Reply to Question for those who are doing the DCPS lotteries-- why did you choose to live where you live?

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Reply to "Question for those who are doing the DCPS lotteries-- why did you choose to live where you live?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Claire! You have a name. What is your response to the situation that many PPs have posted about, namely families who have CHOSEN to live in neighborhoods with crappy IB schools for commute/diversity/hipster/whatever reasons. They could easily chose to move, yet they don't and their situation is one of their own creation. I recognize that this situation is not YOUR situation. But your situation is not the one we are discussing. Of the PPs who posted their stories on this thread, I would say most them made the conscious choice to live where they wanted to live, and the lottery worked out for them.  My guess is that the demographics of DCUM are that the "conscious choice" crowd is greater than the low SES crowd, which I get you are a part of. We aren't talking about you. [/quote]

You're so out of touch! Do you REALLY think that it is as simple as buying a small house in ward 3 vs. buying a big house in ward 5, 7, 8, heck, even many parts of most wards? This is the oversimplification of the century. Do I think that some families do make choices like that? Sure. But MOST families I know in my neighborhood, the ones in the bigger houses, probably could have afforded a condo in bounds for a "decent" (NOT top) school on the Hill, say. Ward 3 stuff is pretty squarely out of reach for most of us. And maybe you think it is reasonable to squeeze a family of 4 into a 900 SF condo or apartment (and again, that is assuming they can afford it), but to some people, that does not seem like a realistic choice. Although many homes in my neighborhood are bigger, that's probably not the only reason people bought here. The chief reason is they are affordable. They are in-reach for some, whereas others are not.

The thing is, let's take Eckington / Bloomingdale. We looked at the cool "big" houses there and they were already out of our reach at 600K. Let's say someone bought there at 600K. That doesn't mean they could have automatically spent 600K on something elsewhere in bounds for a good school. Do you really think there is that much 600K real estate in bounds for good schools? The moment that real estate is declared in bounds for a good school, it is priced out of the reach of MANY of these people you accuse of making "choices."

What they maybe CAN choose to do is get in bounds for a mediocre school. Or, for a school without a middle school / high school feed that inspires confidence. They can spend ALL of their money hoping for adequacy, or they can spend less money and hope to use whatever tools they can use (investing time and effort into the local school produced encouraging results until the one-two punch of NCLB and the charter school aka parental resource drain machine kicked in) to boost the local schools. Or they can ride the charter roller coaster.

What I don't get, anti-Claires out there, is exactly why you seem so pissed off that people do not live in your wealthy neighborhood, why people with more limited choices in this world than you clearly have, are exercising what little choice and flexibility they do have?

You seem to think that they can't complain about a deeply flawed system because they didn't drain their bank accounts on a "smaller" house in a mediocre school district instead of taking a chance where they were. You are misrepresenting the choices that even people with far, far more money than my family has, can actually make. [/quote]

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