Reply to How was the meeting with the admin meeting last week at BASIS?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "How was the meeting with the admin meeting last week at BASIS?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, I'm no attorney but even I know enough to know that what most people typically rely on is preponderance of evidence and corroborating testimonies and information, as opposed to relying on hearsay or just plucking one person's statement out of an entire roomful of witnesses and putting your all behind it.  Neither you nor I have interviewed every child present, nor even a meaningful fraction of them, to know whether they all agree on what happened.  Yet you've already made the specious leap to judgement and demands for apologies without actually having the full facts.

Regarding Cameron Louis, his age has indeed repeatedly been brought up.  As for his "silence" - again I'd ask if you actually ever specifically discussed this with him, one-on-one, a rational, focused discussion on this specific concern - as opposed to lobbing a lengthy one-way public tirade jumbling together every single thing you think is wrong with the school as seems to keep happening on this board?  I somehow doubt that you have.[/quote]

[b]I[/b] have not brought up his age in terms of the way he has handled himself in the past week. I may have brought up his experience.

I have no interest in discussing this issue with him - I see no point because his initial email on this matter was so off the wall: 
"the Dean may have misspoken.... Have a wonderful week!"  
and something along the lines of he is "messaging" our children......

I will, however, discuss it with Mr. Aiken when he returns.  At length.
 
This email from Mr. Louis was fairly soon after the event, and his message still has not gotten through sufficiently so that all of our kids feel secure about their Chemistry grades, [b]nor has he personally met with the section to reassure these children, who are ultimately his students, and his responsibility, that their grades are not at risk[/b]).  Even though by now it must be obvious even to him that his initial "messaging" was insufficient, at least for some of the students.

He [b]has[/b] gotten that feedback directly from at least one parent in the class, and that should be all he needs to act. The buck is supposed to stop with him.  He is the Head of School.  He, not the Dean, has the ultimate authority here.  All he had to do was properly exercise it to avoid a week of anxiety, and the Dean's behavior and statements becoming the "hot topic" for most of the kids at Basis.

All of you, with your "hearsay," your "preponderance of the evidence" your legalese, are ignoring the fact that these are our kids.  [b]And they are upset.[/b]  These 8th graders, who undoubtedly represent at least some of the "top" students [b]he was so upset[/b] that he "lost" last year, are still frightened. That fact alone, for those of you who have some respect for how intelligent and sensible most 8th graders at Basis are, should tell you something about their encounter with the Dean that day.

You seem to want to focus on whether [b]they should be frightened[/b] for their grades.  It does not, and should not, matter one whit.  [b]They are.[/b]  And Mr. Louis has been informed of that directly by at least one parent.  How many parents directly informing him should it take before he decides to act?  A preponderance of the parents?  Why is the onus on them?

The point I have been trying to make is that a number of our kids are still scared about their Chemistry grade.  These are 8th grade kids, 13 year old kids, who are frightened that they may end up in an academic hole so deep they cannot dig themselves out, since the Upper School does not have 5 grading periods.  They are new to the Upper School, and new to the grading system.  It no longer matters whether they were given good cause to be worried, or whether Mr. Louis's initial email should have been enough.  (He should have known it would not be, and therefore my suspicion is that he did not have a conversation with the Dean or Ms. Pickett before he sent it out, which is hardly due diligence.)

[b]It was not enough[/b].  A more than de minimus number of our kids are still afraid for their grades, and Mr. Louis has been made aware of that, through direct communication.  It should no longer matter what the Dean said or did.  At this juncture, an inquisition is the last thing we need.  The Dean, after having given the kids the opportunity to toss the room for 5 minutes while he and the teacher stepped out, returned to discover that they had been unsuccessful in finding the candy.  He then said something along the lines of "I will mess with your grades."

And yes, this comes from more than one child who was in the room at the time, but you doubt whether they can be trusted, or you want all the children to repeat the Dean's statement verbatim with a degree of accuracy that is not even necessary for a conviction when numerous victims testify after having been inside a bank while it was robbed at gunpoint.  The Dean is not on trial here.  The issue is how the kids feel about what he did and said, it is no longer about what he actually did and said.  How can so many posters, whom I must presume are also Basis parents, be so willfully blind or deliberately obtuse? What is wrong with you people?  Are you not parents?  Have you no sympathy?  Have you no empathy?  Have you no shame?

Some of these kids are [b]still scared[b] about their grades and their future, [b]when they should not have been put in fear in the first place.[/b]  To me, that is all that matters.  I wonder why it does not matter at all to you.  No, I was not there.  And it is clear I cannot possibly convince you or many others of how very wrong it was, or how the email Mr. Louis sent trivialized and dismissed the feelings of many of the children who had, quite frankly, had the living daylights scared out of them. And how his "message" did nothing to comfort them or calm them down.

So the saga continues, 8 days later.  Who knows what day 9 will bring.

Certainly not a groundswell of support from fellow Basis parents for the students in 8La.

Clearly, the way they are feeling is their fault, and their problem, and not Mr. Louis's responsibility.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics