Flora Singer v. Oakland Terrace v. Rock Creek Forest

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in a neighborhood zoned for Flora Singer before the language program as on the horizon. Had we known, we would have waited until we could find a house zoned for OTES. But it is what it is and I don't see us moving again. All of our neighbors seem to be happy with Flora Singer.

I do wonder how OTES will handle kids who move to the school partway through ES. I know of kids who have transferred into a full immersion program in 1st grade but none beyond that. I could see it being hard to do in say, 4th grade.

"Hard" is an understatement. Maybe an SSOL program will be necessary.

In DC, if you are zoned for Oyster but dont want to or are too old for immersion, you can go to another assigned DC school. Does OT have a back up like that, or an ENglish only track within the school?

I believe you can get a COSA for a different school if you don't want to be part of the two-way immersion program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in a neighborhood zoned for Flora Singer before the language program as on the horizon. Had we known, we would have waited until we could find a house zoned for OTES. But it is what it is and I don't see us moving again. All of our neighbors seem to be happy with Flora Singer.

I do wonder how OTES will handle kids who move to the school partway through ES. I know of kids who have transferred into a full immersion program in 1st grade but none beyond that. I could see it being hard to do in say, 4th grade.

"Hard" is an understatement. Maybe an SSOL program will be necessary.

In DC, if you are zoned for Oyster but dont want to or are too old for immersion, you can go to another assigned DC school. Does OT have a back up like that, or an ENglish only track within the school?

They'll probably send them to Flora Singer! I think Kemp Mill has an option if you make the case that your kid won't do well in the immersion that you can go to another nearby school. My guess is they will at least give them the option to go to a nearby non-immersion school. Right now the immersion is only K and 1 so they are probably not having this issue yet. Older kids who move into the boundary are not going into two-way immersion yet, so it hasn't come up yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in a neighborhood zoned for Flora Singer before the language program as on the horizon. Had we known, we would have waited until we could find a house zoned for OTES. But it is what it is and I don't see us moving again. All of our neighbors seem to be happy with Flora Singer.

I do wonder how OTES will handle kids who move to the school partway through ES. I know of kids who have transferred into a full immersion program in 1st grade but none beyond that. I could see it being hard to do in say, 4th grade.

"Hard" is an understatement. Maybe an SSOL program will be necessary.

In DC, if you are zoned for Oyster but dont want to or are too old for immersion, you can go to another assigned DC school. Does OT have a back up like that, or an ENglish only track within the school?

They'll probably send them to Flora Singer! I think Kemp Mill has an option if you make the case that your kid won't do well in the immersion that you can go to another nearby school. My guess is they will at least give them the option to go to a nearby non-immersion school. Right now the immersion is only K and 1 so they are probably not having this issue yet. Older kids who move into the boundary are not going into two-way immersion yet, so it hasn't come up yet.

I somehow doubt it. Singer was over 100% capacity from the day it opened. Kemp Mill ES.... Good lord, that would be quite the punishment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in a neighborhood zoned for Flora Singer before the language program as on the horizon. Had we known, we would have waited until we could find a house zoned for OTES. But it is what it is and I don't see us moving again. All of our neighbors seem to be happy with Flora Singer.

I do wonder how OTES will handle kids who move to the school partway through ES. I know of kids who have transferred into a full immersion program in 1st grade but none beyond that. I could see it being hard to do in say, 4th grade.

"Hard" is an understatement. Maybe an SSOL program will be necessary.

In DC, if you are zoned for Oyster but dont want to or are too old for immersion, you can go to another assigned DC school. Does OT have a back up like that, or an ENglish only track within the school?

They'll probably send them to Flora Singer! I think Kemp Mill has an option if you make the case that your kid won't do well in the immersion that you can go to another nearby school. My guess is they will at least give them the option to go to a nearby non-immersion school. Right now the immersion is only K and 1 so they are probably not having this issue yet. Older kids who move into the boundary are not going into two-way immersion yet, so it hasn't come up yet.

I somehow doubt it. Singer was over 100% capacity from the day it opened. Kemp Mill ES.... Good lord, that would be quite the punishment.

Kemp Mill has two-way immersion and has had it longer. Families that don't want two-way immersion or think their child will not do well with it (speech/language delays, etc) get to go to a nearby non-immersion school. There are a couple people have mentioned over the years. Maybe Glen Haven or Glenallen (I always get those two confused). It would make no sense to send OT boundary families to Kemp Mill because Kemp Mill is also two-way immersion. They would go to Flora Singer or Rock View or somewhere else nearby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recognize that poster up-thread who for years has been trashing Oakland Terrace every.single.time. it is mentioned. I have always suspected a fired teacher or mental parent. They just can't let it go and it has been years.

I grew up in Silver Spring and so did my husband. We are both teachers (UMD for undergrad and GW for grad school, so truly locals!) . When we started a family a few years ago we knew we would choose OT or Flora Singer. OT won out due to the dual immersion language program. We are hopeful the program will continue to Newport Mill MS; we will see what to do when that time comes. We are fine with the DCC high school choices as husband and i are both products of them (Blair). The IB programs are what we are looking for; it will be most convenient for us personally if our kids choose Einstein, though as proud Blair graduates, well, we would be beaming if our kids continued the legacy...

I’m a new poster to this thread. I have a 1st grader at OTES and I have posted on 2 other OTES threads. It is so interesting because as the poster up thread said, there are many of us with complaints about OTES. Both on this board and other parents I have spoken to at the school. Yet every time these legitimate complaints come up, someone (maybe the same someone?) “recognizes” the poster as the crazy OTES poster and shuts it down. My first ever post on the last OTES thread got “recognized” by this person as “the same poster” with an ax to grind. It’s uncanny. Next time someone complains about OTES, watch for the immediate gas light.

So far for us OTES has been fine. Spanish immersion is a huge perk, but the poster above summed it up perfectly. There is very little parent interaction compared to experiences of friends at other schools. It is hard to volunteer even if you flat out ask. There is zero communication from teachers or admin. We have grown used to it and our child is happy, so it’s basically fine. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a little more from our child’s school.

If people are thrilled with admin and teachers at Flora Singer, that is worth a ton IMO.

[Anonymous]

Same poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recognize that poster up-thread who for years has been trashing Oakland Terrace every.single.time. it is mentioned. I have always suspected a fired teacher or mental parent. They just can't let it go and it has been years.

I grew up in Silver Spring and so did my husband. We are both teachers (UMD for undergrad and GW for grad school, so truly locals!) . When we started a family a few years ago we knew we would choose OT or Flora Singer. OT won out due to the dual immersion language program. We are hopeful the program will continue to Newport Mill MS; we will see what to do when that time comes. We are fine with the DCC high school choices as husband and i are both products of them (Blair). The IB programs are what we are looking for; it will be most convenient for us personally if our kids choose Einstein, though as proud Blair graduates, well, we would be beaming if our kids continued the legacy...

I’m a new poster to this thread. I have a 1st grader at OTES and I have posted on 2 other OTES threads. It is so interesting because as the poster up thread said, there are many of us with complaints about OTES. Both on this board and other parents I have spoken to at the school. Yet every time these legitimate complaints come up, someone (maybe the same someone?) “recognizes” the poster as the crazy OTES poster and shuts it down. My first ever post on the last OTES thread got “recognized” by this person as “the same poster” with an ax to grind. It’s uncanny. Next time someone complains about OTES, watch for the immediate gas light.

So far for us OTES has been fine. Spanish immersion is a huge perk, but the poster above summed it up perfectly. There is very little parent interaction compared to experiences of friends at other schools. It is hard to volunteer even if you flat out ask. There is zero communication from teachers or admin. We have grown used to it and our child is happy, so it’s basically fine. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a little more from our child’s school.

If people are thrilled with admin and teachers at Flora Singer, that is worth a ton IMO.

Here’s what I find interesting: when parents seemingly care more about “cool” or “nice” teachers than “good” teachers.

And what impact does the admin have on parents? Are you just frustrated that you can’t volunteer? That’s weird. Why are you so pressed to be in the building during school hours? Unless you have a kid with special needs, you really don’t interact with admin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same poster.

It may or may not be. I find the “no communication” thing strange: we get an email every single Sunday about what’s going on at school for the upcoming week. Between the two kids I have there, one has communicated often and proactively, one not much at all, and two somewhere in the middle.

I do think the principal focuses more on supporting her teachers and running the school than she does on making parents happy, at least from what I’ve observed at other schools. That’s fine with me. Her job is making the school run well, not placating parents. Mind you, we’re not unhappy parents; I think some parents have expectations more aligned with being catered to than with the reality of running a diverse school with multiple specific programs (immersion, special education).

[Anonymous]

^^I meant one teacher communicated proactively, etc. Not my kids. Ha!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recognize that poster up-thread who for years has been trashing Oakland Terrace every.single.time. it is mentioned. I have always suspected a fired teacher or mental parent. They just can't let it go and it has been years.

I grew up in Silver Spring and so did my husband. We are both teachers (UMD for undergrad and GW for grad school, so truly locals!) . When we started a family a few years ago we knew we would choose OT or Flora Singer. OT won out due to the dual immersion language program. We are hopeful the program will continue to Newport Mill MS; we will see what to do when that time comes. We are fine with the DCC high school choices as husband and i are both products of them (Blair). The IB programs are what we are looking for; it will be most convenient for us personally if our kids choose Einstein, though as proud Blair graduates, well, we would be beaming if our kids continued the legacy...

I’m a new poster to this thread. I have a 1st grader at OTES and I have posted on 2 other OTES threads. It is so interesting because as the poster up thread said, there are many of us with complaints about OTES. Both on this board and other parents I have spoken to at the school. Yet every time these legitimate complaints come up, someone (maybe the same someone?) “recognizes” the poster as the crazy OTES poster and shuts it down. My first ever post on the last OTES thread got “recognized” by this person as “the same poster” with an ax to grind. It’s uncanny. Next time someone complains about OTES, watch for the immediate gas light.

So far for us OTES has been fine. Spanish immersion is a huge perk, but the poster above summed it up perfectly. There is very little parent interaction compared to experiences of friends at other schools. It is hard to volunteer even if you flat out ask. There is zero communication from teachers or admin. We have grown used to it and our child is happy, so it’s basically fine. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a little more from our child’s school.

If people are thrilled with admin and teachers at Flora Singer, that is worth a ton IMO.

Here’s what I find interesting: when parents seemingly care more about “cool” or “nice” teachers than “good” teachers.

And what impact does the admin have on parents? Are you just frustrated that you can’t volunteer? That’s weird. Why are you so pressed to be in the building during school hours? Unless you have a kid with special needs, you really don’t interact with admin.

It's how you become involved in your community. The more volunteer opportunities (usually outside of school hours) the more families you meet. We like to be a part of our community, but the opportunities are harder to find at OTES. The e-mail on Sunday is school wide and vague. I have a number of friends who are elementary ed teachers elsewhere in MCPS and they update the parents in their class weekly or monthly about how the class is going. My one friend up county gets a weekly e-mail from both of her kids' teachers about what the kids learned that week, the student of the week, etc. OTES is not like that. A good school, but not like that. It's not off the wall to want to interact with your kid's teacher more than once a year at the parent teacher conference. Hearing about what they are learning about and doing in class helps spark conversation at home. If this stuff doesn't seem appealing to you it's because you have different preferences than me, and that's OK. My response is information for people who may have similar preferences to me. This is how the world works. We won't all agree, but we can be respectful of other's preferences. I'm certainly not writing nasty letters to the administration about this stuff. We are happy enough at OTES. But if someone asks for an opinion on OTES, this is my opinion. Just like any other review, it may not apply to you if the things I'm talking about aren't things that matter to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recognize that poster up-thread who for years has been trashing Oakland Terrace every.single.time. it is mentioned. I have always suspected a fired teacher or mental parent. They just can't let it go and it has been years.

I grew up in Silver Spring and so did my husband. We are both teachers (UMD for undergrad and GW for grad school, so truly locals!) . When we started a family a few years ago we knew we would choose OT or Flora Singer. OT won out due to the dual immersion language program. We are hopeful the program will continue to Newport Mill MS; we will see what to do when that time comes. We are fine with the DCC high school choices as husband and i are both products of them (Blair). The IB programs are what we are looking for; it will be most convenient for us personally if our kids choose Einstein, though as proud Blair graduates, well, we would be beaming if our kids continued the legacy...

I’m a new poster to this thread. I have a 1st grader at OTES and I have posted on 2 other OTES threads. It is so interesting because as the poster up thread said, there are many of us with complaints about OTES. Both on this board and other parents I have spoken to at the school. Yet every time these legitimate complaints come up, someone (maybe the same someone?) “recognizes” the poster as the crazy OTES poster and shuts it down. My first ever post on the last OTES thread got “recognized” by this person as “the same poster” with an ax to grind. It’s uncanny. Next time someone complains about OTES, watch for the immediate gas light.

So far for us OTES has been fine. Spanish immersion is a huge perk, but the poster above summed it up perfectly. There is very little parent interaction compared to experiences of friends at other schools. It is hard to volunteer even if you flat out ask. There is zero communication from teachers or admin. We have grown used to it and our child is happy, so it’s basically fine. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a little more from our child’s school.

If people are thrilled with admin and teachers at Flora Singer, that is worth a ton IMO.

Here’s what I find interesting: when parents seemingly care more about “cool” or “nice” teachers than “good” teachers.

And what impact does the admin have on parents? Are you just frustrated that you can’t volunteer? That’s weird. Why are you so pressed to be in the building during school hours? Unless you have a kid with special needs, you really don’t interact with admin.

Our experience with a special needs child has been terrible. They completely ignore the issues, say it is something else when we've had tons of private testing and the supports they provide are based on groups, not individual kids.

Why wouldn't you want to volunteer to support the teacher so she/he can focus on the kids and you help with the other things?

OTES would be great for you if you aren't there if you are no involved and don't care. They like parents like you.

Admin has a huge impact. How the teachers are treated and told what or what they cannot do impacts both the parents and kids. Admin is probably behind the communication block between parents and teachers. I've heard/seen admin screaming at the teachers rather than giving the supports they need. Teacher tried to help us advocate what our child need and admin told us and the teacher we were both wrong when they had no direct experience with our child.

I want good teaches who teach, not dump the kids on computers or teach from videos. I don't want nice. We have lots of nice teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recognize that poster up-thread who for years has been trashing Oakland Terrace every.single.time. it is mentioned. I have always suspected a fired teacher or mental parent. They just can't let it go and it has been years.

I grew up in Silver Spring and so did my husband. We are both teachers (UMD for undergrad and GW for grad school, so truly locals!) . When we started a family a few years ago we knew we would choose OT or Flora Singer. OT won out due to the dual immersion language program. We are hopeful the program will continue to Newport Mill MS; we will see what to do when that time comes. We are fine with the DCC high school choices as husband and i are both products of them (Blair). The IB programs are what we are looking for; it will be most convenient for us personally if our kids choose Einstein, though as proud Blair graduates, well, we would be beaming if our kids continued the legacy...

I’m a new poster to this thread. I have a 1st grader at OTES and I have posted on 2 other OTES threads. It is so interesting because as the poster up thread said, there are many of us with complaints about OTES. Both on this board and other parents I have spoken to at the school. Yet every time these legitimate complaints come up, someone (maybe the same someone?) “recognizes” the poster as the crazy OTES poster and shuts it down. My first ever post on the last OTES thread got “recognized” by this person as “the same poster” with an ax to grind. It’s uncanny. Next time someone complains about OTES, watch for the immediate gas light.

So far for us OTES has been fine. Spanish immersion is a huge perk, but the poster above summed it up perfectly. There is very little parent interaction compared to experiences of friends at other schools. It is hard to volunteer even if you flat out ask. There is zero communication from teachers or admin. We have grown used to it and our child is happy, so it’s basically fine. But there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a little more from our child’s school.

If people are thrilled with admin and teachers at Flora Singer, that is worth a ton IMO.

Here’s what I find interesting: when parents seemingly care more about “cool” or “nice” teachers than “good” teachers.

And what impact does the admin have on parents? Are you just frustrated that you can’t volunteer? That’s weird. Why are you so pressed to be in the building during school hours? Unless you have a kid with special needs, you really don’t interact with admin.

It's how you become involved in your community. The more volunteer opportunities (usually outside of school hours) the more families you meet. We like to be a part of our community, but the opportunities are harder to find at OTES. The e-mail on Sunday is school wide and vague. I have a number of friends who are elementary ed teachers elsewhere in MCPS and they update the parents in their class weekly or monthly about how the class is going. My one friend up county gets a weekly e-mail from both of her kids' teachers about what the kids learned that week, the student of the week, etc. OTES is not like that. A good school, but not like that. It's not off the wall to want to interact with your kid's teacher more than once a year at the parent teacher conference. Hearing about what they are learning about and doing in class helps spark conversation at home. If this stuff doesn't seem appealing to you it's because you have different preferences than me, and that's OK. My response is information for people who may have similar preferences to me. This is how the world works. We won't all agree, but we can be respectful of other's preferences. I'm certainly not writing nasty letters to the administration about this stuff. We are happy enough at OTES. But if someone asks for an opinion on OTES, this is my opinion. Just like any other review, it may not apply to you if the things I'm talking about aren't things that matter to you.

+1, my kids are happy and doing well but there is no sense of community. I rarely get return emails from teachers and never get return emails from admin. Math homework is a particular issue and we use homework helpline as often we get worksheets with no samples or directions and have no idea what they are looking for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same poster.

It may or may not be. I find the “no communication” thing strange: we get an email every single Sunday about what’s going on at school for the upcoming week. Between the two kids I have there, one has communicated often and proactively, one not much at all, and two somewhere in the middle.

I do think the principal focuses more on supporting her teachers and running the school than she does on making parents happy, at least from what I’ve observed at other schools. That’s fine with me. Her job is making the school run well, not placating parents. Mind you, we’re not unhappy parents; I think some parents have expectations more aligned with being catered to than with the reality of running a diverse school with multiple specific programs (immersion, special education).

She isn't supporting the teachers either and my impression is she doesn't respond to them either except when she needs something. I don't want to be catered to but on the rare occasion something happens and I email, being a professional means responding either quickly or a few days depending on what it is. I'm to the point I don't even bother emailing when my kids are sick. Its never coded in the computer properly anyway.

[Anonymous]

Np-- do schools actually allow parents to volunteer in the classroom? Seems like a terrible idea unless the volunteers get full background checks beforehand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Np-- do schools actually allow parents to volunteer in the classroom? Seems like a terrible idea unless the volunteers get full background checks beforehand.

MCPS barely backgrounds staff let alone parents. Parents are not to be left alone in the classroom and yes, they should be, but they are not.