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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Would one (or all) of the people who wrote or +1’d that post about graduating from a title I elementary school be willing to do an AMA? We may be in this position. We’re having a wonderful experience at our title I school but more and more of the other white/UMC families leave every year - starting next year we’ll be one of just a couple left. I have a ton of questions about your experience. [/quote]

Ask some questions! I would answer. We stayed at a Title 1 until 4th, I have lots of complicated thoughts about the school experience, about what to do for middle school, and about what makes a school "good enough." I also moved my younger kid to a very highly rated non-Title 1 DCPS and have lots of points of actual comparison. [/quote]

PP here who asked for the AMA. Here are my questions (would be interested in answers from anyone with a child who actually had a kid go all the way through 4th or 5th grade at a title I school):

1) Were you able to make “family friends” via your kids school (where the kids were friends and the parents were friends) despite race/class/cultural differences? [b]If yes, can you offer any tips on how to make that happen?[/b] If no, did you miss this?

[b]Across race, yes, easy and a good thing for the kids, across class much less so. Lots of friendships between white, black and Asian parents at the school. Across class and language -- friendly dynamics at school and at school events, but not outside of school. I did make a huge effort to invite all the kids to our parties early on, which meant physically tracking down parents and putting invitations in their hands. It did work early on! As the kids got older, they dug into their small friend groups, which were homogeneous by class, and didn't include kids with non-native English speaking parents, unfortunately.
[/b]
2) Did your school have a lot of Spanish speaking families? Did your kid become friends with those kids? [b]If so, how did you navigate the language barrier with those parents?[/b]

[b]Yes it did, and I found this very, very hard to overcome. The kids were friendly at school, but having deep friendships with parents across languages is very difficult. There was friendliness at school events, though. This group also didn't exist on the PTO, even though they are a plurality at the school. I'm sure some school manage this better than others. I think the school as an institution managed it well (many bilingual administrators and teachers, parents were supported), but social and PTO it was very segregated[/b].

3) Did you talk to your kid about the racial differences at his school? About racism? About the dynamics of being the only white kid in the class? If so, at what age(s)? Did you bring it up or did they? Did they seem to notice or care? We’re there every any hiccups around being the only (or one of a very few) white kids?

[b]Personally I think the parents care a lot more than the kids, especially when they are starting in that environment from PK. It's normal to them. Parents are the ones who are usually coming from more homogeneous environments so they feel weird. My kids never really mentioned it. Kids are born without biases!

The teachers did talk about race, black history month always celebrated the best of blackness, which was really nice to be exposed to, and the school celebrated the cultural heritages of the kids. They wanted the kids to be proud of their race and culture. I thought that was a really good thing for my kids to be exposed to!

I'm the PP that moved my kids to better schools later on (this is super identifying to the people who know me, but I moved one to a charter middle and another to a better DCPS school). Neither of my kids mentioned the new racial makeup of their classes, but both talk about how much more work they do in class now, how much more they learn, that they watch fewer screens and things like that. My older kid talks about it a LOT, because he barely worked in 4th grade and he's at BASIS now and has a tremendous amount of work. So his opinion of his elementary school has kind of changed, now that he's seen the other side. My younger son also says "there is less time to be bored." [/b]
[b]
[b]The new DCPS school is also less segregated and everyone is friendly to each other, maybe because there aren't language barriers and little things like the WhatsApp group truly includes every parent (which rarely happened at the old school).

I know at diverse schools, parents need to work a bit harder to engage with everyone across race, class and language. It takes more effort, and it was less perfect in our experience. It's easy for everyone to socially default to what they are used to, and the kids will cluster in classes by their ability, which ends up correlating with class (not race) more and more as they rise through the grades.

But the schools are a nice little microcosm in which to try, especially in a neighborhood school where presumably the families are actually neighbors. And kids do end up understanding more about the world, I think, when they go to a diverse school. I have no regrets about keeping our kid in through 4th! [/b][/b]

I know that’s a lot - happy to also provide a burner email or something if you’d rather talk directly. The bolded are honestly my biggest questions. We’re in a situation where I’ve ended up friends/friendly with mostly the white/UMC families, and they are leaving at high rates, and I’m not having a lot of luck bonding with the families of color (despite my efforts). The language barrier has been huge, plus just some unexpected differences (ex: aftercare is dominated by white families, which I wouldn’t have guessed, some black families are housing insecure and move often, there seems to be less of a culture of scheduling time in advance to get together to play. Even weird things like the white families are all at the pool from 10 or 11 to 1 and the black families are there more in like the 2-6 window). I’m sure a lot of this is a skill issue on my part, and I want to do better and learn but I’m struggling a bit and don’t want my kids to be left out due to my own social limitations/awkwardness.

Oh and if you haven’t been at a title 1 through 4/5, please don’t respond. I myself was HORRIFIED when I asked the neighbor with a kid a little older if she knew a lot of the parents at the school (when my kids were toddlers) and she said “sure, all the white parents” and now that I’ve lived it, I’m seeing how that happens and how hard it is to swim against that tide. [/quote][/quote]

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