Colvin Run Elementary School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Just because you've been posting regularly for years and sock puppeting your own posts doesn't mean a majority is not very happy with the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Just because you've been posting regularly for years and sock puppeting your own posts doesn't mean a majority is not very happy with the school.

You must be the aap parent happy with school because your kid is in aap. Good for you. Let all of us (and there are a lot) with different justified opinions freely voice them without you disregarding them under no basis. We have real concerns that go ignored by the school.

[Anonymous]

NP: we actually haven’t reached 3rd grade yet but I also feel like CRES has zero sense of community. I don’t know if it’s the Vienna/GF divide, the various ethnic groups that seem to be a little bit insular, or if people are just too busy to care. Is it like this at all of the top FCPS elementary schools? In other words, would Spring Hill, Wolftrap or Great Falls elementary be any different?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: If you all are so unhappy with the school, then why do you still send your children here? Why don’t you send them to private school or just move? This is a well-to-do area so you probably have the means to do that. Otherwise, why don’t you make your voice heard instead of commenting anonymously on this site? Go to the school and request a meeting or speak with your PTO person to hold a meeting with the admin? Instead of fueling the fire, try to find solutions with the school.

It’s not that difficult. Besides, being a new member to this community I have heard lots of rumblings and have found many of them to be untrue. This is the same community that preps their kids for the tests in first and second grade. Why are we focusing so much on aap when we should be focusing on our kid’s character and happiness.

You do know that most people can't just pick up and move, or send their kids to private, right? And plenty of us *have* spoken to the administration about the very stark division between the AAP kids and the GE kids. Segregation at its finest. We can also come here, to an anonymous website, and vent. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

You say you are a new member to this community. Do your kids attend CRES? Have they reached the 3rd grade yet, when the kids are herded into either AAP or GE classrooms, shutting the door (literally) on friendships that had developed in K-2? If not, I wish you well. You really won't understand what we're talking about until your kid experiences the absurdity that is an AAP center.

Actually, anyone who can afford the Colvin Run district (one of the most expensive in the region) and is that opposed to AAP ought to be able to pick up and move to a school that isn’t an AAP center or another jurisdiction. Instead, you’ve been ranting about Colvin Run for years and sock puppeting your own posts. Other people there are very happy.

Pardon me? How on earth would you know what I've posted and when? There are plenty of CRES parents who feel that AAP has ruined what could be a nice neighborhood school. But sure, take the lazy way out and accuse those you disagree with of "sock puppeting" their posts. Really doesn't reflect well on you, btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Exactly. We kept our kids at CRES because people (AAP parents, no less) kept telling us how "great" the school was, for all the kids. Turns out, it's probably only great if your kid is in AAP. Otherwise, they might as well be invisible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Just because you've been posting regularly for years and sock puppeting your own posts doesn't mean a majority is not very happy with the school.

DP. You might want to take a seat before we report YOU for falsely accusing people of sock puppeting. If you can't stand reading opinions you want to silence, then perhaps you should run along. This forum is for ALL opinions to be expressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Just because you've been posting regularly for years and sock puppeting your own posts doesn't mean a majority is not very happy with the school.

You must be the aap parent happy with school because your kid is in aap. Good for you. Let all of us (and there are a lot) with different justified opinions freely voice them without you disregarding them under no basis. We have real concerns that go ignored by the school.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP: we actually haven’t reached 3rd grade yet but I also feel like CRES has zero sense of community. I don’t know if it’s the Vienna/GF divide, the various ethnic groups that seem to be a little bit insular, or if people are just too busy to care. Is it like this at all of the top FCPS elementary schools? In other words, would Spring Hill, Wolftrap or Great Falls elementary be any different?

Any school that isn't an AAP center will have a better sense of community. So Great Falls and Spring Hill probably don't have these issues and I imagine the entire student body is more cohesive than at CRES, or any center where there is segregation.

[Anonymous]

Probably not the best strategy to try and counter an allegation of sock puppeting by posting five times in five minutes, all after midnight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP: we actually haven’t reached 3rd grade yet but I also feel like CRES has zero sense of community. I don’t know if it’s the Vienna/GF divide, the various ethnic groups that seem to be a little bit insular, or if people are just too busy to care. Is it like this at all of the top FCPS elementary schools? In other words, would Spring Hill, Wolftrap or Great Falls elementary be any different?

Any school that isn't an AAP center will have a better sense of community. So Great Falls and Spring Hill probably don't have these issues and I imagine the entire student body is more cohesive than at CRES, or any center where there is segregation.

I think any school with different programs is going to have this issue. My kid is at a language immersion school and there are parents with kids in the Gen Ed program that complain that the Principal favors the language immersion program. There is a clear differentiation between the programs. The kids in language immersion do not take special classes with the kids in gen ed, which I think is normal since most classes take specials as a class and not mixed. The real issue is that there are special programs that are centered around the culture associated with the language that some people feel excluded from. There are kids from outside the schools borders that attend the language classes. And the Principal does help to advertise and hype the language program because it does differentiate the school from other schools.

I have not heard any one discuss that one group gets more resources then the other but there are plenty of people who see that there is a divide between the kids and occasionally some kids will brag that they are better because they are learning the language.

[Anonymous]

Can’t speak about Great Falls Elem. but know that Spring Hill has a very strong PTA that parents actually want to be a part of because of the wonderful traditions they have as a PTA. They actually work to include and bring all people together. Has anyone ever been to a PTO meeting at CR? Only a handful of people show up and they spit out the same spiel every year, which is why people stop going. Principal has to beg and bribe people to be PTO President. He calls specific parents who he thinks will be easy to work with and won’t rock the boat and begs them to join. No one wants to do it. Volunteers are at a low this year. NO school spirit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can’t speak about Great Falls Elem. but know that Spring Hill has a very strong PTA that parents actually want to be a part of because of the wonderful traditions they have as a PTA. They actually work to include and bring all people together. Has anyone ever been to a PTO meeting at CR? Only a handful of people show up and they spit out the same spiel every year, which is why people stop going. Principal has to beg and bribe people to be PTO President. He calls specific parents who he thinks will be easy to work with and won’t rock the boat and begs them to join. No one wants to do it. Volunteers are at a low this year. NO school spirit

To be sure, the PTO at CRES is very strong, but I know SPring Hill's is also. To your comments, I wonder if the PTO participation at CRES, compared to Spring Hill, is because there may be more WOHMs at CRES who can't commit the time. My kids attended Spring Hill for a year before we moved to CRES and while Spring Hill was fine, we prefer CRES -- as a WOHM, I sort of felt like an outsider at Spring Hill. Both schools are great, though. As a CRES parent of gen ed kids, I have seen none of the behavior from the principal or PTO that people have spoken of up-thread. We have never felt left out of anything at CRES, so those comments are puzzling to me. I guess everyone has their own experiences, but that is not my experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably not the best strategy to try and counter an allegation of sock puppeting by posting five times in five minutes, all after midnight.

You clearly don't know what sock puppeting is. Hint: it's not simply responding to other people's posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can’t speak about Great Falls Elem. but know that Spring Hill has a very strong PTA that parents actually want to be a part of because of the wonderful traditions they have as a PTA. They actually work to include and bring all people together. Has anyone ever been to a PTO meeting at CR? Only a handful of people show up and they spit out the same spiel every year, which is why people stop going. Principal has to beg and bribe people to be PTO President. He calls specific parents who he thinks will be easy to work with and won’t rock the boat and begs them to join. No one wants to do it. Volunteers are at a low this year. NO school spirit

To be sure, the PTO at CRES is very strong, but I know SPring Hill's is also. To your comments, I wonder if the PTO participation at CRES, compared to Spring Hill, is because there may be more WOHMs at CRES who can't commit the time. My kids attended Spring Hill for a year before we moved to CRES and while Spring Hill was fine, we prefer CRES -- as a WOHM, I sort of felt like an outsider at Spring Hill. Both schools are great, though. As a CRES parent of gen ed kids, I have seen none of the behavior from the principal or PTO that people have spoken of up-thread. We have never felt left out of anything at CRES, so those comments are puzzling to me. I guess everyone has their own experiences, but that is not my experience.

+1000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People unknowingly actually move to this area because of false ideals of the school and then are in disbelief when they find out in 3rd the reality of it all. People deserve the right to know what really to expect. Hence, the beauty of this forum. Parents have been voicing their concerns to the school for years to no avail and they just get lip service. If the school actually cared, listened and adapted to what the majority of parents have been saying for years it wouldn’t have such negative reviews.

Exactly. We kept our kids at CRES because people (AAP parents, no less) kept telling us how "great" the school was, for all the kids. Turns out, it's probably only great if your kid is in AAP. Otherwise, they might as well be invisible.

+ 1000