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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was there and found that most people were happy with the school, even those with detailed complaints prefaced how pleased they and/or their children were with the school. In part the meeting agenda was to talk about areas to improve. Thus when people listed concerns I felt that was the goal of the meeting.  I was encouraged that the meeting was held at all and that the admins had slides that anticipated the concerns of the parents. I will be watching to see if the issues are addressed next year.

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I think that you have just pointed out a key difference between BASIS and many other DCPS and/or charter schools.  BASIS WAS OPEN to hearing complaints, and is really willing to respond to them.  It even sounds like the meeting was called to air complaints/recommend areas of improvement.  Two pieces of evidence of this: they have replaced the principal (not fired him, just transferred him to another job at another BASIS school (he was formerly a teacher and a college guidance counselor and was clearly out of his league at their first non-Arizona inner city school.))  The second, which may not be publicly known at this point, is that they have hired a SPED coordinator, whom the woman who I spoke to at the DC Public Charter School Board said she has worked with previously in DC when she was at another school and gave her a glowing recommendation.

Honestly, I think a lot of the non-compliance with specific accommodations for kids with IEP/504s at BASIS this year has been because DC is not Arizona, and they were not prepared for the dysfunctional system that delivered them a bunch of seriously unprepared kids, not any deliberate attempt to discriminate.  Disorganization, not malice.  Think of it as a school that has a specific method that works in Arizona, and they think DC is Arizona, and they end up on Mars, not the planet Earth which they are familiar with and have succeeded in.  So instead of giving up, throwing in the towel, they try to learn what the deal is on Mars.  There is at least one absolutely brilliant kid who appears to be on the autism spectrum who is valued for his brilliance and respected by my kid for his intellectual capabilities, which are obvious, despite his equally obvious social handicaps.

My understanding is that their flagship schools resembles Montgomery County (think Pyle Whitman) more than Washington DC.  And the learning curve was steep but they are open to trying to ascend it and make changes and hear complaints, and that in and of itself makes me highly optimistic.  They have a vested interest in having their first "inner city" school succeed and they honestly care about our kids.  The fact that they were willing to have a meeting where parents felt free to express complaints in and of itself speaks volumes about their dedication and their culture, where smart kids are cool, not the automatic potential victims of harassment.

At the DCPS my non-BASIS child is at (a JKLM school), I would not publicly feel comfortable making ANY public complaints for fear of retaliation against my dc who is still not old enough for BASIS (my other dc is already there and delighted).  In fact, we are cautious about making private complaints.  The assumption is that JKLM schools are perfect, and that anyone who criticizes or complains is too "high maintenance", while our dc at BASIS has learned more this year than any other year in his/her life and finally been academically challenged in the way that maybe s/he would have at private school, which we cannot afford, but honestly I seriously doubt it. I don't think ANY private school offers the academics that my kid got in 5th grade this year, including Algebra I.   My dc was absolutely NOT challenged at my JKLM school by 3rd grade.  My dc at BASIS DC has the OPPORTUNITY to be in Calculus by 8th grade, not saying dc is capable, but the opportunity will be there.

I think all the naysayers and parents who have kids at BASIS who felt their kids with special needs were mistreated/ignored should realize that a) we NEED a school like BASIS DC in DC - there is really nothing quite like it, nothing that gets anywhere near it and b) BASIS got in over their heads, and they are trying really hard to get up to speed, meet every child's needs etc.  The fact that they had a meeting where they were willing to hear complaints makes them unlike any DCPS school we have attended.

A lot of what happened this year was the result of them being absolutely unprepared for how uneducated (thanks to DCPS) some of the kids would be who were delivered to them in 5th grade, how badly behaved some of them were (which was probably acceptable in their previous school) and so the IEP/504 kids who were well behaved and actually passing their classes were probably unfortunately the last fire they focused on because they had so many other fires to put out.

I personally do not believe that their lack of compliance with IEPs/504s was because of malice or a deliberate attempt to force special ed kids out, just like I do not believe that they are trying to push all the AA kids out because they are racist.  As I said, they have hired a new SPED coordinator who, according to someone at the DC Charter Board organization, has a proven track record at other DC schools, and whom she has worked with before.  As for the complaints about too many tests etc, I honestly believe they should be assigning only 15 math problems a night MAX.  Once the math becomes sufficiently complex, it just seems like unnecessary overkill.

As for the complaints about racism, those same allegations were launched at Washington Latin not so many years ago, and will be launched at any charter school that tries somehow (through comprehensive exams, repeated write ups, etc) to get the kids who through their bad disruptive behavior are making it impossible for those kids who want to learn to actually have productive classes, out of their schools.  In my personal opinion, honestly they belong at some special school or a pull out program at a DCPS, similar to a class my mother in law taught in NYC.  I guess the same way we don't have schools for G&T kids or programs for them, we may not have programs for troubled kids who are disruptive in class.

BASIS got a serious wake up call this year, and they are trying to respond to everything, while still keeping an excellent school running, and I for one hope that they succeed and show everyone what smart DC kids are capable of, even if they do (horrors) go to public school.  One of these kids got an award from President Obama for an essay that was a nationwide competition, and the science bowl kids beat out every school public and private in DC (with a kid on the spectrum on their team)... Again, BASIS has the potential to become the best school in DC, public or private, and the bashers should go back to the holes they crawled out of.  Those concerned parents who are willing to go through the start up problems that every new school goes through (one parent on this board said that BASIS was a no go solely from the fact that it was a first year charter school and because she had BTDT she just was not willing to go through the growing pains of a new charter school) please stay with us...[/quote]

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