Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

If it doesn't apply to you, don't be so butthurt and move along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

If it doesn't apply to you, don't be so butthurt and move along.

The misinformation and gathering of pitchforks impacts all of us.

Maybe spend your energy getting worked up about getting services improved rather than blaming some other parent also trying to take care of their child!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

Yes - if you live near Janey you must be in DCPS, no way you attend a private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

Yes, and those kids will almost certainly go to private by default.

You also have no idea if those children have IEPs, and if they do, there's a good chance they pay for outside services rather than begging DCPS to provide required services.

[Anonymous]

A lot of people do actually send their kids to dcps even if they’re wealthy. This is especially true for elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

Yes, and those kids will almost certainly go to private by default.

You also have no idea if those children have IEPs, and if they do, there's a good chance they pay for outside services rather than begging DCPS to provide required services.

You don’t know what it’s like to have an IEP. There is no substitute for pullout services. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Many privates won’t accept a child with an IEP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole line of conversation is ridiculous. One person after another saying,

"Those entitled people advocating for their spoiled kids to get an education even though the kids are already on grade level! So selfish! They should settle for whatever is right for my kid and people just like my kid. It's a public school, so how dare they expect it to meet all kids needs when it should just meet my kids' needs."

Nobody is criticizing accommodations that provide students with access to appropriate education. They're criticizing accommodations that give students a real or perceived advantage in selective admissions processes.

It's not easy to separate though, since the accommodations come from within the public school system and the selective admissions exist largely outside of it.

To be honest, I'm not even criticizing accommodations that give kids a "real or perceived advantage." I'm comfortable with where my kid is at and don't worry much that a kid is going to get "ahead" because of extra time for an ADHD diagnosis.

It's more that I am concerned about a culture where whenever a kid is struggling, the solution is to pursue a medical diagnosis and accommodations. And, to get back to the subject of the thread, I think this is one of the problems when wealthy and/or UMC families dictate how public schools work. Middle and working class kids need to learn resilience and how to adapt to the world around them. UMC and wealthy families often expect the world to adapt to their kid. It's a fundamental difference in approach that burdens middle/working class families.

Could you say more about how it burdens middle/working class families? Decreased resources for struggling students without an IEP? The need to teach and reinforce resilience and adaptability outside the school environment? Or something else?

I think we need to rethink accommodations to focus them back on access, not achievement.

The original point of disability accommodations was to ensure all kids had access to education. Whether that meant ensuring a school could provide a textbook in braille or providing an aide for a child with an intellectual disability that would meant the difference between that child being able to participate in school or not. The goal was to give kids an opportunity to get an education and "even the playing field" for kids who have bigger obstacles to overcome just to participate.

When that's been extended to kids with mild ADHD which in previous generations would not even have been diagnosed as a discernible disability, and when the accommodations are more about maximizing comfort and minimizing challenge than they are about making sure everyone can participate, this skews heavily in favor of wealthy students who's parents are willing to pay to get them tested and retested and who have the time and bandwidth to keep pushing the schools for more "accommodations."

I also think people should consider the degree to which this sort of accommodation, designed not to provide access but to provide achievement, is impacting curriculums in ways a lot of us hate. For instance, do schools stop assigning full books in favor of short passages because that's what teachers want, or what schools want, or does avoiding long texts just make it easier to accommodate the myriad of IEPs and 504s the schools are navigating? To what degree is the shift towards EdTech and using screens and apps in the classroom the result of schools looking to free teachers up for the extra time IEPs demand, or to make it easier for the students with IEPs at the cost of challenging other kids?

The problem is that wealthy parents often can't accept that their kids are average, and they look for medical explanations for their averageness, and then demand the school accommodate their "limitations" which I think sometimes are just the normal limitations of being a human being. When 30-40% of a school population has ADHD, can you really describe that as "neurodivergent"?

Anyway, waiting for the people who feel uncomfortably seen by this comment to yell at me in 3, 2, 1...

Love how your last line seeks to make anyone who wants to comment immediately suspect and disparaged before they even speak.

Well, I don't have kids in DCPS with ADHD, and my wonderful kids were pretty darn average, and I'm an empty nester. So let's get that "seen" bull pucky out of the way, shall we.

I disagree with your premise that these accommodations are not about accessing the curriculum. The fact that you say so makes clear you don't understand ADHD. I know what ADHD is, and that a kid with ADHD does need accommodations to access the curriculum consistently. Their brains randomly turn on and off or scramble. The best analogy I've heard from a person with ADHD is that it is like selective brain blindness and brain deafness that comes and goes randomly, and that's without the impulse control layer. Sometimes they are aware of what is going on around them in the classroom and sometimes they miss up to 70% of the content and don't even realise it. They think they heard it all, until they compare their notes to the accommodation provided notes and see just how much they didn't see or hear during class, even though they thought they were paying attention. So for them, studying means essentially re-doing the whole class on their own as homework via the accommodation of written or recorded notes. And it will take them twice as long as the kids who don't have accommodations because they face the same hurdles outside of class.

Accomodations are designed to prevent the brain from glitching as much as possilbe (seating, quite rooms for test, etc.), reset it when it happens (teacher awareness, reminders, intentional interruptions, tap on the shoulder, post it notes on teh desk, visual cues), and allow them to access the learning, to do the school work and show what they are learning or not learning in spite of that happening in their brains (class recording, provided notes, audio books, ability to take computer notes, extra time for tests, so they might get the full time even when their brain shuts off mid exam, etc.). So if you are OK with allowing access for those with vision and hearing impairments, seizure disorders, etc., then you should be OK with the same for kids with ADHD who sometimes can't see or hear or process what is going on around them, and sometimes can.


If you meet a person with ADHD who got good grades, you should be darn impressed with what they needed to do to achieve that. You cannot begin to understand how much harder their brains are working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

Yes, and those kids will almost certainly go to private by default.

You also have no idea if those children have IEPs, and if they do, there's a good chance they pay for outside services rather than begging DCPS to provide required services.

To recap: We can't lottery seats in schools like Janney because neighborhood/community vibe stuff but also no one who lives near Janney actually goes to Janney because they're so rich. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

Examples:

- Getting hung up on a public school inconvenience that middle class parents just accept and move on from, and wanting to dedicate resources to it. For instance, throwing a fit over DCPS absence policies when they conflict with international travel, and hijacking PTA meetings to discuss it.
- Expecting the school to provide tutoring to help on-grade-level kids become above grade level, and not understanding why that's different from tutoring kids who are lagging behind grade level.
- Assuming families can always spend extra money to provide the kids with something. For instance advocating for programming that can't be subsidized by PTA funds and expecting all families to kick in $50 or $100 to supplement it. This is often accompanied by a promise to pay the fee for at risk or low-income kids, without understanding that middle class families don't fall in that bucket and that more families might struggle with a fee like that then they realize.
- Pushing for programming based on status markers or upper class ideals that they don't understand aren't important to middle class kids or get in the way of practicalities, like pushing for French or Mandarin over Spanish.

These are good examples. Add to it "required" PTO donations of hundreds of dollars and telling parents that it's cheaper than sending your kids to private school. And focusing effort on improving the playground or getting a new gym when existing facilities are adequate.


I disagree with the above grade level point though. Kids should be challenged and offering those opportunities to at risk and middle class kids is a better investment than offering it to upper middle class kids. But supporting below grade level students is so a priority (that's not a place you have to choose)

Yes all kids should be challenged but it is very common for the UMC parents to suck up all the air in the room demanding special attention to their above average kid (sometimes in the form of elaborate 504s or IEPs) as opposed to realistically understanding what is good for the majority. Sometimes the UMC parents have actually caused the issues by advocating against teaching methods that don’t conform to Dr Becky or whatever (like being against homework or drilling math facts).

The abuse of the IEP/504 system to secure advantages for kids who do not need them drives me nuts. It also impacts every level of the school. It changes how teachers and administrators interact with all parents, including those of us who are not trying to exploit the system. Having even a handful of parents in a school who are constantly angling for any advantage for their kids makes all parents suspect.

Yes. I’m not sure it’s knowing abuse but it’s definitely parents who believe in extracting every possible benefit. My kid actually has an IEP but I try to avoid the IEP team as much as possible lol. With some very small exceptions the bulk of support has come from people not on the IEP team. I find that if I ask for things my kid obviously needs it’s very easy. Everything else slides.

This strikes me as so odd. It’s such a horrible process to get an IEP, and every psychologist we saw immediately saw my kids as having xyz disability. I would not wish this on anyone. Yet I am sure the average uninformed person doesn’t understand why it is in place and thinks it’s something like the abuse described above. But the reality is that you’re not a psychologist and this type of thinking just make an it so much harder to get the services and accommodations some students need. My students 5th teacher made our life miserable and our report explained in detail why we needed what we needed.

This is not about kids who need IEPs, but schools and parents offering 504s to typical kids in order to max out test scores. Different thing.

It is so dang hard to get accommodations for kids who need them that lots of these kids end up leaving the system so they can get access to an education. If kids who need it can't get it, I simply don't believe that kids who don't need it are getting it so easily that there is wide spread abuse. I can only asusume that you have never been in this situation and so imagine it must be easy to abuse.

It really depends on the accommodation. Plus you are missing that this conversation is around abuse by wealthy or very well resourced parents whose kids are actually fine. They can abuse the system because they have the resources to do so. Think of the difference between a family who can hire a lawyer to address their IEP versus one who cannot, and how you think schools respond differently to them?

Also the milder the disability (or, as the case may be, "disability"), usually the cheaper and easier the intervention. Extra testing time is free, as opposed to like a 1:1 aide or pull outs for therapy, which are not. Now, the time of the teacher who has to administer that IEP for extra test time is not free, but the parents pushing for it don't care about that teacher's time and don't care that administering their IEP will necessarily take time away from other kids (including kids with special needs). On some level, they believe they are entitled to more of that teacher's time because they think their kid matters more than other kids.

I'm not missing that point -- it's what I'm addressing. I don't think it is abused in DCPS they way you suggest becuase it is just so dang hard to get at all, wealthy or not, lawyer or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole line of conversation is ridiculous. One person after another saying,

"Those entitled people advocating for their spoiled kids to get an education even though the kids are already on grade level! So selfish! They should settle for whatever is right for my kid and people just like my kid. It's a public school, so how dare they expect it to meet all kids needs when it should just meet my kids' needs."

Nobody is criticizing accommodations that provide students with access to appropriate education. They're criticizing accommodations that give students a real or perceived advantage in selective admissions processes.

It's not easy to separate though, since the accommodations come from within the public school system and the selective admissions exist largely outside of it.

To be honest, I'm not even criticizing accommodations that give kids a "real or perceived advantage." I'm comfortable with where my kid is at and don't worry much that a kid is going to get "ahead" because of extra time for an ADHD diagnosis.

It's more that I am concerned about a culture where whenever a kid is struggling, the solution is to pursue a medical diagnosis and accommodations. And, to get back to the subject of the thread, I think this is one of the problems when wealthy and/or UMC families dictate how public schools work. Middle and working class kids need to learn resilience and how to adapt to the world around them. UMC and wealthy families often expect the world to adapt to their kid. It's a fundamental difference in approach that burdens middle/working class families.

Could you say more about how it burdens middle/working class families? Decreased resources for struggling students without an IEP? The need to teach and reinforce resilience and adaptability outside the school environment? Or something else?

I think we need to rethink accommodations to focus them back on access, not achievement.

The original point of disability accommodations was to ensure all kids had access to education. Whether that meant ensuring a school could provide a textbook in braille or providing an aide for a child with an intellectual disability that would meant the difference between that child being able to participate in school or not. The goal was to give kids an opportunity to get an education and "even the playing field" for kids who have bigger obstacles to overcome just to participate.

When that's been extended to kids with mild ADHD which in previous generations would not even have been diagnosed as a discernible disability, and when the accommodations are more about maximizing comfort and minimizing challenge than they are about making sure everyone can participate, this skews heavily in favor of wealthy students who's parents are willing to pay to get them tested and retested and who have the time and bandwidth to keep pushing the schools for more "accommodations."

I also think people should consider the degree to which this sort of accommodation, designed not to provide access but to provide achievement, is impacting curriculums in ways a lot of us hate. For instance, do schools stop assigning full books in favor of short passages because that's what teachers want, or what schools want, or does avoiding long texts just make it easier to accommodate the myriad of IEPs and 504s the schools are navigating? To what degree is the shift towards EdTech and using screens and apps in the classroom the result of schools looking to free teachers up for the extra time IEPs demand, or to make it easier for the students with IEPs at the cost of challenging other kids?

The problem is that wealthy parents often can't accept that their kids are average, and they look for medical explanations for their averageness, and then demand the school accommodate their "limitations" which I think sometimes are just the normal limitations of being a human being. When 30-40% of a school population has ADHD, can you really describe that as "neurodivergent"?

Anyway, waiting for the people who feel uncomfortably seen by this comment to yell at me in 3, 2, 1...

Love how your last line seeks to make anyone who wants to comment immediately suspect and disparaged before they even speak.

Well, I don't have kids in DCPS with ADHD, and my wonderful kids were pretty darn average, and I'm an empty nester. So let's get that "seen" bull pucky out of the way, shall we.

I disagree with your premise that these accommodations are not about accessing the curriculum. The fact that you say so makes clear you don't understand ADHD. I know what ADHD is, and that a kid with ADHD does need accommodations to access the curriculum consistently. Their brains randomly turn on and off or scramble. The best analogy I've heard from a person with ADHD is that it is like selective brain blindness and brain deafness that comes and goes randomly, and that's without the impulse control layer. Sometimes they are aware of what is going on around them in the classroom and sometimes they miss up to 70% of the content and don't even realise it. They think they heard it all, until they compare their notes to the accommodation provided notes and see just how much they didn't see or hear during class, even though they thought they were paying attention. So for them, studying means essentially re-doing the whole class on their own as homework via the accommodation of written or recorded notes. And it will take them twice as long as the kids who don't have accommodations because they face the same hurdles outside of class.

Accomodations are designed to prevent the brain from glitching as much as possilbe (seating, quite rooms for test, etc.), reset it when it happens (teacher awareness, reminders, intentional interruptions, tap on the shoulder, post it notes on teh desk, visual cues), and allow them to access the learning, to do the school work and show what they are learning or not learning in spite of that happening in their brains (class recording, provided notes, audio books, ability to take computer notes, extra time for tests, so they might get the full time even when their brain shuts off mid exam, etc.). So if you are OK with allowing access for those with vision and hearing impairments, seizure disorders, etc., then you should be OK with the same for kids with ADHD who sometimes can't see or hear or process what is going on around them, and sometimes can.


If you meet a person with ADHD who got good grades, you should be darn impressed with what they needed to do to achieve that. You cannot begin to understand how much harder their brains are working.

ADHD is the new gluten allergy. When someone tells you they have it, it's probably safe to roll your eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

Uh, huh. There are multiple houses currently for sale near Janney that cost more than $7 million.

Yes, and those kids will almost certainly go to private by default.

You also have no idea if those children have IEPs, and if they do, there's a good chance they pay for outside services rather than begging DCPS to provide required services.

To recap: We can't lottery seats in schools like Janney because neighborhood/community vibe stuff but also no one who lives near Janney actually goes to Janney because they're so rich. Got it.

You are trying to be obtuse.

The vast majority of housing near Janney is not $7 million.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many privates won’t accept a child with an IEP.

Or they will manage intake because of resource constraints. Which, yes, may mean fewer spots or other kids with IEPs. It’s a really advantage of private schools vs public schools forced into constant triage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours.

Seriously! These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS. There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504

This is only true if you carefully define "wealthy" to exclude yourself. Here's a couple profiles of DCPS families I know:

Family 1: Real estate holdings worth around 3-4m, including two rental properties. Trusts for both kids, primarily funded by grandparents, to cover college costs up to current private college costs (both kids also have 529s). Not sure what they have in retirement exactly, but they have already received multi-million dollar inheritances, so I'm guessing it's a lot. Actual HHI isn't crazy high (maybe 250k), but real generational wealth in play. They would 100% describe themselves as "upper middle class" though.

Family 2: Until recently, both parents made in the ballpark of 200-300k, so combined HHI of 500k+, now reduced to 250-300k (higher earning spouse still working). Parents are upper 40s though, with high incomes for the last 20 years, so huge amount of savings in retirement and investment accounts (millions). Home, worth about 1.5m, is paid off. One child, 529 has been super funded by parents and grandparents. One set of grandparents is wealthy, likely to leave somewhere in the ballpark of 6m when they pass, until then regularly fund all vacations, summer camp, childcare expenses, and have provided substantial down payments for house purchases (in the 50-100k range). Would also describe themselves as upper middle class.

All kids in DCPS. There are plenty of wealthy families in DCPS, especially at the elementary level. These families would absolutely complain that they would "struggle" to afford private, but they don't mean it the way that, for instance, I would mean it. They mean that they might have to rein in extremely high vacation, dining, and entertainment budgets to something less extravagant, in order to afford private school tuition. And they almost certainly will do just that, when their kids are in MS or HS. And they will continue to claim the are upper middle class. And sure, okay, let's call that upper middle class.

UMC people in DC are often quite wealthy.