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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]SWS has been separarte from Peabody for ten years - the sibling preference of the original white famillies is not the reason for the school's continued lack of racial diversity. [/quote]

The 4th and 5th grade has a ton of youngest siblings of IB peabody families who had the preference.  3rd and below looks a lot different.  The PK3/PK4 has a ton of Black children and FWIW, from talking to their parents they all seem very happy.

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This is absolutely true, plus 5th grade is half the size of 4th enrollment.   The number of upper ES kids connected to Peabody/Cluster boundary is small.  Those families have mostly aged out.  The younger grades are far more diverse.[/quote]

This feels contradictory. If it is only the 4th and 5th grades that retain the Peabody preference siblings (and thus, by your logic, tend to be whiter), and the 5th grade class is small, why is the school still 60% white? If PK3-3rd is diverse, this would be reflected in the numbers, right?

I'm the PP who originally brought this up and this conversation is why I say no one has ever sufficiently explained this to me. The Peabody connection really cannot explain on its own why the school has remained so white. I think blaming it on Peabody and sibling preference at this point sort of proves why this is an issue -- if 10 years on, the school is still so predominantly white, that it really looks like the community has not tried that hard to diversify. It also raises the question as to why this weird DCPS school (remember SWS is not a charter) exists to essentially serve a small, affluent, white community. Particularly when so few SWS students go on to Stuart Hobson.

It just gives me an unpleasant impression. I'm sure everyone there is well meaning, but this seems bad.[/quote]

It's really not that big a mystery.  DC's black child population is 56%, so based on that alone, the school isn't that far off from the population citywide.  The neighborhoods surrounding and accessible to SWS have a much higher population of white children than the city overall, so that's one factor.  SWS's location is not particularly metro accessible, and there are a ton of charters in the surrounding wards, so people have a lot of more accessible options, with a lot longer runway than SWS, which doesn't have a great middle school feed.  Plus the 4th and 5th grade have legacy inbound preference.  All of those combined result in the school's demographics, which as stated above, are a lot more diverse in the lower grades.

Your ignorance of the school is really showing given that you think there's some vast racist conspiracy going on.  SWS leans hard into diversity, equity and inclusion.

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It is surprising for a school with no IB preference given the demographics of nearby elementariness like Ludlow-Taylor, JO Wilson, Miner, Payne, Tyler, etc. The demographics of the neighborhood explain the populations at Peabody, Brent, and Maury. But the Hill itself, and adjoining neighborhoods, is still very diverse. There is no obvious reason to me why more families from these other schools, including the many, many, POC families there, would not be putting SWS on their lottery list. Look at the demographics at Capital Hill Montessori at Logan and Two Rivers. SWS is an outlier for this kind of school in this neighborhood.

It's interesting to hear that it was as much as 80-90% white when the school started. I'm glad they've gotten more diverse with time but wow -- how that must have looked (and felt) when they created SWS. I now understand some of the racial politics at the Hill Cluster school a little better. We have friends there and some of the drama in the last few years has been weird to me based on my own DCPS experience. But no wonder there is so much tension. Basically a bunch of white families got together and created a special little school for themselves. I cannot even imagine.[/quote]

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