Reply to Ludlow-Taylor getting a new a new Principal

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Again.  Comments like this really don't build community.  But apparently, you're not interested in building a unified community.  I'm going to have to call this one the way it sounds...you just want the black families out.  But here's a newsflash for you--many of those little black children are IB for LT, and they aren't going anywhere.  I know newcomers think that every black person they see at their school is sneaking in here from PG county, but that is an urban myth.  It happens, but not on a level anywhere near DCUMers believe it does.  When it does, it's a case of separation or divorce. Moreover, there aren't a whole lot of PG county residents who are sneaking into DC schools to attend LT. No offense, but I can name two dozen other schools (including charters) that they would go to before they would ever think of LT.

Seriously, you guys IB for LT need to tamp down your rhetoric.  It's ugly and counterproductive.  If you really want a great IB school, spend your energy working on a solution that benefits children of every race and socio-economic level.  And stop with the IB/OOB distinction.  LT is NOT a Ward 3 school, and if you want to emulate Ward 3 schoosl, the whole "I'm IB and you're not" attitude is the last thing you would want to take from them.[/quote]

Some good points above but even more counterproductive palaver.  On my little street alone, near Ludlow, there are half a dozen grandmothers who've been passing off their grandchildren, now in the upper grades, as IB kids since preschool without fear.

With more and more of the elderly people in the neighborhood, almost all of whom arrived in the 60s, leaving for nursing and retirement homes, and passing away, rampant address cheating is dying a death of attrition.  There were at least twice as many families on the street playing the game at L-T five years ago.  Brent isn't a Ward 3 school either, but it's FARMs rate has dropped from 3/4 to under 10% in just over a decade.  Maury just shed its Title 1 status, with its FARMs rate halving in five years.

Demographers estimate that at least two-thirds of the children under age 5 in the L-T catchment area are white and high SES.   The rest are a mix of races and classes.

PPs sound horrified by the prospect of neighborhood families, who are mostly white, collectively embracing the school and staying through the upper grades, causing L-T to become majority high SES.  This is being on the wrong side of history, like the states fighting gay marriage. Demographic sea change has already arrived, with a flood of affluent families choosing to raise their kids in the L-T District.

The new principal will be confronted with endless demands for pullout groups and challenge for "advanced learners" (mostly average ability upper middle-income kids), with less and less emphasis on SN and remedial education as the years pass.  Gentrifiers of all races are weary of lottery stress and school commutes far into NE; they have a right to send their kids to their neighborhood school before other comers.  More are going to stay for K+ with every passing year.  With both mayoral candidates pushing for better neighborhood schools, low SES L-T community members will have little choice but to leave or cope with the influx.

Pretending that a unified school community is possible in light of the large high SES-low SES achievement gap, while DCPS rejects GT programming, won't help.  Much tension will continue to come of this calculus, at least until high SES parents emerge as the majority at L-T.  Good intentions aside, it's not all rainbows and kittens at any of the Hill schools caught in seismic demographic shifts.  [/quote]

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