Reply to Can Gentrifers Use Their Skills and Resources to "Make" a Great School?

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Reply to "Can Gentrifers Use Their Skills and Resources to "Make" a Great School?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
You say having more trained volunteers to tutor during the school day would be helpful. Does this mean you don't think there's much value to one-on-one tutoring after school or on Saturdays (not by regular tutors, but as you say, by volunteers trained to do it well, eg retirees)? I just feel like the social stuff can only get kids so far. It's needed, but if they are reading Level A books in second grade, I'm not sure free supplies or playdates with higher SES kids are ever going to bring them up to speed.[/quote]

Weekends are tricky, who is going to supervise the building, provide heat and security for example. Even if teachers worked for free the other staff would not or may bot be able to. Additionally, even DC-CAS Saturday schools are very poorly attended and that is with numerous teacher/parent incentives, it is very difficult to get students to attend Saturday school consistently. Same for after-school, it depends on the age of the students but many older students have clubs already and then you have issues with snacks, who is or is not allowed to be in the building, etc. It is not that simple to use a school building during non-school hours, not to say it can't and isn't being done, but just giving you the reality. If you are going to volunteer it is better to join an already up and running tutoring program as they already have connections with DCPS, even volunteers have to have fingerprints and other checks. [/quote]

The principal at our Title 1 school says that the teachers have asked her to open up the school on the weekend. She has agreed to do this once a month for them. I had kind of assumed that the teachers would not want to come in on the weekends, but apparently enough of them have requested this that she is willing to try opening up on Saturdays and see how it goes this spring. So I would say that if a group of parents is interested in something like this, ask the principal how to make it happen. If there is no interest or possibility, move on to other efforts, but don't assume that the answer will be no. My experience with a supportive principal is that she has been supportive of us having open houses after hours. We had a lottery Q&A session a few weeks ago after hours. The only logistical issue was that the security guard goes home at the end of aftercare (6pm) so someone had to stay at the door to let people in and anyone who arrived super late wasn't able to get inside. [/quote]

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