Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

My friend's kid is in Gunston and reading a novel for English right now . . . She is in 6th

Actually I want to add my kid is currently reading a novel in 5th. I don't know where this "APS doesn't read novels BS" comes from.

Wait until you get to high school. Then you'll get it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

My friend's kid is in Gunston and reading a novel for English right now . . . She is in 6th

My kids each read multiple novels (in Spanish and in English) during their time at Gunston. They also got homework and they also got grades.

I think PP is referring to standards-based grading, which doesn't mean no grades at all.

We sent our second (boy) to private for middle school--which was a financial hardship for us--after the experience of our first. We found that Gunston did not provide enough support to kids who struggled with the change to having 6-7 different teachers, multiple assignments to juggle, longer-term assignments, etc. They had teams of teachers, etc who coordinated some but we were unable to get any student-level support for our kid without an IEP. We knew our second DS, who was even more scatter-brained than the first, was going to get there, get immediately overwhelmed, decide he "couldn't do school" or "hated school," and we would never get him back on track. We sent him to a private with very small classes that focused on developing academic skills (not just content) and when he went back to Gunston for 8th he did...OK....but it was the year of virtual learning so also hard to say.

Middle school is hard, its hard for boys, big schools are hard, multiple classes/teachers are hard.....there are lots of reasons your kid can slip. What we could have done, instead of full private, was enroll in an after-school program or get a tutor. The downside is, there are hardly any offerings like that in south Arlington--you have to schlep to north Arlington or McLean.

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

Students do get homework. And they do read novels.

Stop spreading lies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

My friend's kid is in Gunston and reading a novel for English right now . . . She is in 6th

Actually I want to add my kid is currently reading a novel in 5th. I don't know where this "APS doesn't read novels BS" comes from.

They did recently adopt a new, more rigorous curriculum, I think, so maybe it's that? But I think a lot depended (and maybe still depends) on what the teacher wanted to teach.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

My friend's kid is in Gunston and reading a novel for English right now . . . She is in 6th

Actually I want to add my kid is currently reading a novel in 5th. I don't know where this "APS doesn't read novels BS" comes from.

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

My friend's kid is in Gunston and reading a novel for English right now . . . She is in 6th

Anonymous wrote:Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

Um, that's district-wide. Not unique to Gunston.

Students do not get homework or read novels or get grades due to equity. The principal is letting the school fail and Duran is cheering her on

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. What are the plans to reduce overcrowding at Gunston? Will some of those kids be moved to another school?

They opened up transfers last year and I assume they’ll do the same this year. I have a 5th grader set for Gunston next year so I’ll be watching for middle school information night

Anonymous wrote:I hate to say it, because with live walking distance, but everyone we know who has or has recently had a kid at Gunston is very unhappy, unless they were in Montessori or Immersion. This is especially true for parents of boys. There seem to be a fair number of rough boys in the school, and they drag better-behaved kids down with them. There is also no tracking except in math, and in, say, your English class it's not unusual to have kids ranging from a 3rd grade reading level to a college reading level. How do you deal with that as a teacher? It's tough. The new policies about not giving grades and not penalizing for late homework etc seem to have made things much worse. The principal is very nice, but the school could use new leadership... The people we know with boys in 5th grade are panicking over whether they should try their luck, move to private (if they can afford it), pray for HB, hope their are openings in other Arlington middle schools and drive their kids there, or move out of the zone... We know people who have done all of the above. We have a boy who is getting toward his middle school years, and we aren't even seriously considering Gunston.

NP. I also know several families with boys who transferred them out of Gunston for the same reasons (rough boys, bad behavior, felt like their kids were being dragged down).

^ Oh man, I just cannot use my words today.

I mean the Arlington board hasn't made overcrowding a priority across all APS schools, not just Gunston. They are busy with missing middle housing and such.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. What are the plans to reduce overcrowding at Gunston? Will some of those kids be moved to another school?

I think others are more up on this than I am, but I personally don't have hope that Gunston will not have issues with overcrowding anytime soon. Arlington county is not making this a priority, and the school board I think is doing what it can but they get limited funds and support from the county. Here is all I know about plans, but it is from last year.

https://www.arlnow.com/2021/12/01/aps-targets-two-overcrowded-schools-in-latest-boundary-change-proposal/

When I say "this" I mean school overcrowding.

Also I'm the PP who is sending my son to Gunston. Obviously overcrowding is a huge downside, but not enough to make me worry about sending DS.

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. What are the plans to reduce overcrowding at Gunston? Will some of those kids be moved to another school?

I think others are more up on this than I am, but I personally don't have hope that Gunston will not have issues with overcrowding anytime soon. Arlington county is not making this a priority, and the school board I think is doing what it can but they get limited funds and support from the county. Here is all I know about plans, but it is from last year.

https://www.arlnow.com/2021/12/01/aps-targets-two-overcrowded-schools-in-latest-boundary-change-proposal/