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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]12:54, you are correct. There are a large chunk of kids that meet these criteria.  When people state that all the IB kids left the 5th grade this year, what they are really saying is "all the white kids" left.  There are plenty of families that are IB for the cluster who attend Brent. I think some of them will hedge their bets to see if Stuart-Hobson improves. If SH became more desirable, I would wager that the flight of affluent students from the 5th grade would slow.  SH is undergoing a renovation right now and if the new principal has her wits about her, she could probably attract more Hill families to SH. Right now, 1/2 spots are filled with students from Ward 7 & 8. An IB Brent family has an equal chance via the lottery to compete for the spots.  Of course, much of this would depend on improving programming at SH. Also (just in case DCPS is listening) you might want to police your students a bit better on the playground. The obscenities they hurl at year other and passer-bys doesn't exactly make me want to send my child there.[/quote]
[quote=Anonymous]This is totally not accurate. Not making any argument, I am just pointing out that people who don't really know things are posting things as fact here.  There were exactly two in-boundary students in the fourth grade in the 2010/11 school year. One was white and one was African American.  Neither one stayed for 5th grade and their slots. Along with other slots opened by out of boundary students (all African American) were filled off the wait list.  The 5th grade this year included two white students (both OOB). [/quote]
In 2011-2012 there were about six in-bounds fourth graders, and none of them (I believe) are returning to Brent for fifth grade - they are all headed to Latin and BASIS.  Overall, there were about 48 fourth graders in 2011-2012, and 16-28 are returning for fifth grade.  Of the 2011-2012 fourth and fifth grade students, about 25 are going to BASIS, about five are going to Latin, and a few are headed to Stuart Hobson/Watkins and Hardy.  Many are leaving DC public schools altogether.

And while we are auditing this thread . . . the PTA does not pay for specials at Brent, and has not done so since late 2011.  The six specials at Brent (art, music, PE, Chinese, science, library) are all staffed by DCPS employees paid by Brent's DCPS budget.  There is some Brent PTA financial support for the Brent DCPS budget, and that support allows the school to shift its DCPS funds around and fund six specials (instead of five) - but the PTA has not directly supported specials at Brent since last year.  In 2012-2013 the Brent PTA will fund a part-time math teacher for the upper grades, and DCPS is paying for a part-time math teacher for the lower grades.  PTA support allows for this extra math support.  Brent's DCPS budget (like JKLMMs) is also helped by a fully enrolled school with a smaller demand for special ed and remedial services when compared to most other DC schools (although Brent’s special ed capacity is still robust).

As one who follows Brent budget issues, I have few problems with amount of money DCPS provides Brent, despite Brent receiving lower than average per-pupil funding.  Certainly PTA cash helps a lot, but I can't say that DCPS underfunds Brent or that Brent squanders its funds.  The LSAT at Brent is very engaged, and the community gets almost all the juice out of the lemon.

A more significant weak spot than DCPS funding for Brent is DCPS district-wide policies.  While greater leeway is given to JKLMM and a few schools like Brent, and that helps a lot, DCPS policies nevertheless hamstring the school, specifically with respect to advanced studies.

And, IMHO the most significant factor holding down Brent (and perhaps all DC public schools) is our city-wide culture.  It's not the presence of out of bounds students bringing down Brent, it's not the school’s diversity, and it's certainly not the presence of poor black kids in the upper grades.  It’s a culture that would rather everyone be equal (see the DCPS Hopes and Dreams campaign results) even if everyone is in a crappy school.  It’s a culture that crushes ability grouping at the altar of differentiated learning.  It's a culture that won't allow a strong middle school to be created immediately, but rather wants to hold onto a flawed system of three mediocre (at best) underutilized middle schools in Ward Six with the futile hope that gentrification and activism will breathe life into them.  It’s a culture that won’t allow radical solutions, only incremental changes.  It’s a culture that chooses to use guilt, and to twist the arms of middle class families so they will sacrifice their children as agents of change, instead of enticing and incentivizing them to stay.  It's a culture that relentlessly attacks the Chancellor and never gives her the room she needs or the credit she deserves.  And despite the desperate need to fund new initiatives, the dominant culture fights against eliminating unused capacity (closing schools), fights to keep librarians in under-enrolled schools, and so on.  Granted, it’s glib to assert that one can simply sit at a drafting table and in one afternoon completely redesign a massive system with a long complicated history.  It’s not nearly that easy.  But often it seems the fights our city’s culture chooses to undertake can provide only pyrrhic victories, instead of embracing more progressive policies that are more immediately impactful and more viable over the long-term.  Come to think of it, it's not just a city-wide thing, it's what our culture is doing in many ways on a national level.

Oops, a crying kid out of bed and so we now return you to your regularly schedule programming.[/quote]

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