City Paper - Neighborhood Schooled by Jonetta Rose Barras

[Anonymous]

No I don't think Jonetta Rose Barras is being racist. I think she is calling her own people out for the effort they are willing to make to better their community. Yes you could say no one calls out white people for white poor communities in appalachia like they Jonetta is calling out well off AA for what is happening in Wards 5,6,7 but I do think it is worth talking about. What obligations do we have to where we live. I say this as a Ward 5 parent with kids at Eaton. The article rang true to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No I don't think Jonetta Rose Barras is being racist. I think she is calling her own people out for the effort they are willing to make to better their community. Yes you could say no one calls out white people for white poor communities in appalachia like they Jonetta is calling out well off AA for what is happening in Wards 5,6,7 but I do think it is worth talking about. What obligations do we have to where we live. I say this as a Ward 5 parent with kids at Eaton. The article rang true to me.

It is racist in the sense that the focus is on race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No I don't think Jonetta Rose Barras is being racist. I think she is calling her own people out for the effort they are willing to make to better their community. Yes you could say no one calls out white people for white poor communities in appalachia like they Jonetta is calling out well off AA for what is happening in Wards 5,6,7 but I do think it is worth talking about. What obligations do we have to where we live. I say this as a Ward 5 parent with kids at Eaton. The article rang true to me.

Well Miss, why are you not at your neighborhood schools. And where the frack does Jonetta live. What has she done for her neighborhood schools. I know she did not send her kids to their low performing neighborhood school. Oops, the attention grabbing, non-reporting heifer does not have any children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No I don't think Jonetta Rose Barras is being racist. I think she is calling her own people out for the effort they are willing to make to better their community. Yes you could say no one calls out white people for white poor communities in appalachia like they Jonetta is calling out well off AA for what is happening in Wards 5,6,7 but I do think it is worth talking about. What obligations do we have to where we live. I say this as a Ward 5 parent with kids at Eaton. The article rang true to me.

Well Miss, why are you not at your neighborhood schools. And where the frack does Jonetta live. What has she done for her neighborhood schools. I know she did not send her kids to their low performing neighborhood school. Oops, the attention grabbing, non-reporting heifer does not have any children.

Why am I not in Ward 5 schools. Poor quality buildings, when I started looking 5 years ago very few extras like music or libraries or language, crappy playgrounds,limited parental involvement. Burroughs which is the school we would have gone to just has a principal removed for taking from a fund of donations. Completely segregated schools. What more do you need. I could not see any movement or even inclination on the part of the schools to say we want to be better and here is what we are doing please come. So no I did not feel like I could bring change and can you imagine a white woman walking into these schools and saying this all has to change? I have lived in Brookland long enough to know that many who stay view us as interlopers and I was not going to go through it over my child's education. Cast aspersions all you want on Jonetta but she spoke truth to a lot of people that are denial about the prospects of DC's children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Why am I not in Ward 5 schools. Poor quality buildings, when I started looking 5 years ago very few extras like music or libraries or language, crappy playgrounds,limited parental involvement. Burroughs which is the school we would have gone to just has a principal removed for taking from a fund of donations. Completely segregated schools. What more do you need. I could not see any movement or even inclination on the part of the schools to say we want to be better and here is what we are doing please come. So no I did not feel like I could bring change and can you imagine a white woman walking into these schools and saying this all has to change? I have lived in Brookland long enough to know that many who stay view us as interlopers and I was not going to go through it over my child's education. Cast aspersions all you want on Jonetta but she spoke truth to a lot of people that are denial about the prospects of DC's children.

The crappy playgrounds, few school extras, crappy libraries, language and lack of parental support was not good enough for your white middle class child, but somehow it should be good enough for Black middle class parents. The Black middle class parents with options should stay with the crappy schools, crappy libraries, no music, no languages, little science and math offerings, etc, etc. Your child's education is important, but their child's education is not important to them And you don't think it's not a race thang Okay, if you say so.

[Anonymous]

The article would have been much more accurate and interesting- but probably less controversial and attention getting-if Barras had talked about the middle class, black and white both, opting out of neighborhood public schools. This is what I see in my Ward 5 neighborhood. Middle class families of all backgrounds choose charters, privates, OOB, or move. School choice has made it possible for DCPS to be missing a whole subset of children in some parts of the city- middle class kids of all races. The question is- why does DCPS just let them go?

[Anonymous]

I think their is an issue within DCPS schools about parents being the problem. Many teacher fundamentally believe that but it is not just the poor parents they blame, they also blame middle class parents that are viewed as interfering. No not all the failures of the system are the fault of teachers, there is a lot to blame but the person parents encounter day in and day out is the teacher and if there an adversarial relationship there, parents blame them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think their is an issue within DCPS schools about parents being the problem. Many teacher fundamentally believe that but it is not just the poor parents they blame, they also blame middle class parents that are viewed as interfering. No not all the failures of the system are the fault of teachers, there is a lot to blame but the person parents encounter day in and day out is the teacher and if there an adversarial relationship there, parents blame them.

Oh that can't be! Ms. Barras clearly explained in the article that the problem is that AA families think too highly of teachers to criticize them in any way. Tsk, tsk . . . those AA parents and their out-dated respect for teachers. why, oh why can't they be more like those white parents that are willing to push the teachers aside and make their neighborhood schools into something great?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The article would have been much more accurate and interesting- but probably less controversial and attention getting-if Barras had talked about the middle class, black and white both, opting out of neighborhood public schools. This is what I see in my Ward 5 neighborhood. Middle class families of all backgrounds choose charters, privates, OOB, or move. School choice has made it possible for DCPS to be missing a whole subset of children in some parts of the city- middle class kids of all races. The question is- why does DCPS just let them go?

What else can DCPS do to keep them? If there were no school choice, and we'd been forced to send my oldest to our neighborhood DCPS school we would have probably moved, most likely to Arlington. Our neighborhood DCPS school is looking better these days and we are actually sending our younger kids there (although very much one year at a time). Most of it was a bad principal retiring after 20 years and being replaced with a great one. We are also seasoned parents now, more comfortable with taking a risk short term.

[Anonymous]

What else can DCPS do to keep them? If there were no school choice, and we'd been forced to send my oldest to our neighborhood DCPS school we would have probably moved, most likely to Arlington. Our neighborhood DCPS school is looking better these days and we are actually sending our younger kids there (although very much one year at a time). Most of it was a bad principal retiring after 20 years and being replaced with a great one. We are also seasoned parents now, more comfortable with taking a risk short term.

This can't be repeated often enough. We're in the same boat (albeit with a charter, not DCPS) - if there was no school choice, we'd have moved for sure. Perhaps to one of the few areas where DCPS in-bounds provides a good education in an acceptable environment, but more likely to Arlington. That move has been delayed 5+ years, and maybe longer. While I agree that the OOB process and charters have removed many middle and upper-middle class kids from their neighborhood schools, eliminating those options won't address the problems. It's incredibly naive to think that all the parents who use OOB and charters would just shrug and say, "Oh, well, we'll just use the substandard IB school." Maybe some would; many more wouldn't. I for one do not have the time to lead, or even participate in a herculean effort like Wells did. It'd be a lot easier, less time-consuming, and better for my kid to move to an established district/system.

In addition, DC has an interest separate from the school system in keeping those middle and upper-middle class families in the system - the tax revenues.

[Anonymous]

The article would have been much more accurate and interesting- but probably less controversial and attention getting-if Barras had talked about the middle class, black and white both, opting out of neighborhood public schools. This is what I see in my Ward 5 neighborhood. Middle class families of all backgrounds choose charters, privates, OOB, or move. School choice has made it possible for DCPS to be missing a whole subset of children in some parts of the city- middle class kids of all races. The question is- why does DCPS just let them go?

I'm this poster. Definitely didn't want to imply anything anti-choice. In fact, our youngest will be attending a language immersion charter-- we don't consider our Ward 5 in bounds school a real option. Without charters, we'd probably have moved to MoCo. I guess my point was that I don't see DCPS doing much to woo middle class families into the system, by investing in language programs, facilities, outreach, etc. I also agree that it's too high of a lift to expect individual parents to be heros like Suzanne Wells. No one has the time or energy-- especially since we're all working on making the schools our children DO attend better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The article would have been much more accurate and interesting- but probably less controversial and attention getting-if Barras had talked about the middle class, black and white both, opting out of neighborhood public schools. This is what I see in my Ward 5 neighborhood. Middle class families of all backgrounds choose charters, privates, OOB, or move. School choice has made it possible for DCPS to be missing a whole subset of children in some parts of the city- middle class kids of all races. The question is- why does DCPS just let them go?

I'm this poster. Definitely didn't want to imply anything anti-choice. In fact, our youngest will be attending a language immersion charter-- we don't consider our Ward 5 in bounds school a real option. Without charters, we'd probably have moved to MoCo. I guess my point was that I don't see DCPS doing much to woo middle class families into the system, by investing in language programs, facilities, outreach, etc. I also agree that it's too high of a lift to expect individual parents to be heros like Suzanne Wells. No one has the time or energy-- especially since we're all working on making the schools our children DO attend better.

OK, but Suzanne Wells is an individual parent. So is Tessa Muellinger and so is Daniel holt. I think it is important to credit those parents that have worked hard to imrpove their neighborhood schools. How exactly did they do it? What did they say to folks that said they were crazy to enroll their child at DCPS neighborhood school?

Too bad Ms. Barras decided instead to take superficial swipes at the African-Americans in other wards. If she really wanted to explore that topic, interviewing more than one AA parent would have been the ethical things to do.