All schools should offer an all-virtual option
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Anonymous
Pressure to do what? Build a DL option in literally two days? PG has been working on this a while. Just think about this. You can’t easily expand a 100 person virtual academy to one meant to accommodate thousands. Budgeting, finding the actual source of funds, choosing a team to put together the school, hiring teachers and admin, finding at least some commercial space to lease, creating an administrative structure, finding students to enroll, actually enrolling those students, probably expanding software leases, orienting teachers, adopting curricula, etc. I’m sure I am not even close to thinking of everything, but this is a logistical nightmare. You can’t throw this together in days, let alone a month, and to make it halfway decent that quickly would require a huge dedicated team at central with a clear vision. All of us know central isn’t going to be able to do that. |
Anonymous
Oh I completely agree that it will be a disaster and logistical nightmare at this point. I just wanted to point out that the virtual school option is gaining significant momentum in the area. |
Anonymous
| It may be gaining some amount of traction, but my point is that the practicalities make it basically impossible at this point. |
Anonymous
No, offering a virtual option at every school means charters as well, and no central option for the entirety of DC. |
Anonymous
I also think charters (and the entire lottery system, for that matter) inhibit DCPS's ability to offer strong centralized leadership as PGPS has. There are so many competing interests in DCPS, it's very hard to unite school communities behind any big idea. I also think the way DC public schooling is structured contributes to a culture of families not really caring about each other on a basic level. You compete in a lottery for spots, even IB spots at the PK level can be competitive. And then you have school themselves competing with one another for resources. It's a system that isolates families within it. And I think that's one reason you see some of the attitudes on display on this thread and in the whole IPL versus virtual debate. There is always a sense that someone is trying to take something away from you, whether it's a slot at a school or resources or access to a program. That may not be the intention of the system, but that's the effect. So now parents who have the means to keep their kids virtual want to do so. And I get that, honestly. If I had a way of keeping my kid out of school this year I'd be seriously considering it. The problem is that I don't have that option -- for me, it's in person public school or just sheer misery (maybe job loss, maybe a mental breakdown, it's hard to say at this point). And when I see parents agitating for virtual options in a way that feels designed to undermine in person schooling, yeah, I get anxious. Because I need in person school. Like NEED it. I wish DCPS could figure out a way to do this that gave everyone what the wanted and needed. But I'm afraid they won't (they never do) and I don't want to wind up with the short end of the stick this time. I can't afford it, frankly. |
Anonymous
Huh. That’s an analysis I hadn’t thought about. |
Anonymous
| I think the big charter donors - Walton, Koch, DeVos, the Heritage/FWorks billionaires - absolutely do see charters as a way to divide parents. |
Anonymous
Because we were all one, big happy smiling DCPS community before charters came along. Back in the days when everyone equally chose Eastern and Ballou and Wilson and we weren’t divided at all over the choices. 
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Anonymous
No one is arguing that. But charters helped to exploit those existing divisions, not relieve them. In theory charters in DC gave families at underperforming schools more choices. But since the lottery, and charters, are available to everyone, it actually just became another way for people who aren’t IB for strong schools to “lose”. Yes, sometimes they win by landing a spot at a charter that is a genuine improvement over their IB. But sometimes they don’t, and the existence of charters makes it harder to improve that IB unless you can afford to live in a neighborhood with high property values, where you can build a critical mass of parents with both the time and, importantly, money to get the school better resources. And sometimes that doesn’t even work. Look at Brookland. The proliferation of charter options, especially the kind that appeal to high-SES families (immersion, Montessori) means that Brookland’s DCPS schools lose a lot of engaged families to charters. There are still good options at the elementary level in Brookland, but the charters are a brain drain on upper grades and MS/HS. You see something similar in Ward 6, though the charter options on the hill are so scarce (it’s almost impossible to get PK spots at SWS or TR these days) that has benefited some of the DCPS schools. But S-H still struggles to retain students snd EH even more, and everyone is frustrated by how hard it is to get neighborhood kids to go to Eastern, it’s well documented. No one is saying the previous situation was better. But the charter system in DC has created just as many,if not more, haves and have nots. If you aren’t IB for a strong school in DC, it’s still very, very hard to get your kid a good education. Not impossible, but it takes a level of dedication and energy that usually also comes with privilege. |
Anonymous
disagree. DCPS opened up earlier and more extensively than PG. |
Anonymous
I’m one of the virtual option proponents and I agree with almost everything you say, but would offer that I and many others I know that are pushing for virtual do not want to remove the option for IPL. In fact I don’t even want simulcast or every school to have virtual as that works less well for everyone (my view only). An irony on the other side is that those digging their heels in against virtual for others could hurt their own cause. As many have reflected expanding the virtual academy doesn’t happen easily. If we had been working on a plan B for risk averse parents, or in case things go south as they are for many schools now closing, there wohld has been much less change that the answer would be to simulcast. But I bet that’s what they’ll do. DCPS right now feels painted into a corner. They, backed by parents willing to call pandemic cautious people names “anxious” and “fear mongering” “afraid of their own shadow” were emboldened into tripling down on a poor choice. It does seem to be the Bowser administrations way (and I voted for her and want to support her, but that’s over..). I do want to say that if there is a shift to virtual, I will push hard as someone who wants virtual for a system that wont add more undue harm to those who want IPL. I just would so appreciate the same consideration. |
Anonymous
No. You don't get the "same consideration" after 1.5 years of closed schools. Now is the time to pour all resources into reopening schools. Parents who are risk averse can ALWAYS homeschool - which does not take much more resources than virtual. |
Anonymous
Oh please, some of you are terribly irrational. "Anxious" is a mild term for some of you. |
Anonymous
Additionally, you are again blaming parents who have no control over this. You are saying that name-calling by parents made DCPS make vast system-wide decisions. That's just ridiculous. |
Anonymous
No, this is always the case in public policy. There are limited resources, and therefore, competition for them, which is particularly harsh in a large system with extremely divergent populations, interests, etc. Adding virtual at this point would require resources that are now allocated to the kind of robust and safe in person schooling that we need. Diverting resources to virtual, whether personnel or financial, would certainly change this calculus and may even take in person slots away. We already experienced the complete dominance of the virtual-anxious people all of last year, removing any possibility of in person for those who wanted it for most schools for most of the year. Enough. The competitiveness has nothing, or little to do with charters, but is happening in all the major cities. |