Anonymous
Post 05/23/2012 07:31     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
1+. Exactly true. Both SH and EH surely won't become schools good enough to attract most IB families, but SH might if EH were shuttered. Do with EH what's being done with Hine by E. Market. I'd like to see the Brent and Tyler PTA parents drawn into the campaign to improve SH and make it a bona fide IB school. DCPS shutting them out makes no sense.



actually, it's going to have to be the other way around. EH has capacity for 800 kids but currently has around 250, i believe. and it's been recently renovated. EH is going to be the last middle school standing once it absorbs jefferson (93 kids!!) and SH.
Anonymous
Post 05/23/2012 06:11     Subject: ludlow-taylor
3:31, you are spot on. I've been in the neighborhood for years and agree completely.

Were you at the meeting years ago Rhee did a dog and pony show and then left? It turned into one of the ugliest attacks on whites and middle class African-Americans that I've ever experienced in my 15 years in DC.

I took would love to see LT take off, if only to improve my property values, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Anonymous
Post 05/23/2012 04:28     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
+1. I'm on 6th and know how you feel. But Tommy Wells doesn't give a damn and, as long as he's in, I don't see all that much changing.

The extra room at Peabody is not a one-off arrangement. With the School Within a School program gone for good, 4 dozen proximity slots will be open from now on. With better access to Peabody, the upper-middle-class Stanton Park area crowd won't be returning to LT in great numbers. The LT waiting list for preK will remain long, and a few more adventurous families will stay for K, 1st, maybe 2nd, and yes, the raggedly building will look much better soon. But no earth-shattering changes afoot. No facilities on a par with Brent's in train.


Anonymous
Post 05/23/2012 03:31     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Ever since I moved to the Stanton Park neighborhood seven years ago, LT has supposedly been on the verge of "taking off." You hear this from the people at Tommy Wells' office, ANC 6C reps, neighbors - the long waiting list for prek 3 is always supposed to be a sign of LT's imminent rise, a la Maury. Only it never takes off. You see dozens of MD plate cars pulling up in front of the school every morning, but never hear about PG County address cheaters being caught and ejected (as at Maury). You even hear IB parents saying that they welcome the MD crowd because they keep numbers up. You see elderly AA neighbors watching their PG County resident grandchildren in the afternoons. You see creepy people hanging around the entrance on 7th. Every summer, you see a beloved neighbor or two hit the road for SE, NW or the burbs partly because they aren't remotely comfortable with the school. You attend a PTA meeting and feel like you've stumbled upon such a tense and unpleasant ghetto scene that this can't possibly be the neighborhood where you own an $700,000 house. You hear PTA parents say that the bad principal is about to go, only she stays. So you come to resent and to dislike the school, quietly searching for alternatives well before your toddler reaches preschool, like most of your neighbors. And then you get on a thread like this and read that you're supposed to rally behind LT to be a good citizen, to get involved. I'm rooting for LT because lasting change inside would boost my home's value but can't help but wonder why it remains an open-ended blight on our classy Victorian cityscape.
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 21:52     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I am a Brent parent who would love to have S-H as a real option and not a lottery dream. I'm not super excited about it, but it looks a lot better than E-H.


See, this is the disconnect that I can't reconcile on this list. One one hand people are saying that parents are abandoning J.O. Wilson and Ludlow Taylor in upper grades, but I hear again and again that parents of Brent kids 20 blocks away are desperate to get into S-H. What is changing from the feeders to the middle school that makes S-H so much more desirable?[/quote

Obvious one, if I understand your question. At Brent, you've got a small minority of low-income kids left in PreK, K, and the lower grades, meaning that the mostly affluent parents lobby and fundraise like crazy to ensure that the school has good teachers and administrators, extra curricular programs, facilities (nice library, media center, playground/garden, classrooms). So parents are willing to deal with falling off a cliff for MS at E-H or Jefferson for the education they can get up to 5th (well, really just up to 4th, with so many running off to Latin, and now Basis, for 5th). There's still a path to SH for Brent parents - switch your kid to Watkins by 5th (plenty of room there in upper grades), but it's hard on kids socially. SH isn't terribly desirable for most families at the several best feeders, it's simply (loads) better than E-H in the absence of lottery luck at Latin, paying nearly $30,000 for privates, or moving to the burbs.
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 17:54     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
For the person who asked about aftercare - yes, the early childhood is separate from the rest of the schoo in aftercare, but starting at 6 o'clock, students are all grouped together.
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 17:16     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:I am a Brent parent who would love to have S-H as a real option and not a lottery dream. I'm not super excited about it, but it looks a lot better than E-H.


See, this is the disconnect that I can't reconcile on this list. One one hand people are saying that parents are abandoning J.O. Wilson and Ludlow Taylor in upper grades, but I hear again and again that parents of Brent kids 20 blocks away are desperate to get into S-H. What is changing from the feeders to the middle school that makes S-H so much more desirable?
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 17:00     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:1+. Exactly true. Both SH and EH surely won't become schools good enough to attract most IB families, but SH might if EH were shuttered. Do with EH what's being done with Hine by E. Market. I'd like to see the Brent and Tyler PTA parents drawn into the campaign to improve SH and make it a bona fide IB school. DCPS shutting them out makes no sense.



I am a Brent parent who would love to have S-H as a real option and not a lottery dream. I'm not super excited about it, but it looks a lot better than E-H.
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:55     Subject: ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is there enough room at S-H for all those kids?

No, there is not. And there you have the quandary we are in . . .
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:49     Subject: ludlow-taylor
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is there enough room at S-H for all those kids?
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:21     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
1+. Exactly true. Both SH and EH surely won't become schools good enough to attract most IB families, but SH might if EH were shuttered. Do with EH what's being done with Hine by E. Market. I'd like to see the Brent and Tyler PTA parents drawn into the campaign to improve SH and make it a bona fide IB school. DCPS shutting them out makes no sense.

Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:14     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:CH is spreading its IB families too thin.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting observation, a concern getting little attention. More than a few of us would like to see 1-2 of these CH ES shut down, with Hill schools for Ward 6 kids, and their property tax paying parents, across the board. If you've been on the Hill since the 90s, as we have, you start to see that trying turn around every one of these schools serves to delay change. There are already enough schools for Ward 8/PG County kids. More power to the Payne PTA for opening the door to dialogue on a thorny issue. But Tommy Well isn't listening, you can trust me on that.

CH is also trying to spread its middle school cohort too thin. In the next five years there is no way for Stuart Hobson AND another middle school to both turn around. Sometimes less is more.
Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:06     Subject: Re:ludlow-taylor
Watkins does not have an accelerated learning program. Talk to Watkins parents and you'll hear them fret about their above grade level child not being challenged.

I know that this is a LT thread, but what's the deal with the Watkins AL program parents talk about then? It's fiction? Just the other day, a mom told me that her 3rd grader was receiving advanced math instruction at Watkins. They don't have some sort of pullout group system, and a part-time gifted coordinator? I'm not in the loop on CH AL programs, but I've heard this quite a few times. I've also heard this about Brent. Or is it fiction there, too?


Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 16:02     Subject: ludlow-taylor
Anonymous wrote:Maybe I am an arch liberal hippy dippy parent, but with waiting lists in the 300s for top charter schools, there are just not enough options for parents who want to stay in the city but not keep transferring and can't afford to live WOTP. I have met literally dozens of families who are desperate to find a "home" for their kids as well as their time and money.

I am not sending my kid to L-T because we got into a charter school I like. We are 30 on the PS3 list for L-T and I bet I won't get a call.


With 2 kids in DCPS PreK believe me when I saw that PS3 and PS4 are a different world than the elementary grades, other than at Brent, Tyler SI, Maury and maybe Watkins. I would never send my kid to Miner for K+ (after being shut out of Tyler SI PreK IB) but preschool was great. Ditto with Payne. Have heard the same about J-O Wilson. Nobody's a hippy for thinking a preschool is fine, 3rd-5th grade are another matter entirely. Parents who know the ropes tend not to think in terms of a school being good because a preschool is.

Anonymous
Post 05/22/2012 15:46     Subject: ludlow-taylor
Maybe I am an arch liberal hippy dippy parent, but with waiting lists in the 300s for top charter schools, there are just not enough options for parents who want to stay in the city but not keep transferring and can't afford to live WOTP. I have met literally dozens of families who are desperate to find a "home" for their kids as well as their time and money.

I am not sending my kid to L-T because we got into a charter school I like. We are 30 on the PS3 list for L-T and I bet I won't get a call.