New bilingual "green" charter in Dupont accepting apps in January, any info?

[Anonymous]

yeah your kid will be a guinea pig but the trade off is that most likely he/she will get in, as opposed to other proven programs where most likely he/she won't get in. Just go for it.

[Anonymous]

Re the Montessori Academy's targeting of low SES status, don't Bridges and Appletree also target low-SES kids with the idea of closing the achievement gap? Yet they are popular on this board.

E.L. Haynes, E.W. Stokes and LAMB were also created to serve low-income , minority and "underserved" communities, and today you have to line up behind 300 other middle class over-achiever parents to get your kids into those schools. I'm sure that saying a new charter will target low SES kids is a good way to help get charter board approval. Or, maybe one could argue that middle class kids east of the park are an "underserved" community --- can't get in OOB west of the park anymore but don't really get the kind teaching they need at the east of the park schools that have to focus on the underprepared low-SES and ELS kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also noticed grammar errors in the Spanish section of the Mundo Verde website.

Re the Montessori Academy's targeting of low SES status, don't Bridges and Appletree also target low-SES kids with the idea of closing the achievement gap? Yet they are popular on this board.

Bridges is an inclusion school. They target students with special needs. They seem to pretty popular outside that niche though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Re the Montessori Academy's targeting of low SES status, don't Bridges and Appletree also target low-SES kids with the idea of closing the achievement gap? Yet they are popular on this board.

E.L. Haynes, E.W. Stokes and LAMB were also created to serve low-income , minority and "underserved" communities, and today you have to line up behind 300 other middle class over-achiever parents to get your kids into those schools. I'm sure that saying a new charter will target low SES kids is a good way to help get charter board approval.

agree with this

Or, maybe one could argue that middle class kids east of the park are an "underserved" community --- can't get in OOB west of the park anymore but don't really get the kind teaching they need at the east of the park schools that have to focus on the underprepared low-SES and ELS kids.

agree with this, too!

[Anonymous]

PP here who said this sounds option sounds promising. After reading some of the later posts I went back to the website and there are grammatical errors in the brief portion written in Spanish. Sort of disheartening since you would hope they'd put a lot of effort into getting that right. Still going to give them the benefit of the doubt though and check out the informational sessions whenever they happen.

[Anonymous]

Typos in school materials drive me nuts, but I've learned not to read too much into those things. At our school there's such an emphasis on what is going on in the classroom and the materials for parents/adults are secondary. They simply do not put the time in, for better or worse. Things will improve.

Several years ago I actually volunteered to proofread all school bulletins and things got much better. They finally hired someone in the administrator's office who is a good writer and now they are fine on their own. Still a few typos here and there but way way way better than the beginning. Our child's school experience has been great and her teachers are excellent. The typos on the web site have nothing to do with that, although one might think they were connected.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry, I think you should be capable of running a spell check before you send home a memo or create a website.

I think educators should be able to spell "kindergarten," "principal," and "administrator."

Though in all fairness, the latter 2 examples were from DCPS. And I say this as a DCPS parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Typos in school materials drive me nuts, but I've learned not to read too much into those things. At our school there's such an emphasis on what is going on in the classroom and the materials for parents/adults are secondary.

But in this case there is nothing going on in the classroom yet.

[Anonymous]

11:12 here. Exactly PP, you have nothing to go on but a web site. It's all a leap of faith, that's for sure. But I wouldn't rule it out just based on typos. If you meet the leaders and they have a good curriculum and you sense that they would do right by your kid, that's a lot of it right there. You can fix typos but you can't fix people's inherent values and attitudes.

In our case, there have been memos with typos in English and Spanish for years from the administration, and web sites that are laughably out of date. In fact, I think they misspelled the word "English" on the web site at one point. But that's not what happened in the classroom. The teachers were sticklers for excellent grammar and spelling in English and Spanish in the class; you would rarely see anything there that contained a misspelled word or grammar problem. My child

Yes, typos can drive you crazy, but that is not enough to rule out the school. Rule it out for other reasons if need be, but not typos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry, I think you should be capable of running a spell check before you send home a memo or create a website.

I think educators should be able to spell "kindergarten," "principal," and "administrator."

Though in all fairness, the latter 2 examples were from DCPS. And I say this as a DCPS parent.

Looks like someone told them about the errors...looks like they have corrected it.

I agree with you

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if there is a way to obtain more information about this school? All I see on the website is info about their plan, Facebook page, and Adams Morgan Day. That's well and nice, but shouldn't they be having information meetings/open houses (though the physical location is likely not completed), and providing contact names and email addresses? I've searched the web, but came up empty-handed. Is it normal for organizers of new PCSs to be so silent a year before opening?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dupont? I had heard Adams Morgan, but secretly wished fir Ward 6.

Wouldn't it be nice if those of us living in Ward 6 got some love?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know if there is a way to obtain more information about this school? All I see on the website is info about their plan, Facebook page, and Adams Morgan Day. That's well and nice, but shouldn't they be having information meetings/open houses (though the physical location is likely not completed), and providing contact names and email addresses? I've searched the web, but came up empty-handed. Is it normal for organizers of new PCSs to be so silent a year before opening?

Sign up for their updates and when they schedule open houses they can let you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know if there is a way to obtain more information about this school? All I see on the website is info about their plan, Facebook page, and Adams Morgan Day. That's well and nice, but shouldn't they be having information meetings/open houses (though the physical location is likely not completed), and providing contact names and email addresses? I've searched the web, but came up empty-handed. Is it normal for organizers of new PCSs to be so silent a year before opening?

It's not unusual for recently approved charters to have limited web info. Yu Ying was similar and actually didn't have space until fairly close to opening. I'd never judge an elementary school on it's website. Check out a charter's application on charter school board website. (Also kind of crap in format, but web usability is not their priority. Nor should it be IMHO.) School websites are kind of like emails from teachers. I was psyched to see daily update PDF with photos in private preschool until I realized the teacher (masters degree and all) was better at Facebook than classroom management. Your young child will never see the website. Hopefully the school staff won't be spending valuable face time with your child updating twitter.