Anonymous wrote:In my family's experience (at the 2nd street campus), Latin is a pretty racist and exclusionary place.
The honors classes were almost entirely White; the on-track classes were almost entirely Black. All the attention was given to the honors classes. When White affluent kids made flip anti-immigrant, sexist, anti-Black, or anti-semitic comments (yup my DD heard it all on a regular basis) they were "just being kids" and there was no consequence or deterrence for next time. Once, relatively recently, a White kid did get in trouble for saying derogatory anti-Black comments and boy did the administrators feel great about their show of equity. But it was one of the very few times I heard of any effort made at shutting down snide, casual racism by White students.
Have they starting offering Spanish yet? When my DD went there (she graduated recently) it wasn't offered. They told us it wasn't "classical" enough and wasn't in the school's original charter, which of course didn't stop them from offering Arabic, which also wasn't in the school's original charter. Not offering Spanish in today's America? Message received.
The school is what it is. Lots of (White) kids seem to enjoy it. Lots of (White) honors kids go to good colleges. But in my family's experience it's a passively toxic. We made it through the place. We only added up the issues over time and by then our DD was nearly done and had close friends there so we didn't want to uproot her. But I personally advise friends to keep their kids away from there. It's left a bad feeling in our family.
My kids is mixed race and we're applying, so your comment is interesting. Most of their photos have a pretty good mix of white, Black, and brown kids. You don't feel that is an accurate representation?