Reply to S/O - Avoid Focus School

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[quote=Anonymous]
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I'm the 21:55 poster and your post accurately describes much of what I would say I dislike about our Focus Achool.

I have become friendly with several of my kids' teachers over the years and one of their frustrations is that often times, for parent-teacher conferences, parents just don't show up (after they have already prepped for them) or they come late or they don't speak English (which is fine, but it's not always feasible to have someone on hand to translate if it's not at the appointed time).

Thank you for this discussion, BTW.[/quote]

I'm the teacher you responded to and parent conferences are a whole other ball of wax. We have a committee of teachers who meet in October and stay at school until after 9pm to schedule parent conferences. Before the meeting we send home a form to ask preferences for which day and time of day and whether an interpreter is needed. We secure our half day interpreter provided by the county months in advance, and then secure other school staff who volunteer to interpret for hours each day. When we schedule conferences, we schedule the entire school at once. We make sure we schedule parents for the date they requested and the general time they requested. We take siblings into account and schedule the sibling conferences back to back but with a 15 minute break between each conference for parents to get from one room to the other. After conference appointment forms have been sent home then any changes necessary have to be made through the office, as any one change has a domino effect on the schedule.

Conferences run from 8am to 8pm on both days. Teachers prepare for every conference, and for me the number of no shows unfortunately outnumbered the number of parents who attended this year. Of course my 7:45pm was a no show :(. Admin makes you hold the conference even if the parent was a no show, so then you have to spend the days following the parent conference days calling and emailing to try to schedule a make-up conference. I actually don't mind if parents come late because at least they come and if they're willing to wait a little while then it's pretty likely I'll have a no show pretty soon and we can do it in that slot as long as they don't need an interpreter.

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We canceled our conference and rescheduled.  Teacher canceled the rescheduled one and said there was no need to have one.  Every school is very different.  [/quote]

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