I don't think anyone has alleged that white families leave Brent, Maury, or any school specifically because it's "too black" in the upper grades. What has historically happened is that families start to leave these schools in the upper grades because they don't like their MS options and want to ensure their kids can go to a charter MS like Basis.

I think the vast majority of the time, the decision to leave DCPS is not about the number of black students. The issue the percentage of poor students, and in DC, poor students are overwhelmingly black. MC and UMC of all races worry about the impact on a school of having a certain threshold of poor students, who often have much higher needs that students from better-resourced families. It's a pretty crappy situation. My family chose to leave our IB DCPS (for another DCPS) for this reason and it is a an awkward mix of guilt and resignation. Our new school still has a very high percentage of FARMS kids. But our old school had a large homeless student population, and particularly during Covid, we learned that providing those children with just their basic needs (which absolutely is necessary) made it all but impossible to offer much of anything to the rest of the school population. Even other FARMS kids who are not housing insecure.

You need a critical mass of middle or high income families at a school to be able to expand the school's offerings beyond a focus on remediating what very high needs and at risk students need. So if you have an average, middle class kid, your school choice can mean the difference between them being treated like the most privileged (and there for least in need of attention or services) kid in class, or to be treated like an average kid deserving of what would be considered average levels of academic and extra curricular enrichment by most national standards.

It's not about not wanting your kid around black kids, or even around poor black kids. It's an understanding that poor children require a lot of services and focus and that if the vast majority of a school's population has those needs, and your child does not, it is unlikely that your child will receive much specialized attention.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Right, so you also bailed on DCPS just a year or two later than the PP. Pot, meet kettle.

that wasn’t the question. the question was whether the upper grades are “bad” and whether white parents bail because they are “too black.” the actual data/experience show these allegations to be false race-baiting (big surprise).

Why didn't you go to Stuart Hobson or Eliot-Hine or Jefferson? Was it because the schools are too black? Or because of the quality of the education?

The argument you are making through your actions applies one year later - some parents just choose to act on it and get their students in place a year earlier than others. Really glad you stuck it out through upper Elementary to bail and go to private, but some make the decision to go to private a year or two earlier than you do. I don't think that warrants looking down on them for making the same decision you ultimately did.

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Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Wrong.

Hill families leave Brent and Maury for Basis and other charters en masse.

Here are the numbers for last year:

Brent:

4th grade: 64
5th grade: 23

Maury:

4th grade: 64
5th grade: 30

Yes, but for many (including us), that's not because of the elementary. Our child moved to Basis in 5th from Ludlow. We would have preferred to have our child stay stay at Ludlow for the last year and then start Basis in 6th, but that wasn't an option.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Wrong.

Hill families leave Brent and Maury for Basis and other charters en masse.

Here are the numbers for last year:

Brent:

4th grade: 64
5th grade: 23

Maury:

4th grade: 64
5th grade: 30

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Right, so you also bailed on DCPS just a year or two later than the PP. Pot, meet kettle.

that wasn’t the question. the question was whether the upper grades are “bad” and whether white parents bail because they are “too black.” the actual data/experience show these allegations to be false race-baiting (big surprise).

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Right, so you also bailed on DCPS just a year or two later than the PP. Pot, meet kettle.

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Anonymous wrote:Do Maury and Brent parents seriously not see a problem with their kids attending majority white schools in a city that is majority-minority? I always wonder this about SWS too. It’s not that I don’t understand that it’s no individual parent’s “fault” that this is the case, but… doesn’t it bother you? Of course we all want our kids to get a good education, but one question I’d ask myself is what we are teaching our kids when we tell them the best schools are the whitest schools. Do you not think they pick up in this stuff? Trust me: by MS they know exactly what the score is. That’s part of the education you are giving them too.

POC inbounds for Maury. We don’t send out kids there because they would be one of the only nonwhite kids in the classroom. We got in SWS- turned it down for the same reason. We drive to a charter and get some pushback from some neighbors for not supporting our neighborhood schools (these are exclusively white women who feel at liberty to say this).

Then point I am trying to make is that you can’t win. I do not feel offended at people who choose to go to their neighborhood school. It’s a rich white neighborhood and attacking people who send their kids to the local public school won’t help. SWS on the other hand……

Maury is 40% non-white though? I mean you do you (and it's nice that you found a charter you like), but I don't think it's accurate to say that your child would be "one of the only" nonwhite kids.

Not in the lower grades

Was just going to post this.

It is common in Capital Hill schools for them to be majority or even mostly white in the PK and early grades, and then become less and less white as the ages increase. It's generally pretty obvious to anyone who has attended one of these schools, and the implications are uncomfortable. That doesn't mean anyone is wrong for attending or not attending their in-bound school -- families have to make the choices that make the most sense for them, and no one should be expected to sacrifice their child to an abstract value, especially because one family doing this alone will have no impact.

But it is something we should keep talking about, even if it's uncomfortable. I honestly think we need some kind of "come to Jesus" moment with DC public school and that we probably need to overhaul the whole system. And that is scary to people who have gotten comfortable with the current system and found ways to make it work for them. But it is very hard to look at DC schools and say "yep, this seems fine, why change it." The inequities are alarming and I actually really do wonder what my child is learning about the world from that. The kids see it, they know what is going on. And I think it impacts kids on both sides of the privilege divide negatively, because what we're really telling our kids is that we don't know how to do any better and have basically given up on trying.

I have a kid in an upper grade in Maury and the race composition has not really changed since K. I think it’s an outdated perception that white parents leave Hill schools because they get “too black” in upper grades (and also doesn’t really make sense since there’s not a huge # of lottery spots that open in upper grades to change demographics.) I think this perception comes from a few years where the rapid pace of gentrification meant black families did not move IB at the same rates due to loss of affordable rental housing. So the lower grades looked whiter. For better or for worse, the crack down on boundary violations played a part as well. Plenty of white (and POC) families leave our school but generally it’s to move to the burbs or for a charter with MS/HS options. Nobody is leaving Maury because the 4th grade is too black.

Also the original PP had the exact opposite concern, right? She thinks Maury is too white. So if white kids are leaving after K that would be a good (or at least neutral) thing from her perspective

Just a reminder that there are other races besides black and white.

PP just said she didn't want her kids to be among the only non-white kids at Maury. Others were pointing out that the school is 40% non-white. No one said all the non-white kids were black?

But that is generally the case.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Please. At Brent and Maury 4th grade numbers are actually higher than K and 1st grade numbers this year. There are around 60 kids enrolled at Brent for K, but more than 70 in 4th grade (cohort that's still more than 80% in-boundary). Yes, some Hill families leave their high-performing elementary schools along the way, but others replace them. We stayed through 5th grade at a Hill DCPS and are glad we did. My kids bike to school on their own and work at least a year ahead of grade level in reading and math. Our oldest went on to a private middle school where she's ahead of the curve. Get a life, PP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

And did what with your kids education?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

+1 It looks pretty similar to other Hill schools when accounting for Peabody. A lot of Hill families bail on DCPS by upper elementary. We turned down upper ES spots at both Brent and Maury this year

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

You can’t really Watkins to the other elementary schools for in-bound or at risk without noting that PK3-K are at Peabody.

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Anonymous wrote:Do Maury and Brent parents seriously not see a problem with their kids attending majority white schools in a city that is majority-minority? I always wonder this about SWS too. It’s not that I don’t understand that it’s no individual parent’s “fault” that this is the case, but… doesn’t it bother you? Of course we all want our kids to get a good education, but one question I’d ask myself is what we are teaching our kids when we tell them the best schools are the whitest schools. Do you not think they pick up in this stuff? Trust me: by MS they know exactly what the score is. That’s part of the education you are giving them too.

POC inbounds for Maury. We don’t send out kids there because they would be one of the only nonwhite kids in the classroom. We got in SWS- turned it down for the same reason. We drive to a charter and get some pushback from some neighbors for not supporting our neighborhood schools (these are exclusively white women who feel at liberty to say this).

Then point I am trying to make is that you can’t win. I do not feel offended at people who choose to go to their neighborhood school. It’s a rich white neighborhood and attacking people who send their kids to the local public school won’t help. SWS on the other hand……

Maury is 40% non-white though? I mean you do you (and it's nice that you found a charter you like), but I don't think it's accurate to say that your child would be "one of the only" nonwhite kids.

Not in the lower grades

Was just going to post this.

It is common in Capital Hill schools for them to be majority or even mostly white in the PK and early grades, and then become less and less white as the ages increase. It's generally pretty obvious to anyone who has attended one of these schools, and the implications are uncomfortable. That doesn't mean anyone is wrong for attending or not attending their in-bound school -- families have to make the choices that make the most sense for them, and no one should be expected to sacrifice their child to an abstract value, especially because one family doing this alone will have no impact.

But it is something we should keep talking about, even if it's uncomfortable. I honestly think we need some kind of "come to Jesus" moment with DC public school and that we probably need to overhaul the whole system. And that is scary to people who have gotten comfortable with the current system and found ways to make it work for them. But it is very hard to look at DC schools and say "yep, this seems fine, why change it." The inequities are alarming and I actually really do wonder what my child is learning about the world from that. The kids see it, they know what is going on. And I think it impacts kids on both sides of the privilege divide negatively, because what we're really telling our kids is that we don't know how to do any better and have basically given up on trying.

I have a kid in an upper grade in Maury and the race composition has not really changed since K. I think it’s an outdated perception that white parents leave Hill schools because they get “too black” in upper grades (and also doesn’t really make sense since there’s not a huge # of lottery spots that open in upper grades to change demographics.) I think this perception comes from a few years where the rapid pace of gentrification meant black families did not move IB at the same rates due to loss of affordable rental housing. So the lower grades looked whiter. For better or for worse, the crack down on boundary violations played a part as well. Plenty of white (and POC) families leave our school but generally it’s to move to the burbs or for a charter with MS/HS options. Nobody is leaving Maury because the 4th grade is too black.

Also the original PP had the exact opposite concern, right? She thinks Maury is too white. So if white kids are leaving after K that would be a good (or at least neutral) thing from her perspective

Just a reminder that there are other races besides black and white.

PP just said she didn't want her kids to be among the only non-white kids at Maury. Others were pointing out that the school is 40% non-white. No one said all the non-white kids were black?

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Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Considering that LT was T1 as recently as the 2019-2020 (which requires 40%+ FARMS), that is some crazy fast gentrification. Considering Watkins was in the transitional non-T1 category as far back as 2015, it is crazy that Watkins has a higher at risk percentage than L-T. Of course, in the DC context, all of these numbers are pretty low… and Brent is among the lowest in the city.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.

Because I was curious, the "Economically Disadvantaged" rates:

LT: 16%
Brent: 3%
Maury: 7%
Watkins: 18%
Peabody: 4%
Miner: 100% (actually means above some threshold; I don't know what that threshold is)
JO Wilson: 100%

Anonymous wrote:What makes Maury and Brent better is not that they are whiter, but they are richer. Neither has a housing complex that feeds to it. Tyler has Potomac Gardens, LT has whatever that building by the Sherwood Rec center is called. Public housing in DC is, unfortunately, always majority black (except maybe in upper Columbia Heights where there are some latinx).
Most black kids at Maury come from high SES black families. There is also a great chunk of black kids being raised by white or mixed foster or adoptive parents. But the poverty levels are tiny.
They are not a Title 1 school like Watkins, Tyler, and, until recently, LT.

The building next to Sherwood Rec Center is a public senior living facility that doesn't permit children. The IB for L-T is actually more expensive on average than Maury and the vast majority of L-T's FARMS eligible kids come from OOB. It is true that L-T is substantially more OOB than Maury and that's the difference, but the IB percentage has been increasing so quickly that I wouldn't be surprised if they look similar demographically pretty soon. (Although L-T also has quite a few self-contained classrooms that are almost entirely OOB and so I think the overall school demographics are slightly misleading.) Brent's IB real estate is more $$ still and so the IB is richer and whiter, so Brent is richer and whiter.

FYI Watkins isn't T1 either and hasn't been in some time.