Reply to Difference between NW parent involvement and Capitol Hill parent involvement.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Opting out of a class everyone else takes is a curriculum change. Freeing up a staff member to staff a study hall requires extra resources. Offering advanced sections or two of a foreign language also requires hiring another teacher (and god knows they have trouble finding competent Spanish teachers to cover the ones they do offer) .

BASIS has more teachers per grade than other schools to cover the 3 science disciplines students take in 6th, 7th and 8th. [b]That's where they put their resources. [/b]If that doesn't work for your family, it does indeed make sense for you to choose something else.

Finally, I'd love to see some empirical evidence that exposure to a third language at school would hurt their ability to learn a second language at home. [/quote]

Come on, the immigrant parents weren't asking for extra "resources" from BASIS to support their children's language learning.  Apparently, they were asking for a little flexibility for a sound academic reason (rooted in ambition) and none was offered by administrators/a charter franchise with tunnel vision.

-Signed,
European parent who grew up trilingual and has observed that "advanced" language study DC public schools is a joke[/quote]

It may not seem significant to you, but supervising kids in a study hall rather than a required class does take staff resources. And leaving them unattended is not allowed.

I'm curious - where did your kids wind up since they didn't go to BASIS? How has their foreign language instruction been handled?[/quote]

I'm recently divorced, shared custody, he resides in MoCo where our kids now attend school. In MoCo, public schools haven't required foreign language instruction for years.  What the county does require, like many colleges, is that students pass a language proficiency exam to graduate high school. My oldest easily passed the HS proficiency exam in the 8th grade, after attending a heritage weekend language school (also in MoCo) from a young age.

The language we speak isn't taught in MoCo middle schools, but is taught in the HS we've set our sights on. Once he's run out of appropriate HS language classes, he'll probably move on to college classes on the side.

Our family situation isn't ideal, but it's good to have the kids in a system where one size doesn't fit all and thinking outside the box to support academic excellence is tolerated.  I'd have gladly sent family members to take him out of language classes at BASIS with another family in similar circumstances if admins would have allowed us. There was never any need to tie up staff to supervise the bilingual kids wishing to opt out of required introductory language classes. [/quote]

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