Anonymous wrote:Ditto on the previous post. I think a Hebrew immersion school is an inappropriate use of public charter school dollars for the same reason that I think a school based on an in-depth examination of the Kurdish culture and language, or an Ireland-themed school, or an immersion school taught in Old German (as spoken by some Mennonite/Old Order groups) would be inappropriate. Rather than draw a broad-based group of potential students, it seems like to appeal to a relatively small, self-selected group of people, defined largely along religious, ethnic, or cultural lines, who predominantly want to educate their own children in a particular skill set of interest but to do so using public funds. If you wouldn't support a Kurdish immersion school in D.C., I'm hard-pressed to see how I'm supposed to support a Hebrew immersion school. That doesn't make me an anti-Semite.

Anonymous wrote:I think the point is, a cul-de-sac school that concentrates a certain slice of white students of means is not an overall good thing for an already unequal city.

It is that many more families who get to say they don't need to make an effort to integrate with the rest of DC.

While people can claim to have established a neutral principle in favor of this school, it clearly would promote inequality in practice.

Anonymous wrote:We can pretend that we live in a world we don't live in, or we can face reality and live in the world in which we do. Name a city in which black and white people live in harmony, side by side, ebony and ivory style. Name a school that your kids go to where the lunchrooms arent divided on color lines. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

That said, the families that would send their kids to a school that, by your argument, "concentrates a certain slice of white students" (which has yet to be proven but is probably true for 75% of students) arent going to be otherwise integrating with the rest of DC anyway. They are going to either a) go private or b) leave the city.

The capitol of the free world should not be a place where residents of the city have to leave the city in order to educate their children. Promoting families such as those in question staying in DC when their kids get to school age is absolutely in the best interests of DC as a whole.

When did you move to DC? I have lived here since the 80s, and it was a real shithole then. After the King riots, there was white flight that lasted for a long time. People didnt live in Chinatown, people didnt live in Adams Morgan, many parts of the Hill, along much of 14th Street (dont want to name all of the Logan Circles, etc.). DC was the murder capital of the country. Our nations capital was the city with the most murders in the country. People came downtown to work and then went home to the suburbs, or to small enclaves in small parts of the Hill, or Upper NW.

But educated middle and above class families--black and white--have moved back to DC in the past 20-some years. This demand for housing is what has revitalized the aforementioned neighborhoods, and what brings much-needed tax dollars to the city. Ultimately, more tax dollars coming into the city helps *all* of the residents of the city--rich, poor, and in between.

So yes, I feel that if Washington Hebrew School keeps some middle to upper middle class families in the city vs moving to the suburbs where they can get a good free education for their kids, it is a good thing for the city as a whole.

Anonymous wrote:The big picture here is about young, yuppie liberals of all races deciding they are going to reverse the tragedy of white flight by moving east of the Park in DC.

We have a new and fragile trend over this decade, and particularly over the past few years, of all types of yuppies moving in and trying real, real hard to put their kid in public and charter schools in DC east of the Park rather than just opting for the suburbs (or Wards 2 or 3) when the kids hit 4 or 5 or ponying up for ridiculous private schools.

Reversing white flight requires critical masses of these families to put their kids in DC schools of some stripe or another east of the Park. A school that effectively concentrates and separates a subgroup of the yuppie families dilutes that fragile critical mass.

And a sustainable reversal of white flight builds bridges between the successful liberal yuppies who are moving in and the dysfunctional poor families around them and east of them. DC charter schools need genuinely open programs that, while diverse in approach, truly interest the yuppie families in staying and interest poor longtime DC families in truly bettering the lives of their children.

Look, we're not going to live in some magic integrated world; it's been proven we only want that to a limited extent due to cultural and class affiliation, etc. But we have to try harder than people have in past generations.

We're a bunch of young, committed yuppie liberals who decided to move into a city that turned into a despicable ghetto and think we can make it livable. We should work in solidarity as much as we can to promote positive trends in this city.

If we were all in it for ourselves, we would just save up and make our own "white flight" west of the Park or out of the City. I know this board is full of snark, crassness, spite and anger, but deep down we all want to serve both our consciences and our self-interest and prove that progress is possible.

Anonymous wrote:Dude I want Washington Gaelic. All are welcome!