Stokes sued for barring parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:This is funny to me. Stokes tried to walk the walk and serve in a super high risk low income area of DC - and they got what they asked for, to some extent. It’s freaking hard to run schools with high numbers of at risk. Families aren’t always easy to deal with or stable. Basically you invite in all the issues that DCPS knows all too well. It sounds like Stokes didn’t have a clue how to deal with this. I agree that counseling out the kind of parents you’ve patted yourself on the back for reaching out and serving isn’t a good look.

This. Even if everything Stokes says is true, it is part and parcel of operating over there. Children with a difficult parent need and deserve a good education as much as anyone else does. Find a way to deal with it or get out.

Sometimes HRCS are not so successful if they can't stack their classes with disproportionately high income kids and push out the hard-to-serve.

You people seriously think that only at-risk kids have behavioral problems and angry and verbally abusive parents?

The difference is that when higher SES parents act like asses, it's considered "advocacy" or "parental involvement".

When higher SES kids act out, it's immediately attributed to an undiagnosed learning disability, never poor parenting.

This 8 billion times. I am a high SES white parent, and I went through a horrible experience very similar to this mothers, and although I am sure the principal couldn't stand me, there was never any question of kicking me off campus.

What I can say is that DCPS/Charters are HORRIBLE at dealing with preschoolers with behavioral issues. I think that this is because they are more focused on their upper grades, and their discipline and interventions are all formulated for older kids. I mean, they decided the way to deal with my 3 year old was to give him a sticker chart with, I kid you not, 17 different categories to get a sticker in, and he had to get all of them in a day to win an incentive. Generally behavioral charts are their only tool to deal with the preschoolers.

Looking back on it, I still feel utterly confused by how the school dealt so poorly with everything. It created a vicious circle where I lost trust in the teachers and admins, and grew less and less cooperative. That's exactly how highly charged adversarial settings are created that lead to the conflicts this mom experienced. When your kid is having serious problems and the school is acting like your enemy, it's really, really hard.

Same here. Eventually upper admin got involved and two teachers admitted to smacking the pre-schoolers. But it was a push from day one and the first response is "you know how children lie" "we have a zero-tolerance policy, so are you sure you want to say what you just said?" They are more concerned with protecting the school business than the children. Totally lost trust in them even after they admitted everything and did staff-wide retraining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Letter is silent on the separate, due process complaint alleging failure to evaluate the child for learning disabilities. I don’t think they can or should comment on this lag, but keep in mind there are 2 suits in play.

I find this letter really inappropriate.

I agree. Very unprofessional. And as a parent, makes me lose trust in the admin in how they will treat us when we raise concerns. She should have simply paraphrased the basis of the civil lawsuit, indicated that they are taking steps to address the matter, and reiterate their support for families and wish to do some restorative justice. This email is tacky and needed some PR finesse.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow-- a five year ban seems awfully long.

Former charter school administrator (not Stokes) here: 5 years is what is on the MPD template. In most cases, schools re-evaluate the barring after a shorter amount of time and consulting with the parent. I generally held a conference 30 - 60 days after the barring and if the parent was willing to modify the problematic behavior, we'd lift it. (Link to MPD circular with template: https://go.mpdconline.com/GO/CIR_16_04.pdf)

It is still a functional permanent ban, even if it is in the template. Parents don't know that you might lift it. It is designed to make them leave. Knowing it is in the template makes me even more cynical about charters pushing difficult families out.

You can also cross out the time limit on the template and write-in another number.

Still, why does the template have 5 years? For some schools that is longer than any child attends! And what is a single parent to do if that happens? It is an obvious attempt to get them to leave.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very sad, I'm glad she has professional legal representation.

This is the dark under-belly of charter schools: they try to act like private schools and abdicate their responsibility to educate children with disabilities. I doubt Stokes is the first or the last.

And glad that WLC is taking a more aggressive approach. Five year ban, come on! I could understand even the remainder of the school year as a cooling-off period. But this is a naked attempt to get rid of people. Yes, at-risk families can be challenging. But charters need to do their share of the work. Not just send them back to their IB and carry on talking about how much DCPS sucks.

Dcps DOES IN FACT suck so there is that.

Sure it does, but it's galling how the charter sector loves to crap on DCPS while also sticking them with the hardest kids and parents.

I'm so sick of seeing this tired old line about charters crapping on DCPS. I've worked at a charter - at the school level we partnered with the nearby DCPS school for volunteers, parking, PD and events. We didn't think about DCPS too much day to day frankly and I don't think they thought much about us. People in schools are busy running schools. It's people outside of schools who want to make the comparisons. Something happens at one DCPS school and all of DCPS is bad. Something happens at one charter school and all charters are bad. This makes no sense.

Well after seeing that video I think we can at least agree that Stokes is bad.

NOT At All. It sounds to me that this kid was a problem from Day 1. The apple doesn’t fall to far from the tree! Some people say “an involved parent” , I say an “opportunist” for sure!

Signed,

From the Waitlist

“opportunist” for what? for a better education? is not like they are suing for money! I hope you stay on the waitlist forever!

+1 in hopes you never get called off any of your waitlists

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Letter is silent on the separate, due process complaint alleging failure to evaluate the child for learning disabilities. I don’t think they can or should comment on this lag, but keep in mind there are 2 suits in play.

I find this letter really inappropriate.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Responding to a previous pp- if left alone dcps is not horrible but also great at Ece management. We get the kids are little & need strong peer models & restorative justice.
However- it’s the UMC parent who FREAK out @ smallest slight their kid may have endured (real or imagined). They start banging pots & pans around & everyone chickens out. So when low SES dark kid hits umc kid- we all brace for it. We know the sh*t Storm is coming.
Now- when the UMC kid acts out- a ‘sorry’ usually clears things up

I don't disagree with you about white v black parents. But the fact you use the terms "peer models" and "restorative justice" for 3 year old indicates you are clueless about preschoolers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Letter is silent on the separate, due process complaint alleging failure to evaluate the child for learning disabilities. I don’t think they can or should comment on this lag, but keep in mind there are 2 suits in play.

I find this letter really inappropriate.

agree, me too. even if the mom went overboard.

[Anonymous]

>>My understanding is that the parent relentlessly harassed staff members and made more than one scene at school in front of other kids. I would want her banned.


>>>>>>If they were abusing your kid, wouldn't you make a scene too?

One teacher pushed a child back onto a seat. This was wrong. It doesn't constitute or prove widespread abuse. Harassing other staff members about it isn't merited and doesn't help anything. Creating scenes at the school hurts and frightens the other children. I would defend my child, but I would not try to inflict as much collateral damage as possible to the rest of the school community as this parent is doing.

Overall, I have heard very good things about Stokes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Responding to a previous pp- if left alone dcps is not horrible but also great at Ece management. We get the kids are little & need strong peer models & restorative justice.
However- it’s the UMC parent who FREAK out @ smallest slight their kid may have endured (real or imagined). They start banging pots & pans around & everyone chickens out. So when low SES dark kid hits umc kid- we all brace for it. We know the sh*t Storm is coming.
Now- when the UMC kid acts out- a ‘sorry’ usually clears things up

I don't disagree with you about white v black parents. But the fact you use the terms "peer models" and "restorative justice" for 3 year old indicates you are clueless about preschoolers.

Restorative justice is if you hurt a friends feeling the ‘consequence’ Is that you repair/restore the relationship. You say something nice or perform an act of kindness. You think that is outside the grasp of a 3yo?
And yes- our kids coming from trauma homes need to see kindness & empathy modeled. By teachers & peers. Again/ you think that’s beyond the realm of a preschool class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Responding to a previous pp- if left alone dcps is not horrible but also great at Ece management. We get the kids are little & need strong peer models & restorative justice.
However- it’s the UMC parent who FREAK out @ smallest slight their kid may have endured (real or imagined). They start banging pots & pans around & everyone chickens out. So when low SES dark kid hits umc kid- we all brace for it. We know the sh*t Storm is coming.
Now- when the UMC kid acts out- a ‘sorry’ usually clears things up

I don't disagree with you about white v black parents. But the fact you use the terms "peer models" and "restorative justice" for 3 year old indicates you are clueless about preschoolers.

Restorative justice is if you hurt a friends feeling the ‘consequence’ Is that you repair/restore the relationship. You say something nice or perform an act of kindness. You think that is outside the grasp of a 3yo?
And yes- our kids coming from trauma homes need to see kindness & empathy modeled. By teachers & peers. Again/ you think that’s beyond the realm of a preschool class?

it's appealing on paper but has zip to do with evidence-based ways to teach preschoolers the behavior you want.

[Anonymous]

Wow. You want to stand by that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. You want to stand by that?

what, evidence-based ways to deal with preschool behavioral issues? forced apologies do very little or make the issue worse. Count yourself lucky you haven't dealt with this, but professional educators certainly should be prepared to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:>>My understanding is that the parent relentlessly harassed staff members and made more than one scene at school in front of other kids. I would want her banned.


>>>>>>If they were abusing your kid, wouldn't you make a scene too?

One teacher pushed a child back onto a seat. This was wrong. It doesn't constitute or prove widespread abuse. Harassing other staff members about it isn't merited and doesn't help anything. Creating scenes at the school hurts and frightens the other children. I would defend my child, but I would not try to inflict as much collateral damage as possible to the rest of the school community as this parent is doing.

Overall, I have heard very good things about Stokes.

The child came home and said she was pushed. The school vehemently denied it. They were so sure it didn't happen they agreed to watch the security tapes with the parent. It turns out the child was in fact pushed. How much trust do you think that parent is going to have in the school? It wasn't that they called the parent and were upfront that the incident happened.

[Anonymous]

And harassing other staff and screaming in the hallways in front of other kids helps that how?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And harassing other staff and screaming in the hallways in front of other kids helps that how?

This is a chicken and egg problem and bad behavior all along.

Schools says kid lied. Security camera says otherwise. Parent asks for the child to be evaluated and school doesn’t get it done in the legally required timeline. Then school bars mom from entering for the rest of the time the child will be there - which is an IDEA violation.

Both sides are escalating in a crazy way. Get a mediator. Move the discussion off site.