Janney PTA Guerrilla Tactics!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

Do you realize that CW Harris hosts 3 specialized, self-contained classrooms for students with serious disabilities? That alone increases the funding per student because the adult/student ratios must be so much lower and in many cases special equipment is needed.

All of you who are triggered by schools serving high-needs children of all descriptions thinking that they are getting something your kids are entitled to make me ill.

If you can't be empathetic to those children and their families you could at least be thankful that your kids don't need those services and haven't experienced trauma and poverty. There but for the grace of god ...

Yah, the enrollment+minimum numbers (the baseline) are $8,636 for Janney and $9187 for Harris. That's essentially even considering Harris is so much smaller but they both have basic admin structure. Harris has $5k "per pupil" SPED funding but that's obviously a misleading average considering the high needs kids they serve. They also get $2k/kid from Title and High Risk funding. But there are almost no high risk/title kids at Janney.

So (appreciating that this is kind of a silly exercise because kids experience a school not their "per pupil" number) general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and at Janney would get roughly the same per pupil funding, but only the kid at Janney would get the supplemental $1k+ from parent fundraising. Of course there are no or almost no general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and only a smattering of high risk kids at Janney.

So it's perfectly fine for base per pupil funding at Harris to be $550 greater than Janney, but if Janney parents donate so that the per pupil amount at Janney ends up $450 greater than Harris that is wrong, wrong, wrong!
That difference is essentially meaningless. It's based on allocated FTEs so, for example, both schools have one Principal but the per pupil cost is higher at Harris because there are 200 students vs 700. Similarly like a PE teacher would have some kind of a curve towards maximum per pupil efficiency as you add more kids until you added a second PE teacher, etc)

First, the PTA contribution at Janney is likely meaningfully less than $1000/pupil (not my school; I'm guessing based on what I know based of my kids' school). Remember that a significant number of people -- appropriately -- don't donate or donate less than whatever is asked.
I used these numbers which are a few years old. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/study-parent-groups-in-northwest-dc-raise-thousands-for-schools/2017/04/12/22d42ef2-1f94-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html?utm_term=.78947c6bf2b9 It depends on if you include fees or just use fundraising so I went in the middle which is roughly $1k if you use these numbers and current year enrollment.

Second, there is not a movement to reduce school funding in DC. PTA contributions are not in conflict with tax paying. And if there are any grumblings are school funding, it's from people who don't use the public schools, not the public-school-using, PTA-donating parents.
This is false because watch you are about to do it.

Third, is money really DCPS's biggest deficiency? How the money gets spent may be questionable, but the overall budget is not skimpy. Arguably, DC should be spending more outside of the schools to support needy families with problems that now get dumped on the schools.
There.

Fourth, do you really think that if Janney PTA raised no money, that that would somehow benefit the Harris students? The most likely outcome is that the Janney parents would be lobbying for equalizing the base per pupil funding, which would only hurt the Harris students.
They would likely lobby for higher base funding which would help Harris, because as I've already pointed out the base funding is not meaningfully different.

Fifth, if the donor parents didn't contribute to their PTA, they would still likely spend that money on their kids. The benefits just wouldn't be shared by their schoolmates.
I mean, okay. Whatever you need. This would be more compelling at some of the charters but Janney is pretty homogenous.

I get the frustration with social and economic inequities. But this is a weird focus for addressing the inequities in our society. There are so many more-substantive issues with truly negative consequences rather than hyped-up, theoretical ones. I just don't see any benefit to discouraging people from adding money to the public school pie.
The whole point is that it doesn't add money to the public school pie. I'm so confused by what you mean here.

And, yeah, I would have been turned off by the shaming fundraising letter too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

Do you realize that CW Harris hosts 3 specialized, self-contained classrooms for students with serious disabilities? That alone increases the funding per student because the adult/student ratios must be so much lower and in many cases special equipment is needed.

All of you who are triggered by schools serving high-needs children of all descriptions thinking that they are getting something your kids are entitled to make me ill.

If you can't be empathetic to those children and their families you could at least be thankful that your kids don't need those services and haven't experienced trauma and poverty. There but for the grace of god ...

Yah, the enrollment+minimum numbers (the baseline) are $8,636 for Janney and $9187 for Harris. That's essentially even considering Harris is so much smaller but they both have basic admin structure. Harris has $5k "per pupil" SPED funding but that's obviously a misleading average considering the high needs kids they serve. They also get $2k/kid from Title and High Risk funding. But there are almost no high risk/title kids at Janney.

So (appreciating that this is kind of a silly exercise because kids experience a school not their "per pupil" number) general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and at Janney would get roughly the same per pupil funding, but only the kid at Janney would get the supplemental $1k+ from parent fundraising. Of course there are no or almost no general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and only a smattering of high risk kids at Janney.

So it's perfectly fine for base per pupil funding at Harris to be $550 greater than Janney, but if Janney parents donate so that the per pupil amount at Janney ends up $450 greater than Harris that is wrong, wrong, wrong!

First, the PTA contribution at Janney is likely meaningfully less than $1000/pupil (not my school; I'm guessing based on what I know based of my kids' school). Remember that a significant number of people -- appropriately -- don't donate or donate less than whatever is asked.

Second, there is not a movement to reduce school funding in DC. PTA contributions are not in conflict with tax paying. And if there are any grumblings are school funding, it's from people who don't use the public schools, not the public-school-using, PTA-donating parents.

Third, is money really DCPS's biggest deficiency? How the money gets spent may be questionable, but the overall budget is not skimpy. Arguably, DC should be spending more outside of the schools to support needy families with problems that now get dumped on the schools.

Fourth, do you really think that if Janney PTA raised no money, that that would somehow benefit the Harris students? The most likely outcome is that the Janney parents would be lobbying for equalizing the base per pupil funding, which would only hurt the Harris students.

Fifth, if the donor parents didn't contribute to their PTA, they would still likely spend that money on their kids. The benefits just wouldn't be shared by their schoolmates.

I get the frustration with social and economic inequities. But this is a weird focus for addressing the inequities in our society. There are so many more-substantive issues with truly negative consequences rather than hyped-up, theoretical ones. I just don't see any benefit to discouraging people from adding money to the public school pie.

And, yeah, I would have been turned off by the shaming fundraising letter too.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Per pupil funding is pretty comparable across schools. The variation comes mostly from enrollment and sped. Janney would also see a significant bump I bet if you weren’t using average salary (obvs salary tied to seniority doesn’t necessarily track with quality blah blah).

The crazy thing about that email is how openly it acknowledges that Janney is only nominally a public school, and that making it acceptable for rich kids means raising a ton of money every year.

Not true at all.

At our kids' school (not Janney, but close) the school gets less than $10k per pupil.

At other schools SE they get over $18k per pupil (not to mention school palaces costing over $100m)

They get more because they need more in terms of academics and social, emotional support. If in 20-21 your school admitted 30-50% at-risk kids, your per pupil allocation would increase too. Is it really worth the trade off to you?

Of course they do. And the taxes paid by others in the city provides that extra money. But you don’t want those others to further subsidize DCPS by contributing to their own kids’ school.

+1.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

It's true that people with more money pay more in taxes and kids with special needs get disproportionately more resources, but it's also true that private subsidization of schools like Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to "adequate" and they are "already paying." Plus as pointed out before the inequities for general ed students created by the funding formula pale in comparison to the supplemental stuff from parents at some of these schools particularly for general ed students because so much of the bump in the per pupil is sped costs but general ed students at Janney get a ton of PTA-funded extras.

The real question imo is what will happen in some of the charter schools where you have a combination of very dedicated, powerful, and wealthy activist parents and a significant portion of students with more typical backgrounds/families. It's such an inefficient way to make schools imo but also seems more promising than the Janney PTA model given that there are so few low income Janney families.

Who are these people who resist funding schools? How do you know this is true?

Okay well we figured out that non-at risk general ed kids at Janney get at least a $1k per pupil advantage over similar kids at Harris, right? (There aren't any at Harris but whatev). Suppose the city council proposed a tax increase to create a "Janney Minimum" funding stream to match whatever PTA funds and fees Janney charges for general ed, non-at risk kids in all other DCPS schools minus whatever their PTAs raise. Do you think that increase would have broad support in Ward 3?

So are you withdrawing your BS assertion about support for school funding?

No because what I said was "Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to 'adequate'" and that's what I meant - that I don't think there is broad support among Janney parents for tax increases that would fund the Janney PTA bump for students across DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

What's crazy is people who turn a blind eye to extreme, systemic poverty and repetitive trauma across generations, and then thinks it's unfair that kids who need more support services get it in order to succeed when your kids are doing fine.

THIS. The perspective, or lack thereof, of SOME UMC DC parents is sickening. - Signed, UMC Parent at at Title 1 School where a only a dozen or so families can afford to contribute monetarily or with their time, but it's becoming very clear that our school community is 100 times more welcoming and warm than Janney's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

Do you realize that CW Harris hosts 3 specialized, self-contained classrooms for students with serious disabilities? That alone increases the funding per student because the adult/student ratios must be so much lower and in many cases special equipment is needed.

All of you who are triggered by schools serving high-needs children of all descriptions thinking that they are getting something your kids are entitled to make me ill.

If you can't be empathetic to those children and their families you could at least be thankful that your kids don't need those services and haven't experienced trauma and poverty. There but for the grace of god ...

Yah, the enrollment+minimum numbers (the baseline) are $8,636 for Janney and $9187 for Harris. That's essentially even considering Harris is so much smaller but they both have basic admin structure. Harris has $5k "per pupil" SPED funding but that's obviously a misleading average considering the high needs kids they serve. They also get $2k/kid from Title and High Risk funding. But there are almost no high risk/title kids at Janney.

So (appreciating that this is kind of a silly exercise because kids experience a school not their "per pupil" number) general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and at Janney would get roughly the same per pupil funding, but only the kid at Janney would get the supplemental $1k+ from parent fundraising. Of course there are no or almost no general ed, non-low income kids at Harris and only a smattering of high risk kids at Janney.

So it's perfectly fine for base per pupil funding at Harris to be $550 greater than Janney, but if Janney parents donate so that the per pupil amount at Janney ends up $450 greater than Harris that is wrong, wrong, wrong!
That difference is essentially meaningless. It's based on allocated FTEs so, for example, both schools have one Principal but the per pupil cost is higher at Harris because there are 200 students vs 700. Similarly like a PE teacher would have some kind of a curve towards maximum per pupil efficiency as you add more kids until you added a second PE teacher, etc)

First, the PTA contribution at Janney is likely meaningfully less than $1000/pupil (not my school; I'm guessing based on what I know based of my kids' school). Remember that a significant number of people -- appropriately -- don't donate or donate less than whatever is asked.
I used these numbers which are a few years old. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/study-parent-groups-in-northwest-dc-raise-thousands-for-schools/2017/04/12/22d42ef2-1f94-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html?utm_term=.78947c6bf2b9 It depends on if you include fees or just use fundraising so I went in the middle which is roughly $1k if you use these numbers and current year enrollment.

Second, there is not a movement to reduce school funding in DC. PTA contributions are not in conflict with tax paying. And if there are any grumblings are school funding, it's from people who don't use the public schools, not the public-school-using, PTA-donating parents.
This is false because watch you are about to do it.

Third, is money really DCPS's biggest deficiency? How the money gets spent may be questionable, but the overall budget is not skimpy. Arguably, DC should be spending more outside of the schools to support needy families with problems that now get dumped on the schools.
There.

Fourth, do you really think that if Janney PTA raised no money, that that would somehow benefit the Harris students? The most likely outcome is that the Janney parents would be lobbying for equalizing the base per pupil funding, which would only hurt the Harris students.
They would likely lobby for higher base funding which would help Harris, because as I've already pointed out the base funding is not meaningfully different.

Fifth, if the donor parents didn't contribute to their PTA, they would still likely spend that money on their kids. The benefits just wouldn't be shared by their schoolmates.
I mean, okay. Whatever you need. This would be more compelling at some of the charters but Janney is pretty homogenous.

I get the frustration with social and economic inequities. But this is a weird focus for addressing the inequities in our society. There are so many more-substantive issues with truly negative consequences rather than hyped-up, theoretical ones. I just don't see any benefit to discouraging people from adding money to the public school pie.
The whole point is that it doesn't add money to the public school pie. I'm so confused by what you mean here.

And, yeah, I would have been turned off by the shaming fundraising letter too.

I know we're all just here to yell at each other but I wanted to point out one more kind of fun rabbit hole when thinking about per pupil spending particularly whether PP is right that Harris's baseline $550 more than Janney is meaningful (it's not). Actually Janney gets considerable minimum funding to make up for it's efficiencies of scale that would put it even further behind as a "per pupil" figure. The whole point is that they are as equal as they can get them. But the rabbit hole is about "FTE" and "actual teacher salary" and "actual teacher value" (that last one is not a policy term I just made it up for use here). These numbers are all based on average teacher salary across the district. So if my school's AP US teacher is a 20 year veteran with a masters, and yours is a TFA 23 year old, they are counted the same in terms of "per pupil funding" even though the first teacher probably makes at least double what the second one does. Traditionally this has created a lot of inequities both across schools and within schools (like if there is an advanced track that has more expensive teachers) as far as the actual cost of the actual teachers spending time with students. The problem is that it only matters in so far as you believe the pay scale has anything to do with "actual teacher value" which it probably does but not nearly enough to justify a huge policy shift especially if you are invested in the idea of measuring and rewarding teacher quality and you want to do away with the old salary scale altogether. Also it would get really messy in terms of budgeting to use actual salaries. I believe NYC at one point looked into using a rolling building-wide 3-year average but I think it went away.

[Anonymous]

I promise I'm leaving now but I just want to clarify the main point about Harris funding vs Janney funding.

The overall per-pupil number at Harris is higher mostly because of SPED and At-Risk funding. Janney's overall per-pupil number is lower even if you include the PTA fundraising. But the extra funding at Harris is kid-based. So if those kids moved to Janney, their SPED and At-Risk funding would come with them (this is the whole point of the per-pupil thing, you'll often hear about it as "backpack funding" or whatever). But the Janney PTA money is school-specific.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

What's crazy is people who turn a blind eye to extreme, systemic poverty and repetitive trauma across generations, and then thinks it's unfair that kids who need more support services get it in order to succeed when your kids are doing fine.

THIS. The perspective, or lack thereof, of SOME UMC DC parents is sickening. - Signed, UMC Parent at at Title 1 School where a only a dozen or so families can afford to contribute monetarily or with their time, but it's becoming very clear that our school community is 100 times more welcoming and warm than Janney's.

You both miss the point that these parents have chosen to be part of a system that redistributes income to poorer kids. They are not arguing that they should pay lower taxes and use that money to fund their own kids’ school. They are actually volunteering to pay even more - in addition to the taxes they already pay.

[Anonymous]

Also, the PTA does not raise $1k per student. That is an insane figure. The suggested amount is much less than $1k and many families don’t contribute that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

What's crazy is people who turn a blind eye to extreme, systemic poverty and repetitive trauma across generations, and then thinks it's unfair that kids who need more support services get it in order to succeed when your kids are doing fine.

THIS. The perspective, or lack thereof, of SOME UMC DC parents is sickening. - Signed, UMC Parent at at Title 1 School where a only a dozen or so families can afford to contribute monetarily or with their time, but it's becoming very clear that our school community is 100 times more welcoming and warm than Janney's.

The Janney community is not this message board. There are people with all kinds of agendas posting here. Yes, Janney fundraises to provide for school needs to allow the principal to spend more of her budget on classroom staff. The budget is based (I think, haven't been to a PTA meeting is a year or two) on a budget of raising $750/student. However, they do not raise that entirely through direct donations, that also include money from the auction and other fundraising activities.

Janney is actually a very welcoming and warm place to all of its students, whether they are IB or OOB. Janney on DCUM, however, is a lightening rod. All the WOTP schools have significant fundraising activities and support their schools in similar fashion. Mann asks for and raises more per student and I believe has a second adult in every classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Per pupil funding is pretty comparable across schools. The variation comes mostly from enrollment and sped. Janney would also see a significant bump I bet if you weren’t using average salary (obvs salary tied to seniority doesn’t necessarily track with quality blah blah).

The crazy thing about that email is how openly it acknowledges that Janney is only nominally a public school, and that making it acceptable for rich kids means raising a ton of money every year.

Not true at all.

At our kids' school (not Janney, but close) the school gets less than $10k per pupil.

At other schools SE they get over $18k per pupil (not to mention school palaces costing over $100m)

They get more because they need more in terms of academics and social, emotional support. If in 20-21 your school admitted 30-50% at-risk kids, your per pupil allocation would increase too. Is it really worth the trade off to you?

Of course they do. And the taxes paid by others in the city provides that extra money. But you don’t want those others to further subsidize DCPS by contributing to their own kids’ school.

+1.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

It's true that people with more money pay more in taxes and kids with special needs get disproportionately more resources, but it's also true that private subsidization of schools like Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to "adequate" and they are "already paying." Plus as pointed out before the inequities for general ed students created by the funding formula pale in comparison to the supplemental stuff from parents at some of these schools particularly for general ed students because so much of the bump in the per pupil is sped costs but general ed students at Janney get a ton of PTA-funded extras.

The real question imo is what will happen in some of the charter schools where you have a combination of very dedicated, powerful, and wealthy activist parents and a significant portion of students with more typical backgrounds/families. It's such an inefficient way to make schools imo but also seems more promising than the Janney PTA model given that there are so few low income Janney families.

Who are these people who resist funding schools? How do you know this is true?

Okay well we figured out that non-at risk general ed kids at Janney get at least a $1k per pupil advantage over similar kids at Harris, right? (There aren't any at Harris but whatev). Suppose the city council proposed a tax increase to create a "Janney Minimum" funding stream to match whatever PTA funds and fees Janney charges for general ed, non-at risk kids in all other DCPS schools minus whatever their PTAs raise. Do you think that increase would have broad support in Ward 3?

So are you withdrawing your BS assertion about support for school funding?

No because what I said was "Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to 'adequate'" and that's what I meant - that I don't think there is broad support among Janney parents for tax increases that would fund the Janney PTA bump for students across DCPS.

Do you think there is not broad support or do you know? If you know, how do you know? A toddler may think Santa is real but without some proof.... So show us your proof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Per pupil funding is pretty comparable across schools. The variation comes mostly from enrollment and sped. Janney would also see a significant bump I bet if you weren’t using average salary (obvs salary tied to seniority doesn’t necessarily track with quality blah blah).

The crazy thing about that email is how openly it acknowledges that Janney is only nominally a public school, and that making it acceptable for rich kids means raising a ton of money every year.

Not true at all.

At our kids' school (not Janney, but close) the school gets less than $10k per pupil.

At other schools SE they get over $18k per pupil (not to mention school palaces costing over $100m)

They get more because they need more in terms of academics and social, emotional support. If in 20-21 your school admitted 30-50% at-risk kids, your per pupil allocation would increase too. Is it really worth the trade off to you?

Of course they do. And the taxes paid by others in the city provides that extra money. But you don’t want those others to further subsidize DCPS by contributing to their own kids’ school.

+1.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

It's true that people with more money pay more in taxes and kids with special needs get disproportionately more resources, but it's also true that private subsidization of schools like Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to "adequate" and they are "already paying." Plus as pointed out before the inequities for general ed students created by the funding formula pale in comparison to the supplemental stuff from parents at some of these schools particularly for general ed students because so much of the bump in the per pupil is sped costs but general ed students at Janney get a ton of PTA-funded extras.

The real question imo is what will happen in some of the charter schools where you have a combination of very dedicated, powerful, and wealthy activist parents and a significant portion of students with more typical backgrounds/families. It's such an inefficient way to make schools imo but also seems more promising than the Janney PTA model given that there are so few low income Janney families.

Who are these people who resist funding schools? How do you know this is true?

Okay well we figured out that non-at risk general ed kids at Janney get at least a $1k per pupil advantage over similar kids at Harris, right? (There aren't any at Harris but whatev). Suppose the city council proposed a tax increase to create a "Janney Minimum" funding stream to match whatever PTA funds and fees Janney charges for general ed, non-at risk kids in all other DCPS schools minus whatever their PTAs raise. Do you think that increase would have broad support in Ward 3?

So are you withdrawing your BS assertion about support for school funding?

No because what I said was "Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to 'adequate'" and that's what I meant - that I don't think there is broad support among Janney parents for tax increases that would fund the Janney PTA bump for students across DCPS.

Do you think there is not broad support or do you know? If you know, how do you know? A toddler may think Santa is real but without some proof.... So show us your proof.

This is silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Per pupil funding is pretty comparable across schools. The variation comes mostly from enrollment and sped. Janney would also see a significant bump I bet if you weren’t using average salary (obvs salary tied to seniority doesn’t necessarily track with quality blah blah).

The crazy thing about that email is how openly it acknowledges that Janney is only nominally a public school, and that making it acceptable for rich kids means raising a ton of money every year.

Not true at all.

At our kids' school (not Janney, but close) the school gets less than $10k per pupil.

At other schools SE they get over $18k per pupil (not to mention school palaces costing over $100m)

They get more because they need more in terms of academics and social, emotional support. If in 20-21 your school admitted 30-50% at-risk kids, your per pupil allocation would increase too. Is it really worth the trade off to you?

Of course they do. And the taxes paid by others in the city provides that extra money. But you don’t want those others to further subsidize DCPS by contributing to their own kids’ school.

+1.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

It's true that people with more money pay more in taxes and kids with special needs get disproportionately more resources, but it's also true that private subsidization of schools like Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to "adequate" and they are "already paying." Plus as pointed out before the inequities for general ed students created by the funding formula pale in comparison to the supplemental stuff from parents at some of these schools particularly for general ed students because so much of the bump in the per pupil is sped costs but general ed students at Janney get a ton of PTA-funded extras.

The real question imo is what will happen in some of the charter schools where you have a combination of very dedicated, powerful, and wealthy activist parents and a significant portion of students with more typical backgrounds/families. It's such an inefficient way to make schools imo but also seems more promising than the Janney PTA model given that there are so few low income Janney families.

Who are these people who resist funding schools? How do you know this is true?

Okay well we figured out that non-at risk general ed kids at Janney get at least a $1k per pupil advantage over similar kids at Harris, right? (There aren't any at Harris but whatev). Suppose the city council proposed a tax increase to create a "Janney Minimum" funding stream to match whatever PTA funds and fees Janney charges for general ed, non-at risk kids in all other DCPS schools minus whatever their PTAs raise. Do you think that increase would have broad support in Ward 3?

So are you withdrawing your BS assertion about support for school funding?

No because what I said was "Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to 'adequate'" and that's what I meant - that I don't think there is broad support among Janney parents for tax increases that would fund the Janney PTA bump for students across DCPS.

Do you think there is not broad support or do you know? If you know, how do you know? A toddler may think Santa is real but without some proof.... So show us your proof.

This is silly.

Yes, it is silly for people to make sweeping generalizations about groups of people without having anything to back it up. But this is an anonymous forum and this is the Internet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

What's crazy is people who turn a blind eye to extreme, systemic poverty and repetitive trauma across generations, and then thinks it's unfair that kids who need more support services get it in order to succeed when your kids are doing fine.

THIS. The perspective, or lack thereof, of SOME UMC DC parents is sickening. - Signed, UMC Parent at at Title 1 School where a only a dozen or so families can afford to contribute monetarily or with their time, but it's becoming very clear that our school community is 100 times more welcoming and warm than Janney's.

I'm with you. we are a nerdy family at a very diverse Title 1 school where about 15% of the families are able to donate. i LOVE our school community, and feel so grateful when I read these threads.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Per pupil funding is pretty comparable across schools. The variation comes mostly from enrollment and sped. Janney would also see a significant bump I bet if you weren’t using average salary (obvs salary tied to seniority doesn’t necessarily track with quality blah blah).

The crazy thing about that email is how openly it acknowledges that Janney is only nominally a public school, and that making it acceptable for rich kids means raising a ton of money every year.

Not true at all.

At our kids' school (not Janney, but close) the school gets less than $10k per pupil.

At other schools SE they get over $18k per pupil (not to mention school palaces costing over $100m)

They get more because they need more in terms of academics and social, emotional support. If in 20-21 your school admitted 30-50% at-risk kids, your per pupil allocation would increase too. Is it really worth the trade off to you?

Of course they do. And the taxes paid by others in the city provides that extra money. But you don’t want those others to further subsidize DCPS by contributing to their own kids’ school.

+1.

Welcome to Absurdistan.

It's true that people with more money pay more in taxes and kids with special needs get disproportionately more resources, but it's also true that private subsidization of schools like Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to "adequate" and they are "already paying." Plus as pointed out before the inequities for general ed students created by the funding formula pale in comparison to the supplemental stuff from parents at some of these schools particularly for general ed students because so much of the bump in the per pupil is sped costs but general ed students at Janney get a ton of PTA-funded extras.

The real question imo is what will happen in some of the charter schools where you have a combination of very dedicated, powerful, and wealthy activist parents and a significant portion of students with more typical backgrounds/families. It's such an inefficient way to make schools imo but also seems more promising than the Janney PTA model given that there are so few low income Janney families.

Who are these people who resist funding schools? How do you know this is true?

Okay well we figured out that non-at risk general ed kids at Janney get at least a $1k per pupil advantage over similar kids at Harris, right? (There aren't any at Harris but whatev). Suppose the city council proposed a tax increase to create a "Janney Minimum" funding stream to match whatever PTA funds and fees Janney charges for general ed, non-at risk kids in all other DCPS schools minus whatever their PTAs raise. Do you think that increase would have broad support in Ward 3?

So are you withdrawing your BS assertion about support for school funding?

No because what I said was "Janney incentivizes wealthy and powerful parents to resist overall school funding increases via higher taxes because they don't need that system to get their own kid's school to 'adequate'" and that's what I meant - that I don't think there is broad support among Janney parents for tax increases that would fund the Janney PTA bump for students across DCPS.

DCPS has plenty of money. It's just that school system bureaucrats prefer to spend too much on no-bid contracts and "community empowerment" rather than on classroom learning. The solution is not more tax increases. It's disciplined spending on what matters to learning, and not spending as much on waste.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just looked it up.

DCPS gives Janney, everything included, $10k per kid.

It gives CW Harris $19k per kid. And $15-18k per kid to a ton other of the "lowest-performing" schools.

Crazy world.

That seems right to me.

Actually, it's not. "Pay" or spend in this case needs to be linked to performance. Rather than year after year giving more money to the lowest performing schools, how about figuring out why they are low performing. Maybe the principal is a DCPS lifer who rides a desk and just punches a clock. Maybe it's the school culture. Maybe more school security officers are needed.