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.
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.
Problem is, they won’t. Lots of people would lottery or move to avoid this new logistical challenge. Peabody/Watkins is evidence of this. Are there people for whom this logistical issue is still better than their other options? Sure. Does that mean that current Maury and Miner families will stay, and DCPS will end up with more integrated school? No guarantee.
I know you think that threatening to move or lottery out (which as people have explained multiple times on here, is not as easy as you seem to imagine it is -- many charters are garbage, spots at high performing schools can be very hard to come by) is a logical checkmate, but it actually proves the point of the people you are arguing against.
Some of you are determined to send your kid to majority white, high-SES schools while also being congratulated for being anti-racist and supporting integration because they are in a public school with *some* poor black kids. No wonder you are so deeply offended at that the proposition that you can't actually have that both ways.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
I'll start with pointing out that I was replying to someone who argued that the fact that a lot of low SES kids were at Miner was proof of their offensive proposition that motivated poors would choose lousy schools to be with poors instead of charters or other higher performing schools. My reply explained that they were completely misunderstanding what the trendline was telling them.
No one is "generalizing". You are misusing the word characterization. Data is what data is. The fact that educated parents are more likely to care about education does NOT mean all. What we're talking about here are large groups of people, well enough to extrapolate.
I would respectfully suggest that the point here is not that the crime or offense is offending people. The crime is that we know the best path to break generational poverty is a good education. People struggling and wanting better lives for their kids don't spend time worrying about word policing or taking offense to imaginary slights. They have better things to do.
Motivated poors? That's a wild thing to write and expect to be taken seriously.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
So why does DME keep failing them? Why does DME think SES balance is all that is needed to fix the situation? Who are the real racists here?
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
I'll start with pointing out that I was replying to someone who argued that the fact that a lot of low SES kids were at Miner was proof of their offensive proposition that motivated poors would choose lousy schools to be with poors instead of charters or other higher performing schools. My reply explained that they were completely misunderstanding what the trendline was telling them.
No one is "generalizing". You are misusing the word characterization. Data is what data is. The fact that educated parents are more likely to care about education does NOT mean all. What we're talking about here are large groups of people, well enough to extrapolate.
I would respectfully suggest that the point here is not that the crime or offense is offending people. The crime is that we know the best path to break generational poverty is a good education. People struggling and wanting better lives for their kids don't spend time worrying about word policing or taking offense to imaginary slights. They have better things to do.
Motivated poors? That's a wild thing to write and expect to be taken seriously.
Post was taking issue with the wanna be SJW's seeing all at risk black folks the same. You seem not so bright.
Anonymous wrote:Attended the town hall tonight. A total travesty. I submitted like 20 questions via mentimeter and none were answered.
Apparently Brent has submitted a letter with 400 signatures against whatever nonsense they are doing with them. Is there a similar effort for Maury?
I see the Brent parents showing some real intelligence. If DME wants Miner to get the true benefits of high SES, they should cluster the school with Brent, not Maury. Those families are high-SES and smart.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
I'll start with pointing out that I was replying to someone who argued that the fact that a lot of low SES kids were at Miner was proof of their offensive proposition that motivated poors would choose lousy schools to be with poors instead of charters or other higher performing schools. My reply explained that they were completely misunderstanding what the trendline was telling them.
No one is "generalizing". You are misusing the word characterization. Data is what data is. The fact that educated parents are more likely to care about education does NOT mean all. What we're talking about here are large groups of people, well enough to extrapolate.
I would respectfully suggest that the point here is not that the crime or offense is offending people. The crime is that we know the best path to break generational poverty is a good education. People struggling and wanting better lives for their kids don't spend time worrying about word policing or taking offense to imaginary slights. They have better things to do.
I think I'm the person you're arguing against and what I was actually saying was that I think one reason at risk set asides don't work as well shifting boundaries is because people understandably would rather send their kids to school with their neighbors and be part of a cohesive community than apply for a lottery spot at a school they might not know much about. I never made any claims about poor people choose "lousy schools" in order to be with other poor people -- I wasn't making any comment on any school but Maury. My point is that if your goal is to draw more at risk students to Maury, moving the boundary to make it more socioeconomically diverse will probably work better than an EA set aside, which has been shown to not work well at other schools.
I think that for a lot of parents who moved in-bound to Maury to send their current/future children there, this is the worst possible news. You’re combining a top 10 elementary school with a bottom quarter (generously) elementary school. That’s not what the Maury families thought they were signing up for.
The goal of the Maury parents is to provide their children with the best educational environment possible. DCPS’s goal here isn’t to improve educational outcomes at both Maury and Miner - their stated goal is literally to spread around the at-risk students to make the distribution more equitable between the two schools. Even if the cluster winds up “working,” however that’s defined, there is undoubtedly going to be uncertainty and a lot of growing pains in the short term that Maury parents will not tolerate.
Maury parents will opt-out. Maybe Miner for Pre-K, then private afterwards. They can afford it, and, for their children, they’ll pay for it. They don’t care about at-risk kids and DC’s goals, and they shouldn’t have to. They care about their kids. DME is being willfully ignorant ignoring this reality.
Sincerely,
Maury Parent who never would have bought in-bound for Miner
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.
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?
Doing a single walk isn’t what we’re talking about. We’re talking about walking the 7 year old multi-blocks from home to the first school to drop off their pre-k siblings, then turning around and walking them multiple blocks to their own school. You may have oodles of time for that and a kid who will willingly do it, but I don’t. I have a job that I have to get to.
Luckily I’m not affected by this nonsense because I’m IB for Watkins, which I immediately opted out of when they decided to get rid of the bus.
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.
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.
Problem is, they won’t. Lots of people would lottery or move to avoid this new logistical challenge. Peabody/Watkins is evidence of this. Are there people for whom this logistical issue is still better than their other options? Sure. Does that mean that current Maury and Miner families will stay, and DCPS will end up with more integrated school? No guarantee.
I know you think that threatening to move or lottery out (which as people have explained multiple times on here, is not as easy as you seem to imagine it is -- many charters are garbage, spots at high performing schools can be very hard to come by) is a logical checkmate, but it actually proves the point of the people you are arguing against.
Some of you are determined to send your kid to majority white, high-SES schools while also being congratulated for being anti-racist and supporting integration because they are in a public school with *some* poor black kids. No wonder you are so deeply offended at that the proposition that you can't actually have that both ways.
You do know that the city actually needs functioning citizens in order to not slide into a complete hellscape, right? DCPS doesn’t actually want to lose them from the system.
Anonymous wrote:I think that for a lot of parents who moved in-bound to Maury to send their current/future children there, this is the worst possible news. You’re combining a top 10 elementary school with a bottom quarter (generously) elementary school. That’s not what the Maury families thought they were signing up for.
The goal of the Maury parents is to provide their children with the best educational environment possible. DCPS’s goal here isn’t to improve educational outcomes at both Maury and Miner - their stated goal is literally to spread around the at-risk students to make the distribution more equitable between the two schools. Even if the cluster winds up “working,” however that’s defined, there is undoubtedly going to be uncertainty and a lot of growing pains in the short term that Maury parents will not tolerate.
Maury parents will opt-out. Maybe Miner for Pre-K, then private afterwards. They can afford it, and, for their children, they’ll pay for it. They don’t care about at-risk kids and DC’s goals, and they shouldn’t have to. They care about their kids. DME is being willfully ignorant ignoring this reality.
Sincerely,
Maury Parent who never would have bought in-bound for Miner
You don’t need to pay for private. Lottery for LT, Brent and SWS. You’ll get into one of those eventually. Honestly I would put in a MySchoolDC application this year.
Anonymous wrote:Attended the town hall tonight. A total travesty. I submitted like 20 questions via mentimeter and none were answered.
Apparently Brent has submitted a letter with 400 signatures against whatever nonsense they are doing with them. Is there a similar effort for Maury?
I see the Brent parents showing some real intelligence. If DME wants Miner to get the true benefits of high SES, they should cluster the school with Brent, not Maury. Those families are high-SES and smart.
I hope Maury families will share opportunities for public comment here or on MOTH. I’m not a Maury parent but I would take the opportunity to speak in opposition to this proposal because it’s stupid and bad for the Hill.
Anonymous wrote:Attended the town hall tonight. A total travesty. I submitted like 20 questions via mentimeter and none were answered.
Apparently Brent has submitted a letter with 400 signatures against whatever nonsense they are doing with them. Is there a similar effort for Maury?
I see the Brent parents showing some real intelligence. If DME wants Miner to get the true benefits of high SES, they should cluster the school with Brent, not Maury. Those families are high-SES and smart.
I hope Maury families will share opportunities for public comment here or on MOTH. I’m not a Maury parent but I would take the opportunity to speak in opposition to this proposal because it’s stupid and bad for the Hill.
Attend one of the DME town halls and make your thoughts known!!
Anonymous wrote:This a whole process stinks of why folks governing with no skin in the game is a bad idea.
City wide metric improves, high priority goal achieved. High fives all around, job done.
Miner and Maury improving? Not a high priority, wont ever matter for the advisory committee.
Precisely.
I find it really interesting that instead of looking at how to attract higher SES families to Miner, the only thing they can think of is forcing the schools together. Also that SWS is apparently exempt from the clustering conversation. SWS is a 12 minute walk from Miner down F St. If they turned Miner into SWS at Miner and allowed IB Miner students preference, that would actually almost instantaneously create SES balance.
Hey, leave SWS out of this mess!
Do city-wide DCPS already have an at-risk set aside? If not, does anyone know if one is being contemplated as part of this study?
SWS already has the EA preference.
Only for PK3 and PK4 though. The idea would be to make it more grades, maybe all grades, and set aside rather than give a preference.
I would support this but it will have zero impact on kids at Miner and likely little impact generally because SWS is such a small school. I imagine the reason they have the preference for PK grades but not upper grades is that they have so few lottery spots available for upper grades as to make it pointless. Even if you agreed that 100% of available lottery spots for upper grades at SWS were EA set asides, you're talking a handful of spots per grade, sometimes none. Plus I'm not even sure that's the best thing for a kid who is genuinely at risk -- SWS can be insular and hard to adjust to for UMC white kids on the Hill if they are entering at 2nd or 3rd. It would be extra challenging for a child with genuine issues, and I'd worry that the curriculum would not do a good job at addressing deficiencies -- SWS is not very academically rigorous but relies heavily on the fact that most of it's population is high income and so kids are getting a ton of support/enrichment at home.
Plus those EA spots would be available on a city wide basis, not just to kids in the Miner boundary, so we're talking about helping like 0-5 Miner IB kids. Yay? It's meaningless.
The idea is that Miner would also become a citywide SWS with IB preference for Miner boundary kids to go to either campus; or split the campuses into upper and lower schools. SWS already feeds EH so no need to change that.
PP here. Okay that makes more sense. But SWS is a Reggio Emilio school. When it was started as part of the original CH Cluster, teachers at Peabody/Watkins actually took it upon themselves to develop the curriculum, get training/certifications, etc. As SWS became its own thing and eventually cluster kids lost their IB preference for it, the approach really diverged. Especially in upper grades (Peabody does retain some of the fundamentals of Reggio, and actually JO Wilson's ECE also follows a Reggio approach I believe -- it's a pretty popular approach for ECE but not common at all for upper elementary, especially in public schools).
So what happens to Miner teachers who don't buy into the Reggio approach? The only way to bill Miner as a SWS campus is to adopt that fully, which means you HAVE to get educators on board. This would essentially mean clearing house at Miner. I think many of the ECE teachers would be interested but I have a hard time believing ANY of the 1st-5th teachers would be willing to do the training/certifications, and many of them would be fully opposed to the way Reggio handles things like homework, discipline and conflicts in class, and some the self-exploration and self-guided elements of Reggio.
Also, even if you give IB preference to Miner kids the same way CH cluster kids got boundary preference for SWS for a time, you still need a by-right school for those kids. Even with preference, not all will get spots, and some families will not want spots -- they will want a more traditional DCPS program, just as not all CH cluster families bought into SWS and many preferred Peabody/Watkins. So what would their by-right DCPS IB be? Even if you shift some of the zone to Payne, the obvious answer for at least half the existing zone is: Maury. Whoops.
Anonymous wrote:I think that for a lot of parents who moved in-bound to Maury to send their current/future children there, this is the worst possible news. You’re combining a top 10 elementary school with a bottom quarter (generously) elementary school. That’s not what the Maury families thought they were signing up for.
The goal of the Maury parents is to provide their children with the best educational environment possible. DCPS’s goal here isn’t to improve educational outcomes at both Maury and Miner - their stated goal is literally to spread around the at-risk students to make the distribution more equitable between the two schools. Even if the cluster winds up “working,” however that’s defined, there is undoubtedly going to be uncertainty and a lot of growing pains in the short term that Maury parents will not tolerate.
Maury parents will opt-out. Maybe Miner for Pre-K, then private afterwards. They can afford it, and, for their children, they’ll pay for it. They don’t care about at-risk kids and DC’s goals, and they shouldn’t have to. They care about their kids. DME is being willfully ignorant ignoring this reality.
Sincerely,
Maury Parent who never would have bought in-bound for Miner
TL;DR: I didn't understand how public school districts work and thought I could get the benefits of living on the Hill and save money on private elementary school but I messed up and now I regret my choices; also I don't care at at risk kids, to be perfectly clear.
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