I’m going to reflect as a former resident and as a current parent on schools in Truxton Circle.
When I moved to the TC I was a single woman in my 30s. The neighborhood was gentrifying. I wasn’t concerned about schools. Many of my neighbors weren’t concerned about schools either. They too were single, retired, or gay or lesbian couples unlikely to drop their DINK (double income no kids) status but we cared about schools as much as people without children could care.
In real estate people care about “good schools” and it adds to the property values. That was never an element in the explosion of house prices in the neighborhood. Proximity to downtown, sometimes parking, and transportation networks were our greatest assets.
There were one active school when I arrived Dunbar, and it looked like a prison. I don’t count the daycare at Slater. Cook was closed. Armstrong was a husk as was Langston. I don’t think MM Washington was being used. All the school buildings were problems to be solved. As far as education goes, DCPS should have opened an Italian restaurant for all the spaghetti thrown at the wall to see what would stick.
Charters were a saving grace. Remember I said the school buildings were problems to be solved? The Cook school had closed, possibly due to low enrollment, but the building was still good. It eventually was taken over by Mundo Verde a DC charter school in high demand. Kent Amos of the Community Academy Public Charter School (CAPCS) got the shell that was Armstrong fixed up and turned into a working charter.
Dunbar eventually was torn down, built anew, and remained part of DCPS.
MM Washington was turned into senior housing.
Langston and Slater. sigh. The buildings were still problems to be remedied.
I began to care more about schools, in DC in general, when I noticed people moving away when their kids were getting Pre-K aged. These were the people came as singletons who later married or DINKs, had kids and left. I only know of one family who stuck it out for the whole child rearing lifecycle. Charters were the thing that kept some neighbors.
I began to actually care about the education going on inside the buildings after getting married and adopting Destructo-kid. Becoming a parent changes you.
It’s a bit too easy to blame the school system or teachers for poor educational outcomes. It’s a mix. Parents, students, individual teachers, principals, the administration and the community as a whole all play a part. No school, nowhere, can make up for crappy parenting and kids require a lot of inputs before they even get to Pre-K. They continue to need parental inputs and care PreK to 12th grade.
When the lottery came around we were able to get into Seaton’s Pre-K, but it was virtual AND my spouse was very unhappy there was a homeless camp along the school’s playground wall. We wound up going to Home Away From Home at New Jersey and R St NW as they were offering in person Pre-K classes. The classes were free as they were part of DC’s Pre-K Enhancement and Expansion Program (PKEEP). It also helped that we’d been using them for daycare the previous 2-3 years.
So did we quietly move away because of the schools? Nope. Nobody moves to PG County for the schools. We moved because of work. I’m now paid enough to have Destructo in a private school. We like the smaller school environment of everyone knowing everyone and how accessible the school is for parents. The neighborhood public school is good, but since COVID, it has limited parents’ access and participation in the life of the school during school hours.
Anyway back to the TC. I am happy Armstrong and Cook (now Mundo Verde) are functioning as charter schools. They aren’t neighborhood schools, so living in the neighborhood doesn’t help with lottery chances. And strangely, were I was living, Dunbar wouldn’t have been our school, even though it was right there.
Quality-wise, the charters are adequate, depending on what metrics one is using. I’m not particularly interested in arguing about what is a “good school”. Dunbar has a good football program. The loss of their high academic reputation was examined in Alison Stewart’s book First Class.