Reply to Why can’t Watkins get traction with Capitol Hill?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote=Anonymous]OP, go back to older Watkins threads.  This issue has been thrashed out on these boards many times in the last decade.  Size of Watkins (too big), the rise of language immersion charters up in NE, in-bound hostile leadership and strong buy in from Ward 7 and 8 parents have featured heavily in the story.  Despite frequent predictions that things would get better at Watkins for IB families, they only seem to get worse.[/quote]

The answer is one word is “Leadership”

They have had REALLY bad leaders for the last 8 years - and essentially they ruined the place [/quote]

How many seats did they offer when reopening after Covid?[/quote]

For my fourth grader - none - the entire fourth grade did not go back that whole year and the leaders of that school allowed that to happen - and so we left - end of our Watkins story and our families 8 year history at the cluster. [/quote]

Wasn't this the case at every DCPS school that year?[/quote]

No, and I wish more people understood this.

We are at another CH DCPS elementary during Covid and then transferred after to a different one (neither was Peabody or Watkins). The schools handled it differently, and they continued to handle it differently.

Some schools really prioritized maintaining community connections during Covid, through playdates and masked community events, even during the 2020-2021 school year. Other schools truly went full virtual and outside a handful of at-risk kids, there was extremely limited community interaction for almost two years. Some schools offered more extensive in-person options in the spring of 2021, some did way more outreach in the summer of 2021. Even once all DCPS schools were back full time in person in 2021-2022 school year, you saw a lot of variation in what this meant for communities, in terms of allowing parents on campus and into schools, holding back to school events, and just how welcoming the schools were.

And I think you still see the results of those choices now. Some DCPS schools on the Hill have even stronger communities post-Covid, because of efforts made by school leadership, teachers, and PTAs to stay connected and keep the community alive. Some don't. These were choices schools made, and the schools you see shedding families quickly post-Covid, in many cases, took for granted that people would stick with them. In DC with the lottery, you cannot take your community of families for granted. I think Watkins is finding that out now.[/quote]

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