Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The segregation at ACHS is self segregation. The students segregate themselves, often starting in middle school.
This is not uncommon at any school anywhere. Do I like it, not really. But keeping one high school doesn’t negate any self segregation. According to my kids, there is significant tension among AA and Hispanic students. I don’t know why. I wish there wasn’t. What exactly are the school board, city council, the mayor and special interests groups like TWU doing about it? Putting their heads in the sand does nothing. Acting like they’re aren’t gangs in high school or that certain groups “have beef” also does nothing. From what I have heard from several ACHS students is that 47, as well as several Hispanic gangs, are prevalent at the high school. It’s such a shame. But no one does anything about it.
This. But we did notice in elementary. Like kids what to hang out in their free time with like kids. The school can't mandate that away. It's human nature and it just happens even in adults.
I think part of the problem is that the one school would be better than the other. This would force a lot of the liberal parents into a position where they would have to say out loud they are picking the better school and don't really care about diversity as much when it comes to effecting their child's education and college prospects. To avoid that, they could force all students into a random lottery to be assigned to one of the 2 schools. Or as someone else said Minnie Howard could just be totally rebuilt into a second high school. Also part of the no second high school was a belief that they would have students doing virtual learning [this was prepandemic] and thus reduce the need for physical space. The pandemic showed that it would not be a good way to teach the majority of students.
That's not what people mean when they talk about segregation within schools.
They mean that poor, POC students are under represented in honors classes, AP classes, etc. More affluent, white kids are getting a different school experience with less disruptive students in their classes, lots of activities that look good on a college application, etc. But that is a problem that starts long before 9th grade and is very apparent when you look at elementary and middle school SOL pass rates by race and income level. It's not like you can take a kid who has been struggling through math since they were 5 and drop them in AP Calculus their senior year and claim victory.
Any student can sign up for honors or AP classes. They can't be forced out of the class either. There are POC students in those classes. If the school demanded that every student take one of the classes, then that would bring outcries of being unfair and militant. There is only so much the school do. Even if they recommend the student take the class, beg the student to take the class, the student doesn't have to do it.
And before you start spewing the progressive rhetoric, please use common sense. Alexandria has many students coming in each year who are recently arrived immigrants or have arrived only a few years earlier. If a student arrives at high school age, the first focus in school is to help them learn English, which they would need to succeed in other courses. Learning English as a teen isn't easy and then to learn complex subjects in a language you barely understand is even more difficult. So you have to accept that there are going to be a large portion of students who just need to learn the basics not because they are being railroaded, not because of their ethnicity, not because no one thinks their smart, but because they have to learn the basics and get up to speed BEFORE they can tackle tougher course and that takes time. Hispanic students make up the majority of POC students btw.
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