Reply to Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Amen. Montessori should be serving more low income families or it should be eliminated.[/quote]

Should ATS as well? Fun fact: no one who didn't attend aps montessori preschool got into Drew montessori this year. I'm not sure all the preschoolers got in, and they are first in line for admission. That means an income requirement is already baked into montessori admission. Aps montesorri preschool does have a 2/3 set aside for families making less than about 80k a year. It's not the same thing as farms, which basically means being on food stamps. But its better than nothing; no other option school has income requirements for admission, so why are you picking on the one that does? It's not like montessori is some bastion of privilege like virtually all NA neighborhood elementaries.[/quote]

Because when it moves and the program is disaggregated from the Drew neighborhood school, we will find that not only aren't you a Title 1 school, but you may not have any significant number of fr/l students, regardless of the 2/3 set aside. All the other option schools have VPI set-asides, which is the right thing to do in order to ensure low-income students have access to those opportunities. You don't have ANY set-aside for those students. NONE. You should have 1/3 for truly low income, especially for the kids who will live nearby in Gilliam Place and at The Wellington. You could get there by making the Pre-K years free for those whose families qualify for fr/l, and you could make up the difference by making another income bracket at the higher end of the sliding scale (doesn't it top out at like $200,000? That's pretty much every dual income household in North Arlington, so make another for $250,000 and another for $300,000 and up). I actually think the program is great and would benefit truly low-income kids, ESPECIALLY for Pre-K. Why can't we find a way to get them there as 3 year olds? That would be a very smart use of limited resources in closing the opportunity/achievement gap.[/quote]

AGREE 1000%!!!  The sliding scales need revamping - not just for Montessori; but in general.  It's the people in the middle who get screwed - make too much to get any breaks; not enough for all the fees for things to not become difficult to manage.  But let's start with Montessori.  Cause let's face it, Montessori is a private system.  It is an absolute luxury to have a public Montessori program.  The 2/3 set-aside for "low-income" doesn't play out the way APS Montessori would like everyone to think it does.  They claim going to a diverse, Title I school; but it is Title I because of Drew neighborhood program.  I am anxious to see the real demographics of the Montessori program.

Montessori has also been having difficulty getting the 2/3 portion even with the 80% AMI cut-off.  So what does that suggest for the economic demographics of the school?  And I won't be surprised one bit if the new Montessori PTA suddenly brings in a healthy PTA budget, even though they comprised 3/4 of the student body at Drew and the Drew PTA had practically nothing.

Again, regardless of what Montessori folks say, Montessori costs money to run with its extra teachers and remodeling buildings to "suit the Montessori learning style."  Not only should the sliding scale be extended to higher income brackets, the differences in costs from one bracket to the next should be more significant.

It may not be a "bastion of privilege" like most NA elementaries; but it sure has the advocacy group of one and and enjoys its own special benefits.[/quote]

I hope you are as enthusiastic about  improving Drew as you are about putting the crosshairs on montessori.

Fwiw, montessori costs aps about the same as immersion, once you factor in the intersessions.

The real problem most people have with montessori and option schools in general is the sense that some kids (the SA middle and UMC, mostly) are getting a something akin to a NA neighborhood elementary experience "without paying for it". This is the NA mindset again, that if you want a good elementary classroom experience for your kid you have to pay for it : buy an overpriced house in NA. Any efforts to do otherwise - rezoning to break up school segregation, busses across the DMZ I mean 50, expanding option schools , these are forms of cheating the status quo that says north wealthy, south poor.[/quote]

No, I am the one who posted the critique of the sliding scale. I am a South Arlington parent, and I support both neighborhood and option schools. I actually like the Montessori program, but I have a real problem with it's fee scale and the exclusion of truly low-income kids from the program. That "small" fee is a barrier for those families and it isn't right. I think it's entirely possible that most aren't aware that barrier exists and that's why the policy and fee scale hasn't changed. I hope when you're in the new building and it becomes more clear that you aren't really living up to Maria Montessori's mission, you will take up the cause so that any student, regardless of economic status, can access the program.[/quote]

Speaking dd awareness, just a hunch: neither vpi nor montessori preschool get a lot of farms applicants. I haven't seen stats for what percentage of preschoolers are farms. Does that number get rolled into the host schools figure or is it reported elsewhere?

[/quote]

BS, it's absolutely false that VPI isn't majority fr/l. They are. That's how the option schools have any fr/l students. If you look at ATS for example, they have 142 students who qualify for fr/l. If the VPI numbers are rolled in, that still leaves 110 kids K-5 who qualify, or 22 students per grade level (previously there was only one VPI classroom, now there are two). There are between 16-18 students per VPI classroom. It's unlikely that those 22 kids who qualify for fr/l at each grade level were not VPI students who continue on but rather random kids who won the K lottery. You can do the math for the other option schools, too. [/quote]

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