Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This a whole process stinks of why folks governing with no skin in the game is a bad idea.

City wide metric improves, high priority goal achieved. High fives all around, job done.

Miner and Maury improving? Not a high priority, wont ever matter for the advisory committee.

Precisely.

I find it really interesting that instead of looking at how to attract higher SES families to Miner, the only thing they can think of is forcing the schools together. Also that SWS is apparently exempt from the clustering conversation. SWS is a 12 minute walk from Miner down F St. If they turned Miner into SWS at Miner and allowed IB Miner students preference, that would actually almost instantaneously create SES balance.

Hey, leave SWS out of this mess!

Do city-wide DCPS already have an at-risk set aside? If not, does anyone know if one is being contemplated as part of this study?

[Anonymous]

I honestly don’t know what they should do here. The SWS idea is interesting and I hadn’t thought of it, but it does make a lot of sense.

That said, I just want to reassure people with genuine safety concerns about Miner. It’s true it’s near starburst and there has been crime nearby, but for whatever reason, when we were there, it truly didn’t feel unsafe and those things weren’t impacting our lives. You don’t have to commute through starburst. You can take the streetcar or bus to 14th and H or to Maryland. It’s a cute and pleasant walk past a bunch of row houses. It is true there violent crime within blocks of the school, but that’s sadly the case in a lot of the hill, and like a lot of the residential pockets of the hill, the area around the school doesn’t feel unsafe at all. I looked forward to walking there every day with a baby and toddler, and I actually miss making the walk now because it’s just a very pretty stroll down Tennessee or F street or Emerald.

The school itself is nice. Not Maury nice, and they are always running out of basics like wipes, but it’s a happy feeling place. They have a pet turtle. The school also doesn’t feel chaotic. The kids are nice to be around, and we went to lots of fun activities in the evenings without any fear for safety, and even the older kids were friendly and pretty orderly for kids.

There are also some fantastic teachers and administrators there, truly. Several *still* text me to ask how my kid is doing. There was a particularly high needs kid in one of our classes, and the kid was getting lots of good, dedicated attention with what seemed like evidence-based practices. There are also wonderful families at Miner, including the families of at risk kids. Really nice parents who go to incredible lengths—often without any financial safety net or reliable work schedules—to support their kids. And i think my kid benefited a lot from realizing that the umc lifestyle isn’t the only one on the planet. So they have the raw materials to have a great school.

Like a lot of people, we left for a few reasons. First, we were not at all confident about teachers in the upper grades. Younger kids’ classrooms were beautiful and decked out, and older ones seemed more bare and sad, and we heard some troubling things about some upper grades teachers. Second, we want a diverse school, and we don’t want our kids only in school with other umc folks. That makes the nw schools unappealing, tbh. But at miner, the concentration of high risk kids is really disproportionately high, and that means attention is rightfully on those kids in most classrooms. That just makes it harder to feel confident your kid will get enough attention and just academic stimulation. And so many of the kids have major obstacles, it’s hard to imagine there being space for smaller but very real stuff (like an umc kid who is behind in reading or struggles to emotionally regulate). That problem seems like one of the fundamental issues with stark socioeconomic segregation, and it makes it really hard for even very dedicated people like the ones we met at miner to get traction. In contrast, at our new school, there’s a small number of kids who are behind, and they seem to have a whole team surrounding them to help. I noticed a kid in class acting out and expressed concern to the teacher (not complaining about the kid, but just flagging I wondered if he was ok and needed support) and I learned there was already a team wide effort to help this kid out. Third, the freaking PTA money and what it brings. Miner honestly has an awesome PTA. But good lord, the one at the new school is a machine. They raise a ton and it all goes to creating these joyful and enriching experiences for the kids. These super involved PTA parents also seem to catch *everything* and fix it asap. I truly don’t know how any of them have the time, but it’s like the school has a whole second league of administrators keeping on top of things. That’s another reason segregation is so bad. Some schools get that in spades, and others barely at all. The cluster *could* address a lot of this. If it happens, I hope the super strong parent community at Maury will pour their talents into figuring out how to make it work well instead of fleeing.

I think the implementation concerns around the cluster are serious, and the lack of apparent planning makes no sense. but i think there’s a scenario where this doesn’t *destroy* Maury.

As for the hill being targeted instead of northwest—I think it’s just more obviously feasible here because of the imbalance in schools so close together. But northwest should be getting attention on this front too! Have you looked at the at risk populations at places like Janney and Lafayette? It’s close to zero! Truly it’s maybe one or two kids. I think the culprit there is housing segregation and transportation issues. I don’t see how they fix the segregation up there without thinking about those issues in tandem. I don’t know much about urban planning, but I would love to see more mixed income and low income subsidized housing in northwest, combined with shuttles etc where needed.

[Anonymous]

SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

Ha, nice try but not gonna happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

Ha, nice try but not gonna happen.

Why not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

Ha, nice try but not gonna happen.

Why not?

It doesn’t have a boundary, for one, so not clear who would be clustering. But SWS is the original awkwardly white school on the Hill, without a doubt! Before Brent!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

Ha, nice try but not gonna happen.

Why not?

It doesn’t have a boundary, for one, so not clear who would be clustering. But SWS is the original awkwardly white school on the Hill, without a doubt! Before Brent!

+1. People ask why the Cluster is so bad these days. It was great when SWS and the Montessori schools were both part of the Cluster. Of course DCPS came in and took them both out and made them into their own schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWS is a great point. Why is it not being included in this discussion? It does have Equitable Access but only for PK3 and PK4. Unlike Maury it doesn't have the challenges of serving all kids within a boundary. It's an outlier racially and by income. A much bigger EA preference or set-aside would be far easier to implement and achieve many of the goals the DME claims to have.

Ha, nice try but not gonna happen.

Why not?

It doesn’t have a boundary, for one, so not clear who would be clustering. But SWS is the original awkwardly white school on the Hill, without a doubt! Before Brent!

Time to give it a boundary, then!

Or just insisting on a massive at-risk set-aside would plus up the DME's stats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know what they should do here. The SWS idea is interesting and I hadn’t thought of it, but it does make a lot of sense.

That said, I just want to reassure people with genuine safety concerns about Miner. It’s true it’s near starburst and there has been crime nearby, but for whatever reason, when we were there, it truly didn’t feel unsafe and those things weren’t impacting our lives. You don’t have to commute through starburst. You can take the streetcar or bus to 14th and H or to Maryland. It’s a cute and pleasant walk past a bunch of row houses. It is true there violent crime within blocks of the school, but that’s sadly the case in a lot of the hill, and like a lot of the residential pockets of the hill, the area around the school doesn’t feel unsafe at all. I looked forward to walking there every day with a baby and toddler, and I actually miss making the walk now because it’s just a very pretty stroll down Tennessee or F street or Emerald.

The school itself is nice. Not Maury nice, and they are always running out of basics like wipes, but it’s a happy feeling place. They have a pet turtle. The school also doesn’t feel chaotic. The kids are nice to be around, and we went to lots of fun activities in the evenings without any fear for safety, and even the older kids were friendly and pretty orderly for kids.

There are also some fantastic teachers and administrators there, truly. Several *still* text me to ask how my kid is doing. There was a particularly high needs kid in one of our classes, and the kid was getting lots of good, dedicated attention with what seemed like evidence-based practices. There are also wonderful families at Miner, including the families of at risk kids. Really nice parents who go to incredible lengths—often without any financial safety net or reliable work schedules—to support their kids. And i think my kid benefited a lot from realizing that the umc lifestyle isn’t the only one on the planet. So they have the raw materials to have a great school.

Like a lot of people, we left for a few reasons. First, we were not at all confident about teachers in the upper grades. Younger kids’ classrooms were beautiful and decked out, and older ones seemed more bare and sad, and we heard some troubling things about some upper grades teachers. Second, we want a diverse school, and we don’t want our kids only in school with other umc folks. That makes the nw schools unappealing, tbh. But at miner, the concentration of high risk kids is really disproportionately high, and that means attention is rightfully on those kids in most classrooms. That just makes it harder to feel confident your kid will get enough attention and just academic stimulation. And so many of the kids have major obstacles, it’s hard to imagine there being space for smaller but very real stuff (like an umc kid who is behind in reading or struggles to emotionally regulate). That problem seems like one of the fundamental issues with stark socioeconomic segregation, and it makes it really hard for even very dedicated people like the ones we met at miner to get traction. In contrast, at our new school, there’s a small number of kids who are behind, and they seem to have a whole team surrounding them to help. I noticed a kid in class acting out and expressed concern to the teacher (not complaining about the kid, but just flagging I wondered if he was ok and needed support) and I learned there was already a team wide effort to help this kid out. Third, the freaking PTA money and what it brings. Miner honestly has an awesome PTA. But good lord, the one at the new school is a machine. They raise a ton and it all goes to creating these joyful and enriching experiences for the kids. These super involved PTA parents also seem to catch *everything* and fix it asap. I truly don’t know how any of them have the time, but it’s like the school has a whole second league of administrators keeping on top of things. That’s another reason segregation is so bad. Some schools get that in spades, and others barely at all. The cluster *could* address a lot of this. If it happens, I hope the super strong parent community at Maury will pour their talents into figuring out how to make it work well instead of fleeing.

I think the implementation concerns around the cluster are serious, and the lack of apparent planning makes no sense. but i think there’s a scenario where this doesn’t *destroy* Maury.

As for the hill being targeted instead of northwest—I think it’s just more obviously feasible here because of the imbalance in schools so close together. But northwest should be getting attention on this front too! Have you looked at the at risk populations at places like Janney and Lafayette? It’s close to zero! Truly it’s maybe one or two kids. I think the culprit there is housing segregation and transportation issues. I don’t see how they fix the segregation up there without thinking about those issues in tandem. I don’t know much about urban planning, but I would love to see more mixed income and low income subsidized housing in northwest, combined with shuttles etc where needed.

The PTA stuff is a bit of a red herring I think. Doubling the school isn't going to double the PTA's fundraising; even if Maury parents' contributions stay at the same levels (no guarantee, if they move their kid elsewhere to get more academic support, or if they have to use more of their resources to get their kid individualized academic attention outside of school), the cluster school will be getting significantly less PTA support.

It's uncomfortable, but PTA fundraising/support is something that is mostly a function of the SES of the school population. High SES parents are always going to have more resources to support their kids, whether through the PTA or something else. It's never going to be equal. DC responds to this by allocating more funding for students/schools that are less likely to have these resources -- Miner gets a ton more money from the city than Maury (though Maury also gets less per student than the NW schools, which I've never really understood -- but I'm not deep in this stuff).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know what they should do here. The SWS idea is interesting and I hadn’t thought of it, but it does make a lot of sense.

That said, I just want to reassure people with genuine safety concerns about Miner. It’s true it’s near starburst and there has been crime nearby, but for whatever reason, when we were there, it truly didn’t feel unsafe and those things weren’t impacting our lives. You don’t have to commute through starburst. You can take the streetcar or bus to 14th and H or to Maryland. It’s a cute and pleasant walk past a bunch of row houses. It is true there violent crime within blocks of the school, but that’s sadly the case in a lot of the hill, and like a lot of the residential pockets of the hill, the area around the school doesn’t feel unsafe at all. I looked forward to walking there every day with a baby and toddler, and I actually miss making the walk now because it’s just a very pretty stroll down Tennessee or F street or Emerald.

The school itself is nice. Not Maury nice, and they are always running out of basics like wipes, but it’s a happy feeling place. They have a pet turtle. The school also doesn’t feel chaotic. The kids are nice to be around, and we went to lots of fun activities in the evenings without any fear for safety, and even the older kids were friendly and pretty orderly for kids.

There are also some fantastic teachers and administrators there, truly. Several *still* text me to ask how my kid is doing. There was a particularly high needs kid in one of our classes, and the kid was getting lots of good, dedicated attention with what seemed like evidence-based practices. There are also wonderful families at Miner, including the families of at risk kids. Really nice parents who go to incredible lengths—often without any financial safety net or reliable work schedules—to support their kids. And i think my kid benefited a lot from realizing that the umc lifestyle isn’t the only one on the planet. So they have the raw materials to have a great school.

Like a lot of people, we left for a few reasons. First, we were not at all confident about teachers in the upper grades. Younger kids’ classrooms were beautiful and decked out, and older ones seemed more bare and sad, and we heard some troubling things about some upper grades teachers. Second, we want a diverse school, and we don’t want our kids only in school with other umc folks. That makes the nw schools unappealing, tbh. But at miner, the concentration of high risk kids is really disproportionately high, and that means attention is rightfully on those kids in most classrooms. That just makes it harder to feel confident your kid will get enough attention and just academic stimulation. And so many of the kids have major obstacles, it’s hard to imagine there being space for smaller but very real stuff (like an umc kid who is behind in reading or struggles to emotionally regulate). That problem seems like one of the fundamental issues with stark socioeconomic segregation, and it makes it really hard for even very dedicated people like the ones we met at miner to get traction. In contrast, at our new school, there’s a small number of kids who are behind, and they seem to have a whole team surrounding them to help. I noticed a kid in class acting out and expressed concern to the teacher (not complaining about the kid, but just flagging I wondered if he was ok and needed support) and I learned there was already a team wide effort to help this kid out. Third, the freaking PTA money and what it brings. Miner honestly has an awesome PTA. But good lord, the one at the new school is a machine. They raise a ton and it all goes to creating these joyful and enriching experiences for the kids. These super involved PTA parents also seem to catch *everything* and fix it asap. I truly don’t know how any of them have the time, but it’s like the school has a whole second league of administrators keeping on top of things. That’s another reason segregation is so bad. Some schools get that in spades, and others barely at all. The cluster *could* address a lot of this. If it happens, I hope the super strong parent community at Maury will pour their talents into figuring out how to make it work well instead of fleeing.

I think the implementation concerns around the cluster are serious, and the lack of apparent planning makes no sense. but i think there’s a scenario where this doesn’t *destroy* Maury.

As for the hill being targeted instead of northwest—I think it’s just more obviously feasible here because of the imbalance in schools so close together. But northwest should be getting attention on this front too! Have you looked at the at risk populations at places like Janney and Lafayette? It’s close to zero! Truly it’s maybe one or two kids. I think the culprit there is housing segregation and transportation issues. I don’t see how they fix the segregation up there without thinking about those issues in tandem. I don’t know much about urban planning, but I would love to see more mixed income and low income subsidized housing in northwest, combined with shuttles etc where needed.

The PTA stuff is a bit of a red herring I think. Doubling the school isn't going to double the PTA's fundraising; even if Maury parents' contributions stay at the same levels (no guarantee, if they move their kid elsewhere to get more academic support, or if they have to use more of their resources to get their kid individualized academic attention outside of school), the cluster school will be getting significantly less PTA support.

It's uncomfortable, but PTA fundraising/support is something that is mostly a function of the SES of the school population. High SES parents are always going to have more resources to support their kids, whether through the PTA or something else. It's never going to be equal. DC responds to this by allocating more funding for students/schools that are less likely to have these resources -- Miner gets a ton more money from the city than Maury (though Maury also gets less per student than the NW schools, which I've never really understood -- but I'm not deep in this stuff).

Those averages can be really misleading. It tends to be driven by the special education and at-risk allocations in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, and whether the school offers self-contained classrooms, which are costly per-student because the class size is much smaller. A few kids with 1:1 aides enrolling or leaving a school can cause the averages to shift.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know what they should do here. The SWS idea is interesting and I hadn’t thought of it, but it does make a lot of sense.

That said, I just want to reassure people with genuine safety concerns about Miner. It’s true it’s near starburst and there has been crime nearby, but for whatever reason, when we were there, it truly didn’t feel unsafe and those things weren’t impacting our lives. You don’t have to commute through starburst. You can take the streetcar or bus to 14th and H or to Maryland. It’s a cute and pleasant walk past a bunch of row houses. It is true there violent crime within blocks of the school, but that’s sadly the case in a lot of the hill, and like a lot of the residential pockets of the hill, the area around the school doesn’t feel unsafe at all. I looked forward to walking there every day with a baby and toddler, and I actually miss making the walk now because it’s just a very pretty stroll down Tennessee or F street or Emerald.

The school itself is nice. Not Maury nice, and they are always running out of basics like wipes, but it’s a happy feeling place. They have a pet turtle. The school also doesn’t feel chaotic. The kids are nice to be around, and we went to lots of fun activities in the evenings without any fear for safety, and even the older kids were friendly and pretty orderly for kids.

There are also some fantastic teachers and administrators there, truly. Several *still* text me to ask how my kid is doing. There was a particularly high needs kid in one of our classes, and the kid was getting lots of good, dedicated attention with what seemed like evidence-based practices. There are also wonderful families at Miner, including the families of at risk kids. Really nice parents who go to incredible lengths—often without any financial safety net or reliable work schedules—to support their kids. And i think my kid benefited a lot from realizing that the umc lifestyle isn’t the only one on the planet. So they have the raw materials to have a great school.

Like a lot of people, we left for a few reasons. First, we were not at all confident about teachers in the upper grades. Younger kids’ classrooms were beautiful and decked out, and older ones seemed more bare and sad, and we heard some troubling things about some upper grades teachers. Second, we want a diverse school, and we don’t want our kids only in school with other umc folks. That makes the nw schools unappealing, tbh. But at miner, the concentration of high risk kids is really disproportionately high, and that means attention is rightfully on those kids in most classrooms. That just makes it harder to feel confident your kid will get enough attention and just academic stimulation. And so many of the kids have major obstacles, it’s hard to imagine there being space for smaller but very real stuff (like an umc kid who is behind in reading or struggles to emotionally regulate). That problem seems like one of the fundamental issues with stark socioeconomic segregation, and it makes it really hard for even very dedicated people like the ones we met at miner to get traction. In contrast, at our new school, there’s a small number of kids who are behind, and they seem to have a whole team surrounding them to help. I noticed a kid in class acting out and expressed concern to the teacher (not complaining about the kid, but just flagging I wondered if he was ok and needed support) and I learned there was already a team wide effort to help this kid out. Third, the freaking PTA money and what it brings. Miner honestly has an awesome PTA. But good lord, the one at the new school is a machine. They raise a ton and it all goes to creating these joyful and enriching experiences for the kids. These super involved PTA parents also seem to catch *everything* and fix it asap. I truly don’t know how any of them have the time, but it’s like the school has a whole second league of administrators keeping on top of things. That’s another reason segregation is so bad. Some schools get that in spades, and others barely at all. The cluster *could* address a lot of this. If it happens, I hope the super strong parent community at Maury will pour their talents into figuring out how to make it work well instead of fleeing.

I think the implementation concerns around the cluster are serious, and the lack of apparent planning makes no sense. but i think there’s a scenario where this doesn’t *destroy* Maury.

As for the hill being targeted instead of northwest—I think it’s just more obviously feasible here because of the imbalance in schools so close together. But northwest should be getting attention on this front too! Have you looked at the at risk populations at places like Janney and Lafayette? It’s close to zero! Truly it’s maybe one or two kids. I think the culprit there is housing segregation and transportation issues. I don’t see how they fix the segregation up there without thinking about those issues in tandem. I don’t know much about urban planning, but I would love to see more mixed income and low income subsidized housing in northwest, combined with shuttles etc where needed.

The PTA stuff is a bit of a red herring I think. Doubling the school isn't going to double the PTA's fundraising; even if Maury parents' contributions stay at the same levels (no guarantee, if they move their kid elsewhere to get more academic support, or if they have to use more of their resources to get their kid individualized academic attention outside of school), the cluster school will be getting significantly less PTA support.

It's uncomfortable, but PTA fundraising/support is something that is mostly a function of the SES of the school population. High SES parents are always going to have more resources to support their kids, whether through the PTA or something else. It's never going to be equal. DC responds to this by allocating more funding for students/schools that are less likely to have these resources -- Miner gets a ton more money from the city than Maury (though Maury also gets less per student than the NW schools, which I've never really understood -- but I'm not deep in this stuff).

Those averages can be really misleading. It tends to be driven by the special education and at-risk allocations in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, and whether the school offers self-contained classrooms, which are costly per-student because the class size is much smaller. A few kids with 1:1 aides enrolling or leaving a school can cause the averages to shift.

This, thank you. The average kid at Miner is not getting more from DCPS than the average kid at Maury. It's just that there are some extremely high needs kids at Miner who are getting a lot more funding than most kids at either school, and that drives the dollars going to Miner way up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Miner has several self-contained SpEd classrooms. It's stuff like that, as well as intervention and tutoring programs for at risk kids and those significantly below grade level. If you are a MC or UMC kid at Miner who does not have special needs, speak English as your native language, and not severely below grade level, you likely get LESS money/attention than a similar kid at Maury, where the money likely gets spread more evenly across the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This a whole process stinks of why folks governing with no skin in the game is a bad idea.

City wide metric improves, high priority goal achieved. High fives all around, job done.

Miner and Maury improving? Not a high priority, wont ever matter for the advisory committee.

Precisely.

I find it really interesting that instead of looking at how to attract higher SES families to Miner, the only thing they can think of is forcing the schools together. Also that SWS is apparently exempt from the clustering conversation. SWS is a 12 minute walk from Miner down F St. If they turned Miner into SWS at Miner and allowed IB Miner students preference, that would actually almost instantaneously create SES balance.

Hey, leave SWS out of this mess!

Do city-wide DCPS already have an at-risk set aside? If not, does anyone know if one is being contemplated as part of this study?

SWS already has the EA preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This a whole process stinks of why folks governing with no skin in the game is a bad idea.

City wide metric improves, high priority goal achieved. High fives all around, job done.

Miner and Maury improving? Not a high priority, wont ever matter for the advisory committee.

Precisely.

I find it really interesting that instead of looking at how to attract higher SES families to Miner, the only thing they can think of is forcing the schools together. Also that SWS is apparently exempt from the clustering conversation. SWS is a 12 minute walk from Miner down F St. If they turned Miner into SWS at Miner and allowed IB Miner students preference, that would actually almost instantaneously create SES balance.

Hey, leave SWS out of this mess!

Do city-wide DCPS already have an at-risk set aside? If not, does anyone know if one is being contemplated as part of this study?

SWS already has the EA preference.

Only for PK3 and PK4 though. The idea would be to make it more grades, maybe all grades, and set aside rather than give a preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don’t know what they should do here. The SWS idea is interesting and I hadn’t thought of it, but it does make a lot of sense.

That said, I just want to reassure people with genuine safety concerns about Miner. It’s true it’s near starburst and there has been crime nearby, but for whatever reason, when we were there, it truly didn’t feel unsafe and those things weren’t impacting our lives. You don’t have to commute through starburst. You can take the streetcar or bus to 14th and H or to Maryland. It’s a cute and pleasant walk past a bunch of row houses. It is true there violent crime within blocks of the school, but that’s sadly the case in a lot of the hill, and like a lot of the residential pockets of the hill, the area around the school doesn’t feel unsafe at all. I looked forward to walking there every day with a baby and toddler, and I actually miss making the walk now because it’s just a very pretty stroll down Tennessee or F street or Emerald.

The school itself is nice. Not Maury nice, and they are always running out of basics like wipes, but it’s a happy feeling place. They have a pet turtle. The school also doesn’t feel chaotic. The kids are nice to be around, and we went to lots of fun activities in the evenings without any fear for safety, and even the older kids were friendly and pretty orderly for kids.

There are also some fantastic teachers and administrators there, truly. Several *still* text me to ask how my kid is doing. There was a particularly high needs kid in one of our classes, and the kid was getting lots of good, dedicated attention with what seemed like evidence-based practices. There are also wonderful families at Miner, including the families of at risk kids. Really nice parents who go to incredible lengths—often without any financial safety net or reliable work schedules—to support their kids. And i think my kid benefited a lot from realizing that the umc lifestyle isn’t the only one on the planet. So they have the raw materials to have a great school.

Like a lot of people, we left for a few reasons. First, we were not at all confident about teachers in the upper grades. Younger kids’ classrooms were beautiful and decked out, and older ones seemed more bare and sad, and we heard some troubling things about some upper grades teachers. Second, we want a diverse school, and we don’t want our kids only in school with other umc folks. That makes the nw schools unappealing, tbh. But at miner, the concentration of high risk kids is really disproportionately high, and that means attention is rightfully on those kids in most classrooms. That just makes it harder to feel confident your kid will get enough attention and just academic stimulation. And so many of the kids have major obstacles, it’s hard to imagine there being space for smaller but very real stuff (like an umc kid who is behind in reading or struggles to emotionally regulate). That problem seems like one of the fundamental issues with stark socioeconomic segregation, and it makes it really hard for even very dedicated people like the ones we met at miner to get traction. In contrast, at our new school, there’s a small number of kids who are behind, and they seem to have a whole team surrounding them to help. I noticed a kid in class acting out and expressed concern to the teacher (not complaining about the kid, but just flagging I wondered if he was ok and needed support) and I learned there was already a team wide effort to help this kid out. Third, the freaking PTA money and what it brings. Miner honestly has an awesome PTA. But good lord, the one at the new school is a machine. They raise a ton and it all goes to creating these joyful and enriching experiences for the kids. These super involved PTA parents also seem to catch *everything* and fix it asap. I truly don’t know how any of them have the time, but it’s like the school has a whole second league of administrators keeping on top of things. That’s another reason segregation is so bad. Some schools get that in spades, and others barely at all. The cluster *could* address a lot of this. If it happens, I hope the super strong parent community at Maury will pour their talents into figuring out how to make it work well instead of fleeing.

I think the implementation concerns around the cluster are serious, and the lack of apparent planning makes no sense. but i think there’s a scenario where this doesn’t *destroy* Maury.

As for the hill being targeted instead of northwest—I think it’s just more obviously feasible here because of the imbalance in schools so close together. But northwest should be getting attention on this front too! Have you looked at the at risk populations at places like Janney and Lafayette? It’s close to zero! Truly it’s maybe one or two kids. I think the culprit there is housing segregation and transportation issues. I don’t see how they fix the segregation up there without thinking about those issues in tandem. I don’t know much about urban planning, but I would love to see more mixed income and low income subsidized housing in northwest, combined with shuttles etc where needed.

The PTA stuff is a bit of a red herring I think. Doubling the school isn't going to double the PTA's fundraising; even if Maury parents' contributions stay at the same levels (no guarantee, if they move their kid elsewhere to get more academic support, or if they have to use more of their resources to get their kid individualized academic attention outside of school), the cluster school will be getting significantly less PTA support.

It's uncomfortable, but PTA fundraising/support is something that is mostly a function of the SES of the school population. High SES parents are always going to have more resources to support their kids, whether through the PTA or something else. It's never going to be equal. DC responds to this by allocating more funding for students/schools that are less likely to have these resources -- Miner gets a ton more money from the city than Maury (though Maury also gets less per student than the NW schools, which I've never really understood -- but I'm not deep in this stuff).

Those averages can be really misleading. It tends to be driven by the special education and at-risk allocations in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, and whether the school offers self-contained classrooms, which are costly per-student because the class size is much smaller. A few kids with 1:1 aides enrolling or leaving a school can cause the averages to shift.

This, thank you. The average kid at Miner is not getting more from DCPS than the average kid at Maury. It's just that there are some extremely high needs kids at Miner who are getting a lot more funding than most kids at either school, and that drives the dollars going to Miner way up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Miner has several self-contained SpEd classrooms. It's stuff like that, as well as intervention and tutoring programs for at risk kids and those significantly below grade level. If you are a MC or UMC kid at Miner who does not have special needs, speak English as your native language, and not severely below grade level, you likely get LESS money/attention than a similar kid at Maury, where the money likely gets spread more evenly across the school.

Self-contained classrooms tend to have 8-12 kids, a teacher, and two or more aides. So you can see, per capita it's quite costly. And those classrooms are more at some schools than at others. There used to be a list of which self-contained programs operated at which schools, but I can't find it now. Anyway, it varies quite a bit which schools have more. And then you have the kids with a 1:1 aide so basically paying a single person's full-time salary for working with just one kid, in addition to a share of the teacher's salary. It emphatically does *not* mean the kids who don't have special needs are getting more resources.

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Anonymous wrote:This a whole process stinks of why folks governing with no skin in the game is a bad idea.

City wide metric improves, high priority goal achieved. High fives all around, job done.

Miner and Maury improving? Not a high priority, wont ever matter for the advisory committee.

Precisely.

I find it really interesting that instead of looking at how to attract higher SES families to Miner, the only thing they can think of is forcing the schools together. Also that SWS is apparently exempt from the clustering conversation. SWS is a 12 minute walk from Miner down F St. If they turned Miner into SWS at Miner and allowed IB Miner students preference, that would actually almost instantaneously create SES balance.

Hey, leave SWS out of this mess!

Do city-wide DCPS already have an at-risk set aside? If not, does anyone know if one is being contemplated as part of this study?

SWS already has the EA preference.

Only for PK3 and PK4 though. The idea would be to make it more grades, maybe all grades, and set aside rather than give a preference.

I would support this but it will have zero impact on kids at Miner and likely little impact generally because SWS is such a small school. I imagine the reason they have the preference for PK grades but not upper grades is that they have so few lottery spots available for upper grades as to make it pointless. Even if you agreed that 100% of available lottery spots for upper grades at SWS were EA set asides, you're talking a handful of spots per grade, sometimes none. Plus I'm not even sure that's the best thing for a kid who is genuinely at risk -- SWS can be insular and hard to adjust to for UMC white kids on the Hill if they are entering at 2nd or 3rd. It would be extra challenging for a child with genuine issues, and I'd worry that the curriculum would not do a good job at addressing deficiencies -- SWS is not very academically rigorous but relies heavily on the fact that most of it's population is high income and so kids are getting a ton of support/enrichment at home.