Anonymous wrote:San Francisco tried the random city wide school lottery and it had the effect of driving upper middle class families out of the city. Some would say this was part of the plan, since families consume more city services than, for example, gay mem with dogs, who are higher net tax payers. A dog park is cheaper to fund than a renOvated school.

+1. If DCPS cares more about dogs than about kids, the San Francisco example would be one to emulate.

No, the parents say, fix it for real, don't patch it, etc. to DGS. Squeaky wheel stuff.

^^ you expect parents to msintain the facilities? There are DCPS employees being paid to maintain facilities. Good liberal here, but am fed up with the union BS.

Anonymous wrote:I see a lot of posts about parents putting in work to make schools better, and this is a thought I find odd.
Certainly parents can and should lobby for their schools as far as enrichment programs: adding foreign languages, field trips, travel abroad...perhaps even lobby for new ways to teach basic math or reading.
But it seems as ifg the educators (who are professionals) should already have a good idea of what is needed, and what works, and should be proposing a lot of those changes regardless. Don't they have entire divisions down at DCPS whose sole focus is curriculum evaluation?

Why should parents NEED to work so hard to get these people to do their jobs?

Making schools better isn't just making curricula work better for your child. There is everything from facilities maintenance to after school space availability or creating partnerships with the school through connections parents have.

A big part of it is classic bureaucratic organizational behavior. The government gives out things, so either they do it as our benevolent dictators based on their limited knowledge or we lobby them. The system has many claimants on its time but some people only work as hard as they are demanded to. You fight for new buildings so that they aren't just given to those schools with the best-connected parents.

I assume that in the rest of life allowing the government to pick without popular input is not how most of us would like to do things. Same here.

I see a lot of posts about parents putting in work to make schools better, and this is a thought I find odd.
Certainly parents can and should lobby for their schools as far as enrichment programs: adding foreign languages, field trips, travel abroad...perhaps even lobby for new ways to teach basic math or reading.
But it seems as ifg the educators (who are professionals) should already have a good idea of what is needed, and what works, and should be proposing a lot of those changes regardless. Don't they have entire divisions down at DCPS whose sole focus is curriculum evaluation?

Why should parents NEED to work so hard to get these people to do their jobs?

Anonymous



^^ What's so interesting about this? When you work hard and value education (and are well educated), it's unthinkable that you would have to send our child to a failing public school that's failing because of parents who aren't educated and don't value education for their children. So, yes, we high SES families ARE looking out for our own -- it would be hard not to! I'll worry about "all kids" when mine aren't in the mix.

I doubt that. I don't think you will spend one minute thinking about kids once you don't have a dog in the fight.

And this is the point. As long as you have an attitude, your schools will not get better. If you truly value education, you'd be digging in and improving the schools one school at a time, starting with your neighborhood school. You knew the situation when you chose to have kids in this city. You knew when you bought your house wherever you did for whatever reason. All this whining about what you want in the absence of any plan that engages you to work for it (save for the Powell PP) is silly and counterproductive.

Sure, take the easy way out and move to the burbs. This idea that that move will be some sort of death bell for the schools is nonsense. There will always be more people to replace you. Hopefully, those people will have a greater investment in their homes and schools and will be willing to do the hard work of turning things around. That's what this city needs.

Anonymous wrote:^^ What's so interesting about this? When you work hard and value education (and are well educated), it's unthinkable that you would have to send our child to a failing public school that's failing because of parents who aren't educated and don't value education for their children. So, yes, we high SES families ARE looking out for our own -- it would be hard not to! I'll worry about "all kids" when mine aren't in the mix.

+1

Some may want to officially re-zone PG into DCPS. It would legalize all the scammers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This would Have the effect of getting rid of feeder rights. So you could get in to a NW school but have no right to stay with your cohort or even be guaranteed any school

For practical purposes, the only elementary kids in the city who have feeder rights now are in the Deal feeders.

Yes so this would also effect all the oob parents who get into a Deal feeder too. Not only those inbound for Deal.so while people are saying this in upper northwest should have to go to a city wide lottery it will also effect those who git in ion to a deal feeder.

Hate autocorrect. "It will also effect those who got into a Deal feeder"

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This would Have the effect of getting rid of feeder rights. So you could get in to a NW school but have no right to stay with your cohort or even be guaranteed any school

For practical purposes, the only elementary kids in the city who have feeder rights now are in the Deal feeders.

Yes so this would also effect all the oob parents who get into a Deal feeder too. Not only those inbound for Deal.so while people are saying this in upper northwest should have to go to a city wide lottery it will also effect those who git in ion to a deal feeder.

Anonymous wrote:I find it interesting that so many self identified high SES families with so called advanced students are concentrating their efforts on how well they should be served, rather than asking on how they can help make schools better for all kids.

Not all. We're at Powell and working for the good of the school. And I really feel great things are happening and will happen.

Anonymous wrote:This would Have the effect of getting rid of feeder rights. So you could get in to a NW school but have no right to stay with your cohort or even be guaranteed any school

For practical purposes, the only elementary kids in the city who have feeder rights now are in the Deal feeders.

^^ What's so interesting about this? When you work hard and value education (and are well educated), it's unthinkable that you would have to send our child to a failing public school that's failing because of parents who aren't educated and don't value education for their children. So, yes, we high SES families ARE looking out for our own -- it would be hard not to! I'll worry about "all kids" when mine aren't in the mix.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Upper NW, you had a good run not having to pay for private middle and HS for half a decade. But you voted for the other guy, overwhelmingly. Now it's time for payback. It's not personal.

I would t worry too much. Our old Gray mayor will soon be indicted and will serve out the upcoming four years in federal prison, not the District building. One city.

I find it interesting that so many self identified high SES families with so called advanced students are concentrating their efforts on how well they should be served, rather than asking on how they can help make schools better for all kids.