Reply to Can Gentrifers Use Their Skills and Resources to "Make" a Great School?

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Reply to "Can Gentrifers Use Their Skills and Resources to "Make" a Great School?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We live in Petworth and are considering our options for elementary schools.   I can't help feeling that with the recent neighborhood improvements in housing stock and HHI that there are is now a critical mass of highly educated and well off parents.

Has anyone ever tried to form an action group with other higher SES parents to work on their local school.  We are looking at Powell and wondering if 30-40 well of parents enrolled their children and took an active interest in the school they could really turn things around and continue to increase the school quality through raising additional funds, establishing more after school programs, increasing the clubs and [b]holding teachers and the principal to account[/b] etc..  If it can happen at Janney etc, why not elsewhere?

We have some decent teachers, and alot of momentum.  Do people think  a group of parents could really make the difference in one DC school.  Or are we stuck with the poorly performing students dragging everyone else down?

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This is what you have very little control over. You can raise a ton of money, but if the teachers and admin are not interested in your '"skills and resources" than a lot of money can be wasted. You can purchase and donate all the smart boards and science lab equipment money can buy, but if the teachers don't know how/want to take the time to work them into their already existing lesson plans, those things will grow mold in the basement, get lost in off site storage, or simply disappear. So do it, but I would advise that you not spend a dime unless the ideas are coming from the inside. After school programs by outside entities are the exception there - no teacher buy-ins needed, just the principal's OK to use the space. Start by asking the school what they want and need.[/quote]

Yes, the problem with the school principal and staff is just as big of a problem as the parents with respect to resistance to change.  In order to pass many if not most programmatic changes at a DCPS schools, you have to put the change to a vote, to current parents as well as the teachers.  Most of the parents at these schools will not respond to the request to vote, except for the gentrifiers, but unless there is a critical mass of gentrifiers, you will still lose that vote.  And you can count on the teachers and most likely principal to be resistant to change.  So you lose that vote, too.  The political reality, gentrifiers, is they don't want you or your "enlightened" changes.  Because they know the result will be more gentrifiers once the changes occur; and even if they understand the long-term academic benefit of that, they prefer the status quo they know.  It's just a losing proposition unless the population is already saturated with gentrifiers, and even then most of those gentrifiers would rather not deal with the B.S.[/quote]

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