Reply to A PS3 Parent's Perspective on Bancroft

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here with a few additional thoughts.  By no means did my original post say that Bancroft is an awful school, nor that our experience has been uniformly negative.  Our son is mostly content going each day .  On the other hand, the issues I raised are ones I did not know about going in, and none of the Bancroft boosters--including friends and acquaintances we have in the neighborhood, where we have lived a long time--shared with us before we attended. We wished we had known how tough communicating with the school and our son's teachers would be going in.  Unlike the poster above, who gets texts from her kid's teachers (?!) we haven't been able to get any meaningful regular communication out of our son's teachers, and we're not alone in this experience in the class.

As to the quality of the teachers, I'd say our experience is decidedly more mixed.  Our son's teachers are certainly nice enough, but I think communication is a core part of their jobs, and we struggle with it with them.  I have also experienced some downright disturbing incidents with other teachers in the PS3 grade, including witnessing one teacher berating a student for sucking on her fingers while walking to class in the morning.  The teacher, who didn't know I was behind her, repeatedly mocked the child for acting "like a baby" and I was horrified.  I actually didn't even realize she WAS a teacher until she turned around--I thought she was the child's parent, which wouldn't have excused the behavior, but would have been marginally less upsetting.

I am glad there are families who are having good experiences, and I do think that family involvement is essential to improving the school. I just think it's worth folks knowing the different experiences current families are having there.  I know I would have wanted to.[/quote]

OP, my child is in PS3 at a charter, and we have also had communication issues. I recognize that a lot of my frustration with the communication issues is directly related to the caliber of the communication we received from the daycare/preschool she attended previously. We also get little notice about schoolwide events. Often notice for things like parent night or PTA event is given in the form of flyers at school on the bulletin board. I do not always check the bulletin board when dropping off or picking up DD as there is usually a ton going on at those times. There is a monthly newsletter for our classroom, but it is mostly a souvenir rather than a communication tool.

I've heard a lot of good things about Bancroft. We had good waitlist numbers last year but didn't get in and will hope to get in this year as it is nearby (we live across 14th Street) and I prefer it to Tubman or Raymond. I was my experience as a student in public school elsewhere that the quality of "the school" often depends on your perspective. Maybe the teacher you have this year just isn't great. Maybe the reason your friends did not tell you about the lack of communication is that it doesn't bother them. Some people have no issue with last minute notice and no email blasts.  The incident you mentioned with the teacher sounds pretty upsetting - did you report it to the principal or anything? I would have.[/quote]

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