Anonymous wrote:+1. It'd help all of us in the charter shuffle.

So if an anon poster on DCUM said their kid had learning gaps, you would apply it to your kid's potential and not apply or get off WL? Just curious to know why people want to know the names. Isn't the experience personalized?

+1. It'd help all of us in the charter shuffle.

Anonymous wrote:New charter schools have very little stability and that is unsettling to a lot of parents. If they have other options, they will take them. FWIW, we left a new charter that I thought was doing a good job. It was only after we left that I discovered the learning gaps.

Please, can you tell us which Charter?

New charter schools have very little stability and that is unsettling to a lot of parents. If they have other options, they will take them. FWIW, we left a new charter that I thought was doing a good job. It was only after we left that I discovered the learning gaps.

Anonymous wrote:It may sound silly but to me the actual facilities of a building are important. I think it is good for little kids to have a nice playground, field, actual real library and separate rooms to travel to for art, music, gym etc... If it is a rainy day it is hard to spend all day in the classroom.

They don't for what is worth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Getting the same thing at Inspired Teachings, it's like "oh the school is fantastic" but then, all of these parents are crossing their fingers in the lottery... Huh?

I can think of a few reasons why someone might be generally happy but still apply for other schools in the lottery:

1) location
2) the immersion thing
3) a school with a longer track record & more students for higher grades (middle & high school)

We are an IT family that is staying. With IT i think there are families who found the original location convenient and tried the new location and its just not working for them. We are the opposite - we really like the new location - and know a number of families who will happily take their places. But in any event you can be happy (even enthusiatic) about a program and just not be able to make the location work for you.

It may sound silly but to me the actual facilities of a building are important. I think it is good for little kids to have a nice playground, field, actual real library and separate rooms to travel to for art, music, gym etc... If it is a rainy day it is hard to spend all day in the classroom.

Perhaps the vague responses are the answer. It seems like people are looking for some sort of smoking gun and maybe there just isn't one.

Some families might think there is a better fit out there and are trying their luck with the lottery again. But nobody is unhappy enough to bad-mouth the school.

That in and of itself says a lot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of CM families playing the lottery on the dl. I don't get it, unless your child is really unhappy. You signed up for a new school, warts and all. Deal with it!

I'm not a CM parent, but it's not as simple as you only leave if your child is unhappy. Your child can be enjoying school a ton but as a parent you see or experience things that make you worrieded about the quality/breadth/depth of education, or about the supervision, etc.

Let me be clear that I have NOT heard any of those complaints about CM specifically, just pointing out that my child's happiness level is just one of several key factors that keeps me at or drives me away from a school.

This. If my child were unhappy, yes I would definitely leave. However, just because a child is happy, in and of itself is not sufficient to necessarily stay (at any school). I can see my child happy in many different environments, and that's great, but I do have other considerations. Some of them may be as mundane as commute, but I could want to get the child into a different academic program (like a language option or expeditionary learning) or want to get more than one child into a school, or prefer different aftercare, or worry over the academic path to MS, or stay with a cohort of friends, etc.

Here on DCUM we tend to all converge on a collection of most popular schools, but we all have our different personal rankings of those schools, and our different reasons for such.

Anonymous wrote:Any criticism of outdoor space should be off set by the phenomenal teacher:student ration. 2:15!!!

And to PP who asked about "their staffing model": In doing your homework, you have to look at the staffing model of an entire school. Our kids' elementary school for example, has definitely more kids in a classroom with a teacher and an aid (more like 22 for K and up). But those kids spend almost half their time with other teachers and staff, including the music teacher, the PE teacher, the art teacher, the instructional coach, the librarian, the science teacher, the counselor, and some intervention/gifted pull-outs etc. A 15:2 ratio can be a great thing but it can also make a teacher's life virtually impossible for planning, preparation, and grading purposes if "the staffing model" foresees that these 15 kids are in one and the same classroom at all times. A good indicator to get at that might be to add up all the teachers and other teaching personnel and divide that by the number of students in the building.

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of CM families playing the lottery on the dl. I don't get it, unless your child is really unhappy. You signed up for a new school, warts and all. Deal with it!

I'm not a CM parent, but it's not as simple as you only leave if your child is unhappy. Your child can be enjoying school a ton but as a parent you see or experience things that make you worrieded about the quality/breadth/depth of education, or about the supervision, etc.

Let me be clear that I have NOT heard any of those complaints about CM specifically, just pointing out that my child's happiness level is just one of several key factors that keeps me at or drives me away from a school.

There are a lot of CM families playing the lottery on the dl. I don't get it, unless your child is really unhappy. You signed up for a new school, warts and all. Deal with it!

Stick w the school!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Getting the same thing at Inspired Teachings, it's like "oh the school is fantastic" but then, all of these parents are crossing their fingers in the lottery... Huh?

I can think of a few reasons why someone might be generally happy but still apply for other schools in the lottery:

1) location
2) the immersion thing
3) a school with a longer track record & more students for higher grades (middle & high school)

Don't forget 4) permanent facility. It matters to a lot of parents - not simply in calculating the commute or carpools, but also the general sense of stability. IT is a good school with a lot of promise. People can genuinely believe that and support the school and still have reasons for looking at other options without it being a referendum on IT.

(I'm not an IT parent btw, I think I'm just stating the obvious.)

I meant the above comment for both CM & IT.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Getting the same thing at Inspired Teachings, it's like "oh the school is fantastic" but then, all of these parents are crossing their fingers in the lottery... Huh?

I can think of a few reasons why someone might be generally happy but still apply for other schools in the lottery:

1) location
2) the immersion thing
3) a school with a longer track record & more students for higher grades (middle & high school)

Don't forget 4) permanent facility. It matters to a lot of parents - not simply in calculating the commute or carpools, but also the general sense of stability. IT is a good school with a lot of promise. People can genuinely believe that and support the school and still have reasons for looking at other options without it being a referendum on IT.

(I'm not an IT parent btw, I think I'm just stating the obvious.)