Reply to Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, they think their kid should have just as much access to an appropriate education as yours. [/quote]

Seriously!  These people insisting they know the disabilities of other children and that "wealthy" parents are hell-bent on gaming the system are so bizarrely smug and confidant in their fact-less beliefs.

Pro tip: there are very few wealthy families in DCPS.  There are UMC families, and probably what you'll find is a disproportionate number of UMC families struggling to afford private because DCPS won't implement their child's IEP or 5504[/quote]

This is only true if you carefully define "wealthy" to exclude yourself. Here's a couple profiles of DCPS families I know:

Family 1: Real estate holdings worth around 3-4m, including two rental properties. Trusts for both kids, primarily funded by grandparents, to cover college costs up to current private college costs (both kids also have 529s). Not sure what they have in retirement exactly, but they have already received multi-million dollar inheritances, so I'm guessing it's a lot. Actual HHI isn't crazy high (maybe 250k), but real generational wealth in play. They would 100% describe themselves as "upper middle class" though.

Family 2: Until recently, both parents made in the ballpark of 200-300k, so combined HHI of 500k+, now reduced to 250-300k (higher earning spouse still working). Parents are upper 40s though, with high incomes for the last 20 years, so huge amount of savings in retirement and investment accounts (millions). Home, worth about 1.5m, is paid off. One child, 529 has been super funded by parents and grandparents. One set of grandparents is wealthy, likely to leave somewhere in the ballpark of 6m when they pass, until then regularly fund all vacations, summer camp, childcare expenses, and have provided substantial down payments for house purchases (in the 50-100k range). Would also describe themselves as upper middle class.

All kids in DCPS. There are plenty of wealthy families in DCPS, especially at the elementary level. These families would absolutely complain that they would "struggle" to afford private, but they don't mean it the way that, for instance, I would mean it. They mean that they might have to rein in extremely high vacation, dining, and entertainment budgets to something less extravagant, in order to afford private school tuition. And they almost certainly will do just that, when their kids are in MS or HS. And they will continue to claim the are upper middle class. And sure, okay, let's call that upper middle class.

UMC people in DC are often quite wealthy.[/quote]

My wife’s family is pretty wealthy but they’re also deeply committed to public schools. It’s a very very midwestern thing. My family is working class Catholic and went parochial the whole way up (I broke away). Propensity to go private is IMO as much a regional thing as a wealth thing.[/quote]

There is also a generational difference. A lot of the well-off parents in DC grew up in families where their parents prioritized education over other things (like travel, dining out, and entertainment). So they may have gone to private schools and elite colleges, but they feel deprived because their childhoods didn't involve trips to Paris or going to concerts or eating at nice restaurants, all things they craved as teens. These parents will flip this dynamic -- send their kids to public school and then use the "savings" to do all the stuff they didn't do as kids. This has two effects -- it means you wind up with a lot of parents in DCPS who didn't go to public schools (and thus don't get how they work or the compromises inherent in them) and then those same parents are spending tons of money on travel and other experiences. This results in a huge cultural difference from the poor, working class, and middle class families who normally populate public schools. That's where a lot of the conflict comes from.[/quote]

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