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[quote=Anonymous]One of the things that our family has to come to like about Jefferson Academy is that students are coming to it from ALL OVER the city. It means the school is communicating to everyone in the same way. And all students start from the same blank slate, with a need to acclimate and become a cohesive Trojan-spirited body, learning to respect JA's ways of doing things, no presumptions. What may be agonizing for parents, having to make new friends, can be liberating for students, namely to break out of the 15-30 classmates they've seen and grown to be friends with since preschool. (It was for our child.)

On the parents' end, while I've had to learn a lot of new faces for sure, at JA I've worked with JA parents from Hill schools such as Brent, Tyler, Watkins, Amidon, Maury, and J.O. That's been nice because we have joint reference points. But there are parents from Garrison, Thompson, Hyde etc. who just as much share a common understanding about how parents can be involved, how to communicate, how to run events, what's important to them, what values to uphold and instill in students, what they want for their children. Some of them, I will tell you, feel just as "new" as any Brent family might when contemplating the deeper historical and community roots of Jefferson. (Fascinating stuff there by the way if you take time to listen.) To say: It would be nice to have more Brent families at JA, not least because it's a solid feeder, but it's not what makes JA. In fact, one may hope it won't be. JA is and should be its own thing, with a distinct history and spirit that kids pick up on very quickly, and so can parents.

Last but not least, consider that there are actually a lot of Brent families at JA. If you don't "see" that it's because you may have your eyes set mainly on white parents and children (let's make sure we count properly if counting is needed). [/quote]

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