Reply to Ludlow-Taylor principal made permanent!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The situation at LT is not good. Enrollment was a disaster over the summer - in addition to 1st grade being overenrolled, many kids in the ECE were not on the class lists when they were sent out a week prior to school, despite matching in the lottery and having sent in (and received confirmation) via paperwork that their child was enrolled. There is at least one family who has a prek4 child who was disenrolled and not able to be accommodated because the family was told that there was no room - despite the child matching and having the right paperwork. The first grade situation is bad - overenrollment and class lists that were changing until the day that school started. The construction which was supposed to have begun over the summer just started and their are nails and debris in the playground right near the ECE area (which is a real risk for the kids). Instead of looking to partner with parents, the Principal choose to no show at the first PTO meeting.

I don't think it's entitled of parents to want to know that their child is enrolled in school and that they have a teacher and not be at risk of getting stabbed by a rusty nail in the playground. I am not an LT parent by the way, my child attends another Hill elementary but Hill is a small community. LT has great teachers and families, it's a shame that the principal is doing such a bad job. [/quote]

Lol classic Hill parent right here - not only whining on DCUM but ALSO whining based on rumors!! [/quote]

What do you mean rumors? When a parent says to you "this happened to me and my kid" is that a rumor? if not, then I don't know why you are jumping on this as rumor. I don't understand the refusal to believe that this is happening. Did you see the list of questions that parents have put together after the AP ended the PTO meeting early? These are real issues that parents have questions about. [/quote]

Yes! It is when you extrapolate that because one parent you know *claims* their child was unenrolled this means that enrollment was a mess. You don't actually know what happened.[/quote]

Pretending the enrollment screw ups are a "rumor" or extrapolated from one kid is a very odd point to keep pushing and makes me wonder if you're actually an L-T parent. Basically everyone in the L-T community knows that enrollment was a total mess. I think people picked up on it the fourth time class lists were delayed or when the 5th grade teacher reported having 38 students. The Q & A document from Principal Miller in the PTO Newsletter walks through exactly why it was such a mess; it doesn't pretend that it wasn't a mess. (FWIW I thought she did a pretty good job with those answers.) I think it's especially frustrating for parents because it's the second year in a row this has happened and both instances have led to us losing a different staff position to accommodate the mistake. The kids in the overenrolled grade end up just fine, actually probably better off because they get an extra teacher/smaller class. It's all the other kids who lose science or support services.

I don't think Principal Miller is a good principal, but I don't think she's badly intentioned and the school has seen worse. The person on here pretending there are no issues and calling things "false narratives" isn't helping anyone, but coming on here to trash the school doesn't help either. Of course people from L-T are defensive when someone who admits they're not even a parent starts talking about how bad things are at a school their kids don't attend even if some of the underlying criticisms ring true.[/quote]

I am the PP you are responding to and I agree that there were major issues with enrollment this year. What I'm pushing back against is a poster sharing one or two anecdotes from parents they have talked to or heard about and then drawing conclusions from those anecdotes about the enrollment process. Specifically there have been two claims of students being "unenrolled" -- a PK4 student who supposedly got in off the waitlist and then wasn't given a spot and a returning mid-elementary student (I think they said 3rd grade). These anecdotes sound odd to me and when the PP admitted they aren't even an L-T parent and are just reporting out things they heard from parents they know I do think that's just random rumor mongering and not even remotely helpful. I don't think L-T would be permitted to just deny a PK4 student who'd gotten in off the waitlist and submitted their paperwork in a timely way for instance. And it really is not that unusual for there to be miscommunication on a returning student and maybe re-enrollment paperwork does not get processed -- sometimes this is on the school and sometimes a parent missed an email or forgot to submit a form somewhere. These anecdotes are not evidence of enrollment screw ups and I think it's irresponsible to go repeating them especially when you have no first hand knowledge.

In terms of the issues with 1st I don't think the over-enrollment was a screw up. And I'm not some booster of the principal -- I think her communication is often very lacking (though actually pretty good and proactive in this case). From what I understand the problems with grade emerged lated due to new IB families enrolling over the summer and it was not until the week before school that the size of the grade was actually known and they took action to mitigate the issues. That's no one's fault -- if you move IB you are actually allowed to show up literally any day with your paperwork and the school has to accommodate you. Sure if they had a crystal ball they could know exactly how many families with 1st graders were going to move IB for the school but no one has that.

Agree that some of the class assignment issues and random switching even on the first day of school was a screw up. But it's been addressed and I do assume part of the issue was that the problems in 1st created some follow-on impacts with the class lists for other grades as the school scrambled to figure it out. Not an excuse but it's not like they were throwing people out of school or unenrolling kids which is what the PP was alleging.

When we started at L-T years ago we started the year without a PK teacher at all and it took weeks to get one and it felt very chaotic and frustrating with weak communication. Yet in the end it was sorted and our experience at the school has been good since then. These things happen. The tone of some of these comments would make you think that the school was falling apart at the seams or something. It's an annoying issue that is being resolved. Not really a reflection on the quality of the school or it's future.[/quote]

I don't disagree with a lot of what you said, but I actually know the details of the 3rd grader and it's much worse than what you're assuming. The school somehow managed to delete her entirely from its system (not just her re-enrollment paperwork) and then skeptically questioned her parents about whether she'd actually ever been enrolled at the school. (She had been, for two years.) For a principal who just bragged about knowing kids' dogs names, it was not an impressive performance to say the least. It ended up being sorted out by Mr. Barnes, the new operations lead, who I have a very good impression of so far.

I am actually not sure if the 1st grade issue was entirely outside of the school's hands or not. I know that the school double-enrolled multiple ECE slots (probably what the PK4 poster is referring to, but I don't know if anyone actually ended up with no place; it's possible because there are hard limits in ECE), because one staff member went out on leave mid-summer and a new person came in and filled the same slots again. (Principal Miller's Q&A answers obliquely referred to his for anyone who received this email.) I think it is actually possible that this happened in other grades as well and is the real reason grades are so full. I think you are repeatedly assuming the best case scenario as the explanation for the problems and in individual cases I know about, it is not warranted/accurate.[/quote]

And where are you getting your info about private conversations between a family and the administration? Were you there?[/quote]

The conversations weren’t all private for reasons that weren’t really the school’s fault. If you are really an LT parent and care, ask around. Lots of people know the details. (I am not the person who posted about the 3rd grader originally in this thread.)[/quote]

Right so rumors are running rampant.

There are details about this situation that are not being discussed because it would be inappropriate to talk about publicly. The relevant people know -- you do not.

Do not talk about things which you have only heard about second and third hand with authority. You will wind up looking dumb in the long run.[/quote]

You completely misunderstood my post. I have first hand knowledge of what happened as do quite a few other people because of unique circumstances. There is no point in engaging further if you want to pretend that enrollment issues at LT are “rumors,” when the Principal herself has acknowledged them and tried to explain why they occurred. The explanation, which all members of the LT community received, makes clear that the issues were very widespread. I give the principal credit for the candor of her Q&A answer on that point; I wish she had been more proactive about it, because it was a very bad first impression for many new members of the community.[/quote]

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