Reply to School Fraud- Cap Hill

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "School Fraud- Cap Hill"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]As someone at a school that appears to have a lot of residency fraud, I think part of the problem is that it has a serious impact on the school's ability to build community. Our school has a lot of IB kids but also a large portion of students that definitely live in MD. It's an open secret. I know some of these families and I get why they do it, and as others on the thread have explained, often situations are complicated. But also -- it's still fraud. These are not families who used to live in bounds and now live out of bounds in DC. They don't still have a parent living in DC and definitely not IBs. Some of them still own property or have family members near the school, but neither the kids nor the parents live in these houses and don't pretend to. Yes, many of them lived IB for a long time and grew up in the area and went to the school themselves. I get it and there are obviously gentrification and racial issues at play and I'm actually not judging any of these families. My kid is friends with some of their kids, and their kids are great. Many are very committed to the school and very active in activities and booster events.

But it still impacts the overall culture of the school. The fact that it's an "open secret" is a problem -- everyone knows what is going on and no one is saying anything but it's absolutely an elephant in the room, especially in situations where the school interacts with the neighborhood, coordinating for events or doing fundraisers. It creates awkwardness. It also undermines a major reason many of us choose to attend this school over a charter. We want to be in a neighborhood school, for our kid to attend school with neighbors and to have a sense of community in our neighborhood. So it was surprising and disappointing when our kid's first true school friend turned out to live in PG county. We're not going to tell on this family, who we love. But it's not what we thought we were getting into with this school and it was sad to discover it. No casual after school playdates or bumping into each other in the neighborhood on the weekend. And we think it will be hard for these kids to maintain their friendship due to the distance and the underlying issues.

Someone upthread said it's not fair for families to complain about residency fraud when they will just abandon the school for charters or private school. But I think this comment ignores how these issues are related. We do sometimes discuss moving to a charter, specifically to try and find a greater sense of community because our current school has a disjointed culture due to residency fraud. There are basically two communities -- the IB families and the MD families. They mix, but they are also distinct, and it's weird.

I'm not trying to deprive any child of an education. But it's kind of crazy we've all just accepted this as the way it has to be. That attitude is endemic in DCPS and I think it leads to a lot of the apathy and resentment in the system. It's not good.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics