Anonymous wrote:I get the difficulty of being the kid perceived as being on the same side of the cultural line as the terrible influences, and a kid across a cultural gulf won't feel that as much. But I still feel like they should be bringing in anyone they can reach to remove the isolation of the school and the more you bring in the better, of all stable backgrounds.
I live in Columbia Heights (down the street from Tubman) and have a school age child. Tubman is on our lottery list.
I think the job of a neighborhood school is to provide an education to the neighborhood children who attend. I agree that the school could do better outreach to the newer group of Columbia Heights parents who would love to send their kids to a neighborhood school but who are nervous about Tubman for various reasons. My DD was born in 2010, just as the DC baby boom was ramping up and also just when Columbia Heights started really taking off for young families en masse. There are other schools that I would rather DD attend, but we did not apply anywhere that was not commute-conducive last year, nor will we do so this year. Since we have IB preference at Tubman, we're not ranking it that high, but would definitely send her there if she isn't offered a spot at the charters we'd prefer.