Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What do you want white parents to do? We're bad if we move to the suburbs, we're bad if we send our kids to private school, and now we're also bad if we send our kids to the neighborhood school and get involved in it.

Don't forget that if you speak up on behalf of or take action to help brown and black students, you will be accused of having a white savior complex.

Uhhh yea, especially if you don't even consult them. I'd be pissed too.

Why did they need to consult them? The school is public and they initiated a new program that didn't cost them a dime. They are not barring any student from using it, so the students can take advantage of the new program (if they thing it would be an advantage) or not and move along like before. It was not like they were taking something away from them and replacing with the program the new parents wanted for their kids.

The school is public after all and it is supposed to serve all, including the newcomers who only enrolled there and saved the school from closure because they could initiate a new program that interested them


If my kids school start a Mandarin language program I will say: "great!" but would not make my children participate and would not be unhappy that they were doing Mandarin instead of xxxx language. Unless of course, if the PTA allocated resources for it and took the $$$ from other things I consider a priority.

But the PTA or public money wasn't even involved in this.

Anonymous wrote:We as a society need to realize that schools are not, and should not be, a place to address all of these social issues. They should be there for one thing-educating our children. We should be concerned that if schools remain closed children may not be fed, but SCHOOLS are not the vehicle to address nutritional needs of our citizens, and secondary and tertiary issues like school lunch or mental health should not be involved in the decisions regarding opening schools.

It is time to restore the notion that government does not exist to solve all of your problems. People are pushing to expand government more and more. What is needed is the exact opposite.

Anonymous wrote:We as a society need to realize that schools are not, and should not be, a place to address all of these social issues. They should be there for one thing-educating our children. We should be concerned that if schools remain closed children may not be fed, but SCHOOLS are not the vehicle to address nutritional needs of our citizens, and secondary and tertiary issues like school lunch or mental health should not be involved in the decisions regarding opening schools.

It is time to restore the notion that government does not exist to solve all of your problems. People are pushing to expand government more and more. What is needed is the exact opposite.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is it wrong for parents to prioritize their own children?

My question is, why do these schools have such low test scores? It's established fact that cities often spend more (often much more) per student than suburbs do. Why does that extra money do nothing to raise test scores?!

Test scores are not a priority to everyone, and not everyone sees their future in college. The replacement of of vocational education with "college for all" is unrealistic and paternalistic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What do you want white parents to do? We're bad if we move to the suburbs, we're bad if we send our kids to private school, and now we're also bad if we send our kids to the neighborhood school and get involved in it.

Don't forget that if you speak up on behalf of or take action to help brown and black students, you will be accused of having a white savior complex.

Uhhh yea, especially if you don't even consult them. I'd be pissed too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Crummy schools have had trillions dumped into them over the last 40 years. People do not change. Whether it’s culture or genetics, I don’t know. What I do know is that the needle NEVER moves. All the so called improvements are fake, the result of cheating, data juking and other manipulating schemes. And we need stop painting inner city teachers and admins as selfless saints. The most unqualified POS six-figure admins I’ve ever dealt with were inner city admins.

This dog whistle BS here.....smh

Anonymous wrote:Crummy schools have had trillions dumped into them over the last 40 years. People do not change. Whether it’s culture or genetics, I don’t know. What I do know is that the needle NEVER moves. All the so called improvements are fake, the result of cheating, data juking and other manipulating schemes. And we need stop painting inner city teachers and admins as selfless saints. The most unqualified POS six-figure admins I’ve ever dealt with were inner city admins.

Anonymous wrote:

What do you want white parents to do? We're bad if we move to the suburbs, we're bad if we send our kids to private school, and now we're also bad if we send our kids to the neighborhood school and get involved in it.

Don't forget that if you speak up on behalf of or take action to help brown and black students, you will be accused of having a white savior complex.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I couldn't believe the first episode! I thought it was going to be totally different based on the reviews.

I don't think these white parents did anything wrong except not being more inclusive to the parents who were already there. But a. the school was struggling to attract new students, b. the media is telling white people how bad and racist we are all the time, how wrong it is to move to the suburbs (white flight), how wrong it is to send your kids to 40-50k a year private schools etc. etc. and here these parents actually send their kids to the neighborhood school, c. they fundraise on their own to put into place the new program they want. At least they weren't using the PTA's money for it.

What do you want white parents to do? We're bad if we move to the suburbs, we're bad if we send our kids to private school, and now we're also bad if we send our kids to the neighborhood school and get involved in it.

You answered your own question.

But that's just the personalities of the particular people involved, that fundraiser Rob and some of his friends. That's not a "white people" problem.

Look, here was a school struggling to attract new students and worried about closing due to low numbers. The principal wants to attract new students. She ok's their idea of a new French program as long as they can find a way to pay for it, which they do.

She should have communicated that to the rest of the parent body. "Hey, we're starting a new French program with this funding through the French embassy, it's open to everyone, woo hoo."

If the parent body had wanted a Spanish or Arabic program (honestly doesn't sound like it was even on their radar), that's when it should have come up, that's when they should have started discussing how to fundraise for those individual programs. Not after the French program was already put into place and the students were enrolled.

It blows my mind how poorly she handled this and how it's now being translated into a "white person" thing, as if we're all assholes who don't know how to be inclusive of others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None of that was meant to be addressed.

But that’s the whole point, is that it? I wanted to know whether ALL the kids were better off. Did they get the new microscopes and gym clothes that were mentioned at the start? Are the original kids doing the IB program, maybe with Spanish instead of French, and is that degree helping them?

Instead we get just TWO parents who don’t get along. A dad who can’t coordinate with anybody else and a pta president who is sulking so badly about being knocked off her cozy perch (even if she was doing nothing when the school was at 35% occupancy) that she refuses to attend a funding meeting she was definitely invited to.

I wanted to hear from more/different parents and more kids about how this actually affected them. Not an hour about these two feuding bozos.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Crummy schools have had trillions dumped into them over the last 40 years. People do not change. Whether it’s culture or genetics, I don’t know. What I do know is that the needle NEVER moves. All the so called improvements are fake, the result of cheating, data juking and other manipulating schemes. And we need stop painting inner city teachers and admins as selfless saints. The most unqualified POS six-figure admins I’ve ever dealt with were inner city admins.

I worked in one of those schools. The problem was not the teachers or the admin or the curriculum or the students. The problem was poverty, which schools don't cause and can't solve alone. No amount of money put into a school for anything at all is going to help a kid who goes home to a crack house every day, who is abused, hungry, whose mom leaves him locked out of the house all night while she has "clients" in, and so on. All that really happens and it happens right here in Northern Virginia. That's why the needle doesn't move. It's people that need money, not schools.

Anonymous wrote:Crummy schools have had trillions dumped into them over the last 40 years. People do not change. Whether it’s culture or genetics, I don’t know. What I do know is that the needle NEVER moves. All the so called improvements are fake, the result of cheating, data juking and other manipulating schemes. And we need stop painting inner city teachers and admins as selfless saints. The most unqualified POS six-figure admins I’ve ever dealt with were inner city admins.