New Jackson-Reed HS (Wilson HS) School Principal - Sah Brown from Eastern High School

[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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

[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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

I’m American, and I completely agree. All I can chalk it up to is an some unwillingness to admit to implementing social programs, shirking of responsibility by policy makers, and some sort of hero complex on the part of educators.

[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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

You're perfectly aligned with the latest union talking points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That principal?!

We live on Capitol Hill. My spouse and I met with Brown when when we were looking into the IB Diploma program at Eastern for our oldest in early 2020, before the pandemic began.

Brown seemed clueless about what it would take to attract high SES in-boundary families like ours to Eastern, without any real interest in doing so. He claimed that the program offered "real rigor and challenge to all" repeatedly, and wouldn't answer our questions about Eastern's average IBD points totals. He also wouldn't talk about how many of the "full Diploma" students at Eastern actually earn the Diploma.

Later on, we learned that Eastern's average points total has been mired in the mid 20s, on a 24-45 points pass scale, since the program's inception a decade ago. We also learned that most of the Eastern students who try to earn the Diploma have failed since the get go. We left the meeting unimpressed with Brown and Eastern's IBD program and didn't enroll our child.

basically you were trying to publicly make him admit his school was bad?

Sounds like PP was politely asking for basic information about Eastern's IB Diploma program. She couldn't get it from the school's semi competent senior admin.

I'm not optimistic about Brown either.

Having experienced Hill parents in a variety of settings, I feel pretty confident that PP is a total PITA and their opinion should be summarily dismissed by JR parents. I have no idea about Mr Sah other than that he made a very good impression at the ANC meeting I saw. But PP’s view, which boils down to disliking the obvious facts about Eastern and thinking she deserves some kind of red carpet for being who she is, is worth absolutely nothing. All it does is present yet another vignette of deluded Hill parenting.

Quoting some deep cuts way early in this thread to offer some open-mind role playing exercise to fellow posters.
How would the bolded quote sound to you if you replaced Hill parents with any group of people you encounter in the course of your child's education?

[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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

You're perfectly aligned with the latest union talking points.

I’m not affiliated with any union, but seriously why are we asking schools to do so much? They need to worry about academics. They don’t have time to worry about all the other stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That principal?!

We live on Capitol Hill. My spouse and I met with Brown when when we were looking into the IB Diploma program at Eastern for our oldest in early 2020, before the pandemic began.

Brown seemed clueless about what it would take to attract high SES in-boundary families like ours to Eastern, without any real interest in doing so. He claimed that the program offered "real rigor and challenge to all" repeatedly, and wouldn't answer our questions about Eastern's average IBD points totals. He also wouldn't talk about how many of the "full Diploma" students at Eastern actually earn the Diploma.

Later on, we learned that Eastern's average points total has been mired in the mid 20s, on a 24-45 points pass scale, since the program's inception a decade ago. We also learned that most of the Eastern students who try to earn the Diploma have failed since the get go. We left the meeting unimpressed with Brown and Eastern's IBD program and didn't enroll our child.

basically you were trying to publicly make him admit his school was bad?

Sounds like PP was politely asking for basic information about Eastern's IB Diploma program. She couldn't get it from the school's semi competent senior admin.

I'm not optimistic about Brown either.

Having experienced Hill parents in a variety of settings, I feel pretty confident that PP is a total PITA and their opinion should be summarily dismissed by JR parents. I have no idea about Mr Sah other than that he made a very good impression at the ANC meeting I saw. But PP’s view, which boils down to disliking the obvious facts about Eastern and thinking she deserves some kind of red carpet for being who she is, is worth absolutely nothing. All it does is present yet another vignette of deluded Hill parenting.

Quoting some deep cuts way early in this thread to offer some open-mind role playing exercise to fellow posters.
How would the bolded quote sound to you if you replaced Hill parents with any group of people you encounter in the course of your child's education?

Putting it out there -

I had to move from ward 3 because I was tired of having other parents at the playground assume I was the nanny. I was tired of my children seeing me disrespected on a routine basis by other parents- not just being called the nanny. I don’t need to be told I’m articulate- I got a perfect score on my verbal SAT. I didn’t need weird anecdotes about the other black/Hispanic people they knew. I was tired of my kids being “the only”.

I’m sure there will be a bunch of Cleveland park parents chiming in to tear me down and tell me how none of this happened, but it did. I know of someone parents of color who are happy there, but I wasn’t.

So before I hear how obnoxious Hill families can be (and that’s not wrong!), they have nothing on the racist ward 3 parents I constantly encountered. Not all ward 3 parents, of course. But enough to make it intolerable.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

You're perfectly aligned with the latest union talking points.

I’m not affiliated with any union, but seriously why are we asking schools to do so much? They need to worry about academics. They don’t have time to worry about all the other stuff.

DP: just ignore; education threads are destined to get union bashers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.


You're perfectly aligned with the latest union talking points.

I'm not a teacher's union fan but I agree with this point---teachers got into teaching to be teachers, not social workers. But to answer the foreigner's question---the reason that being social workers has devolved upon the schools is because it is the only place that parents are legally obligated to send their children. There are numerous community programs scattered throughout the city, but the participants are self-selecting---the parents may be low-income, but they are trying to give their kids as many advantages and opportunities they find available and affordable. Whereas the kids in school who are most in need of those types of socialization programs are most likely coming from home environments that are the least likely to get them into those programs. And because of the emphasis on individual autonomy in US society, there is a cultural aversion to forcing families into those types of programs, even if they plainly need 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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

This is a very good point. I don’t get why everything is dumped on schools and teachers. And they are not even paid well or respected.
The US is a strange country in some ways.

[Anonymous]

If parents, grandparents, counselors, therapists and community programs took care of behavioral issues, teachers can focus on academics. Intact and involved family units are the biggest strength of any community.

[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:what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid? Demanded appropriate classes?

This is "made it better?"

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building. The kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else. But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that.

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question. PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification. Do you not know that that word means? It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy. Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up. I live in Adams Morgan. Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood. Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly. The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out. That’s gentrification. What is not clear?

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.” It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall. System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools. Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high. Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP. Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures.

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids. You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW. If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them. Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community. Tracking MIGHT help with that, it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation. So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it.

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not.

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics? Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff. Schools in the US are expected to do too much.

This is a very good point. I don’t get why everything is dumped on schools and teachers. And they are not even paid well or respected.
The US is a strange country in some ways.

Because parents and US society in general look at schools as babysitters and servants. Teachers are nor even viewed as human beings with families also. We even use hunger issues as a reason to keep schools open. The lack of discipline is just awful. Teaching is one of the few professions that everyone "knows everything but doesn't want the job." The pandemic should have shown how important and essential they are. Of course it just vilified them more.

[Anonymous]

Its true, parents are too busy with hustle of dual careers and house chores/social life/internet. They want schools to babysit and raise their kids. Unless schools are set up for all that, tgeir will be issues to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its true, parents are too busy with hustle of dual careers and house chores/social life/internet. They want schools to babysit and raise their kids. Unless schools are set up for all that, tgeir will be issues to deal with.

As a parent, I don’t want this. I want schools to be successful at their fundamental purpose of education. I want policy makers to stop over-burdening schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its true, parents are too busy with hustle of dual careers and house chores/social life/internet. They want schools to babysit and raise their kids. Unless schools are set up for all that, tgeir will be issues to deal with.

As a parent, I don’t want this. I want schools to be successful at their fundamental purpose of education. I want policy makers to stop over-burdening schools.

As a teacher, I really appreciate this sentiment. The past year on this forum have shown me too many times, however, then when teachers ask for things, they are called greedy, selfish, lazy, etc...

If you look on the local politics board right now, there are multiple threads of people who didn't vote for R. White because of his relationship with WTU. Who do you think is making the policies that overburden the schools? Right now that is Mayor Muriel Bowser and her all encompassing control of schools.

We get that the once in a lifetime (hopefully pandemic) wasn't ideal. We get that the WTU upset people with their actions. If people don't move on from it and keep disqualifying politicians because they support teachers, it is only going to get worse.

[Anonymous]

Several European countries, take Iceland for example, turn free, quality after school programs into places where social workers can help children who need it. They provide therapy and fun after school activities. This should be the focus- free, QUALITY aftercare where social workers can really help kids out. I don’t want my kids yanked out of class or other kids pulled from academic pursuits so the social worker can help them out.