Push for another bilingual middle school
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Anonymous
Jefferson is planning to add advanced Spanish instruction to accommodate the immersion students graduating from Chisolm. It's also not difficult to lottery into Jefferson from OOB (last year Jefferson offered 6th grade seats to 89% of students who matched/on waitlist on results day). Why is that not sufficient for Chisolm parents and other immersion school families on this side of the city? If the issue is with the extent of Spanish courses Jefferson plans to offer, why don't they lobby for improving upon that? IMO, asking for a whole new middle school in this financial and political climate is extremely myopic at best. |
Anonymous
| Making Chisholm 100% immersion never made sense to me, but since we have it and the program at Houston, offering some classes in Spanish at Jefferson seems like the best option. It's only a few blocks from the L'Enfant Plaza metro so that makes it simpler for kids to come from Deanwood or the SE part of Capitol Hill. I could also see some families from Cleveland's dual language program preferring Jefferson and Eastern to MacFarland and Roosevelt. |
Anonymous
Okay yes, McFarland is EOTP. As I said, I only know broad strokes. But if you look at a map, McFarland is a solid six miles from anyone in-bounds for Chisholm, and close to an hour on public transit. Would you like to explain how that is an equitable distance for Chisholm (or other similarly located) kids to travel? DCPS has already acknowledged there’s a need for a bilingual middle school other than McFarland for exactly this reason. And to the other poster who mentioned that Jefferson is going to add advanced Spanish instruction, that’s of course better than the current options! (Though will wait to see what that actually looks like.) And I kind of suspect that’s what the advocacy is really hoping for as the end result - a new middle school seems far fetched but a strong Spanish curriculum that kids can continue on with would be a good result (at least in terms of dealing with DCPS). |
Anonymous
I think the answer is a track at Jefferson, but… Chisholm to MacFarland is an hour on public transport. And that’s because Chisholm is pretty close to the EM metro, so most of its students are actually an even longer commute (especially the substantial portion coming from EOTR). That’s a horrific commute for zoned school and lots of parents wouldn’t feel comfortable letting their 6th grader do it alone (it’s not even a straight shot on one line). |
Anonymous
PP here. Okay I went and looked at the Creciendo Chisholm website. I am not impressed and continue to disagree that this is a reasonable proposal. First of all, as you mention, the vast majority of immersion elementariness on the east side are charters. Most of them already feed to DCI. The only two immersion DCPS schools on the east side are Chisholm and Houston. I see nothing on the website about Houston -- do they want an immersion middle school? They are in a part of the city that is particularly ill-served at the MS and HS level. And if they do want an immersion MS, do they want to do it with Chisholm? Btw, if you wanted to locate a MS about midway between Chisholm and Houston, it would be in the Fort Dupont neighborhood. Are the Chisholm folks okay with that, because it sounds like they are pushing for a school on the Hill. Well an immersion MS on the Hill doesn't sound like it's designed to serve all the east side immersion programs -- it sounds like a special MS for Chisholm. Yes there are immersion charters on the east side. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they all already feed into DCI? Stokes definitely does. There are other DCPS immersion schools "EOTP" though not on the east side -- a whole cluster of them in NW like Marie Reed and Bruce-Monroe. We happen to have friends at both of those schools and they are not interested in an immersion MS on the Hill -- it's too far for them. They are both considering trying to move IB for Oyster for Middle School. But honestly this brings me back around to my original point, which is this: as a parent who actually lives in the same neighborhood as Chisolm but has kids at a nearby, non-immersion school, I am just not very invested in making sure these kids can continue immersion past 5th grade and I think advocating for a new school that serves that "need" is unbelievably myopic. Capitol Hill has a large contingent of families who have invested in our IB elementary schools and who want to ensure strong MS and HS options for our kids, ideally within our own part of town. That means investing in our existing MSs and doing what we can to make Eastern a reasonable option. Chisholm has over 500 kids, and you want to take those kids OUT of their current feeder and create a bespoke option, maybe with schools in other wards. I'm just never going to get on board with that. As I stated before, public school is about pooling resources for the good of everyone. This is the opposite of that -- this is about siphoning resources from the broader population to serve a bespoke and frankly non-core educational need (immersion education is a nice-to-have -- it is not essential). That's a hard no from me. But let's get back to that Creciendo Chisholm website. On the front page of that website, I see the words "Bilingual Arts Education for All" and "Dual-language education beyond elementary school. An equitable path forward for ALL of DC." I get that the argument here is that they want an option like Oyster on the East side of the city, and that majority-black Chisholm deserves the same opportunities as majority Hispanic/White Oyster. Fair enough -- I just looked and was shocked to discover that Oyster is 3% black. In DC! That's insane. It's 50% Hispanic though. But while I know that's what those statements mean, just on face value, they are false. They aren't trying to create bilingual arts education for all. For instance, my kids and all the kids at our Hill elementary are excluded from that, despite also being a majority black school. Because they haven't been in an immersion program since PK so I'm sure would not be welcome at this new immersion school. Well that sucks. Just create some advanced Spanish options at Jefferson, the existing feeder. |
Anonymous
I also think that leaning into the current, emerging and potential Spanish offerings at Jefferson makes the most sense. The principal at Jefferson seems very supportive of making this happen. It's also actionable much more quickly than re-doing the entire plan for Chisholm's modernization and building a new school. |
Anonymous
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How can they support “bilingual arts education for all”, but then advocate for themselves? That would mean making these schools citywide open to all.
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Anonymous
| Perhaps they should lobby to let Stokes open their middle school EOTR as the planned to do before they ran into roadblocks. Thanking kids from bilingual DCPS schools was part of the planning. |
Anonymous
| dcps both wants and has capacity plans for more students at jefferson and eliot-hine. they are near-term unlikely to support turning chisholm into an oyster-adams equivalent on the east side of town. |
Anonymous
| I think that one of the problems that tends to happen in these situations is all stakeholders aren’t made aware of a seat at the decision-making table. According to one of the parents leading this, there will be a meeting for all stakeholders at Chisholm on July 21st that has not been sent out to anyone in the community. |
Anonymous
Having a meeting mid-summer is also a choice. Also who do they view as "all stakeholders"? Because if they want to use DCPS resources to open the school, which they do, then all taxpayers in the district are stakeholders. I'm sure they think it's just a private matter for Chisholm families but it's not. This would be a stupid waste of money to benefit such a small number of kids somewhat. There is absolutely no compelling reason not to simply create advanced Spanish options at Jefferson instead. If they created a good program, it could be a draw for students from other schools. It's one thing to make an existing DCPS elementary Spanish immersion if the IB families agree. Creating an immersion MS in addition to existing boundary MSs to primarily serve the interests of ONE elementary (while pulling those students from their existing feeder MS) is not in the best interests of DCPS or any other stakeholders. My kid is a really strong creative writer. I think we should use DCPS resources to create a custom creative writing program in her classroom that would meet her interest and ability. Think how great that would be for her. Sure, it wouldn't benefit anyone except her and maybe a few other students in her classroom who are interested, but it would be so great for them, let's do it. |
Anonymous
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I agree with you previous poster. They just put out a flyer announcing the meeting for July 21st at 5:00 pm. It will be attended by Councilmember Charles Allen and some DCPS leaders. There is also a virtual option to join.
I do believe that this is highly inappropriate in the manner and timing of releasing this information. However, they are using the same tactics of current leader Dr. Brann and Fereebee. The full immersion and dual-language program was voted down by majority stakeholders 1 year prior to Dr. Brann sneakily resubmitting her proposal against the wishes of the majority. |
Anonymous
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One of the key issues raised with the Creciendo group is that funding and contracts for Chisholm’s modernization have already been allocated and approved, with construction scheduled to begin in August 2026. DCPS has clearly stated that they are not interested in creating additional education campuses. Even if they were to consider such a shift, it would require restarting the entire process—essentially sending Chisholm “back to the end of the line” for modernization.
It’s also worth noting that while DCPS claims no other middle school has expressed interest in expanding dual-language programming, Dr. Brann has not formally expressed interest either. Additionally, I would like to see the actual data behind the statements on the Creciendo website claiming that “93% of Chisholm families said they would support a middle school on-site” and “96% said continuing bilingual education was important to them.” As a current Chisholm parent, I have never been surveyed. Out of the approximately 500 students at Chisholm, how many families actually participated in this survey to make up those percentages? |
Anonymous
Parker and other Councilmembers are expressing support for this. The community *may* have been excluded but certainly there must be some constituents for it if multiple councilmembers are getting involved. The middle school immersion issue is both a DCPS and charter issue. On the charter side, DCI has limited spots available. Plus not all immersion charters have feeder rights to DCI. Perhaps it was bad planning to have not foreseen that when these elementaries were created middle options would be needed. But we are where we are. The Jefferson solution sounds like a good option. |
Anonymous
What is the "this" that Parker and other Councilmembers support? A MS at Chisholm? Or expanding the Spanish program at Jefferson? I don't know why anyone with kids at another immersion school would support a MS program at Chisholm. It would wind up being like Oyster, where students in the elementary program get in no problem and kids at other immersion schools compete for like 2 lottery spots there. I know multiple families at Marie Reed who have moved IB for Oyster to get there kids into the MS program, which is not a great situation. If Chisholm wants to advocate for an east-side immersion MS, they should be advocating either for a stand-alone school (which I think is a non-starter) or an immersion track at Jefferson, which could actually serve multiple schools and wouldn't just be a little bespoke program for Chisholm students. I also want to throw out the idea that it's okay for kids who attended immersion in PK-5 to not continue with immersion. I get why you would want it, but I don't actually think it's important enough that the district HAS to provide it. As long as appropriately leveled language courses are offered at the MS and HS level, these kids will still benefit from early immersion, and parents can pursue other immersion opportunities for their kids. The vast majority of DCPS students don't get ANY immersion experience, so I just don't view the lack of immersion opportunities at the MS and HS level as a problem. Not when we have much bigger fish to fry, like creating tracked math and ELA programs at the MS level and improving the academic quality at the HS level across the city. Immersion is a side project, not a central goal of the school district. Immersion parents get too entitled about this. |