Does anybody know what is going on with Crossway Montessori Charter School?

[Anonymous]

Agree that the county is doing everything it can to discourage charters which makes me really mad as someone whose home middle school and high school are totally unacceptable.

But here the worst the county seems to have done was to simply let Crossway's crazy plan sink on its own. Reading the news about their funding model revealed they were counting on a huge chunk of donations to make up for the fact that the county's schooling does not include most 4s and includes no 3s but the charter included both rather than just start with K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My impression is that MCPS is not ready to have charters and wanted to run it like a regular ES which defeats the whole purpose of having a charter.There were many issues with funding from MCPS and the charter. There's a reason MOCO does not have charter schools- they don't really want them.

This is absolutely untrue, but it is the line that the school's administration is holding to in order to shift blame away from themselves and the fact that the school has been terribly mismanaged. Crossway knew what they were getting into when when they established the Charter. And while I agree that it was inane for MCPS to approve the Charter in the first place, I do note that they expressed several times concern over the funding, administration, the ability to hold a fair an open lottery, and separation of public and private funds. The Charter was rejected the first time, and was only approved after several promises from Crossway, including that they would definitely be able to cover the expenses of the non-funded children (a sentiment that was reiterated this past July in before the MoCo Education Committee).

In the original letter home to parents about the closing of the school, the CEO blamed parents for not contributing more. Yet now, she is blaming MCPS and has stated that the Crossway Board will consider keeping the school open IF there can be an agreement to allow them more autonomy in their use of MCPS (public tax-payer) funds. It is also worth noting that parents received no indication of any potential for the school to close until it had already been decided.

This is really the just the tip of the iceberg as far as issues with this school.

While I agree that the teachers are good, I also don't think that they are able to give their all to the student, due to constant administrative issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"However, the management is a nightmare -- strange, ego-driven, rigid, and completely unwilling to look at parents' perspective.

One year they suddenly raised fees for the after care portion by over 100% with no notice. When a group of parents strenuously objected, the response was that they didn't really approve of after care anyway and shouldn't we have a parent staying home with the kids after they finished the Montessori program anyway?
"

I have heard this many times now about that school. Your annecdote about the after care fees is horrifying to me since it indicates they look down on working parents. I don't want my school critidizing my family's choices or making life harder than it needs to be. Why anyone would sign up there after the huge mismanagement of the charter is mystifying.

Yes, it was particularly interesting in light of the Montessori philosophy that kids ages 2 and a half and older should be in the Montessori program five days a week (this is indeed part of the philosophy). So they insisted that kids enroll for five days -- fair enough, but parents who want to do that are typically working parents who need childcare for the day. People aren't going to pay those fees for the full day if they are sacrificing income to stay home with kids.

But the "head of school" was quite contemptuous of workiing mothers and didn't really try to hide that.

Which mothers don't work??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My impression is that MCPS is not ready to have charters and wanted to run it like a regular ES which defeats the whole purpose of having a charter.There were many issues with funding from MCPS and the charter. There's a reason MOCO does not have charter schools- they don't really want them.

This is absolutely untrue, but it is the line that the school's administration is holding to in order to shift blame away from themselves and the fact that the school has been terribly mismanaged. Crossway knew what they were getting into when when they established the Charter. And while I agree that it was inane for MCPS to approve the Charter in the first place, I do note that they expressed several times concern over the funding, administration, the ability to hold a fair an open lottery, and separation of public and private funds. The Charter was rejected the first time, and was only approved after several promises from Crossway, including that they would definitely be able to cover the expenses of the non-funded children (a sentiment that was reiterated this past July in before the MoCo Education Committee).

In the original letter home to parents about the closing of the school, the CEO blamed parents for not contributing more. Yet now, she is blaming MCPS and has stated that the Crossway Board will consider keeping the school open IF there can be an agreement to allow them more autonomy in their use of MCPS (public tax-payer) funds. It is also worth noting that parents received no indication of any potential for the school to close until it had already been decided.

This is really the just the tip of the iceberg as far as issues with this school.

While I agree that the teachers are good, I also don't think that they are able to give their all to the student, due to constant administrative issues.

I don't know why the board is bothering with going through the motions of maybe keeping the charter school open. It appears the funding model isn't working. Why doesn't the charter school have its own board and leadership?

[Anonymous]

The charter school was required by MCPS to have it's own board(which parents never knew about!), but the admin never put it in place. They're not really into transparency or sharing information or the decision making process. Seems like they wanted county money, but refused to actually operate like a county school. No PTA, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My impression is that MCPS is not ready to have charters and wanted to run it like a regular ES which defeats the whole purpose of having a charter.There were many issues with funding from MCPS and the charter. There's a reason MOCO does not have charter schools- they don't really want them.

This is absolutely untrue, but it is the line that the school's administration is holding to in order to shift blame away from themselves and the fact that the school has been terribly mismanaged. Crossway knew what they were getting into when when they established the Charter. And while I agree that it was inane for MCPS to approve the Charter in the first place, I do note that they expressed several times concern over the funding, administration, the ability to hold a fair an open lottery, and separation of public and private funds. The Charter was rejected the first time, and was only approved after several promises from Crossway, including that they would definitely be able to cover the expenses of the non-funded children (a sentiment that was reiterated this past July in before the MoCo Education Committee).

In the original letter home to parents about the closing of the school, the CEO blamed parents for not contributing more. Yet now, she is blaming MCPS and has stated that the Crossway Board will consider keeping the school open IF there can be an agreement to allow them more autonomy in their use of MCPS (public tax-payer) funds. It is also worth noting that parents received no indication of any potential for the school to close until it had already been decided.

This is really the just the tip of the iceberg as far as issues with this school.

While I agree that the teachers are good, I also don't think that they are able to give their all to the student, due to constant administrative issues.

I heard that MCPS did not give full funding for the 5 year olds because of mixed age classrooms so the charter only received the % funding of 5 year olds per class- 37%. This made it unsustainable. The charter thought if it had full funding for 5 year olds, it could offset the shortfall for 3's and 4's with fundraising. The charter did not know MOCO would not fully fund the 5 year olds even though Montessori is mixed age grouping and both parties knew that when the agreement was made.

Also public school funds never go directly to the school, the system pays directly. For charters, the difference is that schools have autonomy with how the money is budgeted. So $ that MOCO designates for building supplies can be moved around in a charter. MOCO did not allow the charter that flexibility.

[Anonymous]

"the charter only received the % funding of 5 year olds per class- 37%. "

Hunh??? How is this not giving "full funding" for 5s? If about 1/3 of the class is 5 year olds in the program, wouldn't that be how many kids MoCo should pay for? I 100% think we need charters in MoCo (primarily as a MS and HS alternative) but I don't think that charters can be an excuse to try to bill MoCo for educating kids that would not normally be in the public school system - such as 3s and non-FARMS 4s. To try to argue that MCPS pulled a fast one on the school by not paying for the preschoolers is just nuts. the school could have chosen to simply have the younger ages be paying families and the 5s and up be charter kids - the school was the one who insisted charter kids had to start at 3. The only fault MCPS has here is that they did not demand that the school do more to explain how in the world they planned to fundraiser such a huge portion of its budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"the charter only received the % funding of 5 year olds per class- 37%. "

Hunh??? How is this not giving "full funding" for 5s? If about 1/3 of the class is 5 year olds in the program, wouldn't that be how many kids MoCo should pay for? I 100% think we need charters in MoCo (primarily as a MS and HS alternative) but I don't think that charters can be an excuse to try to bill MoCo for educating kids that would not normally be in the public school system - such as 3s and non-FARMS 4s. To try to argue that MCPS pulled a fast one on the school by not paying for the preschoolers is just nuts. the school could have chosen to simply have the younger ages be paying families and the 5s and up be charter kids - the school was the one who insisted charter kids had to start at 3. The only fault MCPS has here is that they did not demand that the school do more to explain how in the world they planned to fundraiser such a huge portion of its budget.

You clearly don't understand how funding works. MOCO only funded 37% of the per pupil funding for 5 year olds because the 5 year olds only make up 37% of the mixed age class. So if MOCO gives approx. $13,900 per child funding for 5 year olds for kindergarten, you have no problem if they only give 37% of $13,900 for 5 year olds to the charter? The charter did NOT receive 100% of the funding for 5 year olds. No one is arguing that MOCO pulled a fast one by not paying for 3's and 4's. What MOCO did was not fully fund the 5 year olds.

[Anonymous]

Why didn't the charter school cite this payment discrepancy in their reason for closing? This is certainly not what parents were told.

[Anonymous]

That is exactly what parents were told. All charter parents were told about the issues with not receiving full funding for 5 year olds from MCPS in a meeting about the closing of the charter school. No one ever said they expected MCPS to suddenly fund 3 and 4 year olds. The charter did expect to be fully funded for 5 year olds. MCPS did not see it that way because of the mixed aged grouping in Montessori.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is exactly what parents were told. All charter parents were told about the issues with not receiving full funding for 5 year olds from MCPS in a meeting about the closing of the charter school. No one ever said they expected MCPS to suddenly fund 3 and 4 year olds. The charter did expect to be fully funded for 5 year olds. MCPS did not see it that way because of the mixed aged grouping in Montessori.

They were given full funding for 5 year olds. They received almost $700,000 for this school year. The Washington Post reported on their funding in June.

[Anonymous]

They called today and said that they were not accepting new applications. The woman was acting strange. Never said they were closing. I knew already.

[Anonymous]

That fits their secretive administrative culture. It's just too bad. Incredible teachers but the administration is horrendous.

[Anonymous]

They aren't closing, they are going back to being a private school. They're just ending the charter and their association with MCPS.

[Anonymous]

That's probably why they said they weren't taking applications to the charter school instead of saying they were closing. The school is taking applications to the private Montessori school.