Reply to South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019

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Reply to "South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nauck is a hard to understand situation. There is a huge history to that area. There are some local activists that think it’s going to be wonderful as a neighborhood school and don’t really understand the performance issues. Or think that once the performance issues are out in the open- they will be fixed... [/quote]

Here's the other thing. In 1990, Nauck was 90% African-American, now it is down to about a third. It is partly gentrified and partly just diversified. The "community" doesn't have any kind of collective view on things anymore, although the older A-A residents still dominate the civic association -- and the county's perception of who they need to be responsive to. It is going to be a very difficult conversation because the Drew boundaries are where all these racial discussions are going to get hashed out in public. [/quote]

White gentrifier Nauck resident here. Drew still has a relatively heavily black population, second only to Hoffman-Boston in Arlington. I would expect that may skew higher when the Montessori moves out, I'm not sure (maybe not, depending on influx from the other school zones). And those kids have not been well served by Drew statistically speaking, as Portia pointed out in her letter. You're right about the civic association still being dominated by the older black residents, and I think there is resentment about the school being so dominated by the Montessori, which I can understand. Thanks to the PP for explaining a bit about the history, by the way. I'm not sure it's going to be all that racially charged, except to the extent of (1) those populations do not historically perform well on tests and the school in general needs to improve, which may be accomplished simply by ceasing the split-program thing, and (2) the usual concern over concentrated minority/poor and the desire of non-minority/wealthy to therefore avoid. From what I've seen at civic association meetings, there are other projects in the works to emphasize and celebrate the history of the area, for example the coming Nauck town square and Jennie Dean park, both of which appear to receive a lot of focus. [/quote]

A lot of the black students at Drew now are African immigrants or the children of immigrants, not African-Americans. It is a different community with different issues. There are also a lot of middle Eastern and south/central American immigrants. A lot of these families move around quite a bit, even within Arlington, and change schools frequently. Parents may or may not speak English. A quarter of the kids in the school are in High Intensity Language Training. [/quote]

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