moving to DC: Kalorama public schools?

[Anonymous]

P.S. I was at Oyster last year when there were efforts underway to oust the principal and I did not hear about ithem for almost a year. So not hearing about something is not always meaningful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard directly from a current (and long-time) Oyster parent with several children at the school that the charter talk at Oyster continues. The principal before Marta (Arturo) was actively trying to make it charter. It seems to be an issue that never gets enough traction to go anywhere but it never entirely goes away. I think it's something prospective families should know about (the fact that it arises as an issue, as a possibility, even a remote one).

they would not kick out current family should the school go charter (which I don't think it will - magent, maybe, but not charter). current families would be grandfathered in. i can guarantee you that woodley park families will fight tooth and nail against both charter and magnet status. and they usually get what they want (like a new principal)

[Anonymous]

I'm an Adams Morgan / Kalorama parent who would also fight against it. We've had to make many sacrifices to buy in-boundary. Having made that investment, it isn't in our best interest to lose something that draws eager families to our neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

This is such a red herring. DCPS bleeds more students to charters every year, the absolute LAST thing they're going to allow is for one of the jewels in the crown to go charter too. Do you think Rhee & Reinoso wouldn't be wise to it and squash this like a bug? (Not to mention all the in-bounds families whose property values are propped up by their proximity to Oyster?!) Seriously I'm surprised anyone is worried about this.

[Anonymous]

It might be a red herring but I think anyone joining the community should be aware that the idea has been discussed for years. I agree it would probably never happen, for the reasons noted in the last several posts, but I would hate to for anyone new to the community to get blindsided by this as a topic of discussion like I was six years ago.

I've long felt that someone should launch a charter school with Oyster as a partner, so the neighborhood would keep the school and more students would be able to study at a program like Oyster's. Oyster Dos if you will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It might be a red herring but I think anyone joining the community should be aware that the idea has been discussed for years. I agree it would probably never happen, for the reasons noted in the last several posts, but I would hate to for anyone new to the community to get blindsided by this as a topic of discussion like I was six years ago.

I've long felt that someone should launch a charter school with Oyster as a partner, so the neighborhood would keep the school and more students would be able to study at a program like Oyster's. Oyster Dos if you will.

Well, that's being done actually. In the sense that there are charter schools that offer a high-level immersion curricula: Elsie Whitlow Stokes offers a French Immersion track and a Spanish Immersion track, LAMB offers Spanish Immersion Montessori, and Washington Yu Ying offers Mandarin Immersion I.B. I doubt you'll see a charter school partner specifically with a DCPS school when they've already got a wealth of best practices models to choose from. After all, it would potentially chain them to the DCPS bureaucracy and administration that being a charter is supposed to free them from.

[Anonymous]

I did not mean partner at the administrative level, I meant partner as mentor for several years or whatever made sense at the gate. Also the new school would use its affiliation with Oyster to attract students.

Of course Oyster's going through a sea change, revamping its teacher model and grappling with the middle school so if this would not be happening anytime soon.

Yes there are plenty of models from which to draw. It's great to see so many new bilingual programs cropping up in D.C.