Want to start a charter school with me?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, so were JKLMO always successful schools, or did parents at some point decide to stay put? I know that the school on Capitol Hill that rallied parents together is having success. It can happen. I'm not willing to give up yet.

Yes, JKLMO were always successful. These schools have been in the wealthy part of the city since they opened. They never had to "turn around."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:17:44 back. Personally, I love having options, and as a result of the many options, our family has landed somewhere very good for us. What I'm suggesting is that if/when a group of families in a neighborhood organize and try to change the culture of a neighborhood school, one of the things that I have seen happen, at least 2x, is the initial group does not stay with critical mass for long enough for that neighborhood school to change course.

One goes parochial, one gets into Two Rivers, OOB JKLM for another, and pretty soon, the neighborhood school is only incrementally better. The options make it very difficult to sustain a change, and especially to sustain it beyond 2nd / 3rd grade. Each individual decision makes sense (my family's did), the overall effect is a version of "tragedy of the commons" for the "flailing schools."

ita with this and have seen a version of this happen. you need substantial numbers of students to make an impact. but they are doing it Ross and making a good go of it at Cooke.

[Anonymous]

So you're saying that a neighborhood that now is home to tremendous wealth can't support a local school? Hmmmm....OK, so we can all keep killing ourselves (driving 1/2 way across the city) and our pocketbooks (purchasing houses west of the park) trying to get into JKLMO, we can send our kids to charters miles away from the neighborhood in areas that aren't necessarily any safer than where we live (Haynes), or we can stay put and make the neighborhood schools something we're proud of.

Let's face it, you're never going to be able to start a charter in this neighborhood because the rents will kill you. Plus, even if you could set up a school within walking distance, what good does that really do anyone in the long run? Sure, the founder's kids get in, but then the school fills up in the future with kids out of the neighborhood and the long-term options associated with AM, CH, MtP don't change. No thanks; I'll stay with Cooke. My kids are happy there, the teachers are great, and we're going to make it work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with "turning around" a school is that every individual family has available to it many options. A school is what it is right now. I had an experience with a committed group of parents trying to change a DCPS school. There were all kinds of reasons why it failed, . . . DCPS budget, lack of strong principal leadership, resistance from entrenched teachers.

I think one of the major reasons that changing the course of the course of the school did not succeed was that everyone has options -- lots and lots of options. When each individual family weighs the option of a current school with potential against a school that is already providing the program you want for your children, families start to leave. It was depressing to see the families leaving, then we left and I feel much better. . . .

I hope the folks working to improve Cooke have a great success story in a few years. Sounds like a great facility, really good principal. But one by one, as the involved parents get the late September phone call from a desirable charter school, as OOB slots are more available for 3rd graders, school loss momentum. . . . it is really hard. . . .

Yikes! Hope you're not suggesting that options are a bad thing! The wealthy always have options ($30K per year private school). For the rest of us? Charter schools and OOB are options - and options are a good thing. Individual children are more important than flailing schools. As was posted above, 31% of DC public school students actually attend their neighborhood school. That means over 2/3 of us are opting out. Suggesting there's something wrong with all of those individual decisions is down right delusional.

It's not delusional to take the con side of the argument here -- Horace Mann did it long, long ago. Imagine a world with no privates, no charters, just local schools. How good would Ross be in that world? Cooke? Bancroft? Hearst? Tubman? Granted, the terrible schools servicing the economic underclass today still would be terrible, but we'd have a lot more fabulous schools in DC than we do today, and they'd all be local.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you're saying that a neighborhood that now is home to tremendous wealth can't support a local school? Hmmmm....OK, so we can all keep killing ourselves (driving 1/2 way across the city) and our pocketbooks (purchasing houses west of the park) trying to get into JKLMO, we can send our kids to charters miles away from the neighborhood in areas that aren't necessarily any safer than where we live (Haynes), or we can stay put and make the neighborhood schools something we're proud of.

Let's face it, you're never going to be able to start a charter in this neighborhood because the rents will kill you. Plus, even if you could set up a school within walking distance, what good does that really do anyone in the long run? Sure, the founder's kids get in, but then the school fills up in the future with kids out of the neighborhood and the long-term options associated with AM, CH, MtP don't change. No thanks; I'll stay with Cooke. My kids are happy there, the teachers are great, and we're going to make it work.

OP here. Seeing all these positive posts from Cooke parents gives me heart. I would really rather put my efforts into a local school than start a new one, but the negativity on all the Cooke threads (and Bancroft, Thomson, etc) make me lose hope. Perhaps we have managed to hide this thread from the Cooke "troll" and therefore it has been a place were actual comments from real Cooke parents are made without interference from the nay-sayers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with "turning around" a school is that every individual family has available to it many options. A school is what it is right now. I had an experience with a committed group of parents trying to change a DCPS school. There were all kinds of reasons why it failed, . . . DCPS budget, lack of strong principal leadership, resistance from entrenched teachers.

I think one of the major reasons that changing the course of the course of the school did not succeed was that everyone has options -- lots and lots of options. When each individual family weighs the option of a current school with potential against a school that is already providing the program you want for your children, families start to leave. It was depressing to see the families leaving, then we left and I feel much better. . . .

I hope the folks working to improve Cooke have a great success story in a few years. Sounds like a great facility, really good principal. But one by one, as the involved parents get the late September phone call from a desirable charter school, as OOB slots are more available for 3rd graders, school loss momentum. . . . it is really hard. . . .

Yikes! Hope you're not suggesting that options are a bad thing! The wealthy always have options ($30K per year private school). For the rest of us? Charter schools and OOB are options - and options are a good thing. Individual children are more important than flailing schools. As was posted above, 31% of DC public school students actually attend their neighborhood school. That means over 2/3 of us are opting out. Suggesting there's something wrong with all of those individual decisions is down right delusional.

It's not delusional to take the con side of the argument here -- Horace Mann did it long, long ago. Imagine a world with no privates, no charters, just local schools. How good would Ross be in that world? Cooke? Bancroft? Hearst? Tubman? Granted, the terrible schools servicing the economic underclass today still would be terrible, but we'd have a lot more fabulous schools in DC than we do today, and they'd all be local.

A world with no choices, where the state decides for you exactly what you will do (your children MUST ATTEND this school, no exceptions) sounds like a terrifying statist dictatorship to me. Once you've decided where my child should go to school, why stop there? Are you going to tell her what she can eat and what she can read too? Why allow her any choices at all since you know best?

No thank you!

My local school doesn't offer language immersion and that is very, very important to me. Our local school also isn't parochial and that is very, very important to my neighbor. Our local school is not diverse, and that is very, very important to one of my best friends. I'm not interested in making Cooke or Bancroft "fabulous," I'm interested in making the choice that is best for my child based on MY priorities, not yours and not DCPS's.

Philosophically, the idea of denying people choices and telling them exactly what important decisions they need to make in their lives offends the very concept of liberty.

[Anonymous]

OP, would you mind sharing, anonymously of course, some of the feedback you got by email? Maybe a Ward 1 summit or seminars or something with public and charter options is in order. (troll-free )

[Anonymous]

I can think of a couple of things that would make recruiting volunteers easier.

#1 Think about what you'd like your school concept to be and put THAT out there. Just offering a Ward 1 school isn't much of a motivator. After all, if you're trying to escape the Ward 1 schools what would make your school very different? It's just another Ward 1 school after all... But a school that has focus that people can buy into may generate a lot of interest. What kind of school would you like to send your child to?

What about a Math & Music program? Commit to a curriculum with a strong math focus, and start teaching children to read music and play an instrument at an early age. I know I'd be VERY interested in a school that wanted to teach math well, and if the music portion helps create buy-in from the student perspective then so much the better. A lot of people recognize cognitive and neurological relationships between math and music. There are some interesting resources out there to draw inspiration from.

Or, what about a year-round school program? That's what they're doing at Haynes to great effect. Why re-invent the wheel if there's a concept out there that works well and the demand exceeds the supply?

#2 Add your support to a charter school that's just getting off the ground. Contact the PCSB and get information on the new charters that have been approved. Maybe one of them is a concept that you really like. Why not contact them and see if you can help? They surely have a lot of work to do and may very well welcome someone to help get it off the ground. Then you'd be in as part of the founding group and you could add your ideas to the program.

[Anonymous]

There was little response, but I think that is an issue of these boards and the daunting nature of the task. In Columbia Heights, Petworth, MtP, Adam's Morgan I think there is a lot of interest in what to do about schools. Look at all the little kids in the neighborhood -- everybody can't be planning to move.

Perhaps, Ward 1 Charter school is the wrong approach. But rather "Ward 1 Schools" or and Parents Google Group where we could really talk and get to know each other (and that would exclude the trolls).

The [e-mail] e-mail is still open. If folks want to e-mail and maybe just use it to start a google group to explore options and exchange ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about a Math & Music program? Commit to a curriculum with a strong math focus, and start teaching children to read music and play an instrument at an early age. I know I'd be VERY interested in a school that wanted to teach math well, and if the music portion helps create buy-in from the student perspective then so much the better. A lot of people recognize cognitive and neurological relationships between math and music. There are some interesting resources out there to draw inspiration from.

I think this is an incredibly cool idea! If there was a "Washington Math & Music" school, I would definitely look at for my children! OP, have you posted to any neighborhood listserves??

[Anonymous]

The leaving isn't just an east of the park phenomenon, it's an issue at schools like JKLM too. In the past some have dropped by an entire class of kids in 4th. A lot of kids bolt for the privates or MC in while the parents lobby each other to hang together. A lot of new kids come in and social groups are disrupted. It's like an endless game of musical chairs.

My kids are young but we hope to give Deal a chance when the time comes. We did OOB (a lot of folks do get in in early fall, you need to keep calling, DS has I think 5-6 OOB kids in his class, none of whom got in in the lottery) but we would have loved more options, ideally a neighborhood school. Wishing you all the best, math and music sounds like a great idea.

[Anonymous]

The idea of a math & music charter sounds exciting.

However, I wonder how a charter school can maintain an academically challenging curriculum while simultaneously attracting a sufficient number of students to remain financially viable. Ultimately, don't you have to weaken the curriculum?

[Anonymous]

Do you have to weaken the curriculum? Does Latin weaken its cirriculum?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have to weaken the curriculum? Does Latin weaken its cirriculum?

PP, can you elaborate? I can't tell what you mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have to weaken the curriculum? Does Latin weaken its cirriculum?

PP, is Latin academically challenging? Would a math & music immersion school be more or less challenging?