Meeting re BASIS DC wanting to expand to PK-4th

[Anonymous]

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand they should attempt to reach each student, on the other hand YOU don't have to send your kid there., Everyone knows its a tough school and as a parent you need to find the right fit for your kid. Its an accelerated school (and we need more of those in DC quite frankly) so why did expect it be different for your kid? the City does not require you to send your kid to school at Basis.

Also, NO public school modifies curriculum for students with disabilities (e.g. changes what is required for graduation or 'waters down' classes). Further Common Core standards apply to all students and kids with disabilities are expected to make progress toward them.

What schools are required to do under the law are provide accommodations or support, and sometimes modified instruction, that enables students with disabilities to access the curriculum.

Year 1 at BASIS was a mess in terms of accommodations, ignorance and paperwork for students with disabilities. I think it was due to incompetence and stupidity -- not a conspiracy theory.

Year 2 they then hired a very strong director of special education who advocates tireless and effectively for the kids with learning disabilities and things improved dramatically. She is still there 3 years later. My kid is still there, doing well, we haven't been pushed out and his psyche is fine. We have no complaints about how he's being treated and won't be signing up for any sort of class action lawsuit.




What type of disabilities does your child have? How does she manage the challenge of basis and how does basis help? TIA

[Anonymous]

DC has anxiety, fine motor deficits, slow processing speed and an expressive language disorder.

Has typical accommodations - uses laptop for all work, extra time for all tests including APs (school handled the College Board request quickly and easily). Teachers provide lecture materials electronically.

Learning specialist works with DC weekly to both plan work (chunking longer assignments) and helps teachers develop strategies to draw DC into class discussions.

DC has no behavioral challenges and strong long-term memory and reading comprehensive skills. The strengths align well to the BASIS curriculum and the small class size prevents him for getting 'lost.' DC is very uncoordinated so no PE requirement in US is a blessing.

I'm well aware that it isn't necessarily the right environment for all kids but they have been a good partner to us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC has anxiety, fine motor deficits, slow processing speed and an expressive language disorder.

Has typical accommodations - uses laptop for all work, extra time for all tests including APs (school handled the College Board request quickly and easily). Teachers provide lecture materials electronically.

Learning specialist works with DC weekly to both plan work (chunking longer assignments) and helps teachers develop strategies to draw DC into class discussions.

DC has no behavioral challenges and strong long-term memory and reading comprehensive skills. The strengths align well to the BASIS curriculum and the small class size prevents him for getting 'lost.' DC is very uncoordinated so no PE requirement in US is a blessing.

I'm well aware that it isn't necessarily the right environment for all kids but they have been a good partner to us.

That's what BASIS is about.
If they decide your family is a good fit for the school, they will accommodate you. Otherwise, they will do everything to get rid of anyone, even the brightest kids who would not need any accommodations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC has anxiety, fine motor deficits, slow processing speed and an expressive language disorder.

Has typical accommodations - uses laptop for all work, extra time for all tests including APs (school handled the College Board request quickly and easily). Teachers provide lecture materials electronically.

Learning specialist works with DC weekly to both plan work (chunking longer assignments) and helps teachers develop strategies to draw DC into class discussions.

DC has no behavioral challenges and strong long-term memory and reading comprehensive skills. The strengths align well to the BASIS curriculum and the small class size prevents him for getting 'lost.' DC is very uncoordinated so no PE requirement in US is a blessing.

I'm well aware that it isn't necessarily the right environment for all kids but they have been a good partner to us.

That's what BASIS is about.
If they decide your family is a good fit for the school, they will accommodate you. Otherwise, they will do everything to get rid of anyone, even the brightest kids who would not need any accommodations.

I see this repeated over and over, and I just don't understand it. To me, BASIS seems very straightforward about expectations, tests, and grades. What exactly does BASIS do "to get rid of" a student?

[Anonymous]

pp, there is a lot of profiling at BASIS.

A certain staff member who has total control of the grades did not want my child to stay at the school. My hard working child who received very good grades all year long was given terrible grades at the end of the year. The final average plummeted because of one final grade. Still, because the grades were very high all year long, my kid was promoted. We tried several times to see these exams, at no avail. We were naïve and thought it was not repeat. The following year, the same thing happened, this time with 3 of the grades. Two teachers totally ignored my emails, but one teacher Came forward and defended us saying that the real grade should have been 27% more than the grade on the report card. The teacher was asked not to return days before school started. This is no heresay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AFTER BASIS DC had to settle with OCR here rather expensively for their conduct towards IEP students the year they opened in DC, this is what they did at their teacher training elsewhere - I guess it really is the BASIS Block Ponzi scheme - but you would think they would stop being so openly arrogant and stupid about it.....

"Hello, I just wanted to share this and see what type of response I can get. I am involved in an on going complaint I filed against BASIS ed. with the Office of Civil Rights for openly stating to myself as well as numerous other educators at their July 2014 teacher training that they DO NOT and WILL NOT modify their curriculum for students with disabilities. Since the OCR accepted and took on my complaint, BASIS has come to a settlement agreement (please be sure to understand that they are not admitting to fault or guilt) with the OCR and have been placed on a series of OCR monitored trainings and changes to their core policies in regard to the no modification policy they trained me on including section 504 and how it relates to special education. My OCR attorney has asked if I would like to start a class action law suit against BASIS, however their needs to be 100 or more families with students that have been discriminated against by BASIS either while enrolled or during the process of enrollment (e.g. being told they will not modify their curriculum for a student). Please email me if you are interested. I will be keeping a running total of interested parties and sending out periodic emails to keep everyone posted as to how many people actually are interested. I will send out an email about every 3-4 weeks. Also, forward my email to anyone that could have possibly had this happen to their child or children. Please lets take a stand against an institution that openly trained employees to refuse modifications to students with disabilities.
Best,
Deborah Graham
[e-mail]"

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand they should attempt to reach each student, on the other hand YOU don't have to send your kid there., Everyone knows its a tough school and as a parent you need to find the right fit for your kid. Its an accelerated school (and we need more of those in DC quite frankly) so why did expect it be different for your kid? the City does not require you to send your kid to school at Basis.

Also, NO public school modifies curriculum for students with disabilities (e.g. changes what is required for graduation or 'waters down' classes). Further Common Core standards apply to all students and kids with disabilities are expected to make progress toward them.

What schools are required to do under the law are provide accommodations or support, and sometimes modified instruction, that enables students with disabilities to access the curriculum.

Year 1 at BASIS was a mess in terms of accommodations, ignorance and paperwork for students with disabilities. I think it was due to incompetence and stupidity -- not a conspiracy theory.

Year 2 they then hired a very strong director of special education who advocates tireless and effectively for the kids with learning disabilities and things improved dramatically. She is still there 3 years later. My kid is still there, doing well, we haven't been pushed out and his psyche is fine. We have no complaints about how he's being treated and won't be signing up for any sort of class action lawsuit.

We've had the same good experience at BASIS with our child.

We are one of the families who had the door shut in our faces before school started, thank goodness. It was definitely deliberate because they simply didn't want to bother with DC. DC is gifted with LD's. Perfectly capable of doing the work but needs understanding of the disability and some accommodations such as being able to take a break.

The 2 main people in charge plus a deer-in-the-headlights very inexperienced sped coordinator sat me down and told me they would not be following DC's IEP. They said some things that were clearly violations of IDEA and when I pointed out that they couldn't do that they acknowledged that and shrugged their shoulders. They said if DC took breaks during classes DC would be failed for that grade. I had made it clear that we fully expected to catch DC up at home if it came to that they said that would be impossible and that DC simply couldn't take breaks. Also couldn't leave class 1 minute early as per the IEP to avoid crowds in the hallway. They said they would leave that to the discretion of the individual teachers.

Oh, and in advance of this August meeting, I had worked for months speaking with the Arizona sped team who assured me up and down and all around that DC would be a good fit academically and that the accommodations were fine. There were no academic supports in the IEP, just accommodations as noted above.

I agree 100% that parents need to think about whether a school is a good fit for their child and clearly I had made a mistake. However, my mistake was not that my DC couldn't handle BASIS academically, but rather than BASIS was blatantly disregarding the federal laws covering children with disabilities. I have heard many many other stories from parents who had similar things happen. Some actually started at the school while others dodged the bullet like we did.

I am truly glad that they have gotten their act together regarding SN though I think they still have a LONG way to go. People especially need to understand that many of these kids who supposedly can't hack BASIS academically actually don't have academic needs. I know a kid who needed to use the elevator to avoid severe exhaustion. Kid was refused this accommodation and thus would miss a couple of days at the end of weeks due to immobility from having climbed so many steps. Should the parents only choose schools that are on 1 level when there is a "great" school that's appropriate for the kid that has an elevator that was being presented as available for the child?

I reported our interactions to OSSE, the charter board, and Catania but I guess they hadn't figured out how bad it was going to be or something. I know families happily attending BASIS which is great. I also know several who are dying to get out, even when their kids are getting good grades.

BASIS parent of another medically fragile but academically accelerated and high performing kid here who was pushed out. They may do great with learning disabilities now but they still stink when it comes to physical disabilities. We won the elevator battle but lost the war. And if they want you out and you have a medically fragile kid all they have to do is make school be a risk to the student's health in one way or another and they KNOW you will pull them out because you have to preserve the health of your kid. So they hold all the cards, and they will hit below the belt, and hurt your kid. We will be joining the class action. Modifying the curriculum can be construed extremely broadly.

[Anonymous]

This is the fundamental problem with charters. If they want you out, they'll get you out by making your family miserable. You may be able to sue after the fact, but it's cold comfort at best. In a city with but one neighborhood middle school that works for most in-boundary middle-class families, we're going to see more crappy treatment of kids with disabilities and other learning differences, a lot more. You can't have 45%+ of your public school kids in schools that aren't really required to serve all local comers without something giving. The focus should have been on dramatically improving neighborhood schools from the get go. It wasn't and we're all vulnerable now. Yes, even the Deal families. Overcrowding at Deal isn't a problem that's going away anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have any updates re: the expansion to K-4th? Is it happening?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any updates re: the expansion to K-4th? Is it happening?

They definitely want to. Charter amendment hasn't been submitted to DCPCSB yet.

You can sign up for their expansion 'interest list' to get information as it progresses. Link should be on the school website or call the office and ask to be added.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any updates re: the expansion to K-4th? Is it happening?

They definitely want to. Charter amendment hasn't been submitted to DCPCSB yet.

You can sign up for their expansion 'interest list' to get information as it progresses. Link should be on the school website or call the office and ask to be added.

I thought they were planning to send the charter amendment to DCPCSB this past spring? I attended one of their interest meetings early this year, and that was what I thought I heard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any updates re: the expansion to K-4th? Is it happening?

They definitely want to. Charter amendment hasn't been submitted to DCPCSB yet.

You can sign up for their expansion 'interest list' to get information as it progresses. Link should be on the school website or call the office and ask to be added.

I thought they were planning to send the charter amendment to DCPCSB this past spring? I attended one of their interest meetings early this year, and that was what I thought I heard.

That could be. Typically schools have to do a couple rounds of revisions. I've been watching the DCPCSB docket; no public hearings or decisions had been scheduled to discuss the expansion as of last week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any updates re: the expansion to K-4th? Is it happening?

They definitely want to. Charter amendment hasn't been submitted to DCPCSB yet.

You can sign up for their expansion 'interest list' to get information as it progresses. Link should be on the school website or call the office and ask to be added.

I thought they were planning to send the charter amendment to DCPCSB this past spring? I attended one of their interest meetings early this year, and that was what I thought I heard.

That could be. Typically schools have to do a couple rounds of revisions. I've been watching the DCPCSB docket; no public hearings or decisions had been scheduled to discuss the expansion as of last week.

Also the existing school is due for its 5 year review; doubt an expansion request will be approved ahead of that being completed, although I suppose the two could be considered together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apparently no one on this thread went to the info session last week.


I don't think BASIS should be given permission until they do something about their attrition rate, because Olga Block said the attrition between 8th and 9th in the BASIS model consisted of students who were not "college bound," and here that is definitely NOT the case, we are having atypical attrition (assuming she was telling the truth) so again, DC is different. Until BASIS can stem a little of the profound exodus to Walls and Wilson, and prove to be a viable high school, the Charter Board should not accept what is surely going to be anothery pyramid model, this time in an elementary school. Because BASIS already knows they can refill the ranks in 5th grade. There are quite a few kids who choose BASIS over Deal, at least initially. But what happens at the best BASIS schools does not apply here, because we are not being run like one of the best BASIS schools.

You said all that needed to be said regarding topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apparently no one on this thread went to the info session last week.


I don't think BASIS should be given permission until they do something about their attrition rate, because Olga Block said the attrition between 8th and 9th in the BASIS model consisted of students who were not "college bound," and here that is definitely NOT the case, we are having atypical attrition (assuming she was telling the truth) so again, DC is different. Until BASIS can stem a little of the profound exodus to Walls and Wilson, and prove to be a viable high school, the Charter Board should not accept what is surely going to be anothery pyramid model, this time in an elementary school. Because BASIS already knows they can refill the ranks in 5th grade. There are quite a few kids who choose BASIS over Deal, at least initially. But what happens at the best BASIS schools does not apply here, because we are not being run like one of the best BASIS schools.

You said all that needed to be said regarding topic.

Actually there was not a "profound" exodus to Wilson and Walls this year. I have been to just about every meeting since before the school opened and never heard Olga say that kids leave because they are not college bound at all.

As for supposedly not being run like one of the best BASIS schools, I have to disagree. BASIS DC is actually doing quite well in AP pass rates in comparison to other BASIS schools. All teachers are trained by BASIS headquarters. We have lots of very good teachers. Is the school perfect? No, but neither is any school.

[Anonymous]

The BASIS haters and boosters will all have a chance to comment on the expansion plan when DCPCSB releases the draft amendment.

No real reason to hash it all out again here, is there?