Two Rivers elementary families -- what is your MS plan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid who was at TR for years before and then the tail end of the pandemic I can assure you that none of the things people are blaming on Covid or Kristina or community meetings were newly discovered in the past few years. TR certainly offers a warm and nurturing ECE environment. The problem is and has always been that the school has no clue how to adjust for middle to upper ES and the changes in kids that accompany chronological age. I have no idea how EL is supposed to work, but certainly it can't be the way TR deploys it. They have always had a tail wagging the dog approach to core subjects. Instead of having a curriculum based on verb conjugation or core math principles they start with whatever the EL concept is and back into the core learning. It results in suboptimal educational outcomes and kids who are not prepared to study or learn. Kristina was incompetent and wielded race as a sword and shield to prevent the board or anyone else from asking hard questions. She was an EL consultant with little to no experience running anything. In many ways she was the poster child for what is wrong with TR; the Board focused on EL fluency and their principles of inclusion instead of core administration of an educational institution and learning. Covid merely exposed how unprepared and unserious she and the TR Board were.

When JO Wilson reopens in 2026 it will be the death knell for TR 4th street. I assume it will be shuttered by 2029 at the latest.

You're going to need ECE teachers at JO who actually like kids though. They barely go outside for recess if it's below 50 degrees, have the kids watch TV for indoor recess (which again, happens A LOT) and when they are outside, they don't play with the kids at all. No engagement at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid who was at TR for years before and then the tail end of the pandemic I can assure you that none of the things people are blaming on Covid or Kristina or community meetings were newly discovered in the past few years. TR certainly offers a warm and nurturing ECE environment. The problem is and has always been that the school has no clue how to adjust for middle to upper ES and the changes in kids that accompany chronological age. I have no idea how EL is supposed to work, but certainly it can't be the way TR deploys it. They have always had a tail wagging the dog approach to core subjects. Instead of having a curriculum based on verb conjugation or core math principles they start with whatever the EL concept is and back into the core learning. It results in suboptimal educational outcomes and kids who are not prepared to study or learn. Kristina was incompetent and wielded race as a sword and shield to prevent the board or anyone else from asking hard questions. She was an EL consultant with little to no experience running anything. In many ways she was the poster child for what is wrong with TR; the Board focused on EL fluency and their principles of inclusion instead of core administration of an educational institution and learning. Covid merely exposed how unprepared and unserious she and the TR Board were.

When JO Wilson reopens in 2026 it will be the death knell for TR 4th street. I assume it will be shuttered by 2029 at the latest.

You're going to need ECE teachers at JO who actually like kids though. They barely go outside for recess if it's below 50 degrees, have the kids watch TV for indoor recess (which again, happens A LOT) and when they are outside, they don't play with the kids at all. No engagement at all.

Weird take. JOW has received high marks for ECE for a number of years. Families avoid it due to 1st and up. Also, have you seen TR's "playground"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid who was at TR for years before and then the tail end of the pandemic I can assure you that none of the things people are blaming on Covid or Kristina or community meetings were newly discovered in the past few years. TR certainly offers a warm and nurturing ECE environment. The problem is and has always been that the school has no clue how to adjust for middle to upper ES and the changes in kids that accompany chronological age. I have no idea how EL is supposed to work, but certainly it can't be the way TR deploys it. They have always had a tail wagging the dog approach to core subjects. Instead of having a curriculum based on verb conjugation or core math principles they start with whatever the EL concept is and back into the core learning. It results in suboptimal educational outcomes and kids who are not prepared to study or learn. Kristina was incompetent and wielded race as a sword and shield to prevent the board or anyone else from asking hard questions. She was an EL consultant with little to no experience running anything. In many ways she was the poster child for what is wrong with TR; the Board focused on EL fluency and their principles of inclusion instead of core administration of an educational institution and learning. Covid merely exposed how unprepared and unserious she and the TR Board were.

When JO Wilson reopens in 2026 it will be the death knell for TR 4th street. I assume it will be shuttered by 2029 at the latest.

You're going to need ECE teachers at JO who actually like kids though. They barely go outside for recess if it's below 50 degrees, have the kids watch TV for indoor recess (which again, happens A LOT) and when they are outside, they don't play with the kids at all. No engagement at all.

Weird take. JOW has received high marks for ECE for a number of years. Families avoid it due to 1st and up. Also, have you seen TR's "playground"?

Oh I'm not pro TR by any means. I just don't think you all know JO. High marks for a number of years? Almost all those teachers are gone. I can think of 4 that have left.

[Anonymous]

In an effort to put some actual numbers to this, I took a look at the Enrollment Audit and Enrollments by DCPS Boundary data. It's hard to port all that into the typing field here, but here are my conclusions.

1) Distress signal is clearly evident in the form of declining preschool and 5th and 6th grade waitlists at all campuses over the past 5 or so years.

2) Total LEA enrollment has been pretty stable right around 1000. SY22-23 was a high point at 1052, SY23-24 was 1028. Seems like the change is driven by the middle school.

3) The first year of not having full 5th grade classes was SY23-24. I guess that was the year the trend of shorter 5th grade waitlists made the class actually not fill up.

4) TR4th continues to draw a stable population from JO (60-70), LT (high teens), Peabody (high teens), Miner, Langley, Langdon, Wheatley, and Browne. So I'm not sure the idea of declining interest in 4th St from nearby Hill schools really holds up. Perhaps it's becoming more and more preschoolers shut out of their IB Hill schools rather than elementary schoolers choosing TR, I don't know. TRY draw from nearby schools is also pretty stable or increasing, with the exception of a dropoff from Miner. Middle school draw from EH and SH is also stable, SH enrollees actually increased from 15 to 21 in the most recent year. Note-- for this data set, the most recent year available is SY22-23.

Obviously there's a lot of analysis you could do comparing TR with the nearby schools and the various trends and changes that are impacting them as well. It's a complex data set with a lot of factors that need to be accounted for. But I hope this sheds a little light. I think what's happened with TR is a sad waste and really disappointing, but clearly it does continue to draw students from a wide range and I don't think it's anywhere near closing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In an effort to put some actual numbers to this, I took a look at the Enrollment Audit and Enrollments by DCPS Boundary data. It's hard to port all that into the typing field here, but here are my conclusions.

1) Distress signal is clearly evident in the form of declining preschool and 5th and 6th grade waitlists at all campuses over the past 5 or so years.

2) Total LEA enrollment has been pretty stable right around 1000. SY22-23 was a high point at 1052, SY23-24 was 1028. Seems like the change is driven by the middle school.

3) The first year of not having full 5th grade classes was SY23-24. I guess that was the year the trend of shorter 5th grade waitlists made the class actually not fill up.

4) TR4th continues to draw a stable population from JO (60-70), LT (high teens), Peabody (high teens), Miner, Langley, Langdon, Wheatley, and Browne. So I'm not sure the idea of declining interest in 4th St from nearby Hill schools really holds up. Perhaps it's becoming more and more preschoolers shut out of their IB Hill schools rather than elementary schoolers choosing TR, I don't know. TRY draw from nearby schools is also pretty stable or increasing, with the exception of a dropoff from Miner. Middle school draw from EH and SH is also stable, SH enrollees actually increased from 15 to 21 in the most recent year. Note-- for this data set, the most recent year available is SY22-23.

Obviously there's a lot of analysis you could do comparing TR with the nearby schools and the various trends and changes that are impacting them as well. It's a complex data set with a lot of factors that need to be accounted for. But I hope this sheds a little light. I think what's happened with TR is a sad waste and really disappointing, but clearly it does continue to draw students from a wide range and I don't think it's anywhere near closing.

The problem for TR is that bolded used to send 2-3x more. There was a time within the last 10 years that people would have chosen TR over LT 9/10 times. That trend has reversed. One expects the same trend with re-opened JOW. The problem for TR is the high SES kids from LT and JOW are the lifeblood of that school.

Your "analysis" on total enrollment is flawed. Whether they can fill a class is a REALLY low bar and the wrong question. The question is re-enrollment. Those numbers have been trending down for many years. People are getting out earlier and earlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In an effort to put some actual numbers to this, I took a look at the Enrollment Audit and Enrollments by DCPS Boundary data. It's hard to port all that into the typing field here, but here are my conclusions.

1) Distress signal is clearly evident in the form of declining preschool and 5th and 6th grade waitlists at all campuses over the past 5 or so years.

2) Total LEA enrollment has been pretty stable right around 1000. SY22-23 was a high point at 1052, SY23-24 was 1028. Seems like the change is driven by the middle school.

3) The first year of not having full 5th grade classes was SY23-24. I guess that was the year the trend of shorter 5th grade waitlists made the class actually not fill up.

4) TR4th continues to draw a stable population from JO (60-70), LT (high teens), Peabody (high teens), Miner, Langley, Langdon, Wheatley, and Browne. So I'm not sure the idea of declining interest in 4th St from nearby Hill schools really holds up. Perhaps it's becoming more and more preschoolers shut out of their IB Hill schools rather than elementary schoolers choosing TR, I don't know. TRY draw from nearby schools is also pretty stable or increasing, with the exception of a dropoff from Miner. Middle school draw from EH and SH is also stable, SH enrollees actually increased from 15 to 21 in the most recent year. Note-- for this data set, the most recent year available is SY22-23.

Obviously there's a lot of analysis you could do comparing TR with the nearby schools and the various trends and changes that are impacting them as well. It's a complex data set with a lot of factors that need to be accounted for. But I hope this sheds a little light. I think what's happened with TR is a sad waste and really disappointing, but clearly it does continue to draw students from a wide range and I don't think it's anywhere near closing.

The problem for TR is that bolded used to send 2-3x more. There was a time within the last 10 years that people would have chosen TR over LT 9/10 times. That trend has reversed. One expects the same trend with re-opened JOW. The problem for TR is the high SES kids from LT and JOW are the lifeblood of that school.

Your "analysis" on total enrollment is flawed. Whether they can fill a class is a REALLY low bar and the wrong question. The question is re-enrollment. Those numbers have been trending down for many years. People are getting out earlier and earlier.

Well, I'm not sure, the DME data only goes back to SY16-17 on that point. Looking at SY16-17 for TR4th, it's 32 for JOW (so actually less than now), 21 for Miner, 16 for Ludlow-Taylor, 13 for Peabody/Watkins. So either it isn't that different or there's more subtlety that I'm not picking up, having to do with age or SES of students perhaps. Please feel free to provide your own analysis if you have any different read of the data.

It's hard to do a good comparison that far back because of the opening of Young campus and the shift of the middle school grades from 4th to Young. I do believe people are getting out of TR earlier (as I said above), but I don't have data to support the assertion. And then there's external factors like the slow but real improvement of Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine.

I think all of the data points are important. Certain re-enrollment is important, certainly waitlist length is important. But not filling up a grade is a very clear turning point as well, and it has a budget impact that is really important. It's kind of a next tier distress signal.

[Anonymous]

Ok, so if you go here: https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/lea/149/school/198/report

And then scroll down and click Explore Enrollment Data and then open Re-Enrollment, and scroll down to the blue, pink, and orange display,

What you see is a pretty consistent upper 80s percent. Now it does seem that the Economically Disadvantaged category's re-enrollment dipped down to 49% (super low!) and then grew back, which is likely masking a corresponding decrease in non-economically-disadvantaged re-enrollment. But still, the overall percentile is okay and (aside from what I said above about SES), if there is a meaningful downward trend it isn't very steep.

Young elementary displays a similar pattern with low-SES re-enrollment dipping. I would say the middle school doesshow a decrease, from 96.6% to 91.9%, but there are only two years of data so I'm reluctant to call it a trend.

I like to compare to ITDS because the schools are roughly similar in location and grade levels and programing. ITDS re-enrollment also shows a slight downward trend, but doesn't have the same dip in low-SES re-enrollment. Interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid who was at TR for years before and then the tail end of the pandemic I can assure you that none of the things people are blaming on Covid or Kristina or community meetings were newly discovered in the past few years. TR certainly offers a warm and nurturing ECE environment. The problem is and has always been that the school has no clue how to adjust for middle to upper ES and the changes in kids that accompany chronological age. I have no idea how EL is supposed to work, but certainly it can't be the way TR deploys it. They have always had a tail wagging the dog approach to core subjects. Instead of having a curriculum based on verb conjugation or core math principles they start with whatever the EL concept is and back into the core learning. It results in suboptimal educational outcomes and kids who are not prepared to study or learn. Kristina was incompetent and wielded race as a sword and shield to prevent the board or anyone else from asking hard questions. She was an EL consultant with little to no experience running anything. In many ways she was the poster child for what is wrong with TR; the Board focused on EL fluency and their principles of inclusion instead of core administration of an educational institution and learning. Covid merely exposed how unprepared and unserious she and the TR Board were.

When JO Wilson reopens in 2026 it will be the death knell for TR 4th street. I assume it will be shuttered by 2029 at the latest.

You're going to need ECE teachers at JO who actually like kids though. They barely go outside for recess if it's below 50 degrees, have the kids watch TV for indoor recess (which again, happens A LOT) and when they are outside, they don't play with the kids at all. No engagement at all.

Weird take. JOW has received high marks for ECE for a number of years. Families avoid it due to 1st and up. Also, have you seen TR's "playground"?

Oh I'm not pro TR by any means. I just don't think you all know JO. High marks for a number of years? Almost all those teachers are gone. I can think of 4 that have left.

JOW has lost several great ECE teachers in recent years which is troubling. Before those departures I do think they had an amazing ECE team (my kid went through it). There are still several incredibly nurturing ECE teachers still there though (and the new folks might be great, I just don't know them).

Also regarding the thing about JOW teachers not taking kids outside-- a lot of this has to do with the school's bad playground set up (with very limited equipment for younger kids and no separation from equipment for older kids that can be dangerous for little ones) that will soon be totally overhauled with the new campus. Very little shade, bad equipment, and a persistent mosquito issue that they've struggled to address because poor facilities management results in a lot of standing water after rainstorms. My kid had PK teachers who really emphasized outdoor time and they were constantly battling these challenges. But the new campus is going to get an outdoor classroom and a bunch of shaded play space so that teachers can take kids out and not roast in the sun and have places for them to sit and play.

I would still choose JOW over TR even with the ECE losses and even in the old building though because there is something wrong with TR's curriculum. And their building is so small with incredibly limited outdoor space (maybe ECE classes spend more time outside but then kids are feet away from traffic on Florida including cars that sit idling waiting to get into the tire place-- air quality is a real question on that tiny playground). The main advantage of TR is access to a larger cohort of higher SES kids. Which I actually agree is helpful-- a high concentration of at risk kids creates challenges and this is true at JOW, though I think people who bailed from JOW for TR in PK likely overestimate what those challenges are.

But DCPS has a sound curriculum and high standards for teachers, who are well compensated and generally have more experience than TR teachers and at the ECE level specifically also have more training. DCPS has its issues but teaching quality is not one of them and this is probably the most important aspect of your child's education.

We spent 3 years at JOW and two at TR and we should have stayed at JOW, warts and all. Throw in a new campus and it's a no brainer which is the better school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will be sending my chickadee to Meret School. I’m sick of my child being around the underachievers. We tried DCPS and it was dreadful. We were enrolled at Janney and weren’t impressed. We then transferred our child to Two Rivers and didn’t like that school either. This will be money well spent. I’m a rich black woman and I refuse to deal with mediocre schools any longer.

I’m the PP. Depending on the cost at Meret, we might just leave the district altogether and enroll at MCPS.

Ma'am, it's "Maret" and it's a safety school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with most of the factors above. Another seemed to be that the emphasis on “community” and “warmth” slipped into a toxic positivity / gaslighting / head in the sand/ conflict averse approach to addressing problems. When teachers raised problems administrators didn’t make hard choices to confront the problems. The strong warm culture started to feel full of buzzwords, doublespeak, smiles and songs about community “we are the boat”, and reading the mission in unison at every gathering - literally - etc. Meanwhile educators were supported less and less and kid’s were not thriving/ learning much and deep parent engagement was rebuffed.

Spot on. Former TR patent and the "toxic positivity" was awful-- it basically means you can't have a useful conversation with the administration or anyone on the FSA about anything because if you aren't all rah-rah-TR-is-amazing, people will just avoid you and not respond to emails. I think people are afraid to confront realities because it's easier to be avoidant and pretend everything is great.

I also just personally can't stand all that stuff like reading the mission statement together. It's cult-like. If you want to stay mission-driven then the focus should be on accountability. Make sure that major decisions or consistent with your core mission and be able to explain to people how that is the case. But just reciting stuff together out loud is not a form of accountability and actually feels like a manipulation tactic to get people not to ask questions or criticize. Again: cult-like.

All of this is spot on. I’ll just add that I found the parent community at TRY overall very bizarre and cult-like, particularly around the COVID closures. There were glaring issues that no one seemed concerned with—the former TRY ES principal basically didn’t bother to show up the second half of the year. The year after we left, both 5th grade teachers quit mid-year and there was NO substitute/no full time replacements hired for the remainder of the year. Someone else mentioned the MS issues—additional days off to deal with “behavior issues”.
Again: cult-like (or ignorant).

This is how I'd describe our experience at ITDS, so it baffles me that so many people are proposing it as the alternative. ITDS always struck me as simply a whiter, richer TR. Same behavior mismanagement and low academic standards but somehow a bit more palatable for reasons I didn't understand. They even have a bunch of TR's old staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with most of the factors above. Another seemed to be that the emphasis on “community” and “warmth” slipped into a toxic positivity / gaslighting / head in the sand/ conflict averse approach to addressing problems. When teachers raised problems administrators didn’t make hard choices to confront the problems. The strong warm culture started to feel full of buzzwords, doublespeak, smiles and songs about community “we are the boat”, and reading the mission in unison at every gathering - literally - etc. Meanwhile educators were supported less and less and kid’s were not thriving/ learning much and deep parent engagement was rebuffed.

Spot on. Former TR patent and the "toxic positivity" was awful-- it basically means you can't have a useful conversation with the administration or anyone on the FSA about anything because if you aren't all rah-rah-TR-is-amazing, people will just avoid you and not respond to emails. I think people are afraid to confront realities because it's easier to be avoidant and pretend everything is great.

I also just personally can't stand all that stuff like reading the mission statement together. It's cult-like. If you want to stay mission-driven then the focus should be on accountability. Make sure that major decisions or consistent with your core mission and be able to explain to people how that is the case. But just reciting stuff together out loud is not a form of accountability and actually feels like a manipulation tactic to get people not to ask questions or criticize. Again: cult-like.

All of this is spot on. I’ll just add that I found the parent community at TRY overall very bizarre and cult-like, particularly around the COVID closures. There were glaring issues that no one seemed concerned with—the former TRY ES principal basically didn’t bother to show up the second half of the year. The year after we left, both 5th grade teachers quit mid-year and there was NO substitute/no full time replacements hired for the remainder of the year. Someone else mentioned the MS issues—additional days off to deal with “behavior issues”.
Again: cult-like (or ignorant).

This is how I'd describe our experience at ITDS, so it baffles me that so many people are proposing it as the alternative. ITDS always struck me as simply a whiter, richer TR. Same behavior mismanagement and low academic standards but somehow a bit more palatable for reasons I didn't understand. They even have a bunch of TR's old staff.

I agree... I think there are a bunch of key differences.

1) Building not as bad as TR4th-- their playground and the atrium's terrible acoustics and inefficient use of space. ITDS' building isn't great, but it's okay, and they do have a city rec center right outside.

2) ITDS didn't try to expand, so their leadership didn't get over-stressed like TR's did.

3) ITDS is operating a much smaller middle school and I think that makes it easier in some ways.

4) Yes there are a lot of TR staff and TR kids-- I knew TR was in a bad way when TR staff started moving their kids out of TR. But my sense is that ITDS only hires TR staff who they feel are seeing the problems with TR and wanting to make a break with that. The last principal they hired from TR who only stayed a year... well... that was a whole different situation

5) ITDS' prior head of school annoyed me but I think she was pretty good in some ways. The new head of school I like a lot, and she came from being a principal at an EOTR DCPS so she has a lot of experience with high-needs kids, and a very good sense of how other schools operate. Unlike the prior HOS whose whole world was ITDS.

6) The academic standards at ITDS could be higher but they aren't always super low either. Some of the teachers expect real work and explicitly teach math, grammar, etc.

7) ITDS is very understanding of behavior if it's special needs-related, but if it's not special needs-related, they definitely will dish out consequences to middle school students. They do have detention (they don't call it that of course), and they will have kids sit out certain fun things if they can't behave. This of course runs counter to their claim of being a restorative justice school, but whatever. Talking big philosophy and then doing more practical stuff in real life is very on brand for ITDS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with most of the factors above. Another seemed to be that the emphasis on “community” and “warmth” slipped into a toxic positivity / gaslighting / head in the sand/ conflict averse approach to addressing problems. When teachers raised problems administrators didn’t make hard choices to confront the problems. The strong warm culture started to feel full of buzzwords, doublespeak, smiles and songs about community “we are the boat”, and reading the mission in unison at every gathering - literally - etc. Meanwhile educators were supported less and less and kid’s were not thriving/ learning much and deep parent engagement was rebuffed.

Spot on. Former TR patent and the "toxic positivity" was awful-- it basically means you can't have a useful conversation with the administration or anyone on the FSA about anything because if you aren't all rah-rah-TR-is-amazing, people will just avoid you and not respond to emails. I think people are afraid to confront realities because it's easier to be avoidant and pretend everything is great.

I also just personally can't stand all that stuff like reading the mission statement together. It's cult-like. If you want to stay mission-driven then the focus should be on accountability. Make sure that major decisions or consistent with your core mission and be able to explain to people how that is the case. But just reciting stuff together out loud is not a form of accountability and actually feels like a manipulation tactic to get people not to ask questions or criticize. Again: cult-like.

All of this is spot on. I’ll just add that I found the parent community at TRY overall very bizarre and cult-like, particularly around the COVID closures. There were glaring issues that no one seemed concerned with—the former TRY ES principal basically didn’t bother to show up the second half of the year. The year after we left, both 5th grade teachers quit mid-year and there was NO substitute/no full time replacements hired for the remainder of the year. Someone else mentioned the MS issues—additional days off to deal with “behavior issues”.
Again: cult-like (or ignorant).

This is how I'd describe our experience at ITDS, so it baffles me that so many people are proposing it as the alternative. ITDS always struck me as simply a whiter, richer TR. Same behavior mismanagement and low academic standards but somehow a bit more palatable for reasons I didn't understand. They even have a bunch of TR's old staff.

I agree... I think there are a bunch of key differences.

1) Building not as bad as TR4th-- their playground and the atrium's terrible acoustics and inefficient use of space. ITDS' building isn't great, but it's okay, and they do have a city rec center right outside.

2) ITDS didn't try to expand, so their leadership didn't get over-stressed like TR's did.

3) ITDS is operating a much smaller middle school and I think that makes it easier in some ways.

4) Yes there are a lot of TR staff and TR kids-- I knew TR was in a bad way when TR staff started moving their kids out of TR. But my sense is that ITDS only hires TR staff who they feel are seeing the problems with TR and wanting to make a break with that. The last principal they hired from TR who only stayed a year... well... that was a whole different situation

5) ITDS' prior head of school annoyed me but I think she was pretty good in some ways. The new head of school I like a lot, and she came from being a principal at an EOTR DCPS so she has a lot of experience with high-needs kids, and a very good sense of how other schools operate. Unlike the prior HOS whose whole world was ITDS.

6) The academic standards at ITDS could be higher but they aren't always super low either. Some of the teachers expect real work and explicitly teach math, grammar, etc.

7) ITDS is very understanding of behavior if it's special needs-related, but if it's not special needs-related, they definitely will dish out consequences to middle school students. They do have detention (they don't call it that of course), and they will have kids sit out certain fun things if they can't behave. This of course runs counter to their claim of being a restorative justice school, but whatever. Talking big philosophy and then doing more practical stuff in real life is very on brand for ITDS.

We hated TR and looked at ITDS (wound up at a DCPS we are happy with ultimately but did list ITDS in the lottery) and this is pretty much our impression. I will say that ITDS had a lot of the same "cult-like" tone that TR has -- I cannot tell if this is just a charter thing or unique to these two schools. After several years at TR this is like nails on a chalkboard to me because I've heard it so many times and it comes off as so fake and meaningless at this point. But we talked to a bunch of ITDS parents including some good friends who live in Edgewood and the school just does not sound as dysfunctional as TR. Plus people seem generally to see the middle school as a meaningful option (even if many parents are also looking at other options -- ITDS middle is very small and has no HS feed so I get this). I think if that's the only school we'd gotten into in the library we probably would have taken it as an acceptable improvement over TR. They have some similarities but just the fact that people seem to like the middle school and they don't have such aggressive attrition after ECE indicated to me that it was a bit more functional.

I will say that my experience at TR soured me on charters generally and I now get why people often dislike them. We have friends who are happy at charters including ITDS and LAMB, but now that I get what it really means for a school to be not really accountable to anyone I am really unimpressed. We've been in a strong DCPS for 2 years now and the quality of teaching and responsiveness of the school to families and the community is just night and day. Curriculum is also really good -- I look back at TR and feel like I don't know can you even call what they do a curriculum? I still have my bones to pick (I don't like our principal) but overall it's just a better set up. Charters are the wild west and TR is a great example of what happens when your cowtown has a bad sheriff (whereas a bad principal within DCPS turns out to not be a big deal if the teaching staff is experienced and good and the PTA and families are involved and give a damn).

[Anonymous]

Oh I agree that ITDS is cult-y, especially for ECE, and it annoys me so much. The people who have never attended any other school tend to be all-in, and the people who came in from elsewhere tend to roll their eyes. But it's just not quite as dysfunctional as TR and I think it's due to a lot of small factors adding up. I agree there's zero accountability from the PCSB, but ITDS has, for whatever reason, solid leadership in place at the moment. Who knows what the future will hold.

The middle school at ITDS is okay-- I would rather my DCs got into Latin, but they didn't, and I prefer ITDS over BASIS and SH for my specific kids for various reasons, so we stay. As long as the application high school results are solid, people are moderately content with it-- there's a lot of talk about well, we don't have a better option. There are some people who feel their child really does need a small school for middle school, who are very much devoted to it. I think maybe TR middle school was too big to provide that small-school feel? Not everyone wants that, but those who want it do really want it.

Re preschool attrition, I think TR does have some people who actually want to be at LT or Peabody or Maury or a different charter, but didn't get in so they're at TR but will leave. ITDS doesn't have any schools in the immediate environs that don't accept all IB preschoolers-- I suppose the nearest ones would be LT and Maury. So there's less of that built-in attrition. It used to be that the big K class size expansion at MV P St always drew some ITDS preschoolers away, but that's much less of a thing lately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid who was at TR for years before and then the tail end of the pandemic I can assure you that none of the things people are blaming on Covid or Kristina or community meetings were newly discovered in the past few years. TR certainly offers a warm and nurturing ECE environment. The problem is and has always been that the school has no clue how to adjust for middle to upper ES and the changes in kids that accompany chronological age. I have no idea how EL is supposed to work, but certainly it can't be the way TR deploys it. They have always had a tail wagging the dog approach to core subjects. Instead of having a curriculum based on verb conjugation or core math principles they start with whatever the EL concept is and back into the core learning. It results in suboptimal educational outcomes and kids who are not prepared to study or learn. Kristina was incompetent and wielded race as a sword and shield to prevent the board or anyone else from asking hard questions. She was an EL consultant with little to no experience running anything. In many ways she was the poster child for what is wrong with TR; the Board focused on EL fluency and their principles of inclusion instead of core administration of an educational institution and learning. Covid merely exposed how unprepared and unserious she and the TR Board were.

When JO Wilson reopens in 2026 it will be the death knell for TR 4th street. I assume it will be shuttered by 2029 at the latest.

You're going to need ECE teachers at JO who actually like kids though. They barely go outside for recess if it's below 50 degrees, have the kids watch TV for indoor recess (which again, happens A LOT) and when they are outside, they don't play with the kids at all. No engagement at all.

Weird take. JOW has received high marks for ECE for a number of years. Families avoid it due to 1st and up. Also, have you seen TR's "playground"?

Oh I'm not pro TR by any means. I just don't think you all know JO. High marks for a number of years? Almost all those teachers are gone. I can think of 4 that have left.

JOW has lost several great ECE teachers in recent years which is troubling. Before those departures I do think they had an amazing ECE team (my kid went through it). There are still several incredibly nurturing ECE teachers still there though (and the new folks might be great, I just don't know them).

Also regarding the thing about JOW teachers not taking kids outside-- a lot of this has to do with the school's bad playground set up (with very limited equipment for younger kids and no separation from equipment for older kids that can be dangerous for little ones) that will soon be totally overhauled with the new campus. Very little shade, bad equipment, and a persistent mosquito issue that they've struggled to address because poor facilities management results in a lot of standing water after rainstorms. My kid had PK teachers who really emphasized outdoor time and they were constantly battling these challenges. But the new campus is going to get an outdoor classroom and a bunch of shaded play space so that teachers can take kids out and not roast in the sun and have places for them to sit and play.

I would still choose JOW over TR even with the ECE losses and even in the old building though because there is something wrong with TR's curriculum. And their building is so small with incredibly limited outdoor space (maybe ECE classes spend more time outside but then kids are feet away from traffic on Florida including cars that sit idling waiting to get into the tire place-- air quality is a real question on that tiny playground). The main advantage of TR is access to a larger cohort of higher SES kids. Which I actually agree is helpful-- a high concentration of at risk kids creates challenges and this is true at JOW, though I think people who bailed from JOW for TR in PK likely overestimate what those challenges are.

But DCPS has a sound curriculum and high standards for teachers, who are well compensated and generally have more experience than TR teachers and at the ECE level specifically also have more training. DCPS has its issues but teaching quality is not one of them and this is probably the most important aspect of your child's education.

We spent 3 years at JOW and two at TR and we should have stayed at JOW, warts and all. Throw in a new campus and it's a no brainer which is the better school.

Again, you're talking about the teachers who are gone. The current teachers don't take the kids outside because it's "to cold" at 45 degrees. They have the kids WATCH TV instead. You have old information.

IDK about TR. Don't know them at all. But your JO info is outdated.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Agree with most of the factors above. Another seemed to be that the emphasis on “community” and “warmth” slipped into a toxic positivity / gaslighting / head in the sand/ conflict averse approach to addressing problems. When teachers raised problems administrators didn’t make hard choices to confront the problems. The strong warm culture started to feel full of buzzwords, doublespeak, smiles and songs about community “we are the boat”, and reading the mission in unison at every gathering - literally - etc. Meanwhile educators were supported less and less and kid’s were not thriving/ learning much and deep parent engagement was rebuffed.

Spot on. Former TR patent and the "toxic positivity" was awful-- it basically means you can't have a useful conversation with the administration or anyone on the FSA about anything because if you aren't all rah-rah-TR-is-amazing, people will just avoid you and not respond to emails. I think people are afraid to confront realities because it's easier to be avoidant and pretend everything is great.

I also just personally can't stand all that stuff like reading the mission statement together. It's cult-like. If you want to stay mission-driven then the focus should be on accountability. Make sure that major decisions or consistent with your core mission and be able to explain to people how that is the case. But just reciting stuff together out loud is not a form of accountability and actually feels like a manipulation tactic to get people not to ask questions or criticize. Again: cult-like.

All of this is spot on. I’ll just add that I found the parent community at TRY overall very bizarre and cult-like, particularly around the COVID closures. There were glaring issues that no one seemed concerned with—the former TRY ES principal basically didn’t bother to show up the second half of the year. The year after we left, both 5th grade teachers quit mid-year and there was NO substitute/no full time replacements hired for the remainder of the year. Someone else mentioned the MS issues—additional days off to deal with “behavior issues”.
Again: cult-like (or ignorant).

This is how I'd describe our experience at ITDS, so it baffles me that so many people are proposing it as the alternative. ITDS always struck me as simply a whiter, richer TR. Same behavior mismanagement and low academic standards but somehow a bit more palatable for reasons I didn't understand. They even have a bunch of TR's old staff.

I agree... I think there are a bunch of key differences.

1) Building not as bad as TR4th-- their playground and the atrium's terrible acoustics and inefficient use of space. ITDS' building isn't great, but it's okay, and they do have a city rec center right outside.

2) ITDS didn't try to expand, so their leadership didn't get over-stressed like TR's did.

3) ITDS is operating a much smaller middle school and I think that makes it easier in some ways.

4) Yes there are a lot of TR staff and TR kids-- I knew TR was in a bad way when TR staff started moving their kids out of TR. But my sense is that ITDS only hires TR staff who they feel are seeing the problems with TR and wanting to make a break with that. The last principal they hired from TR who only stayed a year... well... that was a whole different situation

5) ITDS' prior head of school annoyed me but I think she was pretty good in some ways. The new head of school I like a lot, and she came from being a principal at an EOTR DCPS so she has a lot of experience with high-needs kids, and a very good sense of how other schools operate. Unlike the prior HOS whose whole world was ITDS.

6) The academic standards at ITDS could be higher but they aren't always super low either. Some of the teachers expect real work and explicitly teach math, grammar, etc.

7) ITDS is very understanding of behavior if it's special needs-related, but if it's not special needs-related, they definitely will dish out consequences to middle school students. They do have detention (they don't call it that of course), and they will have kids sit out certain fun things if they can't behave. This of course runs counter to their claim of being a restorative justice school, but whatever. Talking big philosophy and then doing more practical stuff in real life is very on brand for ITDS.

We hated TR and looked at ITDS (wound up at a DCPS we are happy with ultimately but did list ITDS in the lottery) and this is pretty much our impression. I will say that ITDS had a lot of the same "cult-like" tone that TR has -- I cannot tell if this is just a charter thing or unique to these two schools. After several years at TR this is like nails on a chalkboard to me because I've heard it so many times and it comes off as so fake and meaningless at this point. But we talked to a bunch of ITDS parents including some good friends who live in Edgewood and the school just does not sound as dysfunctional as TR. Plus people seem generally to see the middle school as a meaningful option (even if many parents are also looking at other options -- ITDS middle is very small and has no HS feed so I get this). I think if that's the only school we'd gotten into in the library we probably would have taken it as an acceptable improvement over TR. They have some similarities but just the fact that people seem to like the middle school and they don't have such aggressive attrition after ECE indicated to me that it was a bit more functional.

I will say that my experience at TR soured me on charters generally and I now get why people often dislike them. We have friends who are happy at charters including ITDS and LAMB, but now that I get what it really means for a school to be not really accountable to anyone I am really unimpressed. We've been in a strong DCPS for 2 years now and the quality of teaching and responsiveness of the school to families and the community is just night and day. Curriculum is also really good -- I look back at TR and feel like I don't know can you even call what they do a curriculum? I still have my bones to pick (I don't like our principal) but overall it's just a better set up. Charters are the wild west and TR is a great example of what happens when your cowtown has a bad sheriff (whereas a bad principal within DCPS turns out to not be a big deal if the teaching staff is experienced and good and the PTA and families are involved and give a damn).

On a forum of ignorant takes, this is top 10. Every charter is its own LEA. The cultures, academic approaches, staffing models and physical plants are specific to each LEA. It is simply ignorant to equate "charters" to "DCPS". Setting aside the LEA issue, the idea of indicting all of DCPS over one poorly run ES would be equivalently dumb.

Other than that you nailed it.