DC White flight - what will it mean for education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Folks I know who left left because of crime not schools. Once you have kids that stuff doesn’t roll off your back so easily anymore, and if you can change your circumstances you do.

This. One thousand people a day are becoming Florida residents. The schools have implemented prudent safety measures after Parkland. What other state has been proactive in that? None.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: but every private school in the city was offering in person learning and bars and restaurants were welcoming customers every night of the week. It's crazy to me that not a single politician has stepped forward to say "that was messed up and we can NEVER let it happen again."

Because they cannot promise that, no matter how much you demand they do so. Shrug.

Well they should say under the same circumstances they won't close schools. In retrospect it was a mistake. Looming potential to close schools again under the current threat of Covid is not science based but kowtows to the vaccine hesitant who don't trust the health system. Two year olds in this city are still masking. What a joke. We seriously put kids last in this city despite being as brown and black centric as the politicians purport. It is all superficial. Kids suffer, held back, not challenged, in the name of equity.

Because they know the parents still harping on the subject of school closures will never be happy, which is incorrect. You will be happy when someone travels back in time and decides to keep DC schools open! Only then will you STFU about it.

This bickering back and forth doesn’t address my original question (original PP here): given how unpopular and difficult school closures were (and in retrospect, unnecessary, based on experiences in other school districts and in DC once schools reopened), why not one single politician who will say “We won’t do that again”?

There’s such an obvious opportunity to do so. Everywhere I go, I encounter people who are still outraged about how that was handled. And yet it was barely discussed in the primary and mostly only in the other direction (politicians saying how important the policy was). I find it bizarre.

This isn’t about me being obsessed with school closures, it’s about the fact that I KNOW there are many parents in DC who were horrified by how they were handled and how long they went on, which makes it an obvious issue for a challenger to seize on.

Well everyone I KNOW knew it was a new virus and no playbook existed. I even know some folks who didn’t want schools to reopen because they didn’t think it was safe. Politicians know that all parents in DCPS have different views and they don’t want to alienate folks. The faction of parents like you won’t be happy with anything so politicians just ignore that faction. Sometimes it’s best not to address the squeaky wheel and hope it works out its issue on its own.

Do you really want to motivate people to vote for you by stirring up anger and resentment?! This is what is grossly wrong with American politics right now.

A politician wouldn't be "stirring up anger and resentment" by saying "we learned new things over the last two years, and going forward we won't do those damaging things any more." I am lost how a politician saying "we will follow the research now that we have it" is hurting anyone.

Even if they said that, who would believe it? Politicians are notorious on not following through.
Did you actually believe Bowser when she was campaigning on - Alice Deal For All?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is a district focused primarily on the growth and success of low-income children of color. From leadership down that is the priority, and it should be.

Fellow teacher here- although I don’t completely disagree with your sentiment, I want to add my two cents. One I don’t think you should prioritize one demographic over the other. If I am a school district, I focus on supporting the growth and success of all students. Secondly, I don’t believe the district prioritizes caring about anyone else his well-being other than their cushy administrative jobs and the teachers union.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is a district focused primarily on the growth and success of low-income children of color. From leadership down that is the priority, and it should be.

Fellow teacher here- although I don’t completely disagree with your sentiment, I want to add my two cents. One I don’t think you should prioritize one demographic over the other. If I am a school district, I focus on supporting the growth and success of all students. Secondly, I don’t believe the district prioritizes caring about anyone else his well-being other than their cushy administrative jobs and the teachers union.

They sure don’t care about kids with special needs. Race and income have nothing to do with it. The graduation rate for kids with disabilities is horrendous and DCPS is just like ho hum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is a district focused primarily on the growth and success of low-income children of color. From leadership down that is the priority, and it should be.

Fellow teacher here- although I don’t completely disagree with your sentiment, I want to add my two cents. One I don’t think you should prioritize one demographic over the other. If I am a school district, I focus on supporting the growth and success of all students. Secondly, I don’t believe the district prioritizes caring about anyone else his well-being other than their cushy administrative jobs and the teachers union.

They sure don’t care about kids with special needs. Race and income have nothing to do with it. The graduation rate for kids with disabilities is horrendous and DCPS is just like ho hum.

I’ll add that I am a special education teacher to. That is a can of worms. Did you know that schools receive extra funding for having more kids labeled with special needs? Did you know that some parents receive extra Social Security checks because of special-needs labels? There are always a few bad apples in every bunch I guess, but I am disgraced by the system more frequently than I’d like to say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: but every private school in the city was offering in person learning and bars and restaurants were welcoming customers every night of the week. It's crazy to me that not a single politician has stepped forward to say "that was messed up and we can NEVER let it happen again."

Because they cannot promise that, no matter how much you demand they do so. Shrug.

Well they should say under the same circumstances they won't close schools. In retrospect it was a mistake. Looming potential to close schools again under the current threat of Covid is not science based but kowtows to the vaccine hesitant who don't trust the health system. Two year olds in this city are still masking. What a joke. We seriously put kids last in this city despite being as brown and black centric as the politicians purport. It is all superficial. Kids suffer, held back, not challenged, in the name of equity.

Because they know the parents still harping on the subject of school closures will never be happy, which is incorrect. You will be happy when someone travels back in time and decides to keep DC schools open! Only then will you STFU about it.

I imagine these people in nursing homes 40 years from now screaming at the staff, "And they closed the schools for a year!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: but every private school in the city was offering in person learning and bars and restaurants were welcoming customers every night of the week. It's crazy to me that not a single politician has stepped forward to say "that was messed up and we can NEVER let it happen again."

Because they cannot promise that, no matter how much you demand they do so. Shrug.

Well they should say under the same circumstances they won't close schools. In retrospect it was a mistake. Looming potential to close schools again under the current threat of Covid is not science based but kowtows to the vaccine hesitant who don't trust the health system. Two year olds in this city are still masking. What a joke. We seriously put kids last in this city despite being as brown and black centric as the politicians purport. It is all superficial. Kids suffer, held back, not challenged, in the name of equity.

Because they know the parents still harping on the subject of school closures will never be happy, which is incorrect. You will be happy when someone travels back in time and decides to keep DC schools open! Only then will you STFU about it.

I imagine these people in nursing homes 40 years from now screaming at the staff, "And they closed the schools for a year!"

It also sounds like those people live rent-free in your head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: but every private school in the city was offering in person learning and bars and restaurants were welcoming customers every night of the week. It's crazy to me that not a single politician has stepped forward to say "that was messed up and we can NEVER let it happen again."

Because they cannot promise that, no matter how much you demand they do so. Shrug.

Well they should say under the same circumstances they won't close schools. In retrospect it was a mistake. Looming potential to close schools again under the current threat of Covid is not science based but kowtows to the vaccine hesitant who don't trust the health system. Two year olds in this city are still masking. What a joke. We seriously put kids last in this city despite being as brown and black centric as the politicians purport. It is all superficial. Kids suffer, held back, not challenged, in the name of equity.

Because they know the parents still harping on the subject of school closures will never be happy, which is incorrect. You will be happy when someone travels back in time and decides to keep DC schools open! Only then will you STFU about it.

I imagine these people in nursing homes 40 years from now screaming at the staff, "And they closed the schools for a year!"

Ha! Probably. Parenting is hard for some people. I get why they’re angry. Life goes on and they should learn better coping skills when things don’t go their way. Poor millennial parents.

[Anonymous]

Parenting was hard for the people who had front-line jobs (retail, healthcare, etc) who couldn't go to work AND supervise their firstgrader's Zoom school. Turns out they just needed better coping skills!

[Anonymous]

All of my social worker friends have talked about how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on kids -- from the low-income students who are now several grade levels behind academically and socially, to the high-income, aiming-for-Harvard types who are stressed that everything they've worked for was ruined. Suicide attempts are up. Behavior problems have increased. This is crisis level, and we need to address it from a public policy standpoint, both locally and nationally. Luckily, my kids are doing fine, but I got to work from home during the pandemic and my kids don't have any special needs. I acknowledge others had it much worse. Why are some so quick to sweep this under the rug?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of my social worker friends have talked about how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on kids -- from the low-income students who are now several grade levels behind academically and socially, to the high-income, aiming-for-Harvard types who are stressed that everything they've worked for was ruined. Suicide attempts are up. Behavior problems have increased. This is crisis level, and we need to address it from a public policy standpoint, both locally and nationally. Luckily, my kids are doing fine, but I got to work from home during the pandemic and my kids don't have any special needs. I acknowledge others had it much worse. Why are some so quick to sweep this under the rug?

I'm also lost as to why some people are so invested in ignoring ongoing issues ABOUT CHILDREN, and even continuing to criticize parents who said things were hard. It's just such a anti-child, anti-woman stance.

[Anonymous]

To add: I used to think that whole focus on individualism and only taking care of yourself, blaming others for their own problems, was a more conservative stance. But this whole "you should learn better coping mechanisms to parenting in a global pandemic that has vast material repercussions, particularly for children" is a line I see largely from progressives.

I don't get why we are constantly shamed to think about others (regarding covid spread) but told we have to deal with the ramifications school closures on our own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To add: I used to think that whole focus on individualism and only taking care of yourself, blaming others for their own problems, was a more conservative stance. But this whole "you should learn better coping mechanisms to parenting in a global pandemic that has vast material repercussions, particularly for children" is a line I see largely from progressives.

I don't get why we are constantly shamed to think about others (regarding covid spread) but told we have to deal with the ramifications school closures on our own.

Just my opinion, but I think the reason is there is no solution. There is no way to make anyone happy. No one is going to apologize, no one is gonna say it will never happen again, no one is going to be fired.

I don’t know that it is so much “swept under the rug” as it is moving on. There is only so much headspace people have and people are worried about current problems. There is nothing anyone can do to solve past problems. Yes, some of the problems may be from the pandemic closures but there is not much to do other than acknowledge and move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: but every private school in the city was offering in person learning and bars and restaurants were welcoming customers every night of the week. It's crazy to me that not a single politician has stepped forward to say "that was messed up and we can NEVER let it happen again."

Because they cannot promise that, no matter how much you demand they do so. Shrug.

Well they should say under the same circumstances they won't close schools. In retrospect it was a mistake. Looming potential to close schools again under the current threat of Covid is not science based but kowtows to the vaccine hesitant who don't trust the health system. Two year olds in this city are still masking. What a joke. We seriously put kids last in this city despite being as brown and black centric as the politicians purport. It is all superficial. Kids suffer, held back, not challenged, in the name of equity.

Because they know the parents still harping on the subject of school closures will never be happy, which is incorrect. You will be happy when someone travels back in time and decides to keep DC schools open! Only then will you STFU about it.

I imagine these people in nursing homes 40 years from now screaming at the staff, "And they closed the schools for a year!"

They’ll be too busy working for the kids who didn’t lose a year of education to have time to complain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To add: I used to think that whole focus on individualism and only taking care of yourself, blaming others for their own problems, was a more conservative stance. But this whole "you should learn better coping mechanisms to parenting in a global pandemic that has vast material repercussions, particularly for children" is a line I see largely from progressives.

I don't get why we are constantly shamed to think about others (regarding covid spread) but told we have to deal with the ramifications school closures on our own.

I strongly agree with you and this aspect of progressive politics in DC, specifically, has been alarming to me over the last two years. For some period of time I chalked it up to panic over the virus coupled with a justifiable response to Trump. So when people I had considered liberal progressives started, for instance, screaming "wear a mask" at people even though masks were not widely available and good masks were extremely expensive (when the actual progressive stance should have been "hey, how can we get free or low cost masks to people who need them most), I was understanding. It was a very hard time for everyone! I get it.

But school closures flipped a switch for me because the rhetoric I saw in favor of closures was not progressive. Sure, there were comments about protecting our most vulnerable. But so much of the rhetoric was openly hostile towards parents, and especially mothers. Especially working moms! It was baffling to me. And there was this attitude in DC that it was only UMC white families who were upset about this, but I know that not to be the case. My family had to go on food stamps for a time during the 2020/2021 school year because I had to decrease my hours for virtual school (until we were able to get into a childcare program that we paid for, ironically, with those tax stimulus checks that Trump sent). It was a deeply difficult year and I was so confused as to why I was consistently told I was entitled for simply saying out loud that I was struggling. Or why our school (Title 1, Ward 5) remained largely shuttered even after vaccines opened schools in NW. Or why the social problem my child experienced during that time (which were the main thing that precipitated me cutting back my job -- my kid was falling apart) were totally ignored so that people could accuse me of only caring about learning loss, and then snidely tell me "they'll catch up." Anytime I spoke up I was shot down. So I stopped speaking up.

I'm a card-carrying member of the Social Democrats. I'm not becoming a Republican and I don't have much tolerance for even the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. But I feel lost, politically, in DC. This is an issue you hear progressives talk about in other places -- we have family in Pennsylvania, California, New York, and Texas, and progressive there will absolutely talk about why prolonged closures can't happen again (and in those places, they didn't happen for as long as they did here, I should add). But something is broken in DC that we can't even acknowledge this. It's crazy to me that we're just going to move on like it never happened when there were people calling for school closures again in December/January and even in April.

If I leave DC, it won't be crime. It will be fear that this will happen again, and the belief that no one in a position of authority seems to care how it will impact family's like mine.