Correct. |
Yes, I've noticed. It's not a good community of parents. |
+1. I feel so lucky that we moved from a charter to DCPS this year. I'd be very frustrated and worried about next year if I was still at a charter. |
There are some great families! And great teachers. Some admin who make bad decisions that are not in line with reality.
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Comments like this seem to ignore the fact that many people are at charters because their in boundary wouldn't well serve their kids over the k-12 experience overall. so, sure, I'd love it if my kid's school had lifted a mask rule, but in the long run, they are meeting my kid's needs well. |
Well we're OOB at a DCPS that feeds to MacFarland, so I think it's a question of priorities, not lack of options. We all play the lottery and make our choices. Glad your school is working for you, masks aside. |
Yes, you're right. There are some great families and my experience is that the teachers we've had have all been great. It's just seems to be a school that doesn't care at all that it makes itself very unwelcoming to parents. I get that admin + some parents don't care at all if people leave, and probably don't even care if fewer people try to lottery in. I honestly can't understand the motivation, though. |
| I think some admin actively are trying to piss off parents to protect a small group of anti-vaxxers/people who are COVID scared. They will not let masked parents in the school and have not planned a single community event. It is such a sad state of affairs. That said, I agree most teachers are very good. |
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News article on the topic:
https://reason.com/2022/04/06/mask-mandates-kids-dc-charter-schools-covid-19/ |
| These schools should be embarrassed by how they are acting. Even the most liberal pockets of this country are doing better than this. My goodness. |
Who wrote this trash? It’s awful. I think masks should be optional, but this thing is embarrassing. I also appreciate how it talks about charter but in the last paragraph mentions teachers unions and how they want masks. |
I feel very strongly that mask mandates in schools need to be lifted and must never return, and I agree. The author is clearly confused about DCPS vs. charters with regard to the mandate (no, Thomas Elementary, a DCPS, doesn't have a mask mandate anymore, the kids there apparently choose to mask or are receiving pressure from either parents or teachers to do so), and he also uses this issue as an opportunity to tout the "school choice" agenda (I guess to be expected in a libertarian outlet). It's poorly written and won't help our cause. |
The whole first few paragraphs explain that DCPS dropped masks but ask whether in practice they're still being required in some DCPS schools. That's a totally reasonable question. You would only think that by 'mandate' the author meant 'centralized rule' and not 'de facto thing that gets enforced' if you were reading that sentence in isolation. |
I know he is not talking about a centralized rule. But his speculation about the school-wide enforcement of mask mandates at individual DCPS schools is just that - speculation without any evidence. Thomas Elementary is his only DCPS example of a school where the kids were observed to all keep their masks on (in the one class that VP Harris visited). After reporting that Thomas did not respond to a request for comment, he goes on to declare that Thomas Elementary "would hardly be alone" in keeping the mask mandate in place, and then talks only about charters, which are in an entirely different situation because unlike DCPS they actually can make up their own rules. DCPS, on the other hand, does have a centralized rule, and it is highly unlikely that any of them would still be enforcing a school-wide mask mandate. They may have individual teachers who pressure students, but they cannot "keep a mask mandate in place" and "require masks", as the author speculates. |
It's not the same and that's clear contextually. But I don't know why you would think that a school couldn't in practice require masks. Not every school has a parent population where someone is guaranteed to call a lawyer if that kind of thing were happening. (And many of the parents may themselves support it.) |