Reply to Are we fools not to play lottery for our 3 y o?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You people who think the gentrification of DC even had a prayer relying on "neighborhood schools" slay me.

Avoiding the neighborhood schools in DC is what built Montgomery County at DC's expense.

Charter schools rescued this city. Now it's just a bonus that some of us can live in cool neighborhoods, have better school options than Ward 3, and still have a smaller mortgage. [/quote]

Yeah, I agree with this.  The following sentence is particularly misguided:

[quote]They're ensuring that when professional families start moving into a community, they focus on safety, police presence, and even the appearance of the local parks and green spaces, but they pay lip service only to the schools while jumping onto a rickety lifeboat in the form of charters. [/quote]

The underlying assumption that all those professional families would have moved to those same neighborhoods if the only choices were crappy IB DCPS or private schools is laughable.  Those neighborhoods became an option because of the possibility that there could be a public education option beyone the local DCPS (that didn't involve driving across the park to go to an OOB school every morning - not that that is an option anymore).   [/quote]

You are so right.  That's what is both laughable and mind-numbing about the PP (or PPs) who keeps lamenting the effects the evil charters have had on parent involvement in local schools.  People who see things that way always get really quiet when you ask them what the alternative to charters should have been that would have saved the neighborhood schools (i.e. something that there wasn't time to see if it worked before charters were born as a different solution).  And again, if charters are such a "rickety lifeboat", why are you trying to find a way to not only get your kid in, but reform the charters so you have a shot at a heldover K spot?  "Ooooh charters are so evil.  Oooooh they're making me put my kid in PS/PK to have a shot.  Oooooooh they should change so they hold K spots and accomodate my parenting priorities.  But Ooooooh they're so evil they should have never existed in the first place, because they're ruining the neighborhood schools that I won't send my kid to.  I want my kid in a popular charter dagnabbit!"  It would be funny if there weren't so many people in the world who do this: damn an institution/systemic change, rewrite history to support their damnation, and all the while trying despeartely to hold their place in that damned institution.[/quote]

You just don't get it. If you all jumped out of the sinking ship, instead of pulling together to patch the holes, recraft the ship, and are in an overcrowded lifeboat that forces some kids back onto the ship or into the water, I'm supposed to jump in the water?

None of you have touched my capitol hill reference. I'm sure those moms are on here, maybe they can talk about how they did it. I know some of them think it is still possible today, in other schools, but unfortunately, experience has proven to some of us that it is not. If you asked me, in person, what the alternative to charters would have been, I wouldn't not have gotten really quiet, I would have given you a thoughtful answer in person as I've tried to do here. There are examples already where local parents got together and said, gee, I don't want to leave this neighborhood we've grown to love as young 20 somethings. Look at all of us parents here on the HIll, probably 3/4 of us are going to put our homes on the market in the next few years. What if, instead, we all storm the local school, send our kids there, and demand change from within? It's a great and risky experiment but we're all bright individuals, we have big jobs and big brains, why not try our best to reform from the inside out? And you know what? They did. Look at the capitol hill cluster schools as a good example. NOte i didn't say perfect. It's hard work. But now it is IMPOSSIBLE or all but impossible work since we'd be an army of one instead of an army of, say, 5 -10, which can gather momentum and become 10-25, and suddenly you're psyched to live in bounds for peabody, brent, etc.

As far as wanting a slot at the charters, hey, charters are now the nature of the beast. I can dislike them and still feel forced to use what I see as the best of a bunch of really poor options. AND, I'm lucky enough that, despite my reluctance to send a kid at 4 or 3, I can figure out a way to make the system work acceptably for me. I can probably get in SOMEWHERE at K, and then continue to try to lottery elsewhere at older years, or eventually do private if / when we start making a reasonable salary at some point again. However, at this point, we deal with the cards we've been dealt AT THE SAME time we try to make that crappy system fairer to all kids, we also look at what we should be doing instead. The HUGE problem with charters is that there are too many of them and not enough of them at the same time. You can acknowledge that charters are part of the problem while still using them - because you have no other choice.  If I have a choice between taking a path in horse dung or just stepping in it, guess which one I'm going to take?

Anyway, yes, I do think that in-bounds public schools should be the true long-term focus. But in this town, with charters being the double-edged sword that they are, ignoring them as an option is foolish. Our hands are forced to some degree, but that doesn't and shouldn't mean we can't change both the short term inadequacies and the long-term issues.

Does that make sense to you? Willing to consider my point or are you just looking to score points saying "ooooh they're so bad but I'll enroll anyway...oooooohhhh (insert whatever insult makes me feel pithy on DCUM). ? [/quote]

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