Protest at Mundo on P street

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are bilingual schools in the suburbs if Spanish is important to you. There are options. No one is trapped at MV and parents should not be deluded into thinking they can change the school.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But having your kids have not learn in elementary just to have a chance (or even a guarantee) of DCI is just not worth it. If you value your kids education, you need to find a better option. It may mean going in bounds for elementary and then moving if you don't get into a good middle school off the lottery. Most people on DCUM could afford to move (maybe not to as big a place and maybe not as fun a neighborhood) if needed for a better school.

How good can DCI be if it's receiving lots of elementary kids that haven't learned much in elementary school? Does DCI have some sort of remediation/catch up plan in place at 6th grade the way BASIS does in 5th grade?

It’s not that good. Which is why many DCPS families are happy to stay for some or all of elementary then move for middle, because DCI may be good enough for some, but it’s really not good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are bilingual schools in the suburbs if Spanish is important to you. There are options. No one is trapped at MV and parents should not be deluded into thinking they can change the school.

So people in DC shouldn’t expect that the public school charter board/superintendent/mayor ensure that kids are getting a quality education?

Just move! As if that was remotely easy.

Some of these posters are pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But having your kids have not learn in elementary just to have a chance (or even a guarantee) of DCI is just not worth it. If you value your kids education, you need to find a better option. It may mean going in bounds for elementary and then moving if you don't get into a good middle school off the lottery. Most people on DCUM could afford to move (maybe not to as big a place and maybe not as fun a neighborhood) if needed for a better school.

How good can DCI be if it's receiving lots of elementary kids that haven't learned much in elementary school? Does DCI have some sort of remediation/catch up plan in place at 6th grade the way BASIS does in 5th grade?

It’s not that good. Which is why many DCPS families are happy to stay for some or all of elementary then move for middle, because DCI may be good enough for some, but it’s really not good.

Dci is better than any dcps. Dcps is garbage, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At a certain point, you need to take responsibility for your own decisions and just get your kids out of the bad school in which you placed them.

Parents are not leaving the school. They are protesting, because they believe things can improve. Also not everyone is having a bad experience.

Oh really. Then why is it P St saw fit to offer 44 PK4 and 60 Kindergarten seats? 40 1st grade seats and 20 2nd grade seats? Sorry but those are not the numbers of a school with good retention.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/aaron2446/viz/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData_draft/MSDCPublicDisplay

This makes no sense. The school doesn’t know how many people are leaving by lottery date. Therefore the lottery seats are not a direct reflection of people leaving.

There have always been a lot of K seats when the school moves from combined PK3/PK4 to K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At a certain point, you need to take responsibility for your own decisions and just get your kids out of the bad school in which you placed them.

Parents are not leaving the school. They are protesting, because they believe things can improve. Also not everyone is having a bad experience.

Dude open your eyes. Student retention is bad. Teacher retention is bad. Test scores are bad. Enrollment is struggling. Your school is in a bad, bad way and it's not improving.

Okay it's just a few parents who feel they must protest in the streets, but most schools have precisely zero parents desperate enough to start picketing outside.

You can see re enrollment data here (higher than DC overall), no need to speculate:

https://stossepublicdocsprod.blob.core.windows.net/public-docs/dc-school-report-card/2021-22/profiles/171-3065(Mundo%20Verde%20Bilingual%20PCS%20-%20J.F.%20Cook).pdf

https://stossepublicdocsprod.blob.core.windows.net/public-docs/dc-school-report-card/2021-22/profiles/171-1088(Mundo%20Verde%20Bilingual%20PCS%20-%20Calle%20Ocho).pdf

Data are here in case the above links don’t work:
https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/schoolsnapshot

This data is from 21-22. When a school starts to fall, it can fall fast. The fact is they have open seats and so many open seats they’re clearing waitlists in May and reducing the number of classes in grades. That’s BAD for their finances and there’s no way around it. The budget spiral from open seats should be alarming to everyone.

It seems like they need to accept the diminishment of their upper grades programs and offer more preschool classrooms.

That would be a stop gap measure at best. Both campuses are on the short waitlist page for kindergarten this year. When parents realize they don’t have an elementary pathway, which it seems like they’re starting to realize now, they’ll just stop lotterying for the school at all. Good for the neighborhood IBs, bad for MV. If attrition gets so bad that they can’t fill their DCI seats, you’ll still have bilingual families lotterying in for fifth to get DCI, but that makes for a terribly unstable school community and miserable experience for the fifth grade staff.

What if they stopped backfilling completely, relying on attrition so that the chances of getting into DCI become pretty good?

I think that has to be part of their charter documents with the charter board. Wasn’t that an issue with LAMB when they joined the common lottery a few years ago? Besides, if they stopped backfilling, they’d doom themselves budget-wise. They’re still filling a lot of elementary seats through the lottery (though not enough). They need those bodies for funding and you can’t run an elementary school without elementary students.

They’re adding more PK classes for next year to get $$.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But having your kids have not learn in elementary just to have a chance (or even a guarantee) of DCI is just not worth it. If you value your kids education, you need to find a better option. It may mean going in bounds for elementary and then moving if you don't get into a good middle school off the lottery. Most people on DCUM could afford to move (maybe not to as big a place and maybe not as fun a neighborhood) if needed for a better school.

How good can DCI be if it's receiving lots of elementary kids that haven't learned much in elementary school? Does DCI have some sort of remediation/catch up plan in place at 6th grade the way BASIS does in 5th grade?

It’s not that good. Which is why many DCPS families are happy to stay for some or all of elementary then move for middle, because DCI may be good enough for some, but it’s really not good.

Dci is better than any dcps. Dcps is garbage, sorry.

Better than garbage, eh? Not exactly a ringing endorsement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But having your kids have not learn in elementary just to have a chance (or even a guarantee) of DCI is just not worth it. If you value your kids education, you need to find a better option. It may mean going in bounds for elementary and then moving if you don't get into a good middle school off the lottery. Most people on DCUM could afford to move (maybe not to as big a place and maybe not as fun a neighborhood) if needed for a better school.

How good can DCI be if it's receiving lots of elementary kids that haven't learned much in elementary school? Does DCI have some sort of remediation/catch up plan in place at 6th grade the way BASIS does in 5th grade?

It’s not that good. Which is why many DCPS families are happy to stay for some or all of elementary then move for middle, because DCI may be good enough for some, but it’s really not good.

Dci is better than any dcps. Dcps is garbage, sorry.

This is also proof of someone who has convinced themselves of something. There' are so many DCPS middle schools that I would choose over DCI, and would educated your child better, if you were to look at the evidence (teacher quality, curriculum, scores).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are bilingual schools in the suburbs if Spanish is important to you. There are options. No one is trapped at MV and parents should not be deluded into thinking they can change the school.

So people in DC shouldn’t expect that the public school charter board/superintendent/mayor ensure that kids are getting a quality education?

Just move! As if that was remotely easy.

Some of these posters are pathetic.

People should expect and demand that the charter school board provide meaningful oversight and that all public schools are good. But they should also not be naive and should realize that is they wait a few more years to see if things improve at MV, their kids could fall further behind. We moved. It was actually not that hard. Our kids are in a diverse public bilingual school and are thriving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in third grade and was at MVP until we got a spot at another Spanish-immersion charter in the Fall of 2020. It was pretty clear the school had big problems then, and it pandemic response in Spring 2020 did not give us any reason to think things would get better instead of worse. We were very, very lucky.

Just to respond to a couple of the comments in this thread:
-Our new charter has had some teacher turnover, but not like MVP. More importantly, the administration has been extremely proactive about communicating both the departures and their strategy for replacing the teachers.
-Our new charter has 2 teachers in every classroom for every grade.
-MVP did not rely on parent fundraising for anything except playground equipment, as best I could tell.

And the whole kitchen they installed to make food onsite….

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure which MV campus she is heading to, but you all are getting a new principle from LAMB, and we (LAMB parents) loved her. We are super upset that she was pushed out by our now former head of school.

[Anonymous]

Re the onsite playground equipment, MV was a total pain about that -- putting in kinds of demands around the types playground equipment that they considered to be green and in keeping with the school's theme.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re the onsite playground equipment, MV was a total pain about that -- putting in kinds of demands around the types playground equipment that they considered to be green and in keeping with the school's theme.

And how is that a "total pain"?

[Anonymous]

Well, they got rid of the original playground on the school site to add a second building (because more bodies = more revenue, and playgrounds don't bring in money) so they went for many years without any onsite play equipment at all. And there was little room left for playground equipment after that.

It took a long time to walk young children to the nearby city parks, and the classes often had to abort their play mission because of other activity going on the public parks (much of which was pretty unsavory) So for years, there was very little active play at the school.

It took a long time to raise money and then build the playground because the equipment ungodly expensive and it was very specialized. Parents were responsible for raising the money, but they had very little say in what was purchased.

The school seemed more focused on the look of the MV "brand" -- like building a big, crazy expensive globe-shaped climber ("the mundo")-- than on if the equipment was actually fun for the kids.

The Mundo to be re-installed because there were issues with the first one they built.

Shall I continue?

[Anonymous]

Dci is better than any dcps. Dcps is garbage, sorry.

Ok. Except kids from Jackson Reed and School Without Walls are going to top tier schools….