Anonymous wrote:So I admit to not having read all 123 pages of this, but to help sum up the claims on this thread for newcomers. A handful of Hardy Middle School parents have said:

Maret is preventing black/brown kids from using the fields.
Maret is white, rich, elite.
Maret had too many AA parents, students and alums speaking at the hearing.
Maret has no AA kids on the baseball team because AA kids don't play baseball. (There were two who testified plus the coach.)
Maret has AA supporters but they are rich AA people and that's bad.
Maret denies use of the field similar to Iraqi children and the Holocaust.
Maret had an alum testify whose name is too similar to a friend of Kavanaugh from Georgetown Prep.
Maret doesn't have support for their contract.
Maret had too many people supporting them at the hearing.
Maret parents are like Trump and/or Trump supporters.
Maret parents are democrat insiders.
Maret conspired with DPC/Evans/Mayor to get field
DPC has no ability to make a decision without mayor's support.
Mayor knew about the contract and conspired to keep it below threshold
Mayor didn't know about the contract.
Council didn't know about the contract.
Evans has no power
Evans has too much power and knew about the contract
Washington Post coverage unfair because Maret has a current parent who was a Obama administration official and a former parent who works at ABC news that influenced the WP beat reporter.
Maret's frog mascot is racist to the oppressed French-American population.
Maret has hired a pr firm
Maret has no pr plan
Maret's pr plan is well organized and orchestrated
Maret's pr plan is worthless and not working
Maret has hired a secret firm to mine data to find out who is posting on DCUM
Maret alums and parents are secretly conspiring against Maret
Maret alums and parents are reading off talking points and supporting Maret without any individual thought
Maret alums will not be hired because of this
Maret applications will plummet because of this
Maret does not accept enough applicants
Maret does not have enough money to purchase their own fields so they secretly conspired on this project
Maret has too much money

Anonymous wrote:So I admit to not having read all 123 pages of this, but to help sum up the claims on this thread for newcomers. A handful of Hardy Middle School parents have said:

Maret is preventing black/brown kids from using the fields.
Maret is white, rich, elite.
Maret had too many AA parents, students and alums speaking at the hearing.
Maret has no AA kids on the baseball team because AA kids don't play baseball. (There were two who testified plus the coach.)
Maret has AA supporters but they are rich AA people and that's bad.
Maret denies use of the field similar to Iraqi children and the Holocaust.
Maret had an alum testify whose name is too similar to a friend of Kavanaugh from Georgetown Prep.
Maret doesn't have support for their contract.
Maret had too many people supporting them at the hearing.
Maret parents are like Trump and/or Trump supporters.
Maret parents are democrat insiders.
Maret conspired with DPC/Evans/Mayor to get field
DPC has no ability to make a decision without mayor's support.
Mayor knew about the contract and conspired to keep it below threshold
Mayor didn't know about the contract.
Council didn't know about the contract.
Evans has no power
Evans has too much power and knew about the contract
Washington Post coverage unfair because Maret has a current parent who was a Obama administration official and a former parent who works at ABC news that influenced the WP beat reporter.
Maret's frog mascot is racist to the oppressed French-American population.
Maret has hired a pr firm
Maret has no pr plan
Maret's pr plan is well organized and orchestrated
Maret's pr plan is worthless and not working
Maret has hired a secret firm to mine data to find out who is posting on DCUM
Maret alums and parents are secretly conspiring against Maret
Maret alums and parents are reading off talking points and supporting Maret without any individual thought
Maret alums will not be hired because of this
Maret applications will plummet because of this
Maret does not accept enough applicants
Maret does not have enough money to purchase their own fields so they secretly conspired on this project
Maret has too much money

Anonymous wrote:

“Pull strings to steal public land from less wealthy kids”?

Remember this is the same mayor whose initial plan for new homeless shelters was to make above-market payments and to vest full ownership of the asset with crony private developers. The Maret agreement is benign by comparison but certainly part of Bowser’s insider-dealing approach to most things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:121 pages of whining. Parents if you want your kid to have access to Jeliff Field, then send your kid to Maret. If you can't send your kid to Maret, then that's on you -- "poor" decision making by your and/or your spouse, unexceptional kids, etc. Look at yourselves and stop blaming others and stop with the conspiracy theories. Signed, non-Maret parent

No thanks. My kids go to a private school that can afford to buy a playing field of its own without doing backroom deals to get a taxpayer funded field for their exclusive use. Why would anyone want to pay 45k/year to go to a school that can’t even afford a field of its own?

Seriously. A private school (I think it was St. Thomas Episcopal) bought land off Foxhall and built their playing fields there. I can't imagine that was cheap or easy for them to do. They didn't go out and pull strings to steal public land from less wealthy kids.

If playing fields are so important to Maret, they should do what other private schools in DC have done: go out into the market and buy the land that meets their requirements.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?

So you go to the DMV, and someone ahead of you leaves the desk and the room after talking with the clerk.
After 20 minutes, your number gets called, but before you get to the desk, the other person comes back and goes to the desk, where you were headed.
The clerk takes them and you have to wait for another 5 minutes.

Are you the person who assumes that they must be friends and something must be going on under the table?
Do you ask to see a manager because the clerk didn't have a clear sign at their desk that you might not be seen when you expected to?

How is an informal agreement - not written down anywhere; not publicized anywhere; not subject to any scrutiny beyond the people in the room - not a "backroom deal"? What then is a backroom deal? I am genuinely curious.

You are making a lot of assumptions.
Let me google that for you...
https://lmgtfy.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.collinsdictionary.com%2Fus%2Fdictionary%2Fenglish%2Fbackroom&s=g

A "backroom" deal can be written down, publicized, and scrutinized.
It's just a pejorative to describe a deal where you weren't in the room, and don't agree with it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?

So you go to the DMV, and someone ahead of you leaves the desk and the room after talking with the clerk.
After 20 minutes, your number gets called, but before you get to the desk, the other person comes back and goes to the desk, where you were headed.
The clerk takes them and you have to wait for another 5 minutes.

Are you the person who assumes that they must be friends and something must be going on under the table?
Do you ask to see a manager because the clerk didn't have a clear sign at their desk that you might not be seen when you expected to?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?

So you go to the DMV, and someone ahead of you leaves the desk and the room after talking with the clerk.
After 20 minutes, your number gets called, but before you get to the desk, the other person comes back and goes to the desk, where you were headed.
The clerk takes them and you have to wait for another 5 minutes.

Are you the person who assumes that they must be friends and something must be going on under the table?
Do you ask to see a manager because the clerk didn't have a clear sign at their desk that you might not be seen when you expected to?

How is an informal agreement - not written down anywhere; not publicized anywhere; not subject to any scrutiny beyond the people in the room - not a "backroom deal"? What then is a backroom deal? I am genuinely curious.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:121 pages of whining. Parents if you want your kid to have access to Jeliff Field, then send your kid to Maret. If you can't send your kid to Maret, then that's on you -- "poor" decision making by your and/or your spouse, unexceptional kids, etc. Look at yourselves and stop blaming others and stop with the conspiracy theories. Signed, non-Maret parent

No thanks. My kids go to a private school that can afford to buy a playing field of its own without doing backroom deals to get a taxpayer funded field for their exclusive use. Why would anyone want to pay 45k/year to go to a school that can’t even afford a field of its own?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Wondering why all the Maret hate?

Because they are behaving horribly to everyone who is not part of their cool little club. It’s fine to act in the interests of your employer, but when contracts are entered into with public entities that violate basic principles of procurement and then you accuse those who are upset about that of slandering your institution and having ulterior motives, you look fairly silly when you then try to claim that you are in fact everyone’s best friend.

The opponents of the field use agreement decided to frame their arguments in terms of race and class to portray Maret negatively. If there are folks to criticize it is not the Maret community but rather corrupt, self-dealing Jack Evans and DC’s corrupt but dumb-as-a-doornail mayor Bowser. They are responsible for this mess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?

So you go to the DMV, and someone ahead of you leaves the desk and the room after talking with the clerk.
After 20 minutes, your number gets called, but before you get to the desk, the other person comes back and goes to the desk, where you were headed.
The clerk takes them and you have to wait for another 5 minutes.

Are you the person who assumes that they must be friends and something must be going on under the table?
Do you ask to see a manager because the clerk didn't have a clear sign at their desk that you might not be seen when you expected to?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?

So you go to the DMV, and someone ahead of you leaves the desk and the room after talking with the clerk.
After 20 minutes, your number gets called, but before you get to the desk, the other person comes back and goes to the desk, where you were headed.
The clerk takes them and you have to wait for another 5 minutes.

Are you the person who assumes that they must be friends and something must be going on under the table?
Do you ask to see a manager because the clerk didn't have a clear sign at their desk that you might not be seen when you expected to?

Anonymous wrote:My favorite part of the hearing on Monday was the Maret affiliate who claimed it was “offensive” for people to call the extension a “back-room deal”. Speakers after her then asserted the 10 year contract was actually a de facto 19 year agreement. If that 19 year agreement was not documented anywhere and was not subject to any oversight by elected representatives, what in the world would you call it?