ACPS Jefferson Houston I.B. Program Middle School vs. GW open enrollment honors?

[Anonymous]

PP again -- one more thing: I didn't leave Alexandria because of the schools. I was in bounds for Jefferson-Houston, and my child goes to the same private now that she went to when we lived in Old Town. I moved because I got tired of finding bloody syringes in my courtyard and human excrement on my garden gate. Not to mention the gang "tag" that was spray-painted in our alley. And the open air drug market that I drove through every day. My husband had spoken to the Police Chief about it, and I thought we were going to get some action, but then he (the Police Chief) got fired because he had a DUI. By this time, we had given up. I lived in Old Town for over a decade, and all of this happened in the last year or so. I loved living in Old Town, and maybe I would put up with it if I didn't have a child. I didn't mind the public housing nearby; however, I did mind having a city leadership that doesn't give a rat's ass (we had those, too -- not mice, huge Norway rats the size of a cat) about the people who actually pay taxes in the City. Ask the business owners how they feel (have you seen the signs in all the businesses on King Street?). People who live there won't tell you all this because they don't want to ruin their property values.

Ok, we live in Old Town, relatively close to one of the public housing projects, and I have never seen or experienced anything like what is described above. I would not send my child to JH, it does not seem like it would be a positive environment conducive to learning, but Old Town is not the hellhole described in this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, we live in Old Town, relatively close to one of the public housing projects, and I have never seen or experienced anything like what is described above. I would not send my child to JH, it does not seem like it would be a positive environment conducive to learning, but Old Town is not the hellhole described in this post.

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

Parts of Old Town are shitholes due to the particular blend of people living in a given public housing area. Hell, even one tenant from the eighth circle can ruin it for everyone -- the bloody syringes and excrement may have been just 1-2 junkies and 1-2 gang members in an block of say 100 people.

[Anonymous]

Why does everyone keep insisting that Alexandria is tearing down its housing projects? They are not--they are just rebuilding them. They are tearing down old projects, then spending billions to build brand new, higher-density housing projects that are composed of 50% public housing units, 50% market rate units.

They're still concentrating the poverty largely in one neighborhood (which everyone with a brain knows is a bad idea for everyone). But, hey, at least now my tax dollars are paying for the freeloaders to live in fancy new apartments with corian countertops. I feel much better knowing that these "poor" folks are so well taken care of. Maybe someday I'll be able to afford to renovate my own kitchen.

[Anonymous]

Because they did tear down some of them, right where the Charles Houston Center went. The number of units was reduced, and moved to other parts of the city. Some were rebuilt under the scenario you spell out.

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

First of all, I'm not a "yuppie." I work for a very low salary for a non-for-profit for children. Second, I never said you didn't have a bad experience. I said what you described is not a fair depiction of Old Town as a whole.

Also, just curious, how did you know that the excrement was human? Did you run DNA tests?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because they did tear down some of them, right where the Charles Houston Center went. The number of units was reduced, and moved to other parts of the city. Some were rebuilt under the scenario you spell out.

They tore them down...to replace them with different buildings. It's still concentrated public housing - just in a prettier package.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

First of all, I'm not a "yuppie." I work for a very low salary for a non-for-profit for children. Second, I never said you didn't have a bad experience. I said what you described is not a fair depiction of Old Town as a whole.

Also, just curious, how did you know that the excrement was human? Did you run DNA tests?

I'm a different PP from the one you originally replied to.

I'll leave it to the PP to figure out how she determined it was human shit. Maybe it was smeared on the gate itself or otherwise placed at a level where an animal wouldn't have put it there.

Even if the shit was some stray dog, you still have the (presumably used) syringes. Or do those just add character to a neighborhood? You know, most people don't like syringes in their yards. Richer addicts (usually) leave that shit in their house and/or rob their families blind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they did tear down some of them, right where the Charles Houston Center went. The number of units was reduced, and moved to other parts of the city. Some were rebuilt under the scenario you spell out.

They tore them down...to replace them with different buildings. It's still concentrated public housing - just in a prettier package.

Again, it is mixed it with market-priced housing. Certainly, it is not the eyesore it once was, which I would think you would appreciate. And again, there are fewer public housing units on that site. Some were moved to other places in the city.

[Anonymous]

Don't even try making a point with some of these posters. They hate the city of Alexandria, despise the schools because of the poor children, and wish every poor person in public housing would go somewhere else (where? they never say).

[Anonymous]

Apologies for being so late to this party. I find some of the posts amusing and simultaneously scary, and couldn't resist posting.

GW Middle School is a perfectly terrific school. There are kids there who exhibit disciplinary problems, some relatively bad. There are kids there who will academically excel, and will go on to top-flight colleges. It's a real City school, and there's going to be a mix.

JH has historically been a troubled school. It's been improving, but only because of what everybody admits is pretty invasive attention that wasn't provided until the late 00s. Most of the admins are gone, there are plans to rip down most of the building and rebuild it (this is long overdue - the design simply doesn't work well and a rebuild is really needed), and the school is going to be voluntary K-8, which means that those kids who are economically disadvantaged from the surrounding area will be able to have a really local school for special, close attention through the start of high school (any child in JH will be able to opt out of the K-8 plan and go to GW).

A really strong student is likely to fare well at either, but I suspect that many parents may find that the overall course selection and combination of opt-honors and high-performance course skips at GW (in the latter, a strong student can be permitted to skip a grade only in selected courses) beats what any smaller program could offer.

What I don't think a thoughtful parent or a well-prepared kid will find is a hostile or unreasonably chaotic (that is, more chaotic than any other middle school) environment at GW MS. I also believe that an academically average or above-average student will do as well or better at GW MS than at any private school, especially in this area. We're private school refugees, FWIW, and we've found the ACPS system consistently better for our DC -- better academically, socially, and in every developmental respect. I don't offer this opinion in derogation of private schools generally, and I fully recognize that some children need and may benefit from a combination of an unregulated program and close attention from non-licensed school personnel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apologies for being so late to this party. I find some of the posts amusing and simultaneously scary, and couldn't resist posting.

GW Middle School is a perfectly terrific school. There are kids there who exhibit disciplinary problems, some relatively bad. There are kids there who will academically excel, and will go on to top-flight colleges. It's a real City school, and there's going to be a mix.

JH has historically been a troubled school. It's been improving, but only because of what everybody admits is pretty invasive attention that wasn't provided until the late 00s. Most of the admins are gone, there are plans to rip down most of the building and rebuild it (this is long overdue - the design simply doesn't work well and a rebuild is really needed), and the school is going to be voluntary K-8, which means that those kids who are economically disadvantaged from the surrounding area will be able to have a really local school for special, close attention through the start of high school (any child in JH will be able to opt out of the K-8 plan and go to GW).

A really strong student is likely to fare well at either, but I suspect that many parents may find that the overall course selection and combination of opt-honors and high-performance course skips at GW (in the latter, a strong student can be permitted to skip a grade only in selected courses) beats what any smaller program could offer.

What I don't think a thoughtful parent or a well-prepared kid will find is a hostile or unreasonably chaotic (that is, more chaotic than any other middle school) environment at GW MS. I also believe that an academically average or above-average student will do as well or better at GW MS than at any private school, especially in this area. We're private school refugees, FWIW, and we've found the ACPS system consistently better for our DC -- better academically, socially, and in every developmental respect. I don't offer this opinion in derogation of private schools generally, and I fully recognize that some children need and may benefit from a combination of an unregulated program and close attention from non-licensed school personnel.

Thoughtful post, but still an apology for a school environment that relatively few parents would find appealing. There are plenty of middle schools that offer superior academics to GW without the disciplinary problems that can make life miserable for good kids (who often don't tell their parents about the harassment until much later, if ever).

[Anonymous]

It's not Fairfax County. It's never is going to be. And for many of use who live here, that's the whole point. If I wanted to send my kid to private school, I'd live in D.C.

[Anonymous]

23:10 Thank you so much for your post - I was the original poster of this thread and appreciate your response. I am very interested to hear that you are refugees from the private school system - we have been so concerned about what is going on with the TAG classes and what we've heard about the Open Enrollment Honors classes that we have wondered if we need to consider private school. I would be very interested to know if you think that the classes at GW are rigorous enough and why you feel that GW is better for your child than private was. Many thanks in advance for your advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

First of all, I'm not a "yuppie." I work for a very low salary for a non-for-profit for children. Second, I never said you didn't have a bad experience. I said what you described is not a fair depiction of Old Town as a whole.

Also, just curious, how did you know that the excrement was human? Did you run DNA tests?

Actually, I'm the person with the excrement, but I am not the person you are quoting above. Believe it or not, there ARE multiple people posting here. I really don't want to go into it detail, but let's say we also had dog poop, and this wasn't dog poop. The bloody syringe and gang tags were not my imagination, either.

For the poster who asked how I knew so much about the schools -- it's because I looked long and hard at the schools, attended meetings at JH, etc, before finally deciding private was the only acceptable route. Yes, you can opt out of JH, but you aren't (at least when I looked) allowed to choose which school you could go to. The schools we would have been sent to was only marginally better.