Below is a letter written concerning the immersion programs that have been so successful in the county. If students in Montgomery County are really being prepared for a global economy, then support for foreign language education should be at the top of the list.
Immersion Advocacy Document FINAL 2292012
Sadly, many parents decide to give up on their neighborhood public elementary schools and instead look for ANY other school that has a language immersion or other focus, or seek private schools. This splinters communities and weakens public schools. If you have concerns about your home school, roll up your sleeves and work to make it a better one!
ReplyDeleteRoll up your sleeves? Right! Then hopefully at some point, if I work hard enough I'll fix my kid's underachieving school. When should I go to work to make money to pay all the taxes to fund these schools? Of course I will give my own child every advantage. I applied to every lottery program and I am so happy that I got into one. I don't want my child at our neighborhood school.
DeleteRe: 9/2/14 9:94 PM Nasty Comment. Sorry, your comment doesn't belong here and won't be seen.
DeleteRoll up your sleeves? How?
ReplyDeletePlease give a concrete example of how parents in MCPS can change their neighborhood school, keeping in mind that principals have been given the "all clear" to exclude any parents they don't want to deal with from the School Improvement Committee. Board members Patricia O'Neill and Christopher Barclay have made it very clear that pain in the a** parents can be excluded.
In some schools parents aren't even allowed to step foot in the building without permission.
There is no mechanism in MCPS that gives parents any control over their local school, but if you have examples of what you think a parent can change in their local school, please post.
Janis, My comment was referring to my experience of some neighbors who--based on their perceived fear of having their children attend the neighborhood Title I elementary school--sought other options, such as schools with language immersion programs or the one county-wide G/T elementary school, INSTEAD of exploring what their home school offered. This flight to other schools makes it harder for a diverse neighborhood school to battle its perceived reputation as a less-desirable school. Making a school better takes a lot of work from the entire school community, which is what I meant by "rolling up your sleeves." There's power when parents come together to make their schools better, vs. simply finding other options within the public school district or heading to private schools. If a school has an administrative "PIA Parent" attitude, then parents also must unite to change that, including making sure they're represented on the School Improvement Team!
ReplyDeleteAgain, what is your concrete solution? Parents should unite together? How? PTAs no longer permit parents to speak to each other. While the Internet offers many options for communications, PTA e-mail lists have been shut down so that only the PTA officers speak to parents.
DeleteParent to parent communication that used to exist in MCPS has been silenced. PTAs are "announcement only" communications.
A number of PTAs are run by MCPS employees. Compared to other public school jurisdictions MCPS parents are inactive and silent.
Again, what is your concrete solution? Montgomery County citizens continue to elect and re-elect Board of Education members that support the exclusion of parents from their neighborhood school.
Why wouldn't parents look to other jurisdictions?
Because you take away from the kids that belong to those jurisdictions. Big time. And it weakens the schools with the attitude of those that believe they are better because they got a lottery chance. And come with all your kids and continue taking away from kids in THEIR jurisdictions.
DeleteNews Flash: MCPS is a county school system. This is not New Jersey with small town systems. The jurisdiction is the County and there are no smaller jurisdictions. Schools don't belong to any specific boundary except the county. Boundary lines for attendance can be changed.
DeleteThere are multiple open slots for the 4th and 5th graders in the Spanish immersion program at Burnt Mills ES (BMES), as of today (April 2013), and it is full and perfect up to the 3rd grade. BMES immersion students graduate into SSI middle school's immersion program. BMES is a Title 1 school now and especially welcomes students from low income families. Students who are not lucky enough to win lotteries for the other two Spanish immersion programs should really seek out BMES for a great education, and to save this program at the 4th and 5th grade level. -A BMES parent
ReplyDeleteIf a student already has to be fluent in the target language to enroll in a language immersion program past 1st grade, this is going to be very difficult to accomplish.
DeleteI am glad that there is a group of parents alerting Dr. Starr to some issues with the language immersion program. We're fortunate in our situation that our neighborhood school *is* a magnet school for language immersion; I have one child in the immersion program and one in a regular English-speaking class. I've always felt supported on both "sides" of the school, but the staffing issue is a problem there as well: because staffing is based on total numbers, the English classes are at fairly good sizes (but could be smaller and MUCH more beneficial in some cases - high ESOL and FARMS population), while the kindergarten immersion classes are at TWENTY-SEVEN. Given the new (and developmentally-inappropriate) academic expectations for kindergarten students overall in Curriculum 2.0 aka CCSS, I do worry that the program will end up being cut as teachers struggle to maintain order, let alone teach students to write topic sentences AND learn the basics of a new language from scratch; the immersion classes ideally shouldn't be larger than, say, 22 IMO, especially since it is VERY difficult for teachers of such large classes to keep students on grade level in two languages (remember, the MSA's are ONLY given in English), and some parents pull their children after 2-3 years because they've fallen behind in English reading/writing (and possibly in some cases math as well, although I haven't heard of any specific occurrences of that happening at our school - just reading).
Has there been any update on this effort? What is the best way to help with this initiative.
ReplyDeleteI am the mother of a one year oland we recently moved to the Forest Glen neighborhood. We would love to see a Spanish Immersion program at our local school Flora M. Singer.