Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Wow, she sounds pretty hostile.

She is setting DCPS up for a lawsuit. They need a poor AA plaintiff who loses their ECE seat to a Spanish-speaking ambassador's kid to challenge whether their 70/30 language preference policy is actually racially motivated, because she's given a lot of quotes in here that make it sound like... yes. I cannot believe DCPS approved this interview.

Also forcing all kids to eat inside during COVID on the grounds that some of the families might have a cultural objection to eating outdoors? I like that she tried to claim it was about not all kids having warm enough clothing (a legitimate concern) and then when the parents were like, oh we can definitely fix that, she was like, I'm not going to let them buy their way out of the cultural problem... as though she hadn't tried to blame poverty seconds earlier.

Yeah, that comment really bothered me too. I just can't imagine if the african immigrants in say, Sweden, were like, no, we don't culturally do winter so we don't want our kids going outside from October to April because it's cold. That's not how it works! You move to a different climate and you adjust, you don't claim that culturally you can't deal with it.

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Agree. Wonder if some of the antipathy is due to resentment at having to deal with a less deferential and more demanding parent population. And the snarky "I couldn't afford to live in this neighborhood" comment. That is one of those things you might think, but that you shouldn't be saying out loud, much less to the press. And yes, affluent well-educated parents are demanding. They also raise lots of money for the PTA and do a lot of volunteering. There is a higher degree of scrutiny on quality of faculty/staff/leadership. For years, the rap on Bancroft among the non-Latino row house population was that the school administration liked being a Title 1/predominantly low-income school and weren't exactly welcoming to higher income families. Those families then went OOB to Eaton, since so many of the kids who were in-bound for Eaton went private, there were always seats. Bancroft got renovated and now the younger generation of families moving into Mt.P (who are even more affluent than the row house owners of a decade ago), have decided to invest en masse in the school so they don't have to trek across the park every day and can walk to school. I really hope the principal is not as she is portrayed in this article.

I just can't get over the antipathy she shows towards the white students at her school. It's kind of incredible. If this is what she's willing to say publicly... She really shouldn't be allowed to keep her job.

The article is also bad. USDA changed the definition of CEP (from estimated 40% to 25% at risk), which is why DCPS practice changed with respect to calculating Title I eligibility (which is also federally determined); it's not that the underlying criteria for eligibility changed and it's not like DCPS could change it if it wanted to. And, in fact, it's actual reported at-risk population times a multiplier specifically to account for undercounting. The author on this article really doesn't know much about schools seemingly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Wow, she sounds pretty hostile.

She is setting DCPS up for a lawsuit. They need a poor AA plaintiff who loses their ECE seat to a Spanish-speaking ambassador's kid to challenge whether their 70/30 language preference policy is actually racially motivated, because she's given a lot of quotes in here that make it sound like... yes. I cannot believe DCPS approved this interview.

Also forcing all kids to eat inside during COVID on the grounds that some of the families might have a cultural objection to eating outdoors? I like that she tried to claim it was about not all kids having warm enough clothing (a legitimate concern) and then when the parents were like, oh we can definitely fix that, she was like, I'm not going to let them buy their way out of the cultural problem... as though she hadn't tried to blame poverty seconds earlier.

Anonymous wrote:It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Wow, she sounds pretty hostile.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's really clear when you saw the last version of the boundaries discussion that it wasn't Black, Latino, lower-income Bancroft families demanding remaining in the Wilson-now-JR feeder pattern, it was clearly the pearl-clutching white folks who didn't buy inbounds for Stoddert or Janney who NEEDED to be in the JR boundary. And of course these parents were hyping the "diversity" that Bancroft was providing to JR though of course they were um "not that."

To me, that's the thing to end. If Bancroft feeds west, make it only at-risk families feed west. Everybody else, welcome to your neighborhood schools pattern and the lottery from out-of-bounds.

Yep. It’s exactly the same with Shepherd - all the wealthy white parents talking about the diversity of the school - pathetic and performative.

OOB seats should only be available to at-risk students, regardless of their ES/MS. Everyone else going to a traditional neighborhood school (not charter, application, etc.) should go to their IB school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's really clear when you saw the last version of the boundaries discussion that it wasn't Black, Latino, lower-income Bancroft families demanding remaining in the Wilson-now-JR feeder pattern, it was clearly the pearl-clutching white folks who didn't buy inbounds for Stoddert or Janney who NEEDED to be in the JR boundary. And of course these parents were hyping the "diversity" that Bancroft was providing to JR though of course they were um "not that."

To me, that's the thing to end. If Bancroft feeds west, make it only at-risk families feed west. Everybody else, welcome to your neighborhood schools pattern and the lottery from out-of-bounds.

Yep. It’s exactly the same with Shepherd - all the wealthy white parents talking about the diversity of the school - pathetic and performative.

That’s…not my experience with shepherd. Maintaining the feeder pattern is a pretty universal sentiment.

You do realize black and brown parents want good feeder patterns for their kids too, right?

Anonymous wrote:It's really clear when you saw the last version of the boundaries discussion that it wasn't Black, Latino, lower-income Bancroft families demanding remaining in the Wilson-now-JR feeder pattern, it was clearly the pearl-clutching white folks who didn't buy inbounds for Stoddert or Janney who NEEDED to be in the JR boundary. And of course these parents were hyping the "diversity" that Bancroft was providing to JR though of course they were um "not that."

To me, that's the thing to end. If Bancroft feeds west, make it only at-risk families feed west. Everybody else, welcome to your neighborhood schools pattern and the lottery from out-of-bounds.

Yep. It’s exactly the same with Shepherd - all the wealthy white parents talking about the diversity of the school - pathetic and performative.

It does not appear the principal enjoys Bancroft’s rapid gentrification: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/23/bancroft-elementary-school-title-i/

Anonymous wrote:I’m disheartened that this post has 4 times as many posts as the kid that got killed last week on DCPS site during the school day. But we really know what’s top of mind for Liberal, Rainbow flags, All are Welcome, Believe Science, BLM Ward 3 folks - the possibility of being zoned out of a white plurality school! Gotta love it.

...Says the guy whose politics would only make that gun violence worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious why any school would be moved out of the Jackson-Reed feeder. Deal and Jackson-Reed would be below capacity if they were only in-boundary students. They would even be below capacity if they had a sizeable amount of out of boundary students - say, 15% - but not the enormous number they have now (22% at Deal and 36% at Jackson-Reed).

Why would out of boundary students be prioritized over students in the current feeder?

Somewhat unrelated, but how does Jackson-Reed have such a higher percentage of out of bounds students than Deal? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the only way to get into JR OOB was to lottery into an elementary that feeds to it - Deal and JR are so full they never take from the lottery. So shouldn’t their OOB percent be similar?

OOB kids matriculate to JR at a higher percentage than IB kids. Those kids peel off for Walls privates or depart DC because it turns out that the best DCPS traditional HS in the city is at best average as against other options (if you have the means).

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious why any school would be moved out of the Jackson-Reed feeder. Deal and Jackson-Reed would be below capacity if they were only in-boundary students. They would even be below capacity if they had a sizeable amount of out of boundary students - say, 15% - but not the enormous number they have now (22% at Deal and 36% at Jackson-Reed).

Why would out of boundary students be prioritized over students in the current feeder?

Somewhat unrelated, but how does Jackson-Reed have such a higher percentage of out of bounds students than Deal? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the only way to get into JR OOB was to lottery into an elementary that feeds to it - Deal and JR are so full they never take from the lottery. So shouldn’t their OOB percent be similar?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a ceiling, though, to how upper-middle class Bancroft will become, and it may have hit it. There are FAR more subsidized apartments and affordable apartments in the Bancroft geography than there are million-dollar plus row houses. The Woodner alone has more families than the rowhouses do.

This.

If Bancroft is fed to MacFarland, MacFarland will be awesome.

you are assuming that upper middle class parents from bancroft will send their kids to MacFarland and I know that MacFarland needs at least 10 years to have a really strong cohort. We are at a MacFarland feeder and so far, only about 5 UMC families have said they are going to MacFarland. Currently the test scores are abysmal and a lot of distractions at MacFarland

This and I bet those 5 families above will either not send their kids to MacFarland when the rubber hits the road and time comes or Wooten last more than a year if they do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you really saying that your idea is to divide up graduating Bancroft 5th graders by race and income, and have different feeder patterns based on your skin color?

is this your interpretation of the at-risk preference?

I'm a DP, but yes, that's how it looks to me.