Reply to APS - From option school to private

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm curious which option schools people are thinking of leaving, but understand not wanting to share.[/quote]

We left Claremont. Claremont has an amazing principal and was a wonderful school (facility, teachers, enthusiasm), but APS (and Claremont) were too overcrowded, which made pandemic learning a disaster. If Claremont had 500 kids instead of 700, I think it would be a much better experience. Lunch was around 1050 due to overcrowding pre-pandemic, and my child felt like a number (We had GREAT teachers, but how can you expect Immersion teachers to track 50 kids?)

If your kid gets an Immersion spot, in my opinion you're getting more than a public school education because you're getting the bonus of a life-long language skill...and we had siblings in the pipeline who would have benefited too.

However in the end the amazing option of Immersion just wasn't enough to gamble other things away (smaller class sizes, strong spelling/writing skills, teacher attention etc). The final straw was APS's utter paralysis in spring of 2020 when COVID began, which convinced us we could not trust the district with our kids' education, and (sadly) we left the immersion experience, but it was the right move for us. Honestly I do think it's a harder call to leave an Option school than a regular APS school because you're getting some "bonus" private-school type features (for free). But you have to weigh everything carefully. [/quote]

I am confused at the idea that the Teachers cannot track 50 kids in immersion. We are in an immersion program in FCPS, DS cohort has 50 kids, spilt between two classes. His Teachers know each of the kids, they spend half the day with each of those kids. Each Teacher is tracking 2-3 disciplines. His Language Teacher is tracking Math, Science, and the Language. The Teacher might have more kids but they have fewer subjects to prepare.

No one says that the Specials teachers cannot do their jobs when they have hundreds of students and see them once or twice a week for 30 minutes.

I get being concerned about overcrowding but an immersion program at a school that is not overcrowded is going to have 50 kids because there is normally one Teacher who teaches in the new language and one Teacher teaching in English for LA and some other class. That has nothing to do with overcrowding and everything to do with the nature of an immersion program.

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