Reply to Experience with Shining Stars?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Experience with Shining Stars?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid is entering K and completed the last two years at SSMA. We’ve had incredible teachers for primary and my child is reading and doing so well in math (addition, subtraction and multiplication) and receives so much emotional support. Another kid in class was doing long division. If you get a good instructor and your kid is a good candidate for Montessori, I recommend it. The other issues mentioned by other posters are true with many families happy with lower grades and community, but there are admin issues and the question of how well the higher grades are performing. 
[/quote]

Multiplication and long division before K.  They'll be doing calculus before middle school.  Sounds odd considering the amount of worksheets and coloring activities some other SSMA parents complain about.  [/quote]

Just wanted to jump into this old thread to mention that we did an open house at SSMA today and saw kids in one of the primary (PK-3 to K) classrooms working on coloring worksheets. I was shocked. They couldn't even pretend to be working on something educational, knowing that the Open House was scheduled and that parents would be coming by? So yes, coloring worksheets are apparently still a thing here. [/quote]

Were there a lot of parents there? Did they acknowledge any of the problems?[/quote]

Hello! Let's see...I think there were about 7-8 families there. Did they address any of the problems? Ehhhh. I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of all of the problems going into the open house (but boy did I get up to speed afterward! Thank you, DCUM, for existing.). However, one astute dad there must have been familiar with a lot of it, because he asked some great, on-point questions that were relevant to a lot of the issues (as I later learned), and I think his questions must have been intended to suss out whether things were getting addressed now. (Trying to think of an example, and am blanking at the moment. Will follow up if I recall any. Sorry, we've been doing so many open houses lately that I've forgotten some of details.)

I can say, on one of the issues--heat--that the school had installed electric plug-in overhead heaters above some of the doorways to the rooms on the main level. They look like those heaters you see on restaurant patios. I was actually really surprised to see them inside a building--it seemed unsafe, since they get so hot!--but apparently there are models you can get intended for indoor and outdoor use. [/quote]

Hello again. Just thought of one of the questions the other parent asked: he inquired about the retention rate (/why the school was able to clear its waitlist). The answer he got was basically, "well, we're not really sure why people left." Again, I didn't know about all of the school's problems going into the open house, so I wasn't super-focused on the response, but I can say now that it seems they were playing dumb with him. [/quote]

This answer from the school that they don't know why families left is 100% false and is exactly why the school will never improve. Many family's who left, mine included, sent long emails to the school explaining exactly why we were leaving. If the school could just be honest about what has gone wrong they could start fixing things. I would have so much more respect of they said x and y happened but we're addressing it through A and B. Instead they obfuscate and get defensive.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics