Middle school after Brent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be real. No one is willing to send their child to Jefferson. When the start day is finally here despite all the talk they find another option. People who don’t want to pay for private or drive their kids will move to VA or MD for public. That’s how it has been and it will continue to be at Brent.

There's about 300 students at Jefferson middle school. Tell us more about who you consider to exist/consider people, and who you do not.

In fairness, I think the PP meant no one IB for Brent — I.e., no one with a lot of financial flexibility. That’s an exaggeration, but not by a lot.

Yes this. The families who live in bound for Brent are often spending $1,000,000+ on a house. At least if you've bought in the past 2 years or buying now. Those same families usually have the means to send their kids to a different middle school and chose to do so.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't argue that many/most Brent families are reasonably comfortable financially, but that's "kids are in public school" comfortable. An extra $30/60/90K after tax is pretty daunting.

Also, very few people moving her for a $1M plus house with 3rd/4th/5th graders, I would imagine. The folks buying those houses have little kids and aren't fully in the middle school mindset (except for the OP!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, they're real idiots, those folks. Look at them investing in their neighborhood public schools. Can you believe it? What a bunch of rubes. So much better to just complain about the situation and whose fault it is.

So much better not to get DCPS to pour 45 million bucks into a middle school building that's more than half empty, and destined to remain so without a test-in program or any definite at or above grade level courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, they're real idiots, those folks. Look at them investing in their neighborhood public schools. Can you believe it? What a bunch of rubes. So much better to just complain about the situation and whose fault it is.

So much better not to get DCPS to pour 45 million bucks into a middle school building that's more than half empty, and destined to remain so without a test-in program or any definite at or above grade level courses.

I've never understood this line of thinking. Every other MS building has been addressed. No matter if it is a good school or a bad school, every building has its life span and the JA building is reaching the end of that span. It needs to be fixed. End of story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, they're real idiots, those folks. Look at them investing in their neighborhood public schools. Can you believe it? What a bunch of rubes. So much better to just complain about the situation and whose fault it is.

So much better not to get DCPS to pour 45 million bucks into a middle school building that's more than half empty, and destined to remain so without a test-in program or any definite at or above grade level courses.

I've never understood this line of thinking. Every other MS building has been addressed. No matter if it is a good school or a bad school, every building has its life span and the JA building is reaching the end of that span. It needs to be fixed. End of story.

Or shut the building down and send everyone to Eliot-Hine.

[Anonymous]

I think Jefferson will be an interesting school to watch the next couple years. Families from the Hill who aren't getting into SH, and don't want to go to EH, are considering Jefferson. Everyone knows that it has had a total overall inside. Now it just needs a large influx of middle & high SES students to commit to it. This could start to flip this year. The biggest obstacle is actually the distance and difficulty in kids going alone from the Hill. But if DC reroutes a bus from Brent to Jefferson (there is talk of this happening), then more Hill families will consider the jump.

And the changes happening in SE and SW are enormous too. But I don't think most of the families there have middle schoolers yet?

[Anonymous]

Sure, it all works out...15 or 20 years from now.

New to these issues and don't get why Brent's Jefferson boosters don't seem to play hardball with DCPS.

Why not say, we're not supporting the renovation, and we're not coming, without appropriate classes in place. We want at and above grade-level math courses, like the ones Wash Latin and BASIS offer. Most of our families enroll at those schools.

Since they've got tens of millions to throw at a building, why not a few million pinned down for appropriate classes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Jefferson will be an interesting school to watch the next couple years. Families from the Hill who aren't getting into SH, and don't want to go to EH, are considering Jefferson. Everyone knows that it has had a total overall inside. Now it just needs a large influx of middle & high SES students to commit to it. This could start to flip this year. The biggest obstacle is actually the distance and difficulty in kids going alone from the Hill. But if DC reroutes a bus from Brent to Jefferson (there is talk of this happening), then more Hill families will consider the jump.

And the changes happening in SE and SW are enormous too. But I don't think most of the families there have middle schoolers yet?

The biggest obstacle is the "distance" and "kids going alone from the Hill?" This is delusional.

Please explain why so many Hill families go with Mundo Verde, Stokes or YuYing to get on a path to go much farther from the Hill for MS and HS...to DCI way up at Walter Reed. Then there are the Brent families cheerfully trooping to Petworth for Latin no where near SE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sure, it all works out...15 or 20 years from now.

New to these issues and don't get why Brent's Jefferson boosters don't seem to play hardball with DCPS.

Why not say, we're not supporting the renovation, and we're not coming, without appropriate classes in place. We want at and above grade-level math courses, like the ones Wash Latin and BASIS offer. Most of our families enroll at those schools.

Since they've got tens of millions to throw at a building, why not a few million pinned down for appropriate classes?

Why do you keep giving this timeline? How many more well off families do you need to cram into the catchment for there to be a critical mass? When things change, it will change in the matter of a few years. It's only a 3-year school. Cultural aspects such as fundraising events would develop over time. But academic offerings can change almost immediately as students are assessed. They already have differentiated homerooms and classes. Do you think the school wouldn't want to serve the kids who walk through its doors?

[Anonymous]

I give this timeline because I've lived in-boundary for the Cluster since the 80s, when the three schools were grouped and I was a practice teacher in DCPS.

I remember how many neighborhood parents predicted that Stuart Hobson would "take off" in a few short years way back then, during the Reagan administration.

20 years later, and SH is only about 20% in-boundary, although the school supposedly differentiates madly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sure, it all works out...15 or 20 years from now.

New to these issues and don't get why Brent's Jefferson boosters don't seem to play hardball with DCPS.

Why not say, we're not supporting the renovation, and we're not coming, without appropriate classes in place. We want at and above grade-level math courses, like the ones Wash Latin and BASIS offer. Most of our families enroll at those schools.

Since they've got tens of millions to throw at a building, why not a few million pinned down for appropriate classes?

Long story, this was tried before. It didn't work. Both sides accused the other of backing out on promises.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Jefferson will be an interesting school to watch the next couple years. Families from the Hill who aren't getting into SH, and don't want to go to EH, are considering Jefferson. Everyone knows that it has had a total overall inside. Now it just needs a large influx of middle & high SES students to commit to it. This could start to flip this year. The biggest obstacle is actually the distance and difficulty in kids going alone from the Hill. But if DC reroutes a bus from Brent to Jefferson (there is talk of this happening), then more Hill families will consider the jump.

And the changes happening in SE and SW are enormous too. But I don't think most of the families there have middle schoolers yet?

JA is less than half a mile from the L'Enfant Plaza metro station. Brent is 0.4 miles from the Eastern Market metro and 0.3 miles from Capitol South,and all three lines that go through that station go to L'Enfant. If Brent kids are so smart, I bet they can figure it out, and if Brent parents want to organize a chaperone or two to ride the metro with a group of kids each day, they should go for it. If some of them want to charter a van, awesome. But no way should WMATA or DCPS pay for a bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Jefferson will be an interesting school to watch the next couple years. Families from the Hill who aren't getting into SH, and don't want to go to EH, are considering Jefferson. Everyone knows that it has had a total overall inside. Now it just needs a large influx of middle & high SES students to commit to it. This could start to flip this year. The biggest obstacle is actually the distance and difficulty in kids going alone from the Hill. But if DC reroutes a bus from Brent to Jefferson (there is talk of this happening), then more Hill families will consider the jump.

And the changes happening in SE and SW are enormous too. But I don't think most of the families there have middle schoolers yet?

The biggest obstacle is the "distance" and "kids going alone from the Hill?" This is delusional.

Please explain why so many Hill families go with Mundo Verde, Stokes or YuYing to get on a path to go much farther from the Hill for MS and HS...to DCI way up at Walter Reed. Then there are the Brent families cheerfully trooping to Petworth for Latin no where near SE.

Agree with this. A huge part of the reason why I do an endless drive to my DCI feeder is the lack of a decent middle school on the Hill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Jefferson will be an interesting school to watch the next couple years. Families from the Hill who aren't getting into SH, and don't want to go to EH, are considering Jefferson. Everyone knows that it has had a total overall inside. Now it just needs a large influx of middle & high SES students to commit to it. This could start to flip this year. The biggest obstacle is actually the distance and difficulty in kids going alone from the Hill. But if DC reroutes a bus from Brent to Jefferson (there is talk of this happening), then more Hill families will consider the jump.

And the changes happening in SE and SW are enormous too. But I don't think most of the families there have middle schoolers yet?

This was a joke post right?

[Anonymous]

Apparently, it wasn't a joke, no.

Much of what you read about Jefferson vis a vis Brent sounds like a joke, yes, but isn't supposed to be.