- D.C. charter schools band together to form new high school with focus on foreign language [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, and Mundo Verde PCS mentioned]
- D.C. charter schools eye city's first pre-K-12 language immersion [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, and Mundo Verde PCS mentioned]
- Southeast Residents Rally to Keep Schools Open
- Judge dismisses D.C. special education busing case
D.C. charter schools band together to form new high school with focus on foreign language [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, and Mundo Verde PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
December 19, 2012
The D.C. Public Charter School Board offered support this week for a plan to open a new middle/high school that would offer International Baccalaureate programs and intensive foreign-language instruction.
The District of Columbia International School, or DCI, will open in a temporary location in 2014-15 before moving to a permanent location the following year at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center site in Ward 4, according to a proposal submitted to the charter school board this fall.
DCI is a collaborative effort by four charter schools that currently offer foreign-language immersion programs for younger students: Washington Yu Ying (Mandarin Chinese), Elsie Whitlow Stokes (French and Spanish), Mundo Verde (Spanish) and Latin American Bilingual Montessori (Spanish).
Leaders and parents at those schools decided to band together to give their students a way to continue the immersive foreign-language instruction that they’ve been receiving in elementary school.
“There was no other way for them to do that in the whole city, essentially,” said Mary Shaffler, who served as executive director of Washington Yu Ying until leaving to head up the effort to establish DCI.
The news comes as the city’s traditional public school system plans to close 20 schools, stoking concern among some activists and parents that the city needs a comprehensive plan for the future of both school sectors.
Cathy Reilly, executive director of the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators, pointed out that DCI will be in close proximity to two other high schools: Paul Public Charter School and Coolidge Senior High School.
“For the city to proceed to build three high schools within one mile of one another does not make sense to me,” she said in comments prepared for a Dec. 10 public hearing on the DCI proposal.
Shaffler said she understands the concern and agrees that there is a need for more coordinated planning. But students at Yu Ying and the other four schools can’t wait for a citywide discussion and planning process to play out, she said — they need a way to continue their language education now.
Students will experience DCI as if it is one school, but will technically stay enrolled in one of the four member charters.
At full capacity, the school is expected to enroll 1,000 to 1,400 students in grades 6 through 12. Students enrolled in member elementary charters will be entitled to continue on into DCI, but there will also be room for the school to accept about 20 new students a year through grade 9.
Students will have the option of working toward the college-prep International Baccalaureate Diploma or the IB “career-related certificate,” which combines liberal arts courses with technical and vocational classes.
The city’s charter school board approved Washington Yu Ying’s request to amend its charter Monday, expanding its enrollment and the grade levels it is allowed to serve.
The charter board will have to approve similar amendments to the other schools’ charters before the project is finalized. That's unlikely to be a hindrance, given board members’ enthusiasm for the school.
“At least for me, this is a terribly exciting development,” said board member Darren Woodruff.
D.C. charter schools eye city's first pre-K-12 language immersion [Washington Yu Ying, LAMB, Elsie Whitlow Stokes, and Mundo Verde PCS mentioned]
The Washington Examiner
By Lisa Gartner
December 19, 2012
D.C. charter schools are set to offer students language immersion from prekindergarten through graduation for the first time, as four schools join forces to create an international secondary school.
Advocates of the District of Columbia International School say it would assuage the anxieties of parents who are interested in multilanguage charter schools for their children but wary of where their students will end up when they age out of charter elementary or middle schools with no guaranteed next step.
The sixth-through-12th-grade campus, to be housed in the former Delano Hall of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Ward 4, received initial approval from the charter school board when it approved an amendment to Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School.
Yu Ying, which teaches Mandarin Chinese to prekindergarten-through-sixth-grade students, has partnered with Latin American Montessori Bilingual (Spanish), Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom (French and Spanish) and Mundo Verde (Spanish). The remaining schools are expected to submit their charter amendments by February, paving the way for "DCI" to open in at least a temporary location to sixth- and seventh-grade classes by 2014. True to its global mission, the school would offer an International Baccalaureate program.
Each of the four schools would feed into DCI, with students guaranteed seats. Although each school says it would maintain its own identity and track its own graduates, the students would be DCI students and in many cases share classes and teachers. The school would be funded as one large school, advantageous because the city funds each campus based on its number of students.
"Our kids needed a path to continue their language learning," said Mary Shaffner, Yu Ying's director of special projects and the school's founding executive director. "You can't really provide a middle-school experience with 30 to 50 children. Plus, they've known each other for so long that by the time they get to middle school, they want to meet new people."
Shaffner and her counterparts at the three partner charters say they have received pressure from parents to create options for their students beyond the current grades offered. Yu Ying and Stokes offer classes through the sixth grade, while Mundo Verde is chartered through the eighth, and Latin American Montessori Bilingual runs through fifth.
"Our parents have been asking us for probably 12 years about the possibility of expanding to middle schools," said Linda Moore, executive director of Stokes, which, in its 15th year is the oldest school in the consortium. "The fact of the matter is, with the exception of one DC Public Schools' middle school, there are no options in D.C. for advanced second-language study."
Chuck Thies, the parent of a second-grader, said he and his wife felt like they were taking a risk when they moved their son out of DC Public Schools for Yu Ying. "We knew there would be a strong potential that we'd have to leave the city," Thies said. Now, for many parents, "there's a huge sigh of relief."
Southeast Residents Rally to Keep Schools Open
The Washington Informer
By Dorothy Rowley
December 19, 2012
A cadre of parents, teachers and community leaders recently gathered on the grounds of a Southeast elementary school to protest a controversial proposal by D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson to shutter several neighborhood schools.
During a Dec. 13 rally at Malcolm X Elementary School in Anacostia, the fired-up group of more than 100 Ward 8 residents who vehemently oppose the 20 school closings – the majority of which are located in their neighborhoods – loudly proclaimed along with newly-elected D.C. Ward 8 School Board representative Trayon White, that "enough is enough."
Cynthia McFarland, 48, said that Henderson has lost touch with the needs of her community. "My grandchildren live in Ward 8," the Alabama Avenue resident said. "They go to school at Hart [Middle] and Malcolm X. I was raised in the public school system and walked to school. So did my children. Ms. Henderson needs to stop playing games and do what's not only right but necessary."
McFarland also stressed that given the large number of children who live in Ward 8, it's essential that all of the area's neighborhood school doors remain open.
According to a statement issued prior to the rally by organizers, many of those in opposition represent Ferebee Hope and M.C. Terrell/McGogney Elementary and Johnson Middle schools. "Parental, school and student choice are no longer a part of the equation in accordance with decisions regarding neighborhood school closings," a portion of the statement read.
Four years ago, at the behest of Henderson's predecessor, two dozen schools were closed throughout the District in an attempt at school reform. But Henderson, 42, admitted recently that those closings only proved costly and ineffective: while student test scores remained stagnant, DCPS enrollment figures dipped from 47,000 students to less than 45,000, and paved the way for public charter schools to gain leverage as the preferred education model.
White, who helped organize the Malcolm X rally, said it doesn't make sense to close any of the community's schools.
"We don't need less educational resources, but more educational resources," the outspoken 28-year-old protégé of Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry, said. "A lot of factors have to weigh in on the closings, and so far, the chancellor hasn't [stepped up to the plate] with an adequate explanation. Dropout and truancy rates are already high in the area, and if she closes our schools, those rates will only increase."
White added that a major concern of parents has been plans to merge low-performing DCPS buildings with high-performing charter schools.
White said that in talks with Barry, he expressed that there's no guarantee DCPS will be more successful in its attempt at school reform.
"History has proven, especially since 2008, that if we continue to go down this road, we will be right back here again discussing another round of school closures," White said.
Henderson's plan – currently being studied by members of her administration – calls largely for the closings of under-enrolled and under-performing schools.
After her staff makes adjustments to the proposal, Henderson will confer with Mayor Vincent Gray, 70, and together in January, they will announce their final decision about which of the 20 schools will be closed.
Kim Harrison, 49, who works with Concerned Parents for Action Coalition, a citywide organization that advocates on behalf of public schools, drummed up support for the for the rally.
She said word of the closings have been exacerbated in the aftermath of a series of public meetings where Henderson shared reasons behind her proposal.
"We can't be quiet, as this is a bigger issue than we think," said Harrison, who lives in Southeast. "It's just awful, all this talk about closing our schools. Our children need a school that's in walkable distance – and they clearly need to be D.C. schools, and not charter schools," she said.
"In order for reforms to work, they're supposed to engage community stakeholders, parents, teachers and students, and Henderson's proposal has failed to include [that kind of input]."
Judge dismisses D.C. special education busing case
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
December 19, 2012
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a 17-year lawsuit over the transportation of D.C. special education students, giving the city final approval to control its own school buses and marking a milestone for the D.C. government and Mayor Vincent C. Gray.
U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman called it a “historic” day in the class-action suit, which is known as Petties v. District of Columbia. Friedman, who has served as presiding judge in the case since it was filed in 1995, signed an order dismissing the case after a final hearing Wednesday morning.
“We’ve come a really long way,” he said, praising the efforts of State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley Jones, Chancellor Kaya Henderson, and a host of lawyers and court-appointed special masters who together filed more than 2,000 pleadings in the case.
Gray (D) called the decision “a wonderful affirmation of the progress that we’ve made in getting children with disabilities to school in a responsible and predictable way.”
The District has long struggled to provide basic social services without court supervision. But in the past 18 months, the city has made notable progress in its efforts to get out from under consent-decree requirements — not just in the Petties case, but also in a handful of other class-action suits.
In July 2011, the District won release from a portion of another long-running special education suit after eliminating a huge backlog of due-process hearings. In February, the District settled a nearly four-decade-long suit over its failure to provide adequate mental-health care.
The city is still facing consent decrees in cases that involve the juvenile-justice system, care for people with developmental disabilities and the child-welfare agency.
“We’re making progress,” Gray said of those cases in an interview.
Wednesday’s hearing offered an opportunity for anyone, particularly parents of students with disabilities, to speak out against settling the Petties case. No one opposed the settlement in written or verbal comments to the court.
The original Petties plaintiffs were parents of students with disabilities who had been placed in private schools because of the city’s inability to provide appropriate special-education services in public schools.
They complained that the city’s tuition payments to private schools were chronically late and inaccurate, endangering students’ ability to stay in those schools.
Shortly thereafter, serious concerns emerged about the District’s ability to get students to school safely, reliably and on time. There were not enough bus drivers and attendants, nor enough buses. Students were arriving late to school more than two-thirds of the time.
Since then, with the help of court-appointed special master Elise Baach, the city published payment and rate-setting rules and established a process to resolve payment disputes.
Now, payments are being made on time, Steven Ney, a University Legal Services attorney for the plaintiffs, said in court Wednesday.
Fixing the transportation problems was more difficult, said District lawyer Ellen Efros.
The full article can be found at the link above.