cats.

I know that but this dude is trying to claim he is better than Maury parents who don’t want to merge with Miner because he moved his kids from Miner to LT because LT is more diverse thab Miner. Nonsensical all around.

NO. Please point to where Billy said any of that. He didn't. He didn't actually mention Miner, Maury, or LT at all. It's just that people dug up info on his children to attack him and then tried to say he was a hypocrite for sending his kids to LT.

ALL he said was that integrated schools are good and provided a link to back up that claim. And then we found out he sends his kids to *GASP* a school that is more integrated than the one he used to send his kids to. Those of you working yourselves into a snit over this are embarrassing yourselves.

He cited to his work as a civil rights lawyer (clearly implying that Maury is a civil rights violator) then stated, smarmily, “Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.”

Are you truly saying, with a straight face, that Billy moving his kids from Miner to LT was him being an “integrationist”; but Maury parents not wanting to combine with Miner are being not integrationist (ie segregationists)?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Some people don’t want their good school to turn into a bad school. Sorry if that offends you.

*whispers* it's not THEIR school, it belongs to the district *whispers*

I believe most democratic philosophies would say it belongs to the people.

Ok. Don’t want the school their kid attends to be dismantled into a worse school. Means the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:

If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.

No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.

However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.

This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.

Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"

Lol, exactly.

The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.

Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.

Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.

Good lord, do you even read the news. This was 4 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/howard-county-school-redistricting.html

The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.

It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.

Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.

But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.

Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.

yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.

Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.

This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.

Some people don’t want their good school to turn into a bad school. Sorry if that offends you.

*whispers* it's not THEIR school, it belongs to the district *whispers*

I believe most democratic philosophies would say it belongs to the people.

Ok. Don’t want the school their kid attends to be dismantled into a worse school. Means the same thing.

Of course parents will be upset by that. No amount of studies cited or guilt trips attempted will make people happy to send their kids to a school that has deliberately been made worse.

[Anonymous]

Idea - if "at-risk" kids are the problem, maybe we just have the Maury families give half of their wealth to the Miner families and problem solved! No longer at-risk! SES balance achieved!