Reply to How will Brookland Middle affect Burroughs, Bunker Hill, Noyes?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We will absolutely consider Burroughs next year. We have a Kindergartener who started at Bethune today, but we're in-bound for Burroughs and we really want to stay hyper-local so we're considering either staying at Bethune if all goes well this year or switching her to Burroughs once the education campus has been disbanded![/quote]

Definitely switch away from Bethune. They have issues with bullying, they are at war with their neighbors over parking issues, they spend money on new playground supplies only to leave them out all summer and have someone set fire to them, and their idea of aftercare is putting all the kids in a room and turning a tv on. Their CAS scores went down this year and they just had the privilege of being the school with the most illegal (PG County) students in all of DC. Run, don't walk. [/quote]

I'd love to know more about these issues (I'm the PP with the Kindergartener) - did you have a child there and what grade? Thanks![/quote]

I had a PreK4 kid there last year. They had severe bullying issues (covered in other threads on this forum here: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/155617.page#1415230). I have friends who were trying to enroll their kids in the school at the same time through the lottery and they simply would not return parents' phone calls. The one time they did get through they hung up on them! Others have had issues actually meeting with teachers before school starts - the teachers have been late or simply not shown up at all. Communication is very poor.

A few years ago they overhauled the playground on the lower level. Unfortunately, they used parent labor to cut corners however and the results showed. The path was uneven, lumps of concrete came up, the netting for the grass tripped kids up, they never watered the flowers, which promptly died etc. This past summer they spent yet more tax payer money to relay the path and put synthetic turf on the playground. Trouble was, they bought the synthetic turf early in the summer and left it out in the upper playground all year. Not only did the elements and rodents get to it, it got set on fire a few weeks before school was due to start, rendering most of it useless. It also burnt the surface of the upper playground and the corrugated iron building on the playground, making it look like a war zone. The older kids at the school can no longer use this playground.

The parking/pick up/drop off situation is hellish. They disregard all calls from the neighborhood to stop double parking and parking in access alleys for the neighbors who live around the school. It got so bad last year that a parent who repeatedly parked in an alley, blocking all the neighbors into their houses, verbally threatened a neighbor with kids of her own in the car and the police was called. A restraining order was taken out against the parent and a policeman was stationed outside the school for the neighbor's protection. I used to see one parent coming to the playground to pick up their kid, walking to the liquor store, and then coming back obviously drunk.

The aftercare involves putting kids of all ages in a room and turning a tv on. I gave up on the aftercare after a while and some other parents and I got together and paid someone to pick our kids up and entertain them after school. Not ideal, and an additional headache for parents.

The CAS scores are available at http://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/publication/attachments/CAS%20Classification%202014_FOR%20POSTING_FINAL.pdf 
They went down 4.16 overall from 2013 to 2014, and down 5.6 in math (see the bottom of page 2)

The school had 18 cases of fraud last year. The article on this can be found at http://www.ward5heartbeat.org/news/local-public-schools-found-to-have-non-d-c-residents-enrolled/
The school principal didn't seem too concerned about the fraud in the article. She says "Asked to comment on the large number of cases at her school, principal Dr. Linda McKay told the Heartbeat that she was not aware of a problem. “It seems that you have more information than I do regarding MM Bethune’s residency fraud investigation. We have not received information from PCSB regarding any students.” Dr. McKay added, “I can assure you that there are many schools, and schools in Ward 5, who have a number that far exceeds the six, the eight, or the eighteen that you say exists at MM Bethune.” Dr. McKay did not provide details about the schools she was referring to."[/quote]

Thanks for taking the time to outline these things - much appreciated! We're only a week in so it's much too early to tell how things will work out, but so far I've been very happy (aside from the my disappointment in their communication style.) We're not doing after care so I can't speak to that and we're figuring out how to best navigate drop-off. I'd heard the same thing about the alley-blocker and find that appalling.

I'll keep the group updated since I get the impression Bethune is becoming an alternative to the Stokes/IT/Two Rivers/CM/LAMB shut-outs.
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