Reply to Do you think Shepherd Elementary will become/is becoming more diverse?

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Reply to "Do you think Shepherd Elementary will become/is becoming more diverse?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm an IB PK parent--hesitant to dive in, but here goes.  The lower grades are more diverse than the upper grades, but there's still a risk of being the "only" in a class.  I'd say that most parents I've met have been okay with this.  I asked one parent about whether he was concerned about his child being the "lonely only"--he sort of shrugged and said, hey, most of the world is non-white, so he wasn't really concerned about his child being one of the few non-AA kids.

In my child's class, which is all IB, there are a few white kids, a couple of biracial kids, and the rest are black, more or less.  Re: OP's recent comment, I was telling my husband that a recent pic of the class looked a bit like a Benetton ad!  I expect this trend to continue, with more diversity in the lower grades, given the young families I've met who have recently moved to Shepherd Park/Colonial Village.  However, because the neighborhood attracts middle/upper SES families of all ethnic/racial backgrounds, including AA, I definitely don't think the school will "flip" anytime soon, as has happened at schools like Maury and Brent in recent years.

To a PP's point, the black contingent of Shepherd's student body is not a monolith.  Some of these kids speak another language at home, some have parents of another race, etc.  There are AA families at Shepherd with Caribbean, West African, East African, and (yes) European backgrounds.  This type of diversity is not visible off the bat, but there is definitely diversity among Shepherd's AA students, as WOTP families have stated re: JKLMM schools as well.  This international diversity--celebrated on International Night in the fall--is wonderful and fits nicely with the IB curriculum.

So, yes, Shepherd will likely be more diverse in coming years, and you'll see that more in the lower grades, but overall I think it will remain predominantly AA for the foreseeable future (who knows, I could be wrong, but that's my best guess!).  Parents who are okay with this fact are probably going to be a lot more comfortable at Shepherd than folks who are hand-wringing about the exact percentage of non-AA students in a given class.  [/quote]

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