Reply to New principal: how to improve Oyster-Adams

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Improve it from what to what? Higher overall scores? [b]Higher percentages of advanced students?[/b] Improvement in Spanish grammar? One building? A better website? [b]Keep more IB families no matter how high the % of non-Spanish speaking families?[/b]

None of these things matter to DCPS. O-A is about as good as it's going to get in terms of quantitative measures. The new principal looks like she was put in there as part of the overall DCPS middle school retention effort. They are going to throw a lot of stuff at the middle school grades for 3 years or so to see if they can stem the tide of flight to charters.

But there is no long-term strategy for the school or any of the dual-language programs in DCPS. It has been completely absent from the entire DME process.

To improve the qualitative elements of the school that many families complain about, all she needs to do is fire the MS AP, move the 4-5th grade AP to the lower grades at Oyster building, hire a superb Dean of Students, get rid of some entrenched staff who have been coasting on the success of individual teachers.

We're IB and bilingual at O-A and have had mixed results. We're contemplating leaving for many reasons, but we're wondering what dual language schools will be better? The only dual immersion secondary school is CHEC.

An easy to use web platform would be great, but first there needs to be consistency in teaching and well-organized administration. Like PP said, many of the crises were self-made or poorly communicated. It would be pretty easy to improve some of the basic operations at O-A.

The elephant in the room is whether it can or will continue as many things to many people. How long can it stay as a neighborhood, bilingual, inclusion, two campus, PK-8 school, that feeds into an English-only high school?[/quote]

Canizales has moved the 4-5th grade AP to Oyster which is an excellent choice.  However, the MS AP remains in place.  It is rumored that she is good friends with Canizales.  Thank goodness for the Dean of Students!  MS AP is incapable of dealing with student behavior.   Although I am worried about the fact that the Dean of Students doesn't speak Spanish, I suspect he will do an excellent job of working with our middle schoolers and creating an environment of respect.  The new 4-5 grade AP seems very nice, but his bio stated that he is a native speaker of Spanish.  I'm sorry, but I heard him present to parents this past week and he is NOT a native speaker.  He struggled throughout the whole presentation to find the right words in Spanish and even used Spanglish.  I suspect he will be speaking to students mostly in English.  This will not help students improve their Spanish.  Fingers crossed that everything will work out.[/quote]

In-bounds families have just lost access to Deal, which proved a far better alternative for advanced students in previous years. My family certainly would have liked to see higher percentages of advanced students and even a shred of interest in keeping in-bounds families though the middle school years. Spanish is a great idea, but in the middle school years, it can't be the school's only priority.[/quote]

I'm an IB Oyster parent, and I think that it's great that we no longer have Deal as an option.  It forces Oyster's admins. and parents to improve whatever needs to be improved in the middle school.  If some IB families don't find that appealing, they should move to a Deal feeder or private.  Or better yet, don't move IB for Oyster at all.[/quote]

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