Anonymous wrote:The Cluster hangs around the neck of each of its schools like an albatross, that's the problem.
- Like it or not, but it is the very opposite of how DC's school system is now working, with choice not only at every transition (from ES to MS to HS) but every year.
- For every Watkins parent complaining about a principal who has to invest time in Stuart-Hobson, you'll find at least one at Stuart-Hobson to complain in reverse.
- With it all comes a legacy that many of today's educated families (white and black) don't identify with.
- To follow one of OP's leads: do you really want your child at Peabody/Watkins for seven years just to reserve a seat at Stuart-Hobson?

In hindsight, the Ward 6 middle school planning process was one huge missed opportunity to rethink all of Capitol Hill's schools, including that albatross.

I'd call 14:30 revisionist history, but that would be misleading for someone who turns such a blind eye to recent public school history on the Hill (yes, even older than the Ward 6 joke of an MS plan). Brent has only become an acceptable option for Hill families within the past 5 years. Maury even more recently, and for all the handringing about the upstairs/downstairs divide at Peabody/SWS, Tyler SI has basically co-opted that model. Two Rivers made its bones attracting disastisfied Hill families, and now it competes to retain them with an ever growing field of charters.

There was a time when there were NO public options, and the Cluster was an effort to accommodate middle class Hill families with an acceptable public school path. I'd agree that the public education landscape has changed dramatically since the Cluster was created and its value has diminished in that regard, but Peabody is generally still a favored EC option, and you'll find plenty of satisfied Hill families at Watkins, even if the school culture may somewhat reflect its oob population.

Don't just follow the mommy blog. Visit the school. Speak to other neighborhood parents at the school and discuss their experience (good and bad). You may reach the same conclusion as the mommy blog, but if were all so socially and economically advanced as we think we are then we shouldn't mind doing a little homework. the mommy blog is cliff notes/wikipedia

The Cluster hangs around the neck of each of its schools like an albatross, that's the problem.
- Like it or not, but it is the very opposite of how DC's school system is now working, with choice not only at every transition (from ES to MS to HS) but every year.
- For every Watkins parent complaining about a principal who has to invest time in Stuart-Hobson, you'll find at least one at Stuart-Hobson to complain in reverse.
- With it all comes a legacy that many of today's educated families (white and black) don't identify with.
- To follow one of OP's leads: do you really want your child at Peabody/Watkins for seven years just to reserve a seat at Stuart-Hobson?

In hindsight, the Ward 6 middle school planning process was one huge missed opportunity to rethink all of Capitol Hill's schools, including that albatross.

Hogwash.

As a Watkins parent, I really appreciate the seasoned, high quality teachers, and the smaller class sizes. The first grade aides funded by the PTA have helped the little ones to transition, by having lunch in the 1st grade classrooms, to support 1st grade curriculum, and to help support a calmer lunch/recess for the upper grades.

I do think that differentiation has been an evolving target - but it seems to have gained momentum this year with structured differentiation blocks for each grade within the schedule. Yes, it is a work in progress and more needs to be done, and frankly has been pusedh by parents for longer, but it is IMHO on the upswing.

A lot of the negative buzz about stems from several years of continuous change - Montessori leaving the building, 5th grade coming back to Watkins from SH (creating a huge pocket to fill in SH too), and SWS leaving that creates a gap in the Peabody/SWS to Watkins feeder. Plus, we had a new Principal come in last year just as the focus fell on the modernization of SH. Maybe I am overly optimistic, but there seems to be a more palpable sense of stability this year, with positive focus on curriculum and behavior. I'm not one that falls into the "a hippy dippy/crunchy" stereotype IB Watkins parent., but I see the improvements.

My one complaint is that the Cluster is too clunky to manage as a single school. The Principal has been forced to be vested in SH, and that shows. I'd love the see Peabody/Watkins remain one school but take SH out of the Cluster as a single school with a dedicated MS administration.

The football program is not directly related to the school -- it's administered by DPR and there's a team that uses the "Watkins" name, but it's not connected to the school. Nothing "anti-athletics" about that post - just sounds like space and logistics. try staying on point 12:37

12:19, stop being anti-athletics. What so bad about Peabody/Watkins? If you have to ask, then you're the bad one.

I can see how the size of the school can seem off-putting, but ultimately the class sizes are small for DCPS and most of the teachers are phenomenal. Watkins has started doing much more differentiated instruction this year and my son loves it. He's working many grade levels ahead but is always challenged and engaged. He has plenty of classmates who are also advanced learners and is surrounded by Hill kids he's known for years.

Do I wish the Cluster was smaller? Yes. I think it's way too big to ever be fully filled with IB kids which creates a challenging dynamic that you won't find at Maury or Brent, but there are also lots of things Watkins' size enables that we're grateful for. We love having fulltime art, music, library, PE, computer, and FoodPrints positions. We love the shuttle to/from Peabody. We love the new fields and playground. We love the gardens. We love the Smithsonian partnership that started this year. We love the afterschool enrichment opportunities. The food in the cafeteria still sucks (thanks, Kaya), but the supervision and crowding is MUCH improved this year. Recess is better scheduled and supervised.

The space sharing with DPR for afterschool is awkward, for sure. I'd love to see programming there that is of more interest to the neighborhood. The football program creates huge traffic/noise problems around the fields and draws virtually no IB kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well maybe we'll go to Watkins and fill in the "social" gap - we are high SES and have a lot of religion and my son can't wait to play pee wee football. What an odd selection of "differences" PP.

New poster. Give me a break, you're not sending your kid out to play pee wee football as one little white kid with 200 AA kids being screamed at by a macho coach. You know just what the PP is talking about, bravely put and very true.

Hate to say it, but +1. And my brothers all played football in HS and college out in the Midwest.

Anonymous wrote:Well maybe we'll go to Watkins and fill in the "social" gap - we are high SES and have a lot of religion and my son can't wait to play pee wee football. What an odd selection of "differences" PP.

New poster. Give me a break, you're not sending your kid out to play pee wee football as one little white kid with 200 AA kids being screamed at by a macho coach. You know just what the PP is talking about, bravely put and very true.

We are a high income IB white family with a child at Watkins and I have to chuckle at the comments. Early on, I was disappointed and even a bit disturbed by what I perceived as the black-white divide at the school. Truth is that the type of high income/education family likely to live on the Hill and send its kids to public school may be a bit out of sync with most middle class American families, black or white. My kid's out of town cousins play football and cheerlead and watch more tv and play more video games and eat more junk food than we allow. Doesn't mean that my kid doesn't have anybody to hang with at Watkins, but we are closer to kids with families we see during the summer at the pool or playing on Hill-based sport leagues. Some of that is purely proximity (we met these families when the kids were very young and continue to run into them regularly around the neighborhood). But some of it probably is due to class/race disconnect. I wish we ventured more often outside our comfort zone, but day to day we fall into a pretty predictable routine.

And, as an aside, our smart kid is challenged to a good degree on an academic level. But I've never believed we had a Nobel laureate (or even Ivy League bound student) in training.

Well maybe we'll go to Watkins and fill in the "social" gap - we are high SES and have a lot of religion and my son can't wait to play pee wee football. What an odd selection of "differences" PP.

Anonymous wrote:Watkins has a strong PTA with great leadership.

The main problems at Watkins in the lower grades are social, in the upper grades, both social and academic.

High-SES IB kids, mostly white, are a minority at Watkins while they now constitute a majority in the neighborhood. Most kids are lower-middle-class AA. Their home lives tend to be quite different than those of the high-SES kids: more TV, less travel, less reading, fewer enrichment opportunities like music lessons, less speaking grammatically, more being screamed at, more religion, more of certain sports (pee wee football, drum majorettes, stepping) etc. We're trying to leave Watkins for 3rd grade more for social reasons than academic ones, though the lack of challenged for an advanced learner is behind the times on the Hill.

I wish DCPS would down-size Watkins to help make it a real neighborhood school, like Brent, and Maury soon enough.

The S-H feeder appeals to so few high-SES families that it's not terribly relevant. High-SES Watkins grads are a lot more likely to head to BASIS, Latin, the burbs or privates than S-H.

The Cluster blew its lead with poor leadership for a few years. Now they have replaced the ineffective principal of a couple years back and the receptionist who would bite your head off and are hopefully getting back on track. There are many wonderful new initiatives there now, as well as the groundbreaking successes of the past (such as the gorgeous library).

Playground supervision has also been a concern in the past.

As always, lack of accelerated options is a weakness. I don't know if Watkins or the PTA is trying anything new this year in that respect. When my child was at Watkins i was told flat out that there was no gifted and talented program for my advanced reader. Brent attempts to superimpose accelerated learning on top of the existing DCPS curriculum, but the real problem is the citywide aversion to meeting the needs of accelerated students.

Watkins has a strong PTA with great leadership.

Anonymous wrote:There seems to be a lot of heartbreak over SWS leaving the cluster. It appears to me that Peabody is a highly coveted preschool (500+ applicants last year.) And Watkins' scores are by no mean abysmal compared to other ES schools in the district. Why can't it be another Maury/Brent?

As a Brent parent, I find this such an odd question! "Why can't it be another Maury/Brent?" Just a few years ago, you were considered nuts to send your child to Brent or Maury when PEabody and Watkins were options. But of course, given the crazy waitlist to get into Peabody/Watkins if you were OOB, people "had" to instead focus on the school they were IB for-- and thus, Brent and MAury were really your only options, so folks made the best of the situation. And look where it has gotten us!

I think Peabody is wonderful and I certainly wouldn't balk at sending my child there if I were IB. Watkins is large- much larger than Brent and Maury. There are advantages with the size-- awesome field, swimming pool on site, etc. But I've head that kids can at first feel a bit lost and it can be tough to transition from the comfy size of Peabody into Watkins, whereas Brent and Maury kids don't have to transition. Actually, some parents think the Peabody/Watkins is superior to Maury and Brent BECAUSE the younger kids are separated from the older. (It was something I was worried about at Brent, but it was entirely groundless as the older kids have been absolutely sweet and gentle with the little ones.)

Of course the BIG advantage Watkins has over Maury and Brent is that Watkins feeds into Stuart Hobson. Many Brent kids transfer to Watkins to position themselves for Stuart-Hobson feed from Watkins rather than face the difficult Jefferson or Elliot-Hine conundrum.

There seems to be a lot of heartbreak over SWS leaving the cluster. It appears to me that Peabody is a highly coveted preschool (500+ applicants last year.) And Watkins' scores are by no mean abysmal compared to other ES schools in the district. Why can't it be another Maury/Brent?