Feedback on Garrison from current families

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did he leave Walker Jones?

I'm guessing because he was assistant principal at Walker Jones, and was offered a promotion to principal at Garrison...

Yes, promoted. Previous principal was a placeholder (and crazy) after long-time principal retired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks, Ann, for your thorough and thoughtful response! All my neighbors with kids at Garrison speak highly of it. I'm looking forward to visiting.

How are people feeling about feeding into Cardozo? Obviously it's kind of early to tell. Any thoughts to change pattern for Garrison?

[Anonymous]

Also curious if families currently enrolled in the early childhood grades are planning to stay through 5th. There are so many DCPS that have solid early childhood programs, but where many IB families peel off after that.

[Anonymous]

I assume that new Garrison parents are similar to parents at Ross - minimal interest in attending Cardozo. Who wants to enter the afterthought middle school at one of the lowest-performing high schools in DC with bad - and declining - test scores, and an on-time graduation rate in the 40s?

I'm very committed to improving DCPS starting at elementary schools and moving upward - but no one should pretend to be excited by the prospect of attending Cardozo as it is today.

It is a wonderful building that should have wonderful things going on inside but will take a lot of work to get there.

[GarrisonPTA]

Hi, it's Ann again. To answer/comment on the replies:

Collin left Walker-Jones to be our principal. I think it's pretty obvious that someone who's an assistant principal aspires to be a principal...

For the mixed-age rooms, when your child has Ms. McLeod for PS3, she will also have Ms. McLeod for PK4. After PK4, she moves up to kindergarten and a new teacher.

We do have not have tons of families who leave before 5th grade. A few, but most do stay until 5th. I believe we have 17 kids in our 5th grade this year. Personally, unless something crazy happens, we plan to stay until 5th grade unless we win the lottery and we can afford to move to New York City.

Cardozo:
Are people excited about it as it exists now? No, I wouldn't say they are.
Are we going to ask if we can change the feeder pattern? NO. Why bother? It would never happen.
Do we have thoughts on things we think that could be implemented to make it more attractive? Yes, and a few parents have discussed it and are trying to figure out how to engage DCPS and other schools about it. We'll see. I will say that the Cardozo principal, Tanya Roane, is fantastic. She will definitely do great things there. But, yeah, it is a hard sell but families and the community need to work and get invested to make it a realistic option instead of just complaining about it.

Personally, I can only take one year at a time, and things change (relatively) quickly, so I do not spend time freaking out about what we are going to do for middle and high school. For all I know, my child may become a musical prodigy thanks to the Garrison Orchestra and want to go to Ellington, so why waste of my mental energy? I have plenty of other things to worry about.

We hope to have our open house schedule finalized in the next day or two. We also will have drop-in days during the week so you can come sit in on classes in action.

cheers
ann

[GarrisonPTA]

Hello everyone! here's our Open House schedule:

Each of the following open houses start at 10 am:
Saturday, January 25th,
Saturday February 8th, and
Friday, February 21st.

Additionally, we are having walk in tours on the following Thursdays from 10 am-11am. During this time a preschool/prek teacher will great you, share some information about Garrison, and then give you a tour of some of the classrooms, while students are in center time. The dates are:
Thursday, January 30th
Thursday, February 13th
Thursday, February 27th.

As always, if you have any questions, email us at [e-mail], or our Principal at [e-mail].

best
ann mcLeod
Garrison PTA President

[Anonymous]

PP,
What's your take on why the school struggles on the DCCAS / went backwards last year?

[Anonymous]

Garrion's open houses are scheduled, here are the dates:

Saturday, January 25th- 10 am
Saturday February 8th- 10 am
Friday, February 2st- 10 am

Additionally, we are having walk in tours on the following Thursdays from 10 am-11am. During this time an a preschool/prek teacher will great you, share some information about Garrison, and then give you a tour of some of the classrooms, while students are in center time. The dates are:
Thursday, January 30th
Thursday, February 13th
Thursday, February 27th.

[Anonymous]

I went to the Open House on Saturday and was very very impressed with Garrison. I have been to 4 other DCPS open houses for other area schools, but Garrison is our IB school so I was really hoping they could "close the deal" for me at the open house and they definitely exceeded my expectations. The new principal gets a lot of rave reviews and I will say he is just fantastic. He totally gets what needs to be done, he is up on all the new innovations etc. There were 5 teachers there - who took most of their Saturday morning to be at an open house - and they are excellent. Smart, caring, enthusiastic. The whole team just gets it. They know there is a buzz around the school and they want to work to keep it moving forward. We met for over an hour before we went on the tour. The school is being completely gutted over the summer for renovations for the new school year. We are just really excited that our neighborhood school has so many of the important ingredients for a successful school.

[Anonymous]

Oh - and I plan to go to the drop in day but was told by each of the teachers that they'd be happy to have me drop in whenever I wanted. I can't imagine a more open teaching staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its odd that no one is responding. I feel like the PTA president (or ever used to be) was always quick to jump and post helpful items, and always signed their name to it. Especially active when they were drumming up support to get their school off the closure list. So now they accomplished that and its silence...

Or maybe she's busy putting away her x-mas tree, getting back to work, getting her kids back in the groove with homework, etc. etc. etc.

What is it with the entitlement of not-even-in-school-yet parents on DCUM lately?! Everybody is supposed to drop everything and get on DCUM and answer your questions because heaven knows they have nothing better to do than cater to you you you.

I just hope you stay far away from the school my children attend, with a parent like you I can only imagine what a brat you're raising.

Wow. You have serious anger issues. I hope I am around your children so they can be around an easy going mom.

Funny. You have no problem with someone demanding a response from a PTA President over the holidays, and getting criticized for it. No, your beef is with someone who snarkily called out the sense of entitlement.

Yes, you are all the role model you imagine yourself to be... and more. Just not in the way that you think.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like their open houses are a lot more organized now. I went to the first one, and it was parents and not teachers, no principals, didn't get a feel for what the program would be like. Glad they've improved them. It's not on our list based on our open house experience.

[Anonymous]

It is interesting how many different styles of open houses there are out there. I understand your last experience with them wasn't great, but if you are still considering you might check out one of the upcoming open houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is interesting how many different styles of open houses there are out there. I understand your last experience with them wasn't great, but if you are still considering you might check out one of the upcoming open houses.

We might if we have time, but we would only do so if we are able to attend open houses for the other schools we are considering.

[GarrisonPTA]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like their open houses are a lot more organized now. I went to the first one, and it was parents and not teachers, no principals, didn't get a feel for what the program would be like. Glad they've improved them. It's not on our list based on our open house experience.

Hello there, it's Ann. I am sorry you had a bad experience with an open house. May I ask when this was? We would not plan an open house without our principal being there - if it is on a weekend we can't get into the building without him. I'm just trying to connect the dots so we can ensure this does not happen again. We are very aware that we win a lot of people over via open houses, so your report makes me very sad. Thank you.

Regarding a posting last week about the test scores - all I can tell you is what the principal explained to me. The past few years we have only had one class per grade in 3-5. In SY 2011-2012, we had a really exceptional 3rd grade. They moved up to 4th (obviously) and a new 3rd grade class came in, who just were not as strong academically. Since it is such a small sample size, it really affects the scores. We have hired additional staff this year to give kids the resources they need to get to where they should be. Hopefully that answers the question. I know how important test scores are when looking at schools, but a school is so much more than its test scores. My son is in 2nd grade and has friends in other DCPS schools and charters - I've seen what is sent home with them and many of the schools are using the exact same materials...some of our friends even say, "Michael is doing addition of three-column numbers? We're not doing that!". My niece and nephew are in 3rd and 2nd grade in Potomac Maryland, and my son is on par with them. My son is learning multiplication and my niece hasn't even started on that, and she's in 3rd grade. So, I believe 100% that my child would not be getting a better education if he were at another school.

As always, thanks for your interest in Garrison!
ann mcLeod
Garrison PTA President