Reply to DCI Parent Petition

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]On IB degradation beyond personnel: the staff letter provides quite a bit of specific evidence.

Here’s what it documents:

The MYP Coordinator resigned in February with no succession plan and no communication to families. Community and Personal Projects, which are IB requirements not optional programming, are currently operating with little to no guidance for 8th and 10th grade students right now.

IB coordinator roles have been restructured to include unrelated coaching duties, in some cases supervising double or triple the number of teachers they previously did. This directly reduces their capacity to manage IB program requirements, which are substantial and non-negotiable.

Teachers no longer receive consistent IB-specific training. The IB has very specific professional development requirements that must be documented and verified at program evaluation. The letter describes the process as having become “convoluted and difficult to maneuver.”

The French language track has had multiple phases collapsed into single courses that the letter says serve neither set of language learners. Current middle school students are not receiving the same degree of target language instruction as previous cohorts and will arrive in DP years at a deficit. The board presented biliteracy outcomes at the March meeting as evidence the program is strong, but the letter points out those outcomes reflect students who were taught under the old model. The current cohort is a different story.

And what we do know about the DP Coordinator is that he had a history of only strong performance evaluations per the staff letter, that 744 students signed a petition to reinstate him, and that the ED told an alum inquiring about his status that conversations about his future at DCI were ongoing when verifiably no such conversations were happening.

Here is why the personnel and the IB program degradation are not separate issues: the DP Coordinator oversees the Extended Essay, Theory of Knowledge, and the full diploma candidacy process. The MYP Coordinator manages Personal and Community Projects. These are not general administrator roles.

They require IB-specific training and certification and years of program experience. Losing both simultaneously, with no succession plan, at a school with an IB re-evaluation coming in 2027-28, is not a personnel matter. It is a program integrity matter. [/quote]

This long post shows me that as a middle school parent, I know precious little about the IB model for MYP, much less for high school, and how it's meant to be implemented.

I personally think that the school needs to work much harder at educating parents and bringing families on board to support the school. They do almost nothing. That is one role an ED should take on, via their coordinators. It's one sign that is a red flag to me.

At one point, I attended a Zoom meeting for incoming 6th grader families in which a couple of fairly young professionals who led the MYP but were about to leave the school presented a slide show. That is about it for the information on the IB model.

This school has so much potential and so many eager parents ready to chip in and support almost anything. They do not engage and already the kids in 6th are discussing how they can try to get into Walls and other schools, amongst themselves.

I also am a LAMB parent and I know what the other poster means by years of instability. I also know the signs that a set of teachers is ready to leave or rebel against an ED, and this is not a good sign. But at least at LAMB, there are many opportunities to learn what Montessori is all about, and the school does make an effort (less so now than before, but it happens) to educate parents on the model itself and bring them frequently into the building to learn what's happening. Of course, it's a much smaller school, but something needs to happen. Letting go of the ED with a succession plan and perhaps pushing out the Board chair are a start, but only if someone with vision is on the horizon. One of the issues with the changes at LAMB are that the initial vision of the school has been lost to an extent, since the subsequent new leaders were not particularly visionary. It matters. Where do you locate the vision and heart of a school with turnover? With the longtime staff and most dedicated teachers.

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