Reply to New DCPS school on former Georgetown Day site will be a high school

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Reply to "New DCPS school on former Georgetown Day site will be a high school"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]
Anonymous wrote:

In theory you are allowed but as you can imagine the reality is much more complicated. The biggest barriers are communication, getting information on tryouts, etc., transportation, and socially not knowing anyone for the kids. It is intimidating for the kids trying out for the team of an unfamiliar school.

The interesting question for me is why these newly built high schools in mostly black neighborhoods are not appealing to black families. Too many black people? I am tired of the simple, although not untrue line that DC is racist which is why high school enrollment is low, Black people also opt out of their local school and go private to charters. So yes DC white parents are afraid of black kids (above a percentage I estimate to be 30%), but is that really what is driving the high availability of high school seats?
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Middle class black families want the same thing for their kids that middle class white families want.  The underenrolled schools are predominantly populated by lower income "at-risk" families.  The schools spend so much time trying to address the social/emotional/learning needs of those kids that there is not a lot of time/attention left for kids from more secure environments.  Discipline is an issue.  DCPS won't eject disruptive actors from classrooms; teachers are just expected to "teach around" the issues.  Middle class parents want their kids in classrooms where there is a minimum of foolishness so learning can happen.  At the high school level, peer influence is incredibly important.  Middle class families don't want their kids to be surrounded by peers for whom drug use, incarceration, teen pregnancy are the "norm". 
 Many middle class black families in DC became middle class via extraordinary hard work and savings by grandparents and great-grands who fled poverty in the rural south to migrate to DC in the first half of the 20th century.  They worked as butlers, maids, and cab drivers in a segregated city and then scrimped and saved to buy houses in neighborhoods like Petworth, Brightwood, 14th Street Heights and Brookland when segregation was prohibited in the 1960s.  Those families understand that education is a key to stability and that in 2022, being able to maintain a middle class lifestyle is fragile.  [/quote]

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