MacFarland MS?
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Anonymous
That one we can blame on Congress and how the original charter legislation was written. Agree with your sentiment though. |
Anonymous
This is exciting news! Thanks for taking questions for the meeting. I will share my scenario and question related to it. My kids are in one of the Spanish DCI feeder schools, but West is our neighborhood school. While we plan to continue to DCI, you never know how our plans may change in 5 years (1st year for middle school for my family) and this program is exciting as another option. We would be guaranteed a spot to McFarland as our neighborhood school, but my question is would we be guaranteed a spot in the dual language program, residing within the boundaries of non-dual language feeder school? Thanks. |
Anonymous
Especially with some of those feeder schools, unless the dual language program is like a school within a school. |
Anonymous
To quote you from the letter, "...students enrolled in dual language programs at DCPS elementary schools will be guaranteed a seat" [though they "will have to apply"] Other students "may apply for a seat... but must be at grade-level for Spanish reading, writing and speaking." |
Anonymous
I wouldn't call it copying DCI. Spanish DCPS elementaries have been around longer than DCI/feeder schools. But I agree with your second part. As a charter parent I say GOOD for Macfarland!! How exciting! |
Anonymous
I totally agree on this - from charter perspective, more options is better. And the truth is, done right, this can be like a charter. Strong sense of what the school is about, tight focus on a starting group, by starting with a language cohort and then expanding year over year. |
Anonymous
| When can we stop calling it Unicorn MS? Now? |
jsteele
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Now we can call it Unicornio MS. 
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calexander
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I might interpret your question just as the followup poster did, but I will be sure to ask anyway. |
calexander
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They sent the members of the cabinet a survey asking our opinion on the school colors and mascot. I just submitted "Unicorns" as my response. 
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calexander
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Isn't this one of the selling points of the charter movement? That they could be innovation labs that the traditional schools could learn from? Not to mention that other jurisdictions already do this. It is not groundbreaking, but it is encouraging to see DCPS take the next logical step after setting up all of those dual language programs years ago. |
Anonymous
I am confused here - no snark at all - I guess I don't get the DCI model as well as I thought I did. Don't you think most MS spots will be taken by students coming in from the feeder schools? Isn't that part of the frenzy to get your kid into MV, etc in the early grades so they are all squared away? And, wouldn't it be crazy for a family to enroll their kid in a language immersion school in later years when they don't know the language? Talk about setting your kid up for, if not failure, significant challenge. How many non-feeder-school students do they anticipate getting in via lottery? |
Anonymous
Once McFarland opens the Education Campuses will cease to exist. DCPS aims to eliminate ECs. MacFarland is a large campus. Have you seen it? |
Anonymous
quite a few---there is such a dearth of good quality middle schools in DC that parents will send their kids to an immersion school with no immersion. DCI HAS to take in lottery kids and can't insist that applicants have adequate language skills (unlike DCPS which can do whatever it wants) so it is forced to have multiple language levels. |
Anonymous
as the feeder schools mature do you anticipate this being as much of an issue? are they building DCI to be bigger than its feeder patterns? If so, I'm not sure how upset one can get since they are building it for more students. If not, I guess it's showing a challenge in how they retain these students. |