Protest at Mundo on P street

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are these parents staying if it’s so bad? Are their IB schools that bad? Sounds like it would most likely be better than this!

If it's P street, our school (Seaton) lost a bunch of students to MV early on (like in PK). I myself almost fell for the hype a few times, but I am SO thankful we stayed. I have a third grader, this feels like a parallel path that my kid could have experienced. Instead he has a team of third grade teachers (ELA and Math) who both have been at the school for more than a decade, are superstars, have grad degrees, and have him working way above grade level on both subjects. In addition to the ELA teachers and math/reading specialists who are always pulling kids out.

I'm going to say it -- families fled their IB school bc they were afraid of the demographics. But it is a better school, period.

Us too (not at Seaton). I feel really grateful I trusted my instincts and didn’t fall for the hype. The grass isn’t always greener.

A lot of people in DC value bilingual education, not everything is about the school demographics.

There are plenty of bilingual DCPS schools where parents aren’t staging protests and accusing the school of educational neglect.

Are you crazy? No there are not. As a bilingual person, it was hugely important for my kids to speak spanish. They also make friends at school and love it there. It’s completely irrational for you to say “oh you wanted your kid to have teachers? Find another bilingual school. Just uproot and drive in a different likely less convenient location and force your kids to leave their friends.

I cannot tolerate the absolute morons on this website sometimes. Every parent should be out there rooting for Mundo. If you don’t think the other charters (including the ones with terrible boards like stokes, lamb, etc) and dcps are watching you are deluding yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

I agree with you. I cannot believe the school is trying to blame the parents for wanting to make sure their kids are taught by teachers not whatever nonsense computer program they found on the cheap. I am furious that anyone would defend the indefensible.

DCI should be there alongside the parents. We are at another feeder and I don’t want to find out when my kids are at DCI that the Mundo kids are missing basic math and reading and spanish skills!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

No one is defending the school. I talked about my good experience so far, but believe me that the parent community of Both campus are working together, even though the complains are coming from P st third grade only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

No one is defending the school. I talked about my good experience so far, but believe me that the parent community of Both campus are working together, even though the complains are coming from P st third grade only.

That is false. Complaints are coming from all over. Don’t minimize this by acting like it’s just one small group- it’s a school wide issue. Minimizing it and brushing it under the rug make the school and pto look like clowns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

No one is defending the school. I talked about my good experience so far, but believe me that the parent community of Both campus are working together, even though the complains are coming from P st third grade only.

How old are your kids? Parents have been organizing and protesting for YEARS. First the second campus expansion, then in support of the teacher unionization, now this. The administration does not care, and the charter board does not care. And they won’t care until the test scores plummet below the worst DCPS schools. Which they won’t, because like the parent letter said, there are enough MC families that supplement that scores will remain artificially high. So kudos to the parents for trying, but they’ll learn what the parents before them did - their choices are suck it up or leave.

[Anonymous]

What does this from the parent letter mean?

This constant turnover has resulted in significant disruptions, negatively impacting our children's academic progress. A clear example is the loss of a full classroom (from second to third grade), which, to our knowledge, is unprecedented in MV history.

Does that mean they had so many unfilled seats that they cut a class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does this from the parent letter mean?

This constant turnover has resulted in significant disruptions, negatively impacting our children's academic progress. A clear example is the loss of a full classroom (from second to third grade), which, to our knowledge, is unprecedented in MV history.

Does that mean they had so many unfilled seats that they cut a class?

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

No one is defending the school. I talked about my good experience so far, but believe me that the parent community of Both campus are working together, even though the complains are coming from P st third grade only.

That is false. Complaints are coming from all over. Don’t minimize this by acting like it’s just one small group- it’s a school wide issue. Minimizing it and brushing it under the rug make the school and pto look like clowns.

I am not minimizing, I am talking about my experience with the school, not what I read here. The protest/letter was started by the third grade parents.

[Anonymous]

My kid is in third grade and was at MVP until we got a spot at another Spanish-immersion charter in the Fall of 2020. It was pretty clear the school had big problems then, and it pandemic response in Spring 2020 did not give us any reason to think things would get better instead of worse. We were very, very lucky.

Just to respond to a couple of the comments in this thread:
-Our new charter has had some teacher turnover, but not like MVP. More importantly, the administration has been extremely proactive about communicating both the departures and their strategy for replacing the teachers.
-Our new charter has 2 teachers in every classroom for every grade.
-MVP did not rely on parent fundraising for anything except playground equipment, as best I could tell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s really shocking that anyone is defending MV on this thread. Even if your child isn’t suffering, do you have no concern for the other children in your school community?
Even if no, do you really feel confident that your child won’t be in a similar position next year? Leaving kids unsupervised, especially during PARCC, the admin’s terrifyingly callous response to the protests, and the lack of staff to teach the curriculum should be an emergency for every family at the school.

No one is defending the school. I talked about my good experience so far, but believe me that the parent community of Both campus are working together, even though the complains are coming from P st third grade only.

How old are your kids? Parents have been organizing and protesting for YEARS. First the second campus expansion, then in support of the teacher unionization, now this. The administration does not care, and the charter board does not care. And they won’t care until the test scores plummet below the worst DCPS schools. Which they won’t, because like the parent letter said, there are enough MC families that supplement that scores will remain artificially high. So kudos to the parents for trying, but they’ll learn what the parents before them did - their choices are suck it up or leave.

I am not a parent at Mundo, but this is horrifying. The fact that a school is a charter doesn’t absolve the city from acting. What is the Board of directors doing? Ultimately doesn’t the executive director report to them?

What is the Dc school superintendent doing? I know the dc public school charter board is terrible but they need to be publicly shamed and dragged over this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is that the third grade class has experienced serious issues with teacher attrition this year as well as last year, to the point where kids have been without a teacher for long periods of time.

I really sympathize with these parents. I have a 3rd grader and, while every kid was harmed by Covid closures, this grade seems to have had it pretty badly. Losing almost half of Kinder and all of first, followed by a very stressful 2nd. For us, this was the first year things felt good again. Teachers back in the zone, kids free and happy again, etc. I would have been CRUSHED to have my kid have another bad year.

[Anonymous]

Parents have out-sourced everything to the schoool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher attrition at charters, especially dual language charters, has been REALLY bad this year. I think it's always been an issue when you need teachers with an extra skill set, but it's particularly bad now.

Pay at charters like Mundo is not good enough. This is a game the charters played to establish themselves: spend money on administration, marketing, and facilities, cheap out on teachers, assume it will work in the end. It doesn't! And it's not like these schools have amazing facilities either. So really they are spending all of their money (taxpayer money!) on administration and marketing themselves to PK parents. It is a house of cards and it's no wonder it's falling apart. There are a bunch of schools in DC in this bind. Not every charter (some are better run than others, some pay teachers more or allocate money better) but a number of them.

I feel compelled to also state that DCPS also sucks in a variety of ways, but teacher quality and making sure classrooms are staffed with teachers is generally not one of them. DCPS pays teachers very well and it helps them retain very high quality teachers even when other aspects of the district are a huge PITA.

I agree with a lot of what you said but please don’t say DCPS is appropriately staffed. So many parents aren’t getting their special Ed services because dcps cannot hire people.

+1 It is too easy and a pretty lazy to fall back on charter vs DCPS. There are a number of DCPS schools that have been without teachers in core classes for much or all of this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is that the third grade class has experienced serious issues with teacher attrition this year as well as last year, to the point where kids have been without a teacher for long periods of time.

I really sympathize with these parents. I have a 3rd grader and, while every kid was harmed by Covid closures, this grade seems to have had it pretty badly. Losing almost half of Kinder and all of first, followed by a very stressful 2nd. For us, this was the first year things felt good again. Teachers back in the zone, kids free and happy again, etc. I would have been CRUSHED to have my kid have another bad year.

Yes, agree that the third graders were by far the most vulnerable kids and it is devastating to me that Mundo let them down so badly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents have out-sourced everything to the schoool.

I think the inverse is true. I see Mundo parents putting their kids with tutors, paying tons of cash for enrichment, driving all over and Mundo can’t find a teacher? Gross.