In a unanimous vote Wednesday, the BPS school committee passed Supt. Johnson's proposal to "bring" a k-8 school to Roslindale. She is doing this by making the Irving a feeder school for Roslindale elementary schools. Essentially, the vote "will give fifth graders who attend the Bates, Conley, Haley, Mozart, Philbrick, and Sumner elementary schools priority admission to the Washington Irving Middle School."
I have mixed feelings about making the Irving a feeder school for students from Roslindale elementary schools.
While I am well aware of the benefits and drawbacks, I still haven't come to my own conclusion about the situation.
Well, the School Committee will immerse me and my fellow teachers in a bit of "reality teaching." The faculty and staff of the Irving will open its doors next school year first to 5th graders attending Roslindale schools, then to siblings of those elementary school students (of middle school age I'm guessing), and third "would go to those students who don’t attend the six elementary schools, but live in walking distance of the Irving."
I am sad because many of my favorite students are not Roslindale residents, and this may seem like a trivial reason to dislike the change, it is, nonetheless, true for me.
Also, while Roslindale is an increasingly diverse neighborhood, it is far less diverse than the city of Boston, which is where all of my students come from now. I even have students traveling from East Boston---ah, perhaps no longer with the new proposal.
What I am hoping will come out of this is 2 things: increased enrollment and increased funding. Simply, our numbers are down, and perhaps those parents who were wary of the Irving's reputation will see this as a reason to send their kids to our school.
What I said above, about our numbers being down, is in fact a bit ironic. While the school numbers ARE down, my classroom sizes are UP. The fact of the matter is, when school numbers go down, Administration cuts positions. When positions are cut, classroom numbers go up because there is one less teacher for each subject area. Last year I had about 22-23 students in a class. This year I have 27-28 in each class. While 5 students may not sound like a lot, it is!
Just one year of this "experiment" may be too little to tell its repercussions. I only hope they are positive for all our students.
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Hey Emily,
ReplyDeleteA couple things, because I know some of the articles mis-interpreted how this is going to work.
First - the Irving is not a feeder school, the Irving is actually the school which the six K-5 elementary schools will feed *into*. :)
Second - The way children will be assigned to the Irving is "sibling preference" FIRST, then the Roslindale priority followed by non-feeder school walk-zone students and any other students who apply.
Third - the children who go to the Roslindale schools are NOT all residents of Roslindale - this is a misconception which we have been trying to fix since day one and was why we had some issues trying to get the proposal approved.
Assignment to the six K-5 Roslindale schools will remain the same as others in BPS - open to the entire West Zone, and in fact because a couple of these schools have very specialized programs for special needs kids we actually have children from the entire city coming to our schools - making us more open than other communities. So, when it comes to how BPS assigns the students to our K-5 schools - nothing at all has changed at the K-5 level.
Will more parents potentially chose to send their children to one of those schools because of this proposal? Maybe - but again, these are not Roslindale-only families, these will be families from all over the West Zone.
Part of the hope we had for this plan is to combat the way our Roslindale schools are losing students in 3-5th grade due to parents choosing charters, pilots and other K-8s. Roslindale K-5s are losing students 46% of 5th graders leave BPS entirely, whereas BPS as a whole is only losing 21%!!!!!!! (Math - I won't do it - you guys figure it out, lol!) That is a boatload of lost funding for all our schools....
Just to give you an idea of the popuation you may see in coming years - students in the K-5 schools, just like the Irving, come from all over the West Zone - largest percetage first (per BPS data I can email you): Roslindale, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, Mattapan, S & N Dorchester, East Boston and Allston/Brighton. We were actually quite surprised to find that by partnering with the six "feeders" we in fact will expand the walk-zone of the Irving in a way! Each K-5 school has its own unique walk-zone which will allow students from further than the 1.5 mile radius of the Irving to attend the school.
I hope that at least helps to explain that in fact, the Roslindale K-8 pathway is NOT for Roslindale residents - it is for any and every child who attends one of the six K-5 schools IN Roslindale - regardless of where the student actually resides!
I am hoping to have the data online soon as I am in process of finalizing the IAG website - as soon as I do I will be happy to let you know!
O - and funding, the IAG is working on that!!!! :)
Karen Kast-McBride
PROUD IRVING & MOZART PARENT :)