BASIS DC shut down/abolished the school list serve

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not that uncommon. Watkins shut theirs down. If you hate the school so much that you need to connect with others to bash it- then you should not be there.

What about all the other people who wanted to connect with others? The only true bashing happened at the beginning of the year, by former disgruntled parents, who were removed from the list serve because they had no right to be there. This lady who is being blamed for shutting down the list serve posted three times.

The three posts in between thousands of others by this lady who was trying to start a facebook page were long, but they were not Basis bashing. They all ended (if you could take the time to get to the end, which was hard) with her saying that she had faith in Basis DC, just did not like some of the things going on right now.

One of them was a misgraded comp that almost made a girl repeat a grade, which we only found out about from the list serve, and yes, one of them was about the way they handled the whole candy thing. But on that issue, let me tell you, she is not the only parent who is irritated or upset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, and in case you are curious, both of us went to private schools, and both of us went to HYP, we are not AA, and our kids are thriving academically and socially at Basis DC.

So, did you not have enough money to afford the elite privates in the area? Backlash?
Not sure the point of your posts.

[Anonymous]

As I see it, from my experience with several schools, this is not a BASIS thing. ALL schools have their share of strange, confused and sometimes rabid parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BASIS is doing fine. They need a real board rather than hand-picked people who Michael and Olga liked and who can play with Craig B.

sorry but who is Craig B?
I thought the line of authority went to Sean Aiken and then Caroline McGarvey (and can never go to Michael Block because he is on the Board of the for profit company), while his wife Olga stayed on the non profit side. Pretty cosy, but still.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not that uncommon. Watkins shut theirs down. If you hate the school so much that you need to connect with others to bash it- then you should not be there.

Um, when? I think there may have been a few posts removed during some controversial aftercare/enrichment decisions. What else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh, and in case you are curious, both of us went to private schools, and both of us went to HYP, we are not AA, and our kids are thriving academically and socially at Basis DC.

So, did you not have enough money to afford the elite privates in the area? Backlash?
Not sure the point of your posts.

Sorry this was addressed to the "this is why, sadly, private" poster.

We actually could swing it, and we actually do not want to. But we are not scared of putting our children in a school where they are a minority, which is full of scary black kids. Considered scary only because they are black.

My point is the parent who is saying private schools have no crazies, and that the possibility of crazies on a list serve, is why she sent her kids to private school is full of shit. Crazy comes in all kinds and appears everywhere.

And that our kids are getting an as good, if not better, education at Basis without all the additional social stress.

You should have seen the thread by private school parents discussing, of all things, handbags and what they mean -

social climber, rich and insecure, rich and confident, poor but trying to hide it, poor and clueless..... I go over there for amusement, and to remind myself why I would rather have my kids at Basis any time a doubt creeps in.

I don't find these threads amusing because I really care about Basis. But I do take my brie and crackers and a cold glass of dry chardonnay over to the private school board when I really want some entertainment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not that uncommon. Watkins shut theirs down. If you hate the school so much that you need to connect with others to bash it- then you should not be there.

Um, when? I think there may have been a few posts removed during some controversial aftercare/enrichment decisions. What else?

does watkins still have a list serve?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope... To put it all in perspective, there are hundreds of families who are doing fine with BASIS, and who think it's a good school meeting most of their expectations, and far better than the alternatives.

And then there's a tiny handful making a huge overblown ruckus, mostly due to their own misunderstandings or skewed expectations - complete with dramatic screaming of "I'm not wrong, it's the rest of everything and the entire universe that is wrong and has to change!"

I agree with this, but those parents are not why they shut down the list serve. I want to know why they could not have just stated it is no longer run by boosters and everyone who wants to should opt out now, and then the rest of us would still have the resource.

There are also parents who always say "if your kid failed their comps, it was your fault as a parent because you were not on top of things and your kid is also lazy and clearly not 'Basis material'" when there are some kids who got retained for a year, stayed, did it over and are now doing well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Managing a listserv entails a certain amount of overhead, and the reasons cited made perfect sense. The listserv can't just be handed over to some unknown party because the current participants specifically opted in to this one and provided their personal contact information, that's not information that should be given over to some unknown party. It wouldn't be ethical or reasonable to just give someone wholesale control without violating privacy concerns. If someone wants to start a new listserv and to let people opt into that one, they are perfectly welcome to do so.

Since you seem to know so much about it and how to justify it (you are probably one of the jerks who decided to abolish it), please explain to me how you would go about setting up another list serve and making the entire Basis community aware of it. Would you be willing to publish it in your news letter? Do you think the Boosters would, if you are not who I think you are?

As for privacy concerns, we just published a directory and every parent gave an email.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not that uncommon. Watkins shut theirs down. If you hate the school so much that you need to connect with others to bash it- then you should not be there.

Um, when? I think there may have been a few posts removed during some controversial aftercare/enrichment decisions. What else?

does watkins still have a list serve?

Yes. There were a flurry of emails since last night about aftercare and pick up with voting in the building. Why wouldn't it still have one? We can take this to another thread if you really care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not a BASIS parent, but I'd be pretty pissed if our school closed the listserve down

This wasn't a school listserv and the school didn't shut it down. It was run by the boosters, which is like a PTA. They decided that it wasn't worth their time to continue running it.

I think the administration was involved in the decision to shut it down. The administration and the Boosters are so entangled it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins. They did not even tell the moderator they were going to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not that uncommon. Watkins shut theirs down. If you hate the school so much that you need to connect with others to bash it- then you should not be there.

Um, when? I think there may have been a few posts removed during some controversial aftercare/enrichment decisions. What else?

does watkins still have a list serve?

Yes. There were a flurry of emails since last night about aftercare and pick up with voting in the building. Why wouldn't it still have one? We can take this to another thread if you really care.

I was just curious because while comparing the Basis list serve with a condo list serve is pretty off the wall, comparing it to the Watkins list serve comes pretty close. Who runs it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually think smaller grouped list serves work better. Maybe parents could set up list serves by grade or neighborhood. If you have a fifth grader you really don't need or want to be reading emails about prom. Or if you live in Georgetown you don't really want to hear that the bus was late coming from Capitol Hill.

yes but if you want everyone to vote in a contest that could get the school $30k, you now have no way to contact them, and remind them, and some may have been bothered by that as well. I agree with grade specific list serves for homework, but otherwise it seems to me that most of what was posted was kind of a school wide thing....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not the first listserv she has taken down...

Ok. I'll bite. What was the other one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am sorry to say that it is evident to most BASIS parents I know that the reason they shut it down for better or worse had to do with your long repetitive and disruptive posts on the Boosters listserv. You have only yourself to blame, but the rest of us suffer the loss. Please stop posting this type of thing all the time here or anywhere-for everyone else's sake if not your kids'.

Well most of those parents would be wrong since they were talking about shutting it down over the summer........