Reply to Anyone go to the Open House at Langley today?

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[quote=Anonymous]Hoping that a prospective parent attendee will respond as their opinion would probably be most valuable to you. But until they do...

I attended as the happy parent of a current PK3 student intending to re-enroll for PK4, to both take advantage of the Open Gym and help answer prospective parent questions. We had Langley toward the bottom of our lottery list but have been so pleasantly surprised that we turned down two WL offers in order to stay there, and have been glad we did. So take the following with that admitted bias.

Every prospective parent I talked with (10 or so of the two dozenish parents there at some point) mentioned being impressed with Principal Spann (as am I) as well as most offering similar comments for the attending PK3 teacher (Ms Fisher, who we also like). Most prospective parents liked the Tools of the Mind curriculum, all liked the spacious classrooms (Langley still has lots of room to grow), the Spanish, visual art, music specials and particularly room for PE both indoor and out. No-cost onsite aftercare with art and gym / outdoor time 3x week, targeted proto-literacy programming 2x week and low-cost before care also were selling points that resonated. Several mentioned an intangible "warmth" to the place- a sentiment with which I agree.

Concerns: clearly no language immersion if that is important to you- weekly Spanish is not the same. Got questions on feeder path which really is a personal risk tolerance calculation as well as your relative optimism as to whether the neighborhood baby boom and activist parents now will translate into improved middle and high schools 7 - 11 years from now. Some parents wanted more overt STEM focus down to PK3-4, others didn't care or wanted less. (At this point at PK3 and 4, it is mostly integration of the onsite gardening, beekeeping in partnership with Farmer's Market- more robotics type stuff in higher grades). Some were focused on the still poor grade 3 scores- others saw that more a reflection of SES in a age cohort that is already SES differentiated from the PK3 and 4 classes rather than instruction quality.

Again, hoping that another prospective will chime in- but feel free to ask any follow on questions. Also, in case you didn't know, there is another Open House/Open Gym at Langley on Saturday, Feb. 20, 9-11:30 AM.

And in the meantime, you can check out our new website at http://www.langleyelementary.org for more info.

Glad you are considering Langley, and good luck for a happy lottery result wherever the algorithm takes you!
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