Do you think Shepherd Elementary will become/is becoming more diverse?

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03/21/2015 11:15

Subject: Re:Do you think Shepherd Elementary will become/is becoming more diverse?

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're PK parents targeting Shepherd next year.

I'm honestly turned off by Janney (and AU park) due to its disconnect with the city's racial makeup. There's something really odd to me about a kid going to public school in a city that's 50% black and only having 9% of the school's population of that color. We're white, but I want my kid to understand that the world around him is not all like him.

With regards to "diversity," part of the reason we do like Shepherd is that there is true economic diversity in the school (33% FARMS), with a fair portion in the middle-to-high income part of the spectrum. This is an on-going debate here, but I think that level of financial stability leads to more engaged parents, better student performance, better student behavior, and an all-around better educational experience for all of the kids. But its not like it's a school of rich brats.

And I'm honestly turned off by the growing comfort with white loathing on DCUM, often by people who say they're white.

Here are facts:

Janney has 71% of its students whose parents state that the kids are "all 100% white." It has 29% percent of kids whose parents say their kids' skin is not white, and has different pretty colors that are not white: black,, black and white, yellow and white, russet and white, black and yellow, yellow and russet. Whatever.

Sheperd has 80% of its students whose parents state their kids are "all 100% black." It has 20% of children whose skin color does not line up with the 80% dominant color of skin. That's 20% non-dominant pretty colors at Sheperd, compared to 29% non-dominant pretty colors at Janney.

So using facts, which are often inconvenient and uncomfortable in these kinds of breezy, acceptable anti-whte comments, we see that the reviled Janney has more skin tone diversity than Sheperd. You cannot dispute this.

[as an aside, Sheperd is 80% black in a city whose population is about 48% black at this time. Why is that not "imbalanced" for PP? It's only imbalanced when the white piece of the enrollment pie is outsized, but it's not imbalanced when the black piece of the enrollment pie is outsized, as with Sheperd. Correct, PP? ]

So comments like PPs really distill down to, eh, I don't want to be around white folk.

-- a multiracial observer of DCUM protocol. Who is often assumed to be Greek, or maybe Egyptian, but in fact is neither and has a little black and a little white in her.

Not sure how long you've been observing but in the 5+ years I've been reading DCUM, I can't say I've seen much of this white loathing you're talking about. The irony in this conversation is that Shepherd Elementary is pretty exemplary of the opposite. It has scores way above average, higher SES population, a relatively low percentage of FARMS, ideal class sizes, it offers the rare inter baccalaureate programming, and it has a newly renovated building on a beautiful campus. These are all factors that most DCUMers clamor for, yet Shepherd is hardly mentioned on anyone's most-desired list. You could say that it's because the school's location makes it difficult, but any observer of DCUM could be forgiven for thinking that it's because the school is mostly black.

If you're having a hard time believing that a higher number of black kids brings down the value of a school in DCPS discussions, search the forum for Hearst, Hardy, Ludlow-Taylor, Ellington, or the terms OOB and flip. More than any "white loathing", you'll see a sentiment of it would be great if there weren't so many black kids.

And if there is the occasional I don't want my kid at JKLM, it might be because of the way people express their true feelings about "diversity" in these threads.