Anonymous wrote:This thread is becoming an early Christmas present.

Thank you Basis, for shutting down your listserv.

Love,

Washington Latin, DCI, and Hardy

This thread is becoming an early Christmas present.

Thank you Basis, for shutting down your listserv.

Lay off the bold. It makes you seem crazier.

Anonymous wrote:To the person who posted the last two posts on this thread: please cease! I know you mean well, but it's repelling people from Basis. Thanks!

gee, there are so many repellent posts and so many posts that will repel people, it is impossible to even begin to identify the two posts you are trying to refer to. Perhaps a little more specificity towards the person or people you are trying to shut up is in order? I am dying to know which posts you think are well meaning repellents as opposed to just repulsive people because darling, at this point, I cannot tell the difference.

Anonymous wrote:The other day, when I walked by the school, I sneezed and nobody said "bless you". The indignity. The outrage. I demand an explanation, I demand that the Head of School come and personally appear before me to say "bless you" and we need to discuss this ad nauseam, over the course of several weeks, and hundreds of posts!

If you think this is the same as not filling our 6th grade or losing kids in our upper school who will probably go on to get into great colleges wherever they went, in no small part due to the academic preparation they received at Basis, you get the idiot prize out of all of them - and that is really saying something, my dear honey pot pie.

Sneeze. Be indignant. Be outrageous. You think you are going to ridicule everyone who has legitimate concerns into silence? Not gonna happen, not even close. You are just adding fuel to an already blazing fire. Idiot prize goes to..........the prize idiot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent who received a call about one of those 6th grade spots (at nearly 100 on wait list) and turned it down, four words: totally dodged a bullet.

Why do you say that?

Please review pages 1-9 on this thread. Thank you.

What did you learn in between the time you put your child on the wait list and pages 1 through 9 of this thread?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent who received a call about one of those 6th grade spots (at nearly 100 on wait list) and turned it down, four words: totally dodged a bullet.

Why do you say that?

Please review pages 1-9 on this thread.

Thank you.

Anonymous wrote:As a parent who received a call about one of those 6th grade spots (at nearly 100 on wait list) and turned it down, four words: totally dodged a bullet.

Why do you say that?

As a parent who received a call about one of those 6th grade spots (at nearly 100 on waitlist) and turned it down, four words: totally dodged a bullet.

Anonymous wrote:Holy moley! The cray-cray is strong at Basis! Please continue as this shit is hilarious. Is crazy Basis mom also crazy word salad lady? Because that would be awesomer.

No, Word Salad is at Eastern. Bless her heart.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BASIS is doing fine. They need a real board rather than hand-picked people who Michael and Olga liked and who can play with Craig B.

sorry but who is Craig B?
I thought the line of authority went to Sean Aiken and then Caroline McGarvey (and can never go to Michael Block because he is on the Board of the for profit company), while his wife Olga stayed on the non profit side. Pretty cosy, but still.

Craig Barrett, former Intel CEO, picked up BASIS (and privatization of public schools in general) as a pet project a while back. But make no mistake, BASIS is and always has been Olga Block. Michael (economics professor) is a nice guy but never wore the pants in that relationship and certainly not when it comes to BASIS. Carolyn is Olga's right hand man - no background in education but a powerful (although quite aggressive) personality and fiercely loyal. Sean, like all the other HOS's, was picked out of the teaching ranks (to detriment of teaching ranks) as a nice guy, capable, ambitious but willing to tow the party line and desirous of more than the minimum wage teacher salary. He has absolutely no power to innovate, only to implement the system. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing it. As far as I can see, at BASIS, from admin to teachers to parents, you either believe in Olga's system, or you don't.

Well if you were at the meeting at the end of the year where Sean Aiken said if there was one statement he could take back as HOS, it was stating in the first meeting that DC is just like Arizona. DC is different. We are their only inner city school, we are their only majority AA school, we are their only school that has 40% FARMS, and we are the only school where they have been told quite clearly by OCR and the Charter Board that they MUST deal with kids with IEPs or 504s appropriately or they will be fined constantly, requests to expand will be denied, and worst case scenario, their charter would be revoked. They got the message. And they have changed to meet the needs of the kids who can succeed at Basis despite their disabilities. If you look at the populations of the schools in AZ, you will quickly realize how different we are. There are NO kids with IEPs or 504s at the flagship schools in AZ. Those schools are full of affluent or middle class children that do not at all reflect the geographic area they are in (for example, one of those cities is 40% Latino, and they have about 15%). Sean Aiken spent a year here as HOS experiencing every single aspect of the DC difference, and he was HOS in Oro Valley before he came here, and he started out as a teacher at Basis. The last thing Olga wants is to fail here, so I believe that she and Caroline are listening to Sean about the "DC difference." Olga's way or the high way does not work here, and Sean Aiken knows it, and he has enough credibility with both these people so that they listen to him on critical issues.

I'm going to have to do this, I owe it to myself: I TOLD YOU SO!


I personally told you so, a couple years ago, before you opened, and you were all boostery up-in-arms about how wrong and negative I was, and Basis is the best, and "just look at Arizona!" despite me telling you - repeatedly - how irrelevant Arizona is to your situation. Your students are not the children of PhDs teaching at the UofA in Tucson. Now you know. I. told. you. so.

Now, carry on with your wailing and rending of garments, it's entertaining and your tears are delicious.

Anonymous wrote:Haha there is so much insanity in this thread. It is calling out for a good gif.

NP here, and not a Basis parent so I'm not invested in your outcome here. You people ignore the frustrated parent above at your own peril. The UPSFF (per-pupil funding formula) indicates that your school lost out on about a quarter of a million dollars by not filling those 25 seats. And that's just THIS YEAR. You can't back-fill them, so now your loss is compounded to $250K per year for that class all the way through HS. Wow - somebody should be fired for that kind of fiscal malpractice. DCI just opened, doesn't have their permanent facility, and is already eating your lunch. You need to get on the ball and address your problems, quickly. Shutting down and/or berating the one person who is actually trying to force the school and its sycophants to face the music will be your downfall.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BASIS is doing fine. They need a real board rather than hand-picked people who Michael and Olga liked and who can play with Craig B.

sorry but who is Craig B?
I thought the line of authority went to Sean Aiken and then Caroline McGarvey (and can never go to Michael Block because he is on the Board of the for profit company), while his wife Olga stayed on the non profit side. Pretty cosy, but still.

Craig Barrett, former Intel CEO, picked up BASIS (and privatization of public schools in general) as a pet project a while back. But make no mistake, BASIS is and always has been Olga Block. Michael (economics professor) is a nice guy but never wore the pants in that relationship and certainly not when it comes to BASIS. Carolyn is Olga's right hand man - no background in education but a powerful (although quite aggressive) personality and fiercely loyal. Sean, like all the other HOS's, was picked out of the teaching ranks (to detriment of teaching ranks) as a nice guy, capable, ambitious but willing to tow the party line and desirous of more than the minimum wage teacher salary. He has absolutely no power to innovate, only to implement the system. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing it. As far as I can see, at BASIS, from admin to teachers to parents, you either believe in Olga's system, or you don't.

Well if you were at the meeting at the end of the year where Sean Aiken said if there was one statement he could take back as HOS, it was stating in the first meeting that DC is just like Arizona. DC is different. We are their only inner city school, we are their only majority AA school, we are their only school that has 40% FARMS, and we are the only school where they have been told quite clearly by OCR and the Charter Board that they MUST deal with kids with IEPs or 504s appropriately or they will be fined constantly, requests to expand will be denied, and worst case scenario, their charter would be revoked. They got the message. And they have changed to meet the needs of the kids who can succeed at Basis despite their disabilities. If you look at the populations of the schools in AZ, you will quickly realize how different we are. There are NO kids with IEPs or 504s at the flagship schools in AZ. Those schools are full of affluent or middle class children that do not at all reflect the geographic area they are in (for example, one of those cities is 40% Latino, and they have about 15%). Sean Aiken spent a year here as HOS experiencing every single aspect of the DC difference, and he was HOS in Oro Valley before he came here, and he started out as a teacher at Basis. The last thing Olga wants is to fail here, so I believe that she and Caroline are listening to Sean about the "DC difference." Olga's way or the high way does not work here, and Sean Aiken knows it, and he has enough credibility with both these people so that they listen to him on critical issues.

To the person who posted the last two posts on this thread: please cease! I know you mean well, but it's repelling people from Basis. Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jesus you people are crazy.

+1. Another possible middle school crossed off. Will be looking at private schools or moving.

You must be joking. Since most Basis threads are either shut down by Boosters (see the one on why did you leave Basis), or are full of a few parents behaving badly - Boosters again no doubt (see the one on the Dean threatening to fail all the children over candy), or are beset by crazies, (this one is a good example, but again the milk of human kindness is sorely lacking), and I would warrant every thread is comprised of less than ten parents in a school that has maybe 500 children, anyone who makes decisions on what school to go to based on what they find in this forum is as nuts as the nut jobs and blind Boosters who seem to take over every thread. I am going to start one on why people like Basis, and we'll see what comes out there, ok?

But either you and the "sadly private" poster can have a slumber party, or you can do your due diligence and figure out whether Basis might work for your child(ren). We were about to move (we almost bought a house in Pyle/Whitman) and then we heard that Basis was coming to DC. We stayed, and have two children there now, and no regrets whatsoever. If you have a child who likes and is good at math and science, you would be doing that child a great disservice by not giving them the opportunity to try Basis in 5th grade. I can guarantee that they will learn more than they would in 5th grade at any other school in the DC metropolitan area, so those of you who have these type of children should seriously consider giving it a real try, threads on DCUM notwithstanding. TJ is so far off on the horizon if you have a 4th grader, and those who excel at Basis have a TJ experience but with a lot more individual attention and a lot less pressure.