Can anyone tell me the story of Stuart-Hobson?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Watkins and SH were doing as well as supporters claim, most of the OOB students who lottery in would be from the Hill. They aren't, not by a long shot, not even in K.

What separates Watkins from Maury, Brent, SWS and Cap Hill Montessori is neighborhood buy-in, weak vs. strong. The issue should be studied, not whitewashed with boosters trilling " Whoo hoo, we're up to 30 percent boundary this year!!"

Watkins has needed more than 3 decades to attract a lower % of neighborhood kids than Maury did between 2012 and this year. Comparative newcomer Mundo Verde is thought to support a student body that's more than half Hill kids.

Mundo Verde has nowhere near half Hill kids. See page 106 of this report. https://dcpcsb.egnyte.com/dl/wz03B5UHgG

[Anonymous]

We started at Peabody (which was fine) after a decade on the Hill but were unwilling to go on to Watkins. We progressed to MV and know more Hill families in the school community than we know in-bounds families enrolling at Watkins.

We'd have moved to NW for a Deal feeder by now without MV and DCI. We're hardly alone.

[Anonymous]

We started at Peabody, as well, then went on to Watkins. While the teachers we had were great, there were some really challenging kids who disrupted learning for everyone. And even in early ECE, there was a huge disparity in performance among kids that was troubling. We eventually left. Sadly, we were not alone.

This was a few years ago and obviously before the modernization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS could care less who fills seats as long as they get filled. End of story.

Well that would be foolish because many IB students are leaving for charters. Filled OOB seats on the Hill means empty seats somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi this is the OP. Thank you to everyone who wrote helpful comments. My child just started at a school in NE that is not a Stuart-Hobson feeder, and I am hoping to switch into JO Wilson so that we can have a better school and access to Stuart-Hobson. However, I understand that that will require a good lottery number and may not happen. I am also aware that the preschool-8th Education Campuses may not always be Education Campuses, and I'm not sure what our options for middle school would be in that case. I wanted to know more about Stuart-Hobson in case my child ends up in a feeder to it, but also because it's hard to know what to expect if that doesn't happen. So I wanted to understand the whole story just as background knowledge. I would love for someone to tell the tale of Eliot-Hine, McKinley Middle, Brookland Middle, etc. I am trying to piece it together but there seem to be so many different opinions and viewpoints out there, that I'm not sure what to believe.

Middle school is a very hard thing to do well, and I understand that. It takes a long time and a lot of parent involvement. I know that my child's needs may be hard to predict, but if I wait until my child is in 6th grade to take an interest in the middle schools, it will be too late.

It will be too late regardless in view of current Hill ES-MS feeder patterns. Just ask the former Brent PTA parents/current BASIS and Wash Latin parents who were lobbying hard for new feeder patterns for the several years before the top-down 2013-14 city-wide boundary/feeder review was finalized.

Sorry, no, it doesn't take a long time and a lot of parental involvement here on the Hill. It takes voting in a mayor determined to dissuade most high SES DC parents from fleeing the system, policy changes s/he make to support the introduction of ES GT and above-grade-level classes for the most advanced DCPS middle school kids, and his or her blessing to set up strong test-in MS programs with a city-wide draw. Test-in HS programs that aren't supported by affirmative-action based admissions wouldn't hurt either.

We won't get any of that in this particular city for at least a decade due to the obnoxious political climate, probably 15 to 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS could care less who fills seats as long as they get filled. End of story.

Well that would be foolish because many IB students are leaving for charters. Filled OOB seats on the Hill means empty seats somewhere else.

They don't care. They don't have to. Political heads don't roll over IB percentages in this city. Principals aren't given bonuses for attracting and retaining IB families. They get them for raising test scores for subgroups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seriously don't know the basics after perusing SH threads?

During the 2013-2014 school boundaries and feeders review, school system leaders refused to allow most of the nine DCPS elementary schools on Cap Hill to feed into an enlarged SH, creating a pan-Ward 6 DCPS middle school. DCPS intransigence on the issue was supported by the politically powerful leadership of the Capitol Cluster, both admins and parents (mostly residents Wards 5, 7 and 8), and their allies at the the pro-Cluster Capitol Hill Public School Parents Organization (CHPSPO). Sadly, most Cap Hill parents of little kids would have cheered the change.

Without the strongest Hill DCPS elementary schools--Maury, SWS and Brent--feeding into SH, the school can't improve quickly, catching up to Hardy and possibly Deal in this generation. Ensuring that SH become a predominantly in-boundary and high SES school is now a 10-20 year project, when it could have been a 3-5 year project. Not much more to say.

Agreed. The Cluster PTA president at the time Vince Morris was not helpful at all and inhibited any progess for growing the neighborhood. School safety and school management administrative culture was not his concern. He seems buddy-buddy with Grosso, so that says it all and now here we are with dysfunctional feeder patterns.

The pan-Hill MS concept was never concrete and not favored by DCPS to begin with. DCPS was not going to give any room for an argument to close either Jefferson or Eliot Hine by making SH the central MS.
Look at the proposals that from 2014 that are linked in the sticky at the top of this forum. The DCPS idea was and remains to strengthen each of the Ward 6 MS by reinforcing feeder patterns with a single or pair of "stronger" anchors.

On top of that, the numbers for the feeders in the pan-Hill MS wouldn't work for using SH. That is what CHPSPO argued, if I remember correctly. I'm not Vince but he expressed his position openly - as did the CHCS PTA that the Watkins/LT/JOW feed to SH is the most logical and sustainable.

What about a multi-campus Hill MS with all Hill ES feeding into a modernized Jefferson for 6th grade and a modernized E-H for 7th and 8th grades? With all current Stuart-Hobson feeder ES going to the pan-hill multi-campus MS, the Stuart-Hobson building could be turned into a citywide performing arts MS that feeds into Duke Ellington.

Nice ideas bandied about on DCUM in recent years that are going absolutely nowhere because DCPS leaders, the current mayor, and the DC City Council members aren't on board. Not a one.

The useless Charles Allen claimed to be for a Hill Middle School, but that was just another lie.

I wouldn't be so fast to accuse Charles Allen. The person in charge of the Edu. Comm. at the city Council is yours truly David Grosso. Why don't you call Grosso's office up and try to get a meeting to get your point across and see what kind of reception you get. Do you really think Grosso cares about Capitol Hill families? NOT!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seriously don't know the basics after perusing SH threads?

During the 2013-2014 school boundaries and feeders review, school system leaders refused to allow most of the nine DCPS elementary schools on Cap Hill to feed into an enlarged SH, creating a pan-Ward 6 DCPS middle school. DCPS intransigence on the issue was supported by the politically powerful leadership of the Capitol Cluster, both admins and parents (mostly residents Wards 5, 7 and 8), and their allies at the the pro-Cluster Capitol Hill Public School Parents Organization (CHPSPO). Sadly, most Cap Hill parents of little kids would have cheered the change.

Without the strongest Hill DCPS elementary schools--Maury, SWS and Brent--feeding into SH, the school can't improve quickly, catching up to Hardy and possibly Deal in this generation. Ensuring that SH become a predominantly in-boundary and high SES school is now a 10-20 year project, when it could have been a 3-5 year project. Not much more to say.

Agreed. The Cluster PTA president at the time Vince Morris was not helpful at all and inhibited any progess for growing the neighborhood. School safety and school management administrative culture was not his concern. He seems buddy-buddy with Grosso, so that says it all and now here we are with dysfunctional feeder patterns.

The pan-Hill MS concept was never concrete and not favored by DCPS to begin with. DCPS was not going to give any room for an argument to close either Jefferson or Eliot Hine by making SH the central MS.
Look at the proposals that from 2014 that are linked in the sticky at the top of this forum. The DCPS idea was and remains to strengthen each of the Ward 6 MS by reinforcing feeder patterns with a single or pair of "stronger" anchors.

On top of that, the numbers for the feeders in the pan-Hill MS wouldn't work for using SH. That is what CHPSPO argued, if I remember correctly. I'm not Vince but he expressed his position openly - as did the CHCS PTA that the Watkins/LT/JOW feed to SH is the most logical and sustainable.

What about a multi-campus Hill MS with all Hill ES feeding into a modernized Jefferson for 6th grade and a modernized E-H for 7th and 8th grades? With all current Stuart-Hobson feeder ES going to the pan-hill multi-campus MS, the Stuart-Hobson building could be turned into a citywide performing arts MS that feeds into Duke Ellington.

Nice ideas bandied about on DCUM in recent years that are going absolutely nowhere because DCPS leaders, the current mayor, and the DC City Council members aren't on board. Not a one.

The useless Charles Allen claimed to be for a Hill Middle School, but that was just another lie.

I wouldn't be so fast to accuse Charles Allen. The person in charge of the Edu. Comm. at the city Council is yours truly David Grosso. Why don't you call Grosso's office up and try to get a meeting to get your point across and see what kind of reception you get. Do you really think Grosso cares about Capitol Hill families? NOT!

Grosso does care about Hill families but is rightly concerned about equity and isn't going to favor white Hill families at the expense of the broader system. I'm a Hill parent who supports that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Watkins and SH were doing as well as supporters claim, most of the OOB students who lottery in would be from the Hill. They aren't, not by a long shot, not even in K.

What separates Watkins from Maury, Brent, SWS and Cap Hill Montessori is neighborhood buy-in, weak vs. strong. The issue should be studied, not whitewashed with boosters trilling " Whoo hoo, we're up to 30 percent boundary this year!!"

Watkins has needed more than 3 decades to attract a lower % of neighborhood kids than Maury did between 2012 and this year. Comparative newcomer Mundo Verde is thought to support a student body that's more than half Hill kids.

Hill families have held sway over SWS and CHML due to sibling priority but the seats that open to citywide enrollment are just that. it has nothing to do with neighborhood and everything to do with the schools and manageable commute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Watkins and SH were doing as well as supporters claim, most of the OOB students who lottery in would be from the Hill. They aren't, not by a long shot, not even in K.

What separates Watkins from Maury, Brent, SWS and Cap Hill Montessori is neighborhood buy-in, weak vs. strong. The issue should be studied, not whitewashed with boosters trilling " Whoo hoo, we're up to 30 percent boundary this year!!"

Watkins has needed more than 3 decades to attract a lower % of neighborhood kids than Maury did between 2012 and this year. Comparative newcomer Mundo Verde is thought to support a student body that's more than half Hill kids.

Hill families have held sway over SWS and CHML due to sibling priority but the seats that open to citywide enrollment are just that. it has nothing to do with neighborhood and everything to do with the schools and manageable commute.

Well sibling preference has also allowed Hill families to take the lion's share of seats at Latin, which is not an easy commute or in the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sorry, no, it doesn't take a long time and a lot of parental involvement here on the Hill. It takes voting in a mayor determined to dissuade most high SES DC parents from fleeing the system, policy changes s/he make to support the introduction of ES GT and above-grade-level classes for the most advanced DCPS middle school kids, and his or her blessing to set up strong test-in MS programs with a city-wide draw. Test-in HS programs that aren't supported by affirmative-action based admissions wouldn't hurt either.

We won't get any of that in this particular city for at least a decade due to the obnoxious political climate, probably 15 to 20 years.

I think the majority of high SES voters in DC are singles, DINKs, empty nesters, etc. And likely always will be. I suspect they are mostly okay with a very slow increase of high SES buy in to DCPS, with more attention paid to helping those who achieve less (owners of family sized residential units in transitional areas being perhaps the exception). If you want them on your side, I think emphasizing the legitimate educational needs of the gifted would be more attractive than focusing on getting more high SES kids into the system for its own sake, which does come off as special pleading at best, racism at worst.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^if you weren't scared of integration,

Go away race baiting troll.

Not PP and agree that race drives most of the IB bitching. Be honest and about it and own it instead of the poorly coded BS about wards 5,7,8 kids in out precious neighborhood

Here is what turned me off about Watkins:

(1) Parents reported teachers and staff yelling at students.
(2) Parents reported teachers being uninterested in challenging students who were above grade level.
(3) Parents reported advanced students having to do a lot of worksheets and self teaching while the teacher focused on the students who were behind.
(4) The test scores are not good.

My kids are in Watkins right now and all 4 of these points are greatly exaggerated. If parents are interested, contact the principal and tour the school. Come multiple times so you can see what goes on for yourself. Don't rely on DCUM posters who are either reporting old stories, never had kids who attended, etc. Is it the perfect school and does it work for everyone? Of course not. But it's not the place DCUM describes.

+1 and same can be said for virtually every school - DCPS, PCS, independent, home schooling. . . Every post on Hill MS devolves into the same inane trolling with little to no real firsthand knowledge. But even if you go strictly by the numbers, Watkins has lowered its enrollment by ~100 students in the past 3-4 years. It's IB rate was %30 last year, up from %21 two years ago. The overall scores have plenty of room for improvement and a stubborn achievement gap not unique to Watkins persists, but there are students performing at a high level so it's hard to argue they're being held back in some way. There is real progress. I'm sure if it was whiter and wealthier it would allay the concerns of the many in the DCUM chorus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My kids are in Watkins right now and all 4 of these points are greatly exaggerated. If parents are interested, contact the principal and tour the school. Come multiple times so you can see what goes on for yourself. Don't rely on DCUM posters who are either reporting old stories, never had kids who attended, etc. Is it the perfect school and does it work for everyone? Of course not. But it's not the place DCUM describes.

+1 and same can be said for virtually every school - DCPS, PCS, independent, home schooling. . . Every post on Hill MS devolves into the same inane trolling with little to no real firsthand knowledge. But even if you go strictly by the numbers, Watkins has lowered its enrollment by ~100 students in the past 3-4 years. It's IB rate was %30 last year, up from %21 two years ago. The overall scores have plenty of room for improvement and a stubborn achievement gap not unique to Watkins persists, but there are students performing at a high level so it's hard to argue they're being held back in some way. There is real progress. I'm sure if it was whiter and wealthier it would allay the concerns of the many in the DCUM chorus.

That seems like a rapid pace of change to me, not too many DCPC elementary schools changing faster, are there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You seriously don't know the basics after perusing SH threads?

During the 2013-2014 school boundaries and feeders review, school system leaders refused to allow most of the nine DCPS elementary schools on Cap Hill to feed into an enlarged SH, creating a pan-Ward 6 DCPS middle school. DCPS intransigence on the issue was supported by the politically powerful leadership of the Capitol Cluster, both admins and parents (mostly residents Wards 5, 7 and 8), and their allies at the the pro-Cluster Capitol Hill Public School Parents Organization (CHPSPO). Sadly, most Cap Hill parents of little kids would have cheered the change.

Without the strongest Hill DCPS elementary schools--Maury, SWS and Brent--feeding into SH, the school can't improve quickly, catching up to Hardy and possibly Deal in this generation. Ensuring that SH become a predominantly in-boundary and high SES school is now a 10-20 year project, when it could have been a 3-5 year project. Not much more to say.

Agreed. The Cluster PTA president at the time Vince Morris was not helpful at all and inhibited any progess for growing the neighborhood. School safety and school management administrative culture was not his concern. He seems buddy-buddy with Grosso, so that says it all and now here we are with dysfunctional feeder patterns.

The pan-Hill MS concept was never concrete and not favored by DCPS to begin with. DCPS was not going to give any room for an argument to close either Jefferson or Eliot Hine by making SH the central MS.
Look at the proposals that from 2014 that are linked in the sticky at the top of this forum. The DCPS idea was and remains to strengthen each of the Ward 6 MS by reinforcing feeder patterns with a single or pair of "stronger" anchors.

On top of that, the numbers for the feeders in the pan-Hill MS wouldn't work for using SH. That is what CHPSPO argued, if I remember correctly. I'm not Vince but he expressed his position openly - as did the CHCS PTA that the Watkins/LT/JOW feed to SH is the most logical and sustainable.

What about a multi-campus Hill MS with all Hill ES feeding into a modernized Jefferson for 6th grade and a modernized E-H for 7th and 8th grades? With all current Stuart-Hobson feeder ES going to the pan-hill multi-campus MS, the Stuart-Hobson building could be turned into a citywide performing arts MS that feeds into Duke Ellington.

Nice ideas bandied about on DCUM in recent years that are going absolutely nowhere because DCPS leaders, the current mayor, and the DC City Council members aren't on board. Not a one.

The useless Charles Allen claimed to be for a Hill Middle School, but that was just another lie.

I wouldn't be so fast to accuse Charles Allen. The person in charge of the Edu. Comm. at the city Council is yours truly David Grosso. Why don't you call Grosso's office up and try to get a meeting to get your point across and see what kind of reception you get. Do you really think Grosso cares about Capitol Hill families? NOT!

Grosso does care about Hill families but is rightly concerned about equity and isn't going to favor white Hill families at the expense of the broader system. I'm a Hill parent who supports that.

OK, perfect. So how do poor kids benefit when most of the high SES families on the Hill bail from DCPS somewhere between K and 9th grade? What does the "system" get out of the age-old exodus?

I'm a longtime Hill parent who doesn't support bone-headed ed policies that spur the families of the great majority of our strongest students to flee our by-right traditional public schools after 4th grade. Grosso might indeed care, but he isn't nearly logical, pragmatic or competent enough to provide effective leadership of the Edu. Comm. No, he's too busy running down those racist high SES Brent families for avoiding Jefferson Academy. Spare us all his bleeding heart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^if you weren't scared of integration,

Go away race baiting troll.

Not PP and agree that race drives most of the IB bitching. Be honest and about it and own it instead of the poorly coded BS about wards 5,7,8 kids in out precious neighborhood

Here is what turned me off about Watkins:

(1) Parents reported teachers and staff yelling at students.
(2) Parents reported teachers being uninterested in challenging students who were above grade level.
(3) Parents reported advanced students having to do a lot of worksheets and self teaching while the teacher focused on the students who were behind.
(4) The test scores are not good.

My kids are in Watkins right now and all 4 of these points are greatly exaggerated. If parents are interested, contact the principal and tour the school. Come multiple times so you can see what goes on for yourself. Don't rely on DCUM posters who are either reporting old stories, never had kids who attended, etc. Is it the perfect school and does it work for everyone? Of course not. But it's not the place DCUM describes.

+1 and same can be said for virtually every school - DCPS, PCS, independent, home schooling. . . Every post on Hill MS devolves into the same inane trolling with little to no real firsthand knowledge. But even if you go strictly by the numbers, Watkins has lowered its enrollment by ~100 students in the past 3-4 years. It's IB rate was %30 last year, up from %21 two years ago. The overall scores have plenty of room for improvement and a stubborn achievement gap not unique to Watkins persists, but there are students performing at a high level so it's hard to argue they're being held back in some way. There is real progress. I'm sure if it was whiter and wealthier it would allay the concerns of the many in the DCUM chorus.

I call BS. You don't agree with the views of those offering "real firsthand knowledge," so you see trolls and invalidate their concerns.

Whiter and wealthier shouldn't be a problem in a neighborhood that fits the bill, not in a city supporting a neighborhood school system. As long as some poor minority kids are still welcome in said schools (which they are), I don't see the issue.

When Watkins is mostly IB, I'll take heart. Not before.