Protest at Mundo on P street
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Anonymous
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Teacher attrition at charters, especially dual language charters, has been REALLY bad this year. I think it's always been an issue when you need teachers with an extra skill set, but it's particularly bad now.
Pay at charters like Mundo is not good enough. This is a game the charters played to establish themselves: spend money on administration, marketing, and facilities, cheap out on teachers, assume it will work in the end. It doesn't! And it's not like these schools have amazing facilities either. So really they are spending all of their money (taxpayer money!) on administration and marketing themselves to PK parents. It is a house of cards and it's no wonder it's falling apart. There are a bunch of schools in DC in this bind. Not every charter (some are better run than others, some pay teachers more or allocate money better) but a number of them. I feel compelled to also state that DCPS also sucks in a variety of ways, but teacher quality and making sure classrooms are staffed with teachers is generally not one of them. DCPS pays teachers very well and it helps them retain very high quality teachers even when other aspects of the district are a huge PITA. |
Anonymous
Thank you! My kids are at MV8 and this is not the case there. I am not sure why P St is having these issues. |
Anonymous
Oh, so two protests in one day at Cook (P St). So did the 1 pm protest happen? |
Anonymous
I do want to add that the school will offer a free summer camp, so I am not sure about the parents request for summer programming. |
Anonymous
Okay, hold on now. I'm no MV booster (far from it!), but how many schools have two teachers/aides per classroom in third grade? What does an additional teacher/aide for each teaching pair mean? A third adult in the classroom half of the time? How many charters provide tutoring, summer academics, and academics in after care? Without context this seems like a lot to ask from a charter school, and even DCPS when it comes to having two adults in the classroom. Is this a post-pandemic issue with third grade (who did K and 1st virtually)? Has there not been enough intervention to get those kids caught up? Are classrooms totally out of control that they need 2-3 adults in third grade every day? I deleted my Twitter, but can anyone see the comments to see (hopefully) more details? I'd really love more information because I came here fully ready to pile on MV, but it's a charter school, not DCPS, they don't HAVE to offer all of the bells and whistles if they don't want to. |
Anonymous
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It says on the twitter that another protest is planned tomorrow morning.
What does it mean "and we need NBC"? |
Anonymous
Yeah...this is strange. What's the context? Are there like 50 kids in the 3rd grade? most of this seems like demand for extra. |
Anonymous
I don't know the answers to all of your questions, but: A lot of charter schools offer at least a few weeks of summer programming, and DCPS offers summer school too. Some schools have two adults, some not, it depends on how you count it. With the number of kids having a 1:1 or a push-in paraprofessional or part-time aide, and some schools hosting student teachers, there are definitely two adults physically in the classroom much of the day at most schools, even if their job isn't to be an aide to the whole class equally. So yes, I would read this to mean that the classroom management is not under control. Or that the teachers feel over-worked an an aide would help with teacher retention. An hour each of ELA and Math seems slightly higher than what is normally required, but certainly not an unreasonable request for a school with such poor test scores relative to demographics. |
Anonymous
Re the bolded above, Inspired Teaching has at minimum a lead teacher and an assistant teacher or teaching resident in each classroom. |
Anonymous
| Why are these requests for third grade only? |
Anonymous
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My understanding is that the third grade class has experienced serious issues with teacher attrition this year as well as last year, to the point where kids have been without a teacher for long periods of time.
I think that's why their requests for teachers for this year seem excessive -- the issue is that kids have had short term subs and been stuck with virtual learning aids for significant portions of this year, and the families want the school to prioritize getting teachers in those classrooms NOW to address learning loss that has happened this year and last due to the school's inability to retain teachers. I also suspect that is what the request for summer programming is for -- not just regular summer school/camp, but extra services for these specific kids to address deficiencies in their experience over the last two years from teacher attrition. I feel bad for the kids who are struggling through this. I know a kid at another immersion charter who had a bunch of teacher losses this year and it's so hard on the kids. A school should be able to, at a minimum, provide kids with continuity in teaching during the duration of the school year. The fact that multiple teachers are bailing in the middle of the year is really bad. |
Anonymous
I will say "assistant teacher" is a term ITS uses when other schools might call the person an aide. Teaching residents are in half the classrooms or less. ITS does have a high adult-child ratio, and it keeps teacher salaries low, for sure. But that feels fair to me. If ITS went to a more DCPS-like staffing model, they could pay more DCPS-like salaries. |
Anonymous
ITS teacher salaries are higher than Mundo. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure if that's true, how did you find out? It seems like MV was founded on the idea that parents would be willing to contribute enough money to make the budget support the kind of school that they wanted. And that's not crazy-- it's basically how Ward 3 operates. But the Achilles heel of that model is when parents get dissatisfied, the fundraising tanks, and then you're in a bad situation and enter that bad budget situation of having empty seats so less money coming in. It's hard to pull out of that kind of spiral. |
Anonymous
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Why is there a public school charter board if they can’t ensure students are taught the basics?
They should all be fired and replaced. Pathetic. As for Mundo, I’ll let the parents decide what they want to do with the administration. This is like a money laundering operation with taxpayer money. |