Reply to Eagle Academy Board votes to close school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Very sad. Eagle should have faced consequences much earlier to give families time to plan and make alternate arrangements. As it stands, the families have 48 hours to find a new school. Some are reporting that they've called many schools and none have space for their children.

Parents on twitter - https://x.com/NickMinock/status/1826299238893912315?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

WJLA story - https://wjla.com/news/local/charter-school-dc-scrambling-eagle-academy-public-board-rejected-plan-merge-friendship-congress-heights-campuses-southeast-capitol-riverfront-southwest-parents-children-reachtions-schools-rush-academic-year-crisis#
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This is on the charter school board.  This should have been finalized in May or June so parents had time to find care or a new school for their kids.  PK3 and 4 is tough to find spots, and some parents dont want to drive all over the city if they can find a spot.  I just find this whole situation infuriating.[/quote]

It's also a scramble for the neighborhood schools that Eagle's K-3 students are in bounds for.[b] Over 10 K students unexpectedly enrolled at our DCPS just this week.[/b] I don't know enough to say how that's really impacting anything beyond class sizes, but seems likely to be logistically and financially tough on admin and teachers. But I guess that's not the charter board's problem ...[/quote]

In 2022-23 there were only five DCPS schools that had even 20 kids from their boundary attending an Eagle campus (Hendley, Simon, Malcolm X, Turner, and Van Ness), and that covered 6 grades (PK3-3). So it seems unlikely that 10 Eagle kindergartners had in-bound rights at any DCPS school. I am not doubting that a DCPS school had 10 kindergartners enroll this week, but they probably weren't all from Eagle. [/quote]

Van Ness and Amidon both had a significant number of last minute enrollments (approximately 15 and 30 from what I understand) from the Eagle Academy that was in Buzzard Point. Those schools will both do a great job of welcoming new families, but that’s a huge burden on the teachers and administrators, and of course on the Eagle families as well. [/quote]

In 22-23, there were 22 kids at Eagle Capitol Riverfront who lived in bounds for Van Ness and 12 who lived in bounds for Amidon. Eagle lost students since then. And some of the kids who were enrolled when it closed were going to start PK3 or PK4, where the DCPS in-bounds school does not need to accept them. Closing Eagle at this late date is certainly disruptive to families and DCPS schools--a massive failure of Eagle's board and the DCPCSB. But it would really surprise me if either Van Ness or Amidon had 30 kids, who live in bounds and had been attending Eagle, enroll in grades K-3 this month. Especially given that these families would already have had a right to attend their IB school and preferred a charter and the Post said there was a fair at Eagle featuring schools with open spaces (the schools mentioned in the article as enrolling three of the 350 former Eagle students were Childrens Guild and Ingenuity Prep). [/quote]

Well, I guess be surprised. [b]What exactly would be the incentive for DCPS parents, teachers, and admin to lie about this[/b]?[/quote]

Admins could use it as cover for making changes to class rosters, personnel, or space/money allocations that they wanted to do anyway (for example, finding out that two kids assigned to the same class don't get along so moving one). It's also a good rationale for being slow to respond to existing parents or otherwise being disorganized. Or the school took kids they weren't required to take (OOB, PreK) and doesn't want to say so. Or the principal is new and doesn't realize how many families usually enroll at the last minute and is assuming it's all due to Eagle when some of it isn't. Or someone misspoke, misunderstood, estimated, or exaggerated. Not necessarily a lie, and not done with bad intent.

It is theoretically possible that while Eagle's enrollment was dropping, the number of kids there who live in-bounds for Amidon and Van Ness went from 34 kids across six grades to at least 45 across four grades. It is also theoretically possible that 45 of those enrolled Eagle students--all of whom had previously eschewed the IB DCPS they had a right to attend--enrolled there rather than picking another charter or an OOB DCPS or homeschooling or a private or parochial. But it doesn't seem likely.[/quote]

Let’s not theoretically disparage the folks who have been moving mountains to make this work. [/quote]

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