Faculty, student and family input on ethical issues DC privates
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Anonymous
Some residents are still there at a dollar per year. |
Anonymous
Maret should be using the Turtle Park fields, then, given the baseball lobby in upper NW demanded 2 diamonds there over a pool. And if Maret cannot handle its program on site, then maybe it should alter its program, rather than impose on public assets in this manner. |
Anonymous
Disagree. Maret asked for a sweetheart deal in the face of documented community opposition, without going through a transparent competitive process. Yes DC said yes and it shouldn’t have, but no one should absolve Maret, as they have not shown the civic values they purport to teach their students. |
Anonymous
DPR has about 110 fields and about 70 them are baseball fields. Even though only about 15% of the kids who play sports on DPR fields play baseball or other diamond sports. DPR is way, way over-invested in baseball fields. It's a canard that there are few 90' baseball fields in DC. Just off the top of my head I can think of Fort Reno, St. Albans, Sidewll, St. Johns, GWU and AU west of the park. |
Anonymous
Bull. I was at a meeting two years ago where Hardy parents were asking DPR not to renew the deal. All the people you name have been quite vocal in opposing the deal, DPR just ignored them. I'll throw in ANC's and civic associations, they also came out in opposition early. There was a Council hearing in the spring where representatives from Hardy, ANC's and citizens associations all testified in opposition. Maret has been pushing the talking point that there was no opposition, that's fake news. |
Anonymous
You left out a step: Maret lobbies city goverment to renew under sweetheart terms that the city is not obligated to, and that don't benefit the city. |
Anonymous
In the hours that Maret doesn't use Jelleff it is used intensively. It might be the most heavily-used field in all of DPR. It's probably in use 3,000 hours a year. |
Anonymous
+1. Do Maret parents and administrators not read much? There was (some) opposition to this deal in 2010 (see 2010 Georgetown article) but the community has been mobilizing against a renewal of the Maret deal for at least a year now.... https://georgetowner.com/articles/2019/09/05/anc-meeting-erupts-in-protest-over-jelleff-agreement/ https://deadspin.com/the-legendary-public-rec-center-in-a-private-schools-po-1837648863/amp https://georgetowner.com/articles/2019/05/20/burning-questions-about-jelleff-center-plans/ https://georgetowner.com/articles/2019/07/03/anc-meeting-heats-up-over-jelleff/ https://georgetowner.com/articles/2019/04/03/228309/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/georgetownmetropolitan.com/2010/01/21/city-turns-over-jelleff-fields-to-maret/amp/ http://209.160.1.24/admin/uploadfiles/GT%20Feb.%203%201.pdf |
Anonymous
If you start talking about ethical issues at all schools you’re opening up a Pandora’s box of all sorts of issues. This would mean questioning who gets on the governing board and why. It would include questioning why families from the same social group seem to be on the school boards year after year. It would also include questioning why the top four positions on a school board are all Republican males which does not represent the school community. So I think they’re all sorts of questions people could ask and they usually don’t have any luck getting answers so they give up questioning anything. |
Anonymous
Why is the community so ineffective? Where was the outrage before this happened? Seems like they wasted a year without doing anything substantial, so a lot of this seems like faux outrage rather than a real loss. |
Anonymous
Or you could ask why a few hundred students at Maret (many of whom are not DC residents) are being given a higher priority than thousands of DC kids despite the community outcry? The answer is money, privilege and connections (Ben Bradlee’s grandkids went to Maret which might explain the lackluster WaPo article, as did councilmember Jack Evans’ kid, who “coincidentally” entered Maret right after this deal was first inked, reportedly with the support of Evans who sided with Maret over the needs of his constituents. |
Anonymous
#complicit |
Anonymous
LOL! You are blaming the victim of other people’s corruption! That’s a new low. |
Anonymous
#complicitatSidwelltoo -- minus the Republicans |
Anonymous
It's not a canard. There are many, many little league sized baseball fields, which is great, but very few baseball fields city wide for kids to play on once they turn thirteen years old and need the larger field. When you add up the private and public schools throughout the District plus the leagues, supply does not come close to meeting demand. The private school fields you mention are not open to the public and the ability to lease field time from Sidwell, St. Albans and St. Johns is very limited, if available at all, and all these schools have varsity and JV teams and in some cases middle school teams that use these fields. Fort Reno is used by Wilson HS, and some of the area private leagues. Many of the other DC High Schools don't have their own fields, and those that do, like Banneker, use them or they get leased them out to other groups. The Nationals Youth baseball facility is used by Gonzaga and some other schools. The reality is that baseball fields are really big, and its easier to put in two multi-use fields that can be used for multiple sports. GDS is doing a major project and a baseball field was just not feasible because it would have meant sacrificing so much else. That's understandable, but it makes the logistics of fielding a baseball team very challenging. You can practice on a multi-use field, but you can't play games. |