Farewell to NYOS
August 14, 2012
Last Friday Julia found out David and Jonathan had been accepted to Gateway Academy charter school up in Georgetown (Jonathan is still on the waiting list) so today she went to NYOS and withdrew David. That means that tomorrow, for the first time since the school opened (in 1998, if I remember correctly) we won’t have a child enrolled there.
As you can imagine, this feels like a big deal. We do think we’re doing the right thing for our children, though. NYOS stands for “Not Your Ordinary School”, but over the years it’s become more and more ordinary. Today, as far as I can see, the only thing that distinguishes NYOS from a public school is its smaller size and nearly year-round schedule. Gateway Academy has a reputation for being more rigorous academically, so we’re looking forward to seeing what it’s like.
What went wrong at NYOS? My impression is that as the original faculty moved on over the years their replacements (and the new teachers added as the school grew) never really caught the vision that was there at first. So they started falling back on what they’d done at other schools or learned during their teacher training.
I wish things had turned out differently at NYOS, but here we are.
August 14, 2012 at 10:13 pm
I think it is important to do what is best for our children, good for you being proactive!
August 17, 2012 at 2:30 pm
This is my 11th year at our charter school and if Seth stays there through 8th grade we’ll have had a child there for 19 years straight! Not sure if we’ll make it that for or not, but so far the school has gotten better and we’ve been really happy with it.