Honest Opinions about your School
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Anonymous
| Please share honest opinions about your school.. what you like about it, what you don't like, why you plan on staying, why you plan on leaving, etc. I am interested in really honest reviews of any Public or Charter School in DC. |
Anonymous
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Because the feedback on every other post is 'dishonest'?
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Anonymous
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we go to lee montessori PCS and we really, really love it. it's just a sweet, little community, everyone knows each other, and the curriculum is very customized to each kid. and i'm not a montessori-obsessed or anything, but it's a quality school and you'd be lucky to get in.
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Anonymous
NP here. Thank you for this feedback. I appreciate non-Montessori devotees feedback especially, as many of the highly recommended charters are Montessori and I am admittedly on the fence about it, but don't want to entirely rule out the schools. |
Anonymous
You have to actually talk to parents to get this. |
Anonymous
| Ditto. I know a lot about a lot of different schools and that is only from talking with parents with direct experience with those schools. And then, at the end of the day, you need to figure out what is a good fit for your kid - it really does not matter what works for someone else. herd mentality does not help you with this decision. |
Anonymous
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We attend Powell where the gentrifiers have pushed out mainly anyone other than them. They’ve taken over the bake sales and any other events/activities once headed by the “old” parents.
Principal has gotten better, but really had no choice; great AP who is 100% better than the last two. Teachers are terrific! Child is progressing, but fluctuates on some of their assessment test. The commute is keeping us there ~5 minutes and the parent community is great if you “fit” in. Can’t compete with SAHM or ones that have flexible jobs, but I make it by business to ensure I don’t miss any events/activities. This is our 3rd year and we plan on staying put. |
Anonymous
Right? Just search and you'll find our honest opinions already posted. |
Anonymous
| what parents say about their school and what they post about them on DCUM are different things. I've noticed loud voices here (boosterism for the school or tearing a school down) but not a lot of depth. To get a real sense of the strengths and weaknesses of a school, hang out at your local playground and ask parents where they send their kids to school. |
Anonymous
| I agree that DCUM doesn’t always provide a genuine review of schools. Also so much of your personal school experience depends on your child’s personality and his/her specific class dynamics. For example, my DS had a great class with a great group of kids but this was not the case with my DD. Same school, same teacher but different students. |
Anonymous
We are a Powell 'gentrifier' family who's been involved since 2013 and I have no problem telling people what I think (generally positive) because Powell is mostly oversubscribed (if you want to have your kids there, move inbounds and cross your fingers) so boosterism wouldn't change much. I would say that 'gentrifier' (professional/white-assimilated/upper income/striver/annoying/whatever) families are more involved and organized than ever. It took a few years and some actual capacity and time (rather than wishful thinking) at the parent level to get to organizing fundraisers that actually make money. These organized parents are more of a force than before and can now actually help buy things and organize broad activities. Other parents who are part of the longstanding corps of Central American families remain involved, though there are few things done only by those parents now, and bake sales aren't run just by them any more. I would say that my experience is actually a more moderated, smoother and more other-conscious/friendly relationship across natural barriers such as language or culture than has been in the past. I think we're simply at a point where there are enough bridging people and moments to help things hang together, as much as they can. People who want to engage really are trying to be thoughtful and not offend and actually build a broad community within the bonds of the school and the limited time and attention we all have. There are some stay-at-home or work-from-home gentrifier parents which has-smoothed over some of the differences between gentrifier parents working downtown all day who can't be involved and those Spanish-speaking parents who can volunteer during school hours. At Powell, if you're new to DC or DCPS and haven't figured this out, we don't have the demographics of most of DC. It's basically the most Hispanic school in DC - 78% (mostly Central American families who don't speak English at home), just over 10% black (partly gentrifiers, yes, and partly longstanding DC and neighborhood families), and 5-10% white (almost entirely gentrifiers, though many of us are not new to DC by a long shot). So the cultural bridging issues center a lot around language and expectations of Hispanic cultures and white secularized overachievers (while my guess is that a lot of other DCPS/PCS families at schools and PTA levels in gradually integrating DCPS have to bridge gaps along black/white/class/education lines). Kids mostly seem on task and rambunctiousness seems within acceptable lines. The dominant feeling is that the school is bilingual and aimed at engaging with families who speak Spanish but limited English. Kids speak English to each other around school, but actually you can find some Spanish-language communication outside of class discussion (especially among those who use it among family at home and know each other well), and my child after starting as a Spanish-speaker, speaking to me in English and using Spanish in class dutifully, is now actually surprising me as a conversant Spanish speaker with us and younger siblings and comes out with actual full on thoughts rather than just SI o NO answers typical of elementary kids. They do try to send a lot of material home for communication purposes. Some of it is good, some of it is not timely, some of it is for events that are during the workday but aimed at parents. (A big overall DCPS peeve - calling something a 'night' event that starts at 3:30 p.m.) The teaching staff has been really strong in my mind, though my view is inherently nearsighted - I only really get to see my kids' teachers. At each grade my child has had what I felt was the right teacher in terms of learning and maturation/discipline. There really is a good cohort there, though sometimes I wonder what people's experiences are like in other classes and especially at very top grades and in the English-only track (which is probably not going to last, long-term, due to building crowding and other schools' proximities, i.e., West and Height). In terms of achievement, everyone who ever reads DCUM either has a high achiever or a kid with learning difficulties, right? Well, Powell has not had a ton of high achievers. They are a relatively new crowd (and I want to be clear about this) they are of multiple origins, from among families who don't speak English at home, black and white and mixed families, gentrifier and not. Teachers are trying to accommodate them. Their small numbers probably mean this is more complicated, but we've not had our older child run into a wall in terms of boredom or learning possibilities yet. In terms of learning difficulties/504s/IEPs etc., they have staff to try to address and get kids rated (or whatever the right language is) but more than that I really don't know about, especially in terms of involved parent satisfaction. Overall in terms of educational success as reflected in testing, Powell has not done anything magical that other schools can't or haven't. Their testing numbers are like other DCPS schools. I have accepted the value of integration in education for all children and believe our affluence and education rub off on our child in educational attainment and hope that we produce a breakthrough generation. But I'm doing that on faith at this point, not testing-based skepticism. The building is mostly new, just finished, but built in stages. This may mean a more mixed maintenance lifecycle down the road, apparently, according to people who know the situation better. In terms of management, I would say it's undeniable that the prior principal had a magnetic effect on families, though hints seep out that at staff level management was not always perfect. I want to be sympathetic to both teachers and the principals here - this is a high-ELL population with very limited parent educational attainment overall, with like 10% of parents who have grad degrees. The current principal has had some difficult things to do. She doesn't speak Spanish when this is the primary hurdle in reaching families. She's had to deal with the staffing shifts in a school that grew MASSIVELY over 6-7 years, from being small enough to be near closure to be breaking building capacity before the building was complete. What this means is that as student numbers are growing, money flows in and continuous hiring could happen and a staff-heavy teaching model was possible, with most dual language rooms having two bilingual teachers. As that stabilized, they had to implement changes in how rooms were staffed, how students moved and learned during the day (departmentalization) and then there were also some conflicts that some knew more and less about between management and staff. I doubt this would make anyone a lot of friends in a management position, but I still think that some of it could have been better explained and managed, insofar as I know about it. I believe that the principal wants the best and works hard but is leery of what educated parents demand of her in many areas, e.g., whether they are worth doing, especially in balance with the needs of the 3/4 of the school that is Central American ELL families, whose massive presence is overwhelmingly not voicing demands for the school. One odd dynamic is that some much appreciated staff have left the school in the last year and are now on the staff of MacFarland MS, run now by the former assistant principal at Powell, who is really a great guy at a personal level and hopefully a good school leader as we look toward middle school. But it is definitely something to think about when staff you like leave and go work around the corner. Hard to draw definitive answers, but it does make you think. Another thing to mention is that the bilingual but English-dominant AP left at the end of last year for a good position closer to her home in faraway Maryland and they hired a new AP. The assistant principal is pretty much the model school leader that I think many of us would have crafted for Powell in a vacuum - she is a friendly and poised highly educated American-born native Spanish speaker who was a committed and professional dual language teacher at Powell before jumping on the management track, so she relates without any effort to long-term Powell families as well as gentrifiers and gets the overall mission of the school like 200%. She'd be a good school leader probably anywhere, but particularly in certain DC schools if you know what I mean. Overall the experience is good at Powell. I do not expect we will leave at all and expect given the way things are going to have our children continue on to MacFarland MS. It is certainly possible that our children's experience at Powell could cause a need for change but I do not expect it. As adult opportunities really start to spring from opportunities available in the teenage educational years in grades 6-12 there is a possibility of a need for some kind of acceleration and it's not clear whether that will be available in DCPS or via supplementation or in accessible PCS options nearby. But as far as Powell as concerned I think we're just fine. |
Anonymous
| Thanks for the PP on powell. I could have written something very similar for Bruce Monroe, very similar demographics. We love the preschool but like many umc families we will try lottery again. Its still not a long term solid school academically. Its also a bit of a social dead end in some ways. The latino families culturally, language wise, scheduling etc are very difficult for a non-spanish speakig person to build relationships with. No birthday party invites, no playdates etc. My kid loves so many latina kids in the class but it stops at 3:15. We really want a long term school community in and out of class as well as stronger acacemics. I know the school will get there but it just wont coincide with our kids time there. |
Anonymous
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Don't want to turn this into a Powell thread, but all that's being said is true from my perspective as well.
We're a bi-racial family (not black and white) who has been at the school for 5 years. We've had first hand experience of the various changes taken place at the school. This year my oldest finally had a playdate with whom she's called her BFF for 2 years. She was estatic as well as I. |
Anonymous
Really? Did you try asking her parents before this? Did they say no? I don't understand how a young child can't have a playdate with a schoolmate in 2 years. It might take more effort than usual but? |
Anonymous
NP whose kids were at a different school with many 1st generation Latino families. This was ABSOLUTELY our experience. We asked, repeatedly. It's a cultural difference -- weekends for my child's classmates seemed to be dominated by extended family time and obligations. More parents may work more irregular schedules. It's can be hard to transfer school friendships to relationships out of school. |