Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The final town hall is tomorrow from 12pm-2pm (virtual): https://dme.dc.gov/page/dc-public-education-boundary-and-student-assignment-study-2023-town-halls

They have a weird little feedback form you can fill out: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=8Unkj5SLt0-ZBm-Tnagtczxvnk3MmepBgILrceqyWwFUQ0wyT09DRURJRVZITU5CNU5INjk2UUU3RiQlQCN0PWcu

The Committee can be reached by email at: [e-mail]
Could also include the DME, the DME's Planning and Analysis team, and the Mayor's office: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Nailed it.

[Anonymous]

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

This this this

[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.

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.

Actually, it’s surprisingly easy.

+1. There are open seats everywhere, all the time. If you don’t like to lottery (which many people don’t) move. You’ll be 100% better off in the suburbs.

[Anonymous]

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

DME isn’t being willfully ignorant. If every high SES family opts out of Maury, there will be SES balance between Maury and Miner. You will be doing exactly what DME wants you to do.

[Anonymous]

Everyone should go to Two Rivers and make that school great again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone should go to Two Rivers and make that school great again.

But Two Rivers is more than 4 blocks away, so that's completely impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

DME isn’t being willfully ignorant. If every high SES family opts out of Maury, there will be SES balance between Maury and Miner. You will be doing exactly what DME wants you to do.

But then the proportion of at-risk kids would go up….so there would be less of a discrepancy in at-risk rates between the two schools. So it’s better to have two schools with high at-risk rates because that’s more “equitable”? I thought the goal was to have fewer at-risk kids…..but maybe not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

DME isn’t being willfully ignorant. If every high SES family opts out of Maury, there will be SES balance between Maury and Miner. You will be doing exactly what DME wants you to do.

But then the proportion of at-risk kids would go up….so there would be less of a discrepancy in at-risk rates between the two schools. So it’s better to have two schools with high at-risk rates because that’s more “equitable”? I thought the goal was to have fewer at-risk kids…..but maybe not?

No kids at either schools so no skin in the game but this. Parents would just leave for better schools or just move.

The plan is nuts. Spreading out at risk kids is not going to solve any problems. It is just going to create 2 poorly functioning schools with high at risk kids.

But no surprises here that this plan is coming from the DME who only cares about numbers and window dressing and not actually supporting or solving actual problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

DME isn’t being willfully ignorant. If every high SES family opts out of Maury, there will be SES balance between Maury and Miner. You will be doing exactly what DME wants you to do.

But then the proportion of at-risk kids would go up….so there would be less of a discrepancy in at-risk rates between the two schools. So it’s better to have two schools with high at-risk rates because that’s more “equitable”? I thought the goal was to have fewer at-risk kids…..but maybe not?

Has DME ever said the goal was to have fewer at-risk kids? I’ve never heard them say that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m beginning to wonder if all the parents in this thread were educated by DCPS themselves, because I’ve never seen so much stupidity in one place.

Let’s be honest, “all” the posts in this thread are by like the same 6 people shouting the same things at each other.

[Anonymous]

Is anyone aware of a letter being written to oppose the paired school proposal?

If so, can you please share in the thread any links to it or the names of anyone who is organizing this?

[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.

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.

Actually, it’s surprisingly easy.

+1. There are open seats everywhere, all the time. If you don’t like to lottery (which many people don’t) move. You’ll be 100% better off in the suburbs.

If the lottery in DC is so easy who cares about any of this? Maury families who are unhappy about any outcomes here can just lottery into a school they like more. Problem solved, the beauty of school choice at work. What are we even arguing about?

[Anonymous]

I have read all 144 pages. I understand what Maury families are saying and concerned about. I cannot understand what Miner families are saying.

If Maury families' concern about concentration of at risk is "gross" or racist, isn't Miner and DME also gross and racist for wanting to lessen the percentage at Miner? Is Miner a good school (in which case why is change needed)? Why do Miner families seem more angry at Maury families than at DCPS for continued mismanagement and worsening test scores? Does Maury have any track record of supporting at risk kids well? If not, how is moving them to Maury going to improve results, especially when that school sucks at it (with much lower percentages)?

Miner families seem more concerned about being disrespected or playing PC word police than on any educational outcome.

[Anonymous]

I submitted the weird feedback form to DME in opposition to the cluster. I'll attend the Town Hall.