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][quote=Anonymous]Are none of you concerned about your kids missing out on the traditional neighborhood school?  Maybe it doesn't matter as much if you work full time and your kids don't get home from after-care until 6pm.  But I would hate to think that every child in my neighborhood went to a different school.  I would hate my child's school to be miles away from our neighborhood.  We don't live in D.C. anymore.  One of the things I absolutely LOVE about our neighborhood is that all the kids in our neighborhood ride their bikes to school together.  There is a real sense of community because all of us are concerned about working to make our neighborhood school the best it can be.  My son's teacher lives four houses away from me.  The principal lives two streets down.  We have crossing guards to help the kids cross the streets safely.  They know all the kids by name.  Community events are often held at the schools.  Our community is tied together in many ways by our school.

I would hate it if my kids' schools started allowing out-of-boundary kids, if for no other reason than the additional traffic.  We have almost no car riders.  ALL the kids walk or bike.  The only time there is a car pool line is in bad weather.

I really think you are missing out on the value of supporting the elementary school in your community.[/quote]

Oh holy night. Really? You seriously don't get it, eh?

I'm sure 99 percent of these parents would like to support a neighborhood school. This is claire here. I know I would LOVE to support my neighborhood school. However, as I said, here's the deal. DCPS schools were already shitty, then NCLB made sure that even the BEST schools would be a test taking factory, and then charter school explosion meant that parents who might have invested in the local in bounds and tried to resist the NCLB train were bled away by these other options. While I agree with you fundamentally, those of us trying to put the horse back in the gate are just shouting into the wind. Many of us in ward 5 are at least happy that our charter school options are close (if not directly in the neighborhood).

So the thing is, your'e making my point ("Claire" here) while also fundamentally missing the fact that YES, most of us would LOVE LOVE LOVE a viable in-bounds school in our neighborhood but again, we do not have the means to live in a neighborhood where that can happen. Tell me your zip code and how much you paid for your house and I'll tell you how far over my head that would have been. And contrary to what people are saying, that my family is the exception, I beg to differ. Let's say my family makes 111K per year. Are our options different now? Not really. We made that much when we were house shopping. We make less now because of an illness. Add just one more reason to be thankful we made the choices we made, and didn't bankrupt ourselves trying to reach way over our heads to live in bounds for a "mediocre / adequate at best" school district.

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Claire, I agree with 4 trillion percent.  I was adamantly anti-charter from the very beginning, but now my DS is enrolled at one b/c I really had no other acceptable choice.  I am the PP who said I had tried to rally some local parents to support our IB school without success.  I really like our school but I am still ambivalent about the whole charter movement.  Education and QOL is the entire reason we plan to move out of the area entirely before DS starts K.[/quote]

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