DCI Parent Petition

[Anonymous]

The school and board are having open meetings to all for discussion so I suggest everyone attend those.

Then you can easily get both perspectives and more details.

It’s not like you can validate or verify things and people on an anonymous board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school and board are having open meetings to all for discussion so I suggest everyone attend those.

Then you can easily get both perspectives and more details.

It’s not like you can validate or verify things and people on an anonymous board.

Except Rosskamm and Pardo are moderating them which means they'll shut down anything that isn't aligned with their thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please read the letter more carefully. People are upset about a culture of fear and retaliation where people are at risk of losing their jobs if they speak up about unjust practices. There is one small part about clocking in and clocking out, but the larger narrative is about an organization run by power and authority. The DP Coordinator, who is beloved by students, parents, and staff, did not get his contract renewed. Students started a petition to have it reinstated, and it has over 700 signatures. He was let go because he sometimes questioned harmful practices. Ask any individual at the school or any parent or student who worked with him. He is one of the most competent people there. That is the culture of the current leadership. Don't ask questions or you're gone. No matter how effective you are at your job. Teaching is hard enough, people. 94% of voting staff do not have confidence in his leadership! Clearly this is about more than clocking in and clocking out.

If I’m gonna ask for anyone to lose their job, I want a list- a bullet point list- of harmful practices,

No one is being specific, at all.

NINETY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE STAFF VOTED NO CONFIDENCE.

That's lower than the President.

Sure. I’d like an enumerated list of grievances. This is the “verify” part of “trust but verify”

I read the letter from the staff so you don't have to. Or apparently want to. Here's what stood out to me:
- The beloved DP Coordinator's contract was not renewed and 744 students signed a petition to reinstate him
- The MYP Coordinator resigned in February with no succession plan and no communication to families and this directly threatens DCI's IB re-evaluation in 27-28
- 37 special education, EL, counseling, and support staff have left since 2023. Nearly 500 students with IEPs and 504s are affected, and the school may be out of legal compliance
- A senior leader made a racist joke about ICE to his team during a period when staff, students, and families were directly impacted and faced no meaningful accountability
- The ED and another leader received $30K bonuses each while aides took home less pay than last year due to how 'raises' were structured
- Over 125 staff departures since SY23-24

The staff letter also documents a pattern of silencing: staff told to 'stop amplifying complainers,' called 'cynical,' and warned that raising concerns is 'dragging down morale.'

And now the school community has heard that the Director Rosskamm & other leadership gave contracts to his wife & other friends/family, and it's unclear or hasn't been announced what those contracts were for and on what basis friends and family were paid to do work for DCI. And also that Leadership hired an anti-union law firm to try to disrupt the efforts of teachers to unionize, and this was paid for with DCI money. Which apparently is definitely a misuse of funds, but that will have to also be looked into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please read the letter more carefully. People are upset about a culture of fear and retaliation where people are at risk of losing their jobs if they speak up about unjust practices. There is one small part about clocking in and clocking out, but the larger narrative is about an organization run by power and authority. The DP Coordinator, who is beloved by students, parents, and staff, did not get his contract renewed. Students started a petition to have it reinstated, and it has over 700 signatures. He was let go because he sometimes questioned harmful practices. Ask any individual at the school or any parent or student who worked with him. He is one of the most competent people there. That is the culture of the current leadership. Don't ask questions or you're gone. No matter how effective you are at your job. Teaching is hard enough, people. 94% of voting staff do not have confidence in his leadership! Clearly this is about more than clocking in and clocking out.

If I’m gonna ask for anyone to lose their job, I want a list- a bullet point list- of harmful practices,

No one is being specific, at all.

NINETY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE STAFF VOTED NO CONFIDENCE.

That's lower than the President.

Sure. I’d like an enumerated list of grievances. This is the “verify” part of “trust but verify”

I read the letter from the staff so you don't have to. Or apparently want to. Here's what stood out to me:
- The beloved DP Coordinator's contract was not renewed and 744 students signed a petition to reinstate him
- The MYP Coordinator resigned in February with no succession plan and no communication to families and this directly threatens DCI's IB re-evaluation in 27-28
- 37 special education, EL, counseling, and support staff have left since 2023. Nearly 500 students with IEPs and 504s are affected, and the school may be out of legal compliance
- A senior leader made a racist joke about ICE to his team during a period when staff, students, and families were directly impacted and faced no meaningful accountability
- The ED and another leader received $30K bonuses each while aides took home less pay than last year due to how 'raises' were structured
- Over 125 staff departures since SY23-24

The staff letter also documents a pattern of silencing: staff told to 'stop amplifying complainers,' called 'cynical,' and warned that raising concerns is 'dragging down morale.'

And now the school community has heard that the Director Rosskamm & other leadership gave contracts to his wife & other friends/family, and it's unclear or hasn't been announced what those contracts were for and on what basis friends and family were paid to do work for DCI. And also that Leadership hired an anti-union law firm to try to disrupt the efforts of teachers to unionize, and this was paid for with DCI money. Which apparently is definitely a misuse of funds, but that will have to also be looked into.

If true, the IRS will have something to say about that. Self-dealing as an officer of a 501(c)(3) can get expensive.

[Anonymous]

Somehow Basis will be blamed for this!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

Lamb and DCI parent here- lamb is not thriving and has never really recovered from the Fernández scandal. And I’ve heard loud rumblings that more bad news is coming soon. I would not liken “angry staff” to “the executive director completely ran the show and did not do her job when multiple people reported a teacher was acting inappropriately towards children”. Please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

I thought the letter was poorly written and not an accurate representation of what happened at LAMB. I cannot believe they had the nerve to compare staff dissatisfaction dozens of child sex abuse victims and a culture that allowed that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

I thought the letter was poorly written and not an accurate representation of what happened at LAMB. I cannot believe they had the nerve to compare staff dissatisfaction dozens of child sex abuse victims and a culture that allowed that.

Holy shit. How is LAMB still so popular?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

I thought the letter was poorly written and not an accurate representation of what happened at LAMB. I cannot believe they had the nerve to compare staff dissatisfaction dozens of child sex abuse victims and a culture that allowed that.

Holy shit. How is LAMB still so popular?

Because there truly are some fantastic teachers and there is a lot of love there. But there are places where a lot of work needs to happen. And if you want Montessori or bilingual education, it’s great. My biggest (only?) issue has consistently been with the administration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

I thought the letter was poorly written and not an accurate representation of what happened at LAMB. I cannot believe they had the nerve to compare staff dissatisfaction dozens of child sex abuse victims and a culture that allowed that.

I read it as comparing the board response not as comparing the incidents. A central question seems to be how does a board respond during a crisis? That's what's being judged. LAMB was obviously a crisis, a horrific tragedy as well crimes against children. DCI is also in crisis though not because of such horrific reasons. I imagine that (some) families and staff are feeling the sense that the DCI board is not treating this as a crisis. Do you think this is a crisis for DCI and that the board response has been adequate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please read the letter more carefully. People are upset about a culture of fear and retaliation where people are at risk of losing their jobs if they speak up about unjust practices. There is one small part about clocking in and clocking out, but the larger narrative is about an organization run by power and authority. The DP Coordinator, who is beloved by students, parents, and staff, did not get his contract renewed. Students started a petition to have it reinstated, and it has over 700 signatures. He was let go because he sometimes questioned harmful practices. Ask any individual at the school or any parent or student who worked with him. He is one of the most competent people there. That is the culture of the current leadership. Don't ask questions or you're gone. No matter how effective you are at your job. Teaching is hard enough, people. 94% of voting staff do not have confidence in his leadership! Clearly this is about more than clocking in and clocking out.

If I’m gonna ask for anyone to lose their job, I want a list- a bullet point list- of harmful practices,

No one is being specific, at all.

NINETY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE STAFF VOTED NO CONFIDENCE.

That's lower than the President.

Sure. I’d like an enumerated list of grievances. This is the “verify” part of “trust but verify”

I read the letter from the staff so you don't have to. Or apparently want to. Here's what stood out to me:
- The beloved DP Coordinator's contract was not renewed and 744 students signed a petition to reinstate him
- The MYP Coordinator resigned in February with no succession plan and no communication to families and this directly threatens DCI's IB re-evaluation in 27-28
- 37 special education, EL, counseling, and support staff have left since 2023. Nearly 500 students with IEPs and 504s are affected, and the school may be out of legal compliance
- A senior leader made a racist joke about ICE to his team during a period when staff, students, and families were directly impacted and faced no meaningful accountability
- The ED and another leader received $30K bonuses each while aides took home less pay than last year due to how 'raises' were structured
- Over 125 staff departures since SY23-24

The staff letter also documents a pattern of silencing: staff told to 'stop amplifying complainers,' called 'cynical,' and warned that raising concerns is 'dragging down morale.'

And now the school community has heard that the Director Rosskamm & other leadership gave contracts to his wife & other friends/family, and it's unclear or hasn't been announced what those contracts were for and on what basis friends and family were paid to do work for DCI. And also that Leadership hired an anti-union law firm to try to disrupt the efforts of teachers to unionize, and this was paid for with DCI money. Which apparently is definitely a misuse of funds, but that will have to also be looked into.

If true, the IRS will have something to say about that. Self-dealing as an officer of a 501(c)(3) can get expensive.

Anecdotally, the ED’s spouse runs a consulting firm, and a quick search suggests a DCI senior staff member participated in one of its programs. There is no information on any financial transaction or conflict of interest.

[Anonymous]

Hi - parent of one of the LAMB victims here…

While the subject matter is different, the situation is eerily similar…

“ the executive director completely ran the show and did not do her job when multiple people reported a teacher was acting inappropriately towards children”

Change it to “reported that the actions of the ED are unprofessional and unethical and creating an environment in which teachers cannot do their job effectively thus causing many of them to leave, weakening the teaching standards, jeopardizing the accreditation of the school and putting the school at risk for legal actions”

It’s the behavior of the ED that is giving us whiplash - he is just doing what he wants to do regardless of what anyone has said over and over (there have been multiple listening sessions already and nothing has come of them) while he gives contracts to his friends and family. (Not to mention $30k bonuses to him and the CFO which is equivalent to what some of the least paid staff make in a year. Disgusting.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

A bit too AI sloppy, but I was also there at LAMB back then + DCI now and this also has been a bit triggering.

Still, I'd love to have one of those town halls where the board and admin stand in front of an angry mob of parents and staff and try to explain why they're not doing anything about a major problem.

While I agree with others above that there still aren't enough tangible details as to what this ED has been doing to make the climate so bad, it does seem clear that we're in trouble because we need the top teachers and staff to STAY on board! That is the key ingredient to a good school, which we found out at LAMB. The staff/teachers also turned LAMB upside down when the pandemic ED was there and she wasn't well liked and they began leaving and being pushed out. Thankfully quite a few have returned. Veteran quality teachers MATTER to parents and kids way more than some ED.

AI sloppy or not, I find the letter to be remarkable. It's a very clear-eyed statement from a parent who values the institution and wants it to be better. Of all the letters and petitions so far, this one is most compelling to me -- not angry or antagonistic but a really sincere statement and request for action from an invested parent.

I thought the letter was poorly written and not an accurate representation of what happened at LAMB. I cannot believe they had the nerve to compare staff dissatisfaction dozens of child sex abuse victims and a culture that allowed that.

Holy shit. How is LAMB still so popular?

People don’t know what happened there and they cleaned house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DCI parents have written to the Board expressing their concerns about the damage Rosskamm is doing.

Here's the letter my husband and I sent:

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees,

We are writing as DCI parents. And as LAMB parents who lived through the events of 2017.

We want to be very direct: We are frustrated and angry to find ourselves in this position again.

Nine years ago, our sons were students at LAMB. Today, our daughter is there and our sons are now at DCI. We are heartbroken that another school community we love is in crisis, that another Board is being asked to choose between an executive and the institution it governs, and that the parents and staff who are sounding the alarm loudly, clearly, and at significant personal risk are once again being met with deflection instead of action.

What we know from living through the LAMB crisis is that the parents who show up in moments like this are not troublemakers. They are the school's most committed advocates, and their urgency is a measure of how much they believe DCI is worth saving. We share that belief completely and we are here, again, because of it.

When Mr. Fernandez was arrested we initially defended the LAMB administration. We believed in the school. We trusted its leaders. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because we could not imagine that the institution we had entrusted with our children had failed so profoundly. That instinct, to protect the school by protecting its leadership, felt like loyalty. It was not. It was blindness.

What changed for us was the evidence other parents and staff shared. The repeated red flags that had been ignored. The staff who had raised concerns and been disregarded. The children who had been harmed while the administration operated from a posture of self-protection rather than accountability. When we finally saw clearly, we joined all the other LAMB parents in demanding that the Board act, independently, decisively, and in the interest of children over institution.

The LAMB Board ultimately did act. They acknowledged that their administrators had failed and they removed the Executive Director. They chose the school over the administrators who had led it astray. LAMB survived and now it thrives.

We are now watching the DCI Board face the same choice LAMB's Board faced and we are watching it make the wrong one.

On the surface the situations are not identical. Mr. Rosskamm has not been accused of criminal conduct. But the pattern is familiar and it is damning: staff raise concerns, leadership dismisses them, the concerns compound, the culture deteriorates, and the Board, the body whose sole obligation is to the mission and to the community, protects the executive instead of the school.

Ninety-four percent of DCI's non-supervisory staff have voted no confidence in Mr. Rosskamm. Over 125 staff have departed since SY23-24. The IB Diploma Coordinator's contract was not renewed. The MYP Coordinator resigned abruptly. These are not personnel inconveniences. These are structural warnings.

And yet the Board's response or lack thereof, especially at the March 19th public meeting and in the communications that have followed, has been to suppress dialogue, deflect accountability, and allow Mr. Rosskamm to manage his own consequence through town halls and listening sessions that result in no change and that his own staff have already declared they do not trust.

We want to be direct about Board Chair Pardo specifically. Her conduct of the March 19th meeting, the deliberate foreclosure of public comment, the alignment with Mr. Rosskamm's framing, the failure to treat the staff's extraordinary vote of no confidence as the serious governance crisis it is, was not neutral. It was a choice. Chair Pardo has not demonstrated the independence this moment demands, and her continued leadership of this board in this crisis is itself a barrier to resolution. We are calling for her to step down as Chair.

We say this not with hostility but with clarity born of experience. At LAMB, the Board's willingness to act over the objections of an administration that had failed is what saved the school. What would have destroyed LAMB was a Board that prioritized protecting leadership over protecting the community it existed to serve.

DCI is a remarkable school. Its IB for All model, its language immersion programs, its diverse and committed community are worth fighting for. We are fighting for them now, as we fought for LAMB then.

The staff have done their part. They documented their concerns. They exhausted every formal channel. They took the extraordinary step of a vote of no confidence at significant personal risk. Nineteen staff members abstained from that vote not because they lacked an opinion, but because they feared retaliation. That is the culture this Board has allowed to take root.

Our daughter is sitting in a LAMB classroom right now. We chose LAMB for her because of what this family of schools represents and because we believed that what we went through in 2017 had made the school stronger and more accountable. We need this board to prove that belief was not misplaced.

You have a decision to make. You can choose, as LAMB's Board ultimately chose, to place the mission above the executive. You can remove Mr. Rosskamm, reconstitute Board leadership, and give this school the chance to rebuild trust and retain the extraordinary educators who have not yet left. Or you can continue on the current path and watch DCI become a cautionary tale told by the next generation of DC education advocates.


We have seen what happens when a Board finds its courage too late. We have also seen what happens when it finds it in time.

Lamb and DCI parent here- lamb is not thriving and has never really recovered from the Fernández scandal. And I’ve heard loud rumblings that more bad news is coming soon. I would not liken “angry staff” to “the executive director completely ran the show and did not do her job when multiple people reported a teacher was acting inappropriately towards children”. Please.

The fact that you reduce all the concerns mentioned here and in the DCI staff letter to the board to "angry staff" tells us all we need to know that you are strongly on the side of "Leadership does what it needs to do to cover its own a**. Stop trying for accountability, they have a right to hide and deflect."

No thanks. DCI parents and staff, we need to keep going! Because those of us with kids in DCI middle school really want the high school to not just survive but get back on track and not lose so many more amazing teachers. And we'll all (in MS) be damned if the current DCI leadership just stays in place and further drives the school into the ground.