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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think anyone has alleged that white families leave Brent, Maury, or any school specifically because it's "too black" in the upper grades. What has historically happened is that families start to leave these schools in the upper grades because they don't like their MS options and want to ensure their kids can go to a charter MS like Basis.

I think the vast majority of the time, the decision to leave DCPS is not about the number of black students. The issue the percentage of poor students, and in DC, poor students are overwhelmingly black. MC and UMC of all races worry about the impact on a school of having a certain threshold of poor students, who often have much higher needs that students from better-resourced families. It's a pretty crappy situation. My family chose to leave our IB DCPS (for another DCPS) for this reason and it is a an awkward mix of guilt and resignation. Our new school still has a very high percentage of FARMS kids. But our old school had a large homeless student population, and particularly during Covid, we learned that providing those children with just their basic needs (which absolutely is necessary) made it all but impossible to offer much of anything to the rest of the school population. Even other FARMS kids who are not housing insecure.

You need a critical mass of middle or high income families at a school to be able to expand the school's offerings beyond a focus on remediating what very high needs and at risk students need. So if you have an average, middle class kid, your school choice can mean the difference between them being treated like the most privileged (and there for least in need of attention or services) kid in class, or to be treated like an average kid deserving of what would be considered average levels of academic and extra curricular enrichment by most national standards.

It's not about not wanting your kid around black kids, or even around poor black kids. It's an understanding that poor children require a lot of services and focus and that if the vast majority of a school's population has those needs, and your child does not, it is unlikely that your child will receive much specialized attention.[/quote]

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