Powell ES?

[Anonymous]

We're thinking about moving into the Powell elementary neighborhood from Shepherd Park. I'm not familiar with Powell and haven't heard much about it on here. Can anyone share their thoughts on it? It's administration? Teachers? Programs? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Well for starters Powell is a dual language, Spanish-English school that feeds MacFarland Middle School. Very diverse student body, ethnically and economically.

[Anonymous]

Powell has cheap aftercare. Other than that, I’d stay IB for Shepherd.

[Anonymous]

Shepherd has the track to Deal and Wilson. McFarland is untested and not well regarded. I’m trying to move out of Petworth and into SP or another Deal feeder for this reason. Powell is well liked

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shepherd has the track to Deal and Wilson. McFarland is untested and not well regarded. I’m trying to move out of Petworth and into SP or another Deal feeder for this reason. Powell is well liked

I’m the PP. OP please ask the Petworth Parents google or yahoo groups.

[Anonymous]

Families in Petworth love Powell, especially the fact that it’s Spanish-immersion. But the middle path is an obvious drawback. If you plan to move again for middle school anyway, I’d say Powell would be a great choice, especially if immersion is important to you.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, everyone!

[Anonymous]

thats not a smart move

[Anonymous]

Our IB school is Brightwood, but we attend Powell and love the parent community and teachers. Although the administration is three years in, they have gotten better as parents requested more communication etc.; they now listen “aggressively”. The AP is awesome and handles quite a few of the everyday task. This is due to her being bilingual as the principal is not.

Our kids are heading to 3rd and K and are doing really well academically for elementary kids.

There is a committee underway to bring in better aftercare options, but for now we have cheap babysitting program.

I would only switch from Shepherd to Powell if I wanted Spanish immersion.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps I might be the flip side of the last poster; I would only avoid Powell if bilingual education feels like a distraction to you. Otherwise I can't see why not.

[Anonymous]

If your kid is white Maybe try it. Otherwise stay at Shepherd. I can’t imagine why one would leave Shepherd for Powell. There are other ways to get Spanish.

[Anonymous]

OP do not give up a deal/Wilson feed for Powell. Are you crazy? McFarland is going to struggle like every other shiny new middle school idea in DCPS.

[Anonymous]

I’m also interested in this school based on a neighbor attending, however how is it having a monolingual principal with two bilingual AP’s? Is this a norm for a principal not to speak the target language of school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m also interested in this school based on a neighbor attending, however how is it having a monolingual principal with two bilingual AP’s? Is this a norm for a principal not to speak the target language of school?

Isn't DCPS funny

[Anonymous]

In DCPS I believe more of the dual language principals speak Spanish (and pretty well) than not. We are a Powell family and my experience has been that it doesn't matter that much that the principal doesn't really speak Spanish.

One, it's a relatively big school and there isn't a lot of direct contact with the principal. She is around and says hello. She can use that level of Spanish, maybe not perfectly, but can get through greetings. Works fine - what are your expectations?

She joins Thursday morning meetings once a month. Though probably around 70% of Powell parents speak Spanish and very limited English, the morning meetings are always a mix of parents who speak Spanish and English, so translation is required one way or the other. The only benefit a true Spanish speaker would have in this situation is that she/he could do it all themselves in both languages. Not an overwhelming difference in real life situations.

Also, the APs, at least in my perspective, are great. And great on language. One has a lot of experience in the school community and is a first language/heritage Spanish speaker. The other is new this year but very engaging and I was surprised at her Spanish ability; if I am not misjudging she is not a heritage speaker but someone who has really done a great deal to gain full fluency - a real model for parents and kids who don't come in with Spanish-language ability.

The knock on the Powell principal, which I only hear second and third hand, is her management ability. That she can and does push out staff. Things I know for certain is that some staff have left and gone to other nearby schools; others have been essentially fired. I've also heard that parent problems have not always been resolved fully, but I've never heard the details and I'm not the type to go find out. There are certainly others who know more.

I can't say how much of that is directly about the principal or more a result of the forces she has to manage, e.g., if the budget says realign staff to fit the building and eliminate ELL teachers or specialists or don't hire full time aides or special education teachers, you can only try to fight that so much. Then a principal has to go make heads roll, apply the grading criteria (whatever they are), and all of the terrible but necessary parts of management. But my impression is that there isn't a lot of love and happiness in principal-teacher relations. (Do you love or even like YOUR boss?)

Some of this stuff is not likely to be easier under different management. Some of it is. People who work in this environment know better than I do.

I'll tell you this. My kids have had good teachers. Teachers that I would want for them regardless of any management choices, teachers who I have no doubt do as well at teaching as those in, ahem, "better schools." They have learned a lot, both in subject matter stuff at the elementary level, and in the language program. They are ahead of grade level and get differentiated instruction (though it has required checking up on regularly).

The only negative to lay out there is that despite teaching that seems to work well for my family, the test scores are not that great. Knowing only a little about this kind of thing, I primarily attribute this to my/our family background being a bunch of upper middle class lawyers and engineers going back generations with lots of graduate degrees and very stable homes, when many other families have parents who are barely literate in Spanish and have to work hard and be out of the home a lot to just stay afloat - and I don't judge, because those families work hard, but standardized testing appears to reflect this type of home input.

And I say all this to say that Powell having a principal that speaks Spanish well doesn't matter as much as you think it might, and lay out some of the issues you may want to think about when you consider a principal and her school.