Reply to ACPS Schools Opinions on Here

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]ACPS is a broken system.  I have a child in elementary and basic fundamentals weren't taught (math facts & grammar being the main ones) and I didn't get any meaningful communication from my child's school about what they were working on or struggling with. At every parent teacher conference I was told that everything was fine.  No tests or work was every shared (beyond kindergarten).  And then I discovered that it wasn't fine and there were serious holes in my child's education.

And the PPs are right.  Superintendent Hutchings and school board chair Alderton send their kids to private schools.  The issues with ACPS run very deep and I doubt will every change.

The school board's general attitude is that parents are the enemy and are there to be ignored at best and mocked at worst.  Margaret Lorber was an example of this over this year (google her).  But Anderson, Nolan and Gentry have all exhibited this attitude in the past both in public and in private over their years in office.  Gentry has been somewhat redeemed of late but it wasn't that long ago that she was saying vocal parents should have their input discounted.

Central Office and Hutchings have the same anti parent attitude.  Hutchings chastised parents last summer and told them they were privileged and responsible for the learning gap for [i]keeping their kids in ACPS but forming learning pods.[/i]  And then he quietly removed one of his kids from ACPS and put them in a private school.  And never apologized for his hypocritical comments in the summer.  In the few years that he has been superintendent - and particularly this year - he has belittled parents publicly.  Generally, parents aren't communicated with & are treated poorly by central office when questions are asked.  Of course, all of this has been exacerbated this year.

An earlier poster on this thread claimed that anyone on this board who posts about ACPS' failures is a private school parent.  That's a completely ridiculous notion but it illustrated another systemic problem in the schools and in the city.  There is a small group of parents who think they are leaders in the community & who seek to shut down any parents who complain.  Even on anonymous message boards apparently.  Some went so far to sign on to an op-ed in the Alexandria Times, extolling how wonderfully ACPS handled virtual school while ignoring special ed teachers, english language learners, kids' emotional troubles and the testimony of parents.   I've seen the actions of some of those signers have taken against vocal parents behind the scenes and it's chilling.  Their need to attack their neighbors, who may not be having similar experiences with ACPS that they did, boarders on obsessive.  I've never seen anything like it.  It seems like a lot to protect home values or their political aspirations in the city.

Your kids may be able to get through Alexandria High School just fine and I hope that they do.  But the SB, Central Office and Hutchings, and these self appointed parent "leaders" have done serious harm to kids at every grade level.  It's so toxic that I'll be homeschooling my kid after this year.  [/quote]

This sums it up.  This is a great post.  It is shameful that ACPS complaints are dismissed as having no merit just because of the demographic challenges the system faces.[/quote]

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