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Anonymous
Are you being facetious? Whatever anyone feels about the proposal involving the two schools, no one should be celebrating a potential scandal involving school leadership. Miner has been through so many changes in leadership over the last 4 years. The kids and staff there deserve better than that. And that failure shouldn’t be celebrated by anyone. |
Anonymous
13 is "many" to me. That's almost a full PK class. Is that 21 just for Apple Tree Lincoln Park or does it include the Oklahoma Ave. campus? Either way, what that says to me is that not only does Maury not have enough PK seats for IB families, but even a PK-only charter that is very close to Maury doesn't have enough capacity to absorb all the excess. Maury parents have complained for years about the problem of PK access. I also think it's interesting that some on this thread are convinced that combining the schools would immediately "infect" Maury with Miner's issues with administration. Why? To me the problems Miner has had getting competent administrators is a point in favor of combining the schools. Maury is a well-run school with a good administration and a great PTO. Usually when you have an example of a terrific school in a district, you want to export what is working to other schools. So why not export what works at Maury to Miner? Why does this automatically mean Maury will suffer and not that Miner will benefit? Is Maury a strong school because of the effort of teachers, administrators, and community, or is it a strong school because of demographics? It's just not clear to me why this is automatically a bad idea. I get the objections about commute, but to me that is not a compelling reason to throw out the proposal altogether, especially when these schools are already quite close together and already a decent number of Maury families use Miner for ECE. |
Anonymous
I think it's 13 across PK3 and PK4, so it's really just a handful of students each year. It's not "many" in the way you seemed to be suggesting earlier, that the Maury community as a whole has already bought into Miner for PK. |
Anonymous
You sound incredibly naive. Schools are not businesses to merge. If Miner needs better administration, it is beyond irresponsible for DCPS to decide, “hey, how about we just combine it with a school with good administration?” instead of, you know, taking responsibility for the Miner administration directly. I can’t believe I’m going to use this word, but it is almost a kind of belief in colonization of the “poor” school by the enlightened “rich” school. |
Anonymous
In terms of test scores, it probably is largely demographics. Which isn't a knock on Maury -- it is true everywhere that things like test scores are very close correlated with socioeconomic status and parents' education. It doesn't look like Maury has some magic formula to fix this -- the scores of its economically disadvantaged students appear to be markedly lower on average than those of its more affluent students. Someone made this point upthread; there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Maury would significantly improve scores for students like this. (I don't know if Title I status would survive the combination, but it strikes me as a huge problem if it wouldn't. Maury is already struggling with staffing on its DCPS budget, and this is with relatively fewer socioeconomically disadvantaged students, who one can expect to be higher-need.) To me, the big strengths of Maury are rooted in its neighborhood feel, and I think the logistics of a cluster would seriously impede some things that are very important. I do think the logistics of drop off are more difficult than you seem willing to credit -- especially for single-parent families or parents with less flexible jobs. But that's not the only reason living in close proximity to your school is beneficial. One of the great things about Maury is its vibrant school events -- how will Maury family attendance change if some (half?) are held at Miner? Will some PTA meetings be held at Miner, and how will that affect Maury family attendance? I also live close enough to Maury to be able to pop in frequently even during the work day to bring things in or volunteer. I wouldn't be able to do that nearly as much at the Miner campus even if both my kids were there -- with one at each, I will be even more limited. You can't just "import" active parents to a school. I consider myself an active parent at Maury, but I would not be able to be an active parent in the same way at Miner, period. (And the extra time spent bringing my kids to separate schools would make it impossible for me to even maintain my current level of activity at Maury.) My big problem -- and maybe this will be addressed tonight -- is that it doesn't seem like DME has put any real thought into this. Someone was like, "say, I've got an idea!" And now that idea is being shopped around without any real substance -- they aren't even committed to exactly which grades would go to Miner. To my mind, it would make much more sense to really consider the logistics of how something like this could work, survey families to model out likely effects on the school populations, etc., and then present it for consideration. But the idea that they would just say, we've been thinking about combining these two schools into a cluster, and that parents would be like, "neat-o! sounds great, I have total faith you will work out the details in a really cool way, so sign me up" is ludicrous. |
Anonymous
This is an interesting discussion, and one could argue it be viewed from the opposite perspective as well. Families who choose to enroll in a DCPS school do so knowing the school is part of a bigger school system. Each school does not exist in a vacuum. Decisions about many aspects of the school are made at a citywide level, and as you can see on the Miner thread, leadership shifts between schools when necessary. In this situation, not only is the school part of the same system, but it exists a few blocks away, and feeds into the same middle school. When you are part of a bigger organization or system, sometimes decisions may be made that impact more than one piece/school - and in this situation, clustering the schools may make sense for multiple reasons that have been listed already in this thread, not just the administration piece. |
Anonymous
| Is it strange to anyone else that the DME school meetings site lists the meeting tonight as "Maury" and that there is not a meeting on the list for "Miner"? Is Miner not going to have a meeting about this? |
Anonymous
They are still working to schedule meetings with certain school communities. I think Miner and Payne were on that list. |
Anonymous
I wondered this as well, and indeed that was one of the questions I wanted to ask (assuming we get a chance). It would be downright grotesque of DME to assume that Miner doesn’t “deserve” a meeting or that they would leap at the chance to commute their kids a mile to Maury. I know several Miner parents who, while clear-eyed about some of Miner’s challenges in upper grades, love its community. I would not assume that they blindly “want Maury.” |
Anonymous
On the first point, Maury has, what, seven separate EC classes? The idea that “almost” 1/7 the size of Maury EC goes to Miner must mean that Miner is effectively already combined with Maury for EC—which was the original claim here—is just inaccurate. As for the idea of “exporting” Maury’s success, trying to replicate success is far different from combining. I think there are plenty of things that Maryland and Virginia governments do well, but that doesn’t mean I want to combine D.C. with them. Combining is a lowest-common-denominator solution that will dilute the hard-won strengths of Maury and do little to actually help Miner. |
Anonymous
Yea, I'm still waiting to see if / when they schedule meetings for the NW schools that feed to JR HS. I thought that was one of the bigger issues that this study was focused on - reducing overcrowding at that HS and MS feeder pattern. And yet all the proposals I've seen are mostly focused on Hill elementary schools with most impactful proposal being to cluster two ES who have zero representation on the committees. |
Anonymous
Nobody has given a reason, other than some Pollyannish and frankly somewhat offensive belief that Miner can only improve if combined with Maury. |
Anonymous
that’s right - Miner only exists as a subject in these people’s minds. Almost as if the “problem” is Maury and not Miner. |
Anonymous
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People need to remember the Rhee-era history of Maury. Before Rhee, UMC parents did not send their kids to Maury (and, unlike today where the boundary is almost entirely UMC, pre-Rhee the area was just starting to gentrify). Rhee gave a very strong Maury principal the backing to make some very tough and often unpopular choices while at the same time a small contingent of gentrifiers worked tirelessly to turn Maury into a place where they could send their kids when they were school aged. This came at the same time as the advent of free PK, which these gentrifiers were willing to take a risk on at Maury. At the time DCPS policy was to create strong IB schools that the IB population wanted to send their kids to. So two forces were working together at once. Higher SES parents willing to take a risk on a school with committed and brave administrators willing to make unpopular decisions to attract those families. Contrast with Payne, which borders Maury, and had similar demographics at the time, but lacked the strong administration or strong parent group. In fact, the Payne principal at the time was openly hostile to IB families. And we can see the differences between the Maury and Payne trajectories, even though location and housing stock are very similar-- Payne is arguably in an even more attractive location because of better metro access.
Today we are in a completely different place. DCPS no longer prioritizes strong IB schools where attracting the IB population is a priority. They'd rather have the "rich kids" spread out among schools. And that is apparently the Maury/Miner plan. They can try this on the Hill because school quality is such a geographic patchwork so you have strong and weak schools right next to each other (unlike in Ward 3). But I worry that with this new approach, instead of having pockets of strong schools and pockets of weak ones, you have more general mediocrity. Time will tell whether UMC parents tire of the mediocrity and go elsewhere. As for overcrowding at JR, that was solved by opening MacArthur. And with the covid attrition, I think the only ES that is possibly considered over crowded in Ward 3 is currently Lafayette. Deal is large and busy, but operating at very close to capacity (and is building an addition). And merging these schools with each other Maury/Miner style isn't going to change anything because although they may have different cultures, quality is overall strong across Ward 3. |
Anonymous
This is very interesting background. I'm curious about the "unpopular decisions" you reference -- could you elaborate on those? |