Reply to Push for another bilingual middle school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I live on this Hill and oppose this because we need to focus on improving existing middle schools, no creating a new one. Create an advanced language program at the existing MS. Why would you create an entire immersion MS to serve one elementary? It doesn't make sense.

Stuff like this annoys me because so many parents in DCPS just want some bespoke program for themselves. That's not the strength of a public school system. We need to pool resources.[/quote]

The parents pushing for this aren’t seeking for it to be a Chisholm-only middle school. If you google “Creciendo Chisholm” you can learn more about their advocacy campaign (I only know broad strokes) — their big point is that there is no immersion middle school east of the park, but multiple immersion elementary schools, leaving a lot of kids high and dry if they want to continue bilingual education. I have no idea how adding a middle school to Chisholm as a bilingual feeder would functionally work — some of those bilingual schools are charters, Chisholm is DCPS, can those even “merge” so to speak? — but I don’t get the sense that is just parents trying to get a bespoke program. [/quote]

PP here. Okay I went and looked at the Creciendo Chisholm website. I am not impressed and continue to disagree that this is a reasonable proposal.

First of all, as you mention, the vast majority of immersion elementariness on the east side are charters. Most of them already feed to DCI. The only two immersion DCPS schools on the east side are Chisholm and Houston. I see nothing on the website about Houston -- do they want an immersion middle school? They are in a part of the city that is particularly ill-served at the MS and HS level. And if they do want an immersion MS, do they want to do it with Chisholm? Btw, if you wanted to locate a MS about midway between Chisholm and Houston, it would be in the Fort Dupont neighborhood. Are the Chisholm folks okay with that, because it sounds like they are pushing for a school on the Hill. Well an immersion MS on the Hill doesn't sound like it's designed to serve all the east side immersion programs -- it sounds like a special MS for Chisholm.

Yes there are immersion charters on the east side. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they all already feed into DCI? Stokes definitely does.

There are other DCPS immersion schools "EOTP" though not on the east side -- a whole cluster of them in NW like Marie Reed and Bruce-Monroe. We happen to have friends at both of those schools and they are not interested in an immersion MS on the Hill -- it's too far for them. They are both considering trying to move IB for Oyster for Middle School.

But honestly this brings me back around to my original point, which is this: as a parent who actually lives in the same neighborhood as Chisolm but has kids at a nearby, non-immersion school, I am just not very invested in making sure these kids can continue immersion past 5th grade and I think advocating for a new school that serves that "need" is unbelievably myopic. Capitol Hill has a large contingent of families who have invested in our IB elementary schools and who want to ensure strong MS and HS options for our kids, ideally within our own part of town. That means investing in our existing MSs and doing what we can to make Eastern a reasonable option. Chisholm has over 500 kids, and you want to take those kids OUT of their current feeder and create a bespoke option, maybe with schools in other wards. I'm just never going to get on board with that. As I stated before, public school is about pooling resources for the good of everyone. This is the opposite of that -- this is about siphoning resources from the broader population to serve a bespoke and frankly non-core educational need (immersion education is a nice-to-have -- it is not essential). That's a hard no from me.

But let's get back to that Creciendo Chisholm website. On the front page of that website, I see the words "Bilingual Arts Education for All" and "Dual-language education beyond elementary school. An equitable path forward for ALL of DC." I get that the argument here is that they want an option like Oyster on the East side of the city, and that majority-black Chisholm deserves the same opportunities as majority Hispanic/White Oyster. Fair enough -- I just looked and was shocked to discover that Oyster is 3% black. In DC! That's insane. It's 50% Hispanic though. But while I know that's what those statements mean, just on face value, they are false. They aren't trying to create bilingual arts education for all. For instance, my kids and all the kids at our Hill elementary are excluded from that, despite also being a majority black school. Because they haven't been in an immersion program since PK so I'm sure would not be welcome at this new immersion school. Well that sucks.

Just create some advanced Spanish options at Jefferson, the existing feeder. [/quote]

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