any popular schools that you just aren't interested in?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
But their "client base" does not speak Spanish. It is a city-wide charter that happens to be in Columbia Heights and will move out of Columbia Heights to Petworth. So all DC residents are their client base. I could see the problem with this if ALL city wide charters had Spanish interpretation, or if you were advocating for translation in Amharic and Spanish and Vietnamese, to name a few of the languages, but this argument is ridiculous. I could see if it were Mundo Verde or DC Bilingual, which does indeed have the Spanish speaking component and actively recruits Spanish-speaking families. At any rate, if that is what turns you off about CMI, don't apply. To each her own. Every charter is not for every person. The CMI community is welcoming and diverse in every sense of the word. I am starting to wonder if some of this attitude towards the Head of School is because she is not the typical liberal, white fuzzy do gooder woman the DCUM majority population is used to dealing with. |
Anonymous
| Two Rivers. |
Anonymous
I should add - that is convenient, because I also am/could be interested in Murch. Otherwise we are only interested in immersion schools, particularly LAMB, Mundo Verde, and Yu Ying. |
Anonymous
|
I don't know anything about CM, but expecting a city-wide non-immersion charter school to be prepared to make this accommodation is ridiculous.
We are a dual-language home with a grandparent who does not speak English and she missed most everything at the open houses we went to, and it never crossed any of our minds to have a problem with it. |
Anonymous
I am a CMI parent and the school is amazing. My kid learns a ton every day and has a diverse cohort of kids. He learns Spanish and chinese. The head of school knows each child and family and had made us feel very welcome. As to the original question, I am not interested in any school that has large class sizes. Unfortunately, that Knocks out all jklm's aside from Mann. |
Anonymous
Well I am not a Republican. Do you always stereotype and fail miserably? |
Anonymous
We learn to speak English |
Anonymous
No, that's not it. Without naming the other 2 charters, (because I wasn't the one to name CM in this thread either), I have been to open houses and school expos and met 2 other popular charter Heads of Schools that were definitely NOT" warm, fuzzy, do gooders" from the ways they presented themselves. Can't comment on whether they were "liberal" or not because a) I didn't ask, b) they didn't identify their political affiliations, and c) I know better than to make assumptions about a Principal's personal political beliefs or agenda based on what they say about their school at an open house. And yet, I was still impressed by them because the atmosphere of the school was welcoming, the Heads of School were able to answer the actual questions asked by their audience, they didn't seem to have an attitude about it (they just weren't warm or fuzzy by a longshot), and what they said made sense. I was turned off by CM's Head of School because she seemed to have an attitude, she didn't answer 2 curriculum questions directly, and her presentation was not just "not warm and fuzzy" but actually off-putting. But as you've pointed out, I can think what I want, I just don't apply. And that's exactly what happened in this last round of lotteries: we didn't apply. And won't next year when we are looking at PK3 for our youngest to see if we end up at a better school than now. |
Anonymous
| ^^ Which brings us back to the origin of this thread, and yes is a reason not to be interested in a popular school. |
Anonymous
|
Re: Spanish interpretation.
Our EotP DCPS is not a dual language school, but we do have a significant percentage of in bounds families who speak English as a second (or third) language. Because most of them are native Spanish speakers, we try to translate things into Spanish as often as possible so that the school is accessible to those families. We also have several families who speak Vietnamese at home. We are trying to figure out a good way to make PTA meetings accessible to those families, but since we do not have any staff who speak Vietnamese, it's tricky. The point of an open house is to be welcoming and convey information about your school. |
Anonymous
In the case of a DCPS where there is neighborhood preference and you know your client base in advance, this makes perfectly good sense. In the case of a city-wide charter, it does not necessarily make sense. A spanish speaking person who lives on the same block as Creative Minds has no better chance of being at the school than anyone else. The same cannot be said of a neighborhood DCPS. With the DCPS you know your neighborhood and know in advance the demographics of the people likely to show up at an Open House. The same cannot be said for a city-wide charter. |
Anonymous
| Back to the OP's original question, we ruled out a number of well-regarded schools because we knew we could not make the location logistics work. To some extent, we didn't want to fall for a place and then turn it down. (This was under the old apply-to-as-many-places-as-you-want system). |
Anonymous
Plenty of reasons someone might want to rule SWS out, but lack of warmth is not one of them. You must have gotten someone on a bad day. I'd have left this alone if you said he school was TOO warm or too -- many other things. But cold it is not. |
Anonymous
Oh, I don't know. Long time SWS parent here. I think there is something to the level of warmth corresponding to whether you are seem in tune with the SWS vibe. I'm not trying to be coy about race or SES, but there are some parents, my DH included, who finds the SWS schtick eye-roll worthy and he never felt much warmth there. We loved it for DD though. I also think that people who don't respond to the Principal consistently. He is great, and I worked as a parent volunteer with him for hundreds of hours, but I'm not sure his warmth is spread universally. IMHO. |
Anonymous
Per Boundary briefing materials: OSSE student level data indicated that about 10% (7,854 public school students) lived in families where a language other than English was spoken in the home. Although 6,063 or 77% indicated that Spanish was the language spoken at home, there were 79 other languages from Akan to Yoruba that were reported. The second most report language, after Spanish, was Amharic, but only 331 families reported that Amharic was the language spoken in their home out of the 7,854 public school students. http://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Policy%20Brief%203_The%20Landscape%20for%20Student%20Assignment%20and%20School%20Choice_Jan%20DRAFT_0.pdf |