Anonymous wrote:

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

First of all, I'm not a "yuppie." I work for a very low salary for a non-for-profit for children. Second, I never said you didn't have a bad experience. I said what you described is not a fair depiction of Old Town as a whole.

Also, just curious, how did you know that the excrement was human? Did you run DNA tests?

Anonymous wrote:Apologies for being so late to this party. I find some of the posts amusing and simultaneously scary, and couldn't resist posting.

GW Middle School is a perfectly terrific school. There are kids there who exhibit disciplinary problems, some relatively bad. There are kids there who will academically excel, and will go on to top-flight colleges. It's a real City school, and there's going to be a mix.

JH has historically been a troubled school. It's been improving, but only because of what everybody admits is pretty invasive attention that wasn't provided until the late 00s. Most of the admins are gone, there are plans to rip down most of the building and rebuild it (this is long overdue - the design simply doesn't work well and a rebuild is really needed), and the school is going to be voluntary K-8, which means that those kids who are economically disadvantaged from the surrounding area will be able to have a really local school for special, close attention through the start of high school (any child in JH will be able to opt out of the K-8 plan and go to GW).

A really strong student is likely to fare well at either, but I suspect that many parents may find that the overall course selection and combination of opt-honors and high-performance course skips at GW (in the latter, a strong student can be permitted to skip a grade only in selected courses) beats what any smaller program could offer.

What I don't think a thoughtful parent or a well-prepared kid will find is a hostile or unreasonably chaotic (that is, more chaotic than any other middle school) environment at GW MS. I also believe that an academically average or above-average student will do as well or better at GW MS than at any private school, especially in this area. We're private school refugees, FWIW, and we've found the ACPS system consistently better for our DC -- better academically, socially, and in every developmental respect. I don't offer this opinion in derogation of private schools generally, and I fully recognize that some children need and may benefit from a combination of an unregulated program and close attention from non-licensed school personnel.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they did tear down some of them, right where the Charles Houston Center went. The number of units was reduced, and moved to other parts of the city. Some were rebuilt under the scenario you spell out.

They tore them down...to replace them with different buildings. It's still concentrated public housing - just in a prettier package.

Anonymous wrote:

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

First of all, I'm not a "yuppie." I work for a very low salary for a non-for-profit for children. Second, I never said you didn't have a bad experience. I said what you described is not a fair depiction of Old Town as a whole.

Also, just curious, how did you know that the excrement was human? Did you run DNA tests?

Anonymous wrote:Because they did tear down some of them, right where the Charles Houston Center went. The number of units was reduced, and moved to other parts of the city. Some were rebuilt under the scenario you spell out.

Why do Yuppies who like their urban area refuse -- or at least find it hard -- to believe someone else may have had a sub-par experience in said urban area?

Anonymous wrote:Ok, we live in Old Town, relatively close to one of the public housing projects, and I have never seen or experienced anything like what is described above. I would not send my child to JH, it does not seem like it would be a positive environment conducive to learning, but Old Town is not the hellhole described in this post.

PP again -- one more thing: I didn't leave Alexandria because of the schools. I was in bounds for Jefferson-Houston, and my child goes to the same private now that she went to when we lived in Old Town. I moved because I got tired of finding bloody syringes in my courtyard and human excrement on my garden gate. Not to mention the gang "tag" that was spray-painted in our alley. And the open air drug market that I drove through every day. My husband had spoken to the Police Chief about it, and I thought we were going to get some action, but then he (the Police Chief) got fired because he had a DUI. By this time, we had given up. I lived in Old Town for over a decade, and all of this happened in the last year or so. I loved living in Old Town, and maybe I would put up with it if I didn't have a child. I didn't mind the public housing nearby; however, I did mind having a city leadership that doesn't give a rat's ass (we had those, too -- not mice, huge Norway rats the size of a cat) about the people who actually pay taxes in the City. Ask the business owners how they feel (have you seen the signs in all the businesses on King Street?). People who live there won't tell you all this because they don't want to ruin their property values.