On March 8, parents at Amidon-Bowen Elementary School launched a campaign to lobby Mayor Muriel Bowser and DC Public Schools (DCPS) Interim Chancellor Amanda Alexander to provide additional funding to our Southwest neighborhood elementary school. Parents identified two main sources of these problems. First, Bowser’s 2018–19 budget did not provide enough funds to the school […]
Op-ed: Amidon-Bowen Is the School for Your Child
Photo caption: Amidon-Bowen students won third place in a city-wide poetry slam with their original poem. If you have a child entering pre-K next school year, you’re probably all too familiar with the DC Public Schools (DCPS) school lottery drama. This is a peak time of year for researching school options, attending open houses, and […]
Amidon-Bowen PTA Highlights of the 2016-17 School Year
It has been a busy year for the Amidon-Bowen PTA. We’ve been able to accomplish a lot thanks to the hard work of a number of parents and community members. Some highlights include: Holding a fundraiser that raised $4,000 by allowing people to use the school parking lot for the Inauguration and Women’s March on […]
Amidon-Bowen: Still Our Collective Challenge and Opportunity
Around this time last year, I wrote an article in The Southwester advocating for our neighborhood public elementary school, Amidon-Bowen. It was a call to arms, asking neighborhood families to consider enrolling their children in Amidon-Bowen and to counter the status quo of socioeconomic and racial school segregation in our neighborhood, city, and country. I […]
It Takes a Neighborhood: Why Amidon-Bowen Is the Right School for All Our Kids
As an education researcher and a former teacher, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the plight of urban schools and their challenges with poverty, student achievement, and teacher quality and turnover. Amidon-Bowen Elementary School in Southwest faces many of these issues: Test scores are low, and 78% of students qualify for free […]