do you love your middle school principal?

[Anonymous]

A friend is the head of an educational nonprofit in NYC for minority youth, and she's talking with another organization about the possibility of starting a mentorship program at a DC middle school that would serve minority students. She says the key to making these things work is a school principal who would be amenable to trying this kind of outside program and is easy to work with. Does anyone know what middle schools in DC might fit that bill?

(I live in Alexandria and DD isn't school-aged yet, so I'm not plugged into this kind of thing!)

[Anonymous]

Try Washington Latin Public Charter School -- great admin; lots of great kids (minority and majority) with big dreams who would love mentors.

[Anonymous]

Latin is 15% free and reduced price lunch. So if your friend is working with Title I school wide funds, I would be hesitant.

San Miguel is a great program and might be worth looking into.

[Anonymous]

Try Hardy MS in Georgetown. The principal won an award two years ago.

[Anonymous]

San Miguel -- small middle school run by St. John's College High School focusing on disadvantaged Latino boys -- Brother Francis Ells is principal www.sanmigueldc.org
Hardy Middle School (DCPS) -- Patrick Pope www.hardyms.org
Deal Middle School (DCPS) -- Melissa Kim www.alicedeal.org
Both Hardy and Deal have significant minority student populations and principals who might be amenable

[Anonymous]

We love our principal at Deal! She is always looking for new ideas!

[Anonymous]

Since the Latin free and reduced lunch was posted, do you mind posting same for all the above? I looked for a source on that, but could not find. Just interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since the Latin free and reduced lunch was posted, do you mind posting same for all the above? I looked for a source on that, but could not find. Just interested.

Per 2009 DCCAS results:

Deal 34% (190/557 students)
Hardy 37% (122/326 students)

For full testing results, go to http://www.nclb.osse.dc.gov/index.asp

Note that Deal added 6th grade this year, so total enrollment is now about 860 and enrollment has also increased at Hardy this year. Both schools are now 6, 7, 8.

[Anonymous]

DC has a bunch of nonprofits that already do varying degrees of mentorship programs. One of the best for middle school specifically is Higher Achievement. http://www.higherachievement.org/

Before reinventing the wheel, your friend should really do lots of homework on the DC nonprofit scene and charter school offerings. There may be some collaborating they can do with existing groups that would probably be happy for extra support.

Lots of education organizations from New York (and elsewhere) have been coming to DC recently. We definitely need help, but it's not the easiest place to try to do good.

Best of luck to your friend

[Anonymous]

pp here. forgot to add, dcps has lots of k-8 schools and few 6-8 grade only schools. probably would hurt to go through dcps office of community partnerships.