Last Saturday was a beautiful autumnal day to celebrate our Fall Festival with families and faculty members. From the squeals of delight, smiling faces, extended conversations and the amount of food consumed, I think it is safe to say that a great time was had by those who attended. Thank you to the parents who popped popcorn, assisted with grilling, baked pastries or supervised different activities and sporting events. This was our second year of offering flu shots and our first time conducting onsite voter registration. From the silly to the serious, we could not have done this without the leadership of the Parent-Faculty Association and a team of passionate parent volunteers.
Whether they attend PFA meetings, chaperone field trips, mentor students or provide access to internships and community service opportunities or bakes their favorite dish for a Parent-Teacher Conference Day, Washington Latin is graced with highly involved parents. Among the efforts to which many contribute time and energy is our annual Latin Pride campaign which also kicked off this past Saturday. This fundraiser, on which the school depends, to fund the PFA and close the gap in general operating expenses was founded by volunteers and continues to be powered by volunteers.
When I speak to Washington Latin parents, I am struck by two things: their gratitude for the hard work of the teachers and their interest in making this school the best it can be for all children, not just their own. We know that as a public charter school, it is more challenging to organize parents because we pull from all eight wards of the city, so it is not always easy to get to campus. This makes it even more challenging for parents who put the extra time in to attend meetings, to sew costumes for our theater productions, or offer up their homes for performances by our choir and jazz band.
When a parent volunteer emails or calls you in the next few days, we urge you to share what makes you proud of Washington Latin. And thank you for your ongoing contributions – as a volunteer and a financial supporter – to our success.
While the school year is now a month into its full swing, for seniors one of the official markings of the beginning of the year was the class trip to 4H Camp. This annual trip allows students to bond as a grade, think about the impact they would like to have in their final months of high school and work collaboratively with those in their advisories on activities such as “Capture the Flag,” making campfires, and other team building activities. This weekend experience also enables students to enjoy casual time with teachers and administrators, getting to know them and one another outside of the confines of the classroom.
The 4H Trip sets the tone for the senior year at Washington Latin, one that tends to be marked by intense emotional connection, friendship, collegiality, and cooperation. Many of our seniors have worked together at our school for eight years, growing from new students to the “seasoned leaders.” As they take on this year’s challenges, including rigorous honors and AP classes and applying to colleges, we hope they will learn to rely on each other and the friendships they have built over their time here.
And it seems that they have. As students shared special moments with each other, as a group, last weekend, one remarked: “We’re really lucky to go to a school like Latin, and I don’t think we always acknowledge that.” Another said, “Our school has a soul, and it’s really beautiful.” Teachers, administrators and students agreed that the experience was moving and affirming.
The year for the seniors culminates in another overnight trip. In June, they travel to Camp Letts, on the Rhode River, south of Annapolis. Once again, students will have the chance to work together in the outdoors, participating in games and boating and other fun activities. This event includes both graduating seniors and juniors. Besides offering opportunities for reflection, it is on this trip that the outgoing students “pass the torch” to the next generation of Latin leaders. We know that this bonding time for students helps them gain a better perspective on what it means to be part of our community. We hope that relationships nurtured, memories formed and lessons learned will last a lifetime.
In D.C., charters that are standalone schools or are a part of local networks are considered local education agencies (LEAs). Federal law defines an LEA as “a public board of education or other public authority legally constituted within a State.” In other words, an LEA is a school district, a non-profit authorized to operate a school or a group of schools. Last school year, there were 67 LEAs in D.C. The largest of these is DCPS, the traditional public school district. One of the fundamental differences between charter LEAs and DCPS is one of governance.
An independent board governs each charter school in the city. These volunteers, whether they are called trustees, directors, governors or managers, provide the strategic vision for their respective schools, hire leaders (usually just the senior school administrator, such as the Head of School or Executive Director), hold those leaders accountable for academic success, and provide financial oversight.
D.C. charter schools are required to have an odd number of board members not to exceed 15. The majority must be city residents. Moreover, at least two must be parents of currently enrolled students. At present, we have 13 people who serve on our board. Two of them are parents. Nine of them live in the city. Of the four who currently live in Maryland or Virginia, two of them grew up in D.C.
The highest performing schools tend to have engaged, trained, and informed board members. We have such volunteers at Washington Latin. The board president, A.E. Lovett, was one of the school’s founding parents. Her husband was on the founding board. Her younger child graduated from Latin this past spring. The vice-president is Chris Wilkinson who mentored one of our upper school students before beginning his first term of service. Other board members include Hunter Rawlings, the former president of Cornell University and a one-time president of the Association of American Universities, Christina Culver, a former Education Department official and Alex Economou, a teacher at an Arlington high school who was a student at National Cathedral School when Martha Cutts (my predecessor) worked there as Assistant Head and Director of the Upper School. The two current parents are Rusty Greiff, who has a son in the tenth grade and Laurie Ballenger, who has three children in the upper school. Her eldest child graduated this past spring.
The board has regular meetings 8-10 times per year. In the intervening weeks, committees take on most of the work. There will be a few occasions, over the course of the year, for parents to meet and get to know the people who govern our school. I hope that you will avail yourself of at least one of these opportunities.
When I was growing up, the assignment I dreaded more than any was the “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay that I was asked to write almost every year from the elementary grades through high school. I filled my summers with lots of reading and writing, plenty of time spent outdoors, the occasional day camp, and trips, usually to the beach or to the countryside. Still, I imagined that my classmates were enjoying far more exciting vacations and that my experiences “paled in comparison.”
What is evident to me is that many Washington Latin students have summertime options that were not available to me. Besides the local museums, art galleries, universities and recreational centers that offer programs, often at reasonable cost, Latin students are eligible to receive scholarships for international travel or to participate in cultural exchanges or policy forums. For situations in which external scholarships are limited or do not exist, we have also established the Equal Access fund to help us make international travel and summer enrichment possible for more students. You can learn more about that fund here.
At the 9th grade new student orientation a few days before the start of the school year, a few of our upper schoolers recounted their summer experiences. I was spellbound as I listened to students discuss what they had learned and how they had grown. The research is clear: summer programs which include academic and social components lead to positive outcomes for students. Benefits include higher school-year attendance and achievement, increased motivation to learn, increased feelings of belonging, and reduced participation in risky behavior. Just spend a minute or two talking with some of our students about how they spent their summer and you will walk away convinced that some of these experiences were transformative.
Junior Owen Fox-Whelpton studied Arabic in Morocco at the Qalam Wa Lawh Center. Junior Alicia Trejo did various projects as a part of the Learn Serve program in Paraguay. Senior Chandler Broussard was able to go to China and senior Dyllan Cole visited Jordan as a part of the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI–Y). Sophomore Lydia Moore volunteered with orphans in Tanzania. Ninth grader Nia Matthews-Cox participated in a peace camp in Indonesia. Junior Oliver Spiva studied neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. Senior Maya Woods-Arthur spent several weeks at the St. Albans School of Public Service, where she met with house representatives and a Supreme Court justice. Several students participated in the Concordia Summer Language Camp in Minnesota. Two of our sophomores studied Arabic at the Middlebury Monterey Language Academy in Vermont. Three seniors went to Rome as a part of the Paideia Institute’s “Living Latin in Rome” program. One junior did a similar program in Greece. And this only accounts for a fraction of the summer adventures enjoyed by many of our students.
To learn more about international travel opportunities for our students (and especially how they can be affordable for your family), please visit the Study Abroad Forum at the school on Tuesday, September 25th at 6:30 p.m.
One longstanding element of our school’s philosophy is the importance of the classroom advisory. Our students attend advisory each day with a teacher and the advisories have lunch together at least once a week. This creates an indelible support system for students to get acclimated to a new school year, learn school policies and rules, and seek support from peers and from a caring adult who has a holistic view of that student’s school experience.
The advisory is also a special place for learning in a small, secure tight-knit group, where students will discuss moral issues and learn social skills. Advisories may watch educational movies, participate in special field trips, or collaborate on community service projects. Some advisories organize talent shows, work on group art projects, or meet at the school or offsite for special movie nights. Most Fridays feature advisory potlucks, in which students and teachers bring in items to share. This adds a homey celebratory tone to the last day of the week.
Students have been specially paired with advisors who will focus on their students’ needs. The advisor is the first point of contact if you have questions about your child’s academic success, social learning, and other skills, and it is worthwhile to take the time to get to know the advisor through emails, phone, calls, or parent conferences. An advisor can give you a “panoramic view” of a student’s day, including how they are faring in each of their classes and areas in which they may to need to grow.
We began the 2018-2019 school year with advisor-parent conferences – the first time we have done this. If you were unable to attend and have yet to meet your child’s advisor, we encourage you to arrange for a meeting at the school or a phone call sometime before the end of the month. Back to School Night will likely not afford you the opportunity for this kind of one-on-one interaction. And, as always, if you have feedback on how we can improve our advisory program (as with anything else at the school), please do not hesitate to reach out to me, Dr. Smith, Mr. Kelly, Ms. Chall, Ms. Brady or Ms. Roberts.
Working together as advisors, teachers, administrators, and parents, we hope to give each of our students what they need to leave our school with the knowledge, skills, dispositions, attitudes and habits of mind necessary to pursue their fuller humanity
Each spring, middle school students and those in 10th grade take PARCC tests in English and math, assessments aligned to national curriculum standards designed to measure whether students are on track to be successful in college and careers. These exams go beyond the multiple-choice questions that were typical of previous standardized testing to get a deeper understanding of student learning. The questions require test takers to apply their knowledge and skills to address real-world problems and describe the reasoning.
The tests are scored on a scale of 1-5. Students who earn scores that place them in Levels 4 or 5 are considered proficient. The District of Columbia has seen continued, steady improvement on the PARCC assessments for the third year in a row – up 8.5 percentage points in ELA and 7.3 in math. A third met expectations in English Language Arts (ELA) and 29.4% met expectations in math, that percentage was 29.4%. In the city, more students tend to be proficient in the elementary grades. At Washington Latin, 66% of our middle school students were proficient in ELA and 49% were proficient in math. In our upper school, of the 72 students who were tested, 75% met expectations in ELA and 47% met expectations in math.
For the second year in a row, we had our highest ever upper school ELA AND math scores. We had our highest ever 8th grade ELA and math scores. More than 40% of our 8th graders earned 5’s on the ELA test. More than 33% of the 8th graders who took the Geometry test earned 5’s. We significantly outperformed city, sector and neighborhood averages for special education students. This was particularly striking in the upper school. Among DC public high school students with IEP’s, only 3.8% earned 4’s or 5’s in ELA. At Washington Latin, our upper school proficiency rate for special education students was 55% in ELA. We maintained our strong ELA performance in both MS and US in absolute terms and compared to other LEA’s and individual schools. Fewer than 3 in 10 DC public high school students were proficient in ELA. Our high school students out-performed their peers by more than two and a half times. Less than 15% of DC public high schools were proficient in math. In our upper school, our proficiency rate was more than 30 percentage points higher. A little less than 23% of African American students in DC public high schools were proficient in ELA. In our high school, 59% of our African American students met expectations. At every grade level, at least 72% of the students earned a 3 or more in math. This means that the majority of our students were at least approaching expectations. In 7th grade, 84% of the students earned a 3 or higher.
We still have work to do with certain groups. Some achievement gaps remained and, for some subgroups, at some grade levels, increased. Math, overall, but particularly in our early middle school grades, remains an area for more growth. To learn more about this data and how we are already working to address our concerns, you are welcome to attend one of our two “Chat and Chew” sessions with me in early October (either in the morning, at 8:00 a.m., on the 1st or in the evening, at 5:30 p.m. on the 4th). Individual student score reports are available now and we plan on distributing them during Back to School Nights.
