The Del Ray
Education Committee will hold its annual State of the Schools meeting
on Monday, February 13. It will offer prospective and current Del Ray
parents to meet the local prinicipals and PTAs, and will feature
comments from Assistant Superintendant Cathy David.
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Monday, January 09, 2006
Mt. Vernon Open Enrollment Proposal
To Del Ray Education Committee members: attached is a copy of the Mount Vernon PTA's suggestions for how the city should handle open enrollment -- allowing any student from the city a chance to attend Mount Vernon.
> Hey all - here is the draft position on Open Enrollment at MVCS that
> PTA President Peter Heimberg put together. Get any questions, comments
> or suggestions to him:
> heimberg1@netzero.com
> He wants to get the formal statement to Supt. Perry by Dec. 7
> Spanish translation coming.
> Discussion of this issue can be found on the MVCS yahoo web site.
> To join:
> go to www.yahoo.com
> click on Groups
> Search for MVCS PTA
> Click Join This Group Now
> To view PTA Minutes (thanks to Secy Marianne Bailey). Click on FILES
> on the left side of the screen. Scroll down to the PTA Minutes folder.
> Open the folder. Click on the Nov. 9 meeting.
> *_
>
> PTA Position on Open Enrollment at Mt. Vernon Community School
>
> _*
>
> DRAFT2/ PCH 12/1/2005
>
> The Mount Vernon Community School PTA recognizes the benefits that open enrollment would bring to children within the school district at large and to MVCS itself and therefore supports the superintendent’s effort to implement it for the 2006-2007 academic year. The PTA also feels strongly, however, that certain guidelines, many of which are in alignment with the stated views of the superintendent’s office, should be adhered to during this process.
>
> First, families within the MVCS zone should always be guaranteed enrollment in the school. Families outside the zone would then participate in a lottery to fill the excess capacity of the school as determined by the Superintendent’s office and the MVCS principal. The fact that MVCS has almost 70% title-1 students and that more than half of the students are learning English as a second language should temper the estimates of available capacity since these demographic groups require more than the average amount of individualized teaching.
>
> Second, families within the zone should be given priority access to the dual language program when demand for the program exceeds its classroom capacity. This should be accomplished through a lottery open only to zone residents. Should there be additional capacity after zone resident requests have been met, a lottery should be used to place those students from outside the zone.
>
> Although unwritten, it has been the policy of MVCS to automatically accept siblings of dual language students into the dual language program. This enhances the dual language experience for the students as they are able to interact in the second language at home as well as in school. Some families came to MVCS with the understanding that this would be the case. Therefore, the "sibling rule" should be kept in place and, in fact, should become written policy at MVCS. The sibling rule should also apply to families outside the zone when one child has gotten into the program during a year when additional capacity was available.
>
> Eventually expanding the dual language program by adding a classroom to accommodate more students should be done only in concert with expanding the traditional program. Maintaining MVCS as a school which truly services the needs of the /community/ is a high priority and we recognize that a dual-language program is not for everybody.
>
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The
Del Ray Education Committee offers information about the fine public schools that serve Del Ray. For more information, or to join
the committee, please e-mail Brian Reid at breid@nasw.org.
"Our
Schools," frequently asked questions about Del Ray Schools
(PDF)
"Our Schools," in Spanish (coming soon)
"Why Go Public": The top reasons to consider Alexandria public schools
(coming soon)
The
public schools that serve our neighborhood:
* Mount Vernon Community School
*
Jefferson-Houston Elementary
* Cora Kelly
Elementary
* Lyles-Crouch
Elementary
* Minnie Howard
9th Grade Center
* George
Washington Middle School
* T. C. Williams
High School
Details
on attendance areas |