CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

[Anonymous]

Great post 18:27. Thank you.

The longer this thread goes on, the more I appreciate Mary and the other parents who founded YY and proposing DCI. They are mostly non-Chinese yet had the vision and follow through to find a Mandarin immersion school in DC. Pretty amazing.

We love the school, too, and haven't heard any complaints from other parents but we have a rising K. The school has been amazing for our DC and he has SNs. Very happy at YY

[Anonymous]

^^ I'm one of the small number of people talking about the possibility of starting a second Chinese immersion school in DC. We've met via the Chinatown Community Cultural Center and/or the Rockville Cantonese School. Most of us have babies and toddlers and, as things stand, aren't planning to put our kids' names in the YY lottery for reasons discussed. One family pulled out.

All we're doing right now is talking and fact finding. I don't disagree with what this thoughtful poster is saying. There aren't as many 50 stand-alone Chinese immersion schools in the country yet, but a plethora of school-within-a-school programs are indeed springing up. CA, UT and NC are the state leaders in the field.

What we're studying at this very preliminary stage is how the one-way immersion programs, like YY, and the dual, or two-way, immersion programs differ in their approaches to teaching and learning. We're not experts, we're learners.

A "strong connection to China" and bilingualism in a dialect are not mutually exclusive of course, but they are two different things. For example, a dual-immersion administrator I spoke to at one of the longest-standing schools (few existed a decade ago) talked about how much faster kids who are fully bilingual in a dialect can learn Mandarin than kids who come in knowing little or no Chinese (although they may come from families who've lived on the Mainland). Thus, there are dual-immersion schools allowing fully bilingual dialect speakers as old as 11 to enter their regular immersion program after a very intensive Mandarin summer program.

DC Charter law seems to have laid down rigid rules governing admission and administration that don't work well for every school and family. So perhaps DCPS would provide fertile ground for a two-way immersion program. Perhaps not. We're not experts on how DCPS runs its immersion schools either. We're simply seeing what we can learn for now.

We'll get back to you eventually. For now, we'd rather not defend ourselves here. All that's clear is that YY isn't for us, and some other bilingual families, and we aren't for you under the school's current administration. It's not a problem, it's a possibility in a city that won't suffer from an over-abundance of Mandarin speakers anytime soon...If we succeed, and DCI wants us, peachy keen.

[Anonymous]

good luck to the bilingual parents thinking that dual immersion would be the way to go. the endless hostility toward those who actually grew up speaking Chinese, and the cultural cluelessness of Yu Ying parents (who give the strong impression of only having heard of 2 Chinese dialects, Mandarin & Cantonese) on dcum makes it easy to understand why you seek greener pastures....i have a sinking feeling that most of us looking for another viable ms/hs charter are going to wind up feeling the same way aobut dci.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:good luck to the bilingual parents thinking that dual immersion would be the way to go. the endless hostility toward those who actually grew up speaking Chinese, and the cultural cluelessness of Yu Ying parents (who give the strong impression of only having heard of 2 Chinese dialects, Mandarin & Cantonese) on dcum makes it easy to understand why you seek greener pastures....i have a sinking feeling that most of us looking for another viable ms/hs charter are going to wind up feeling the same way aobut dci.

That's what you got out of all of this? Do you also read books to your children such as, "Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and teach him/her that the moral of the story is that oppression of pigeons?

[Anonymous]

Hey, c'mon--the pigeon has feelings too!

[Anonymous]

"It's not a problem, it's a possibility in a city that won't suffer from an over-abundance of Mandarin speakers anytime soon..."

Sheesh, the moral of the story is see the possibilities. I strongly suspect that they will remain in MoCo for most of the bilingual crowd. Curricular choices in DCPS AND DC charter are politicized to an absurd degree. MoCo focuses only on language acquisition, and that means more than a tiny number of native speakers in the mix at every immersion ES. I'm not optimistic about DCI's prospects either, probably OK for middle school, but a competitive high school is highly unlikely to emerge from this complex and PC calculus. A really savvy group of founders would do everything they could think of to attract scores of Tiger parents, including by asking DCPS to hand them a benign dual-immersion ES feeder on a silver platter. They'd hire consultants with experience at Richard Montgomery's first-rate IB program, loaded with Asians.

[Anonymous]

I can't be bothered to read the 21 pages of this thread: way too much drama.

I can't help observing there are maybe a dozen or so Chinese immersion programs in the US. That leads me to think that you should go ahead and start a school, it's obviously easy to do. That's why so many other districts have succeeded, right?

No seriously, do it.

Until you came along, probably nobody even thought to sit around bitching on the internet instead of actually creating something. You should keep doing that - it's the epitome of innovation! Thanks for being part of the DC public/public charter community of schools - you're a jewel.

[Anonymous]

+100. You're so right it's sobering. DCI will be OK, just not MoCo standard without the requisite Tiger Mom quotient. Makes me think of Steve Jobs saying you don't ask the customer what s/he wants (a school w/demographics that mirror the city's), you design and build something they're going to love and sell it to 'em.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have an udpate on this - the idea of LAMB, Yu Ying and Stokes merging into a middle and high school?

Is it definitely going to happen in 20141/15?

[Anonymous]

yes. mundo verde is one of the four feeder charters too.

[Anonymous]

Is there anymore information anywhere, details of the merge and how it would work? Does alot of construction need to occur at the Walter Reed site?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there anymore information anywhere, details of the merge and how it would work? Does alot of construction need to occur at the Walter Reed site?

A presentation given to YY parents (& perhaps others too; I only know that YY parents did have access to it) this past June said that the Walter Reed site wouldn't be ready until January 2014. The presentation also said that the school would probably not launch until 2014-2015 and would start in incubator space. (I realize that these two statements don't add up--if the space is ready in 2014, why not move in then? I'm just repeating what I know.)

[Anonymous]

Really? I heard the charter law would have to be amended to allow this merger. Did this happen?

[Anonymous]

I've heard that each individual school would extend their charter thru 12th grade, and allow new entrants at 6th to fill MS slots. Not clear which school(s) would run the lottery to fill empty slots (of which there are sure to be a lot since YY & LAMB have low retention, MV not yet into those grades, and Stokes hasn't really signed on)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really? I heard the charter law would have to be amended to allow this merger. Did this happen?

No, charter law doesn't have to be amended. The founding/feeder schools' charters need to be amended. Not the same thing.