Reply to Ludlow-Taylor getting a new a new Principal

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[quote=Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
Pp. Do you understand that Brent didn't always have the bells and whistles you describe above? Parents enrolled kids despite that. When I visited the school the spring before I enrolled, the School looked horrible, the AP had is feet up on the desk just chilling, the office staff was surly and as I waited to speak to the principal a sobbing 2nd grade girl wandered into the office with a bloody nose because another girl had punched her and sat on her and her teacher wouldn't help so she came to the office for help. No nurses, no joy, certainly no outfitted band room or brand new playground. Test scores in the tank. But I trusted the principal and her vision for moving the school forward: for BOTH the families who were already there and the neighborhood parents who were enrolling kids and starting to fundraise and build gardens.

Fair enough everyone who started at LT and didn't trust or feel included in the vision and priorities of the principal.

But for those of you looking for all the bells and whistles to happen BEFORE you invest your blood sweat and tears, it ain't gonna happen.

The leadership is key and I hope this new leader is a true professional who can bridge the divide.

Re: bolded. I have zero desire to invest in a school that does not already meet the criteria I have so I moved out of Ward 6 (much as I loved living on the Hill) when I had children to somewhere else where schools were already up to my specifications. I think it's pretty appalling that in the vast majority of DCPS schools, it is the norm for the parents to fight the administration and school reality in order to improve the school (or just give up and go elsewhere or put up with a bad education). That's insane to me! I am not a teacher or a school administrator (and I imagine most people on this board are not) so it is not my job to improve a school, any more than it is the job of my DS' teacher to come to my office and help me with my work or make the business I work for run more efficiently. L-T clearly is not serving the neighborhood (whether it is serving the largely OOB population or not) - and in a system with neighborhood schools, I would imagine the priority should be on serving the neighborhood and making the school most attractive to people who live there, whatever that may take. The fact that L-T cannot do that and that parents are expected to improve the school if they want any results is ridiculous.[/quote]

It is absolutely your job, as a parent, to improve schools. You are a major stakeholder in the school that educates your child. That is not insane. What is insane, though, is you think there is an equivalence in your son's teacher coming to do your work. Your son's teacher doesn't have a vested interest in your job.[/quote]

A teacher could have a vested interest in a lot of parents’ jobs – police (helping the area to have less crime is good for everyone, her included), medicine (what if she or her family member get sick – having a hospital be more efficient is beneficial to all), various Government agencies (regulations affect us all) etc, and yet nobody expects a teacher to help a policewoman, a doctor or a Government employee do their jobs. My job, as a parent, is to educate my child outside of school on how to behave properly, to ensure he gets proper activities (sports, enrichment etc) to benefit his growth, and to send him to school that does an adequate job teaching him the basics (and to pay taxes to ensure schools are properly funded if the school is public; and pay proper tuition if the school is private). It is not my job to improve the school (to use another, somewhat equivalent example – it is certainly beneficial to me and directly afects me to have a plumber and an electrician to know what they are doing when they work on my house – so I hire knowledgeable professionals, I am not expected to hire incompetent ones and get them up to speed). DH and I are both a product of two different public school systems in different states (and, at one point, different countries).  In none of those schools was it expected or necessary for parents to drag the school kicking and screaming into functionality (and no, having a good school with a PTA that raises money through bake sales is not an equivalent of what parents are expected to do to ‘improve’ DCPS schools). Parents of children in NoVa, MoCo or Ward 3 are expected to be involved in their children’s education and possibly help PTA with the above-mentioned fundraising, but it’s a far cry from what parents in most of DCPS are supposed to do to ‘improve’ the schools – which is basically become a teacher/administrator/booster/everything else with little expectation of success. To me, that means that DCPS beaurocracy is broken. (And before anyone gets into ‘Ward 3/NoVa/MoCo have different demographics’ argument – true but (a) L-T inbounds demographic is hardly impoverished and (b) I would think children whose parents have less choice about moving somewhere better deserve even more help from DCPS than the typical DCUM poster but they do not get it.  
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