Feeling misled...

When we first arrived in Krakow in 2011, my husband and I needed to settle our kids in a school. We only had the options of ISK or BISC. I tried to research some reviews about these 2 schools, but to no avail.

The first time we visited ISK, we loved the open air and spaciousness of the school. We were greeted by the acting-Director and vice-Principle at the time, and they were very helpful, friendly, and assured us that the school was a very close-family unit, with small classes (maximum 16 children), and the children's education and well-being were their top priority! Both have since left the school.

Based on their sales pitch, my husband and I chose ISK for our children, and judging by the school's philosophy below, we had no reason to doubt.

"Instruction is geared to the individual needs of the student.

We set the highest standards for each of our students at his or her stage of development, and foster achievement through a rich variety of teaching styles and methods matched to his or her needs.

We also aim to identify the special talents of each of our students and to provide challenging educational programs to encourage the widest development of these talents.

To enhance this, we encourage continuous dialogue among students, teachers, administration and parents."

Up until the middle of 2012 school year, we were quite happy with the school because our children appeared happy. But when our son started complaining that the class work was boring and too easy, I decided to do my own assessment at home. I was surprise to find that he was highly advanced in Maths and above grade level for Language. We approached the school to see what they thought and was disappointed to hear that there were no adequate assessment tools to test if a student is advanced for their age. Instead, we were recommended to visit a psychologist in Warsaw. We were even more shocked to hear that his previous teacher reported to the Special Needs Coordinator that he was highly advanced, but nothing was done about it. And even worse, we were never informed!

Had one of the teachers followed up on his advanced development, his potential would not have been wasted for 1.5 years. And had I not assessed him at home myself, nothing would have been done to meet his needs at school.

This year, my daughter scored an average of 96% in three of her unit tests and she was surprised that she only received "Meeting Expectations" in her report card. When we asked how the grades were determined, we got some round-about answers that not only didn't make any sense, but contradictory. As part of the explanation we received, we learnt that the Head of Elementary reviews the report cards but only looks for "red flags", which as he explained are children who are graded as "Not Meeting Expectations" or "Approaching". I guess this explained why my son was not identified as a "red flag" because he was graded as "Exceeding Expectations" and therefore, disregarded.

Now, I understand that it could be argued that ISK is a small international school with limited resources and cannot cater for every student individually. However, my point is if ISK publishes a philosophy that states, "We also aim to identify the special talents of each of our students and to provide challenging educational programs to encourage the widest development of these talents", then I expect them to live up to it. Otherwise, don't publish statements that mislead parents into believing that the school is able to provide something that it cannot.

Based on the experiences with my own children and what other parents have told me, I can only conclude that ISK is currently not equipped to handle students that are advanced. This is one of the reasons why we are unhappy and feel that we've been misled.

Your thoughts?

PS. I understand that not everyone has a Google+ account. However, if you want to leave a comment as Anonymous, then I encourage you to sign off with your name so that it's easier to have meaningful discussions.

Missing blog comments

I'm sorry to inform that due to a problem with Google Blogger, the comments that were left on this blog are no longer visible. In my search for answers, I've found several other people reporting this same problem which doesn't have any clear solution right now. I regret that this issue has occurred but will do everything possible to retrieve the old comments.

In the meantime, I have enabled a different commenting option that also allow comments to be left anonymously.

Life is full of ironies

I attended the IWAC Ball last Saturday, and it's amazing the number of people who were interested in talking to me and sharing their experiences about ISK, when they realize that I was the person behind the blog of Parents' Voices at ISK. I never expected that so many people are reading my blog, and discussing some of the issues that I have raised amongst other parents. It's also surprising how quickly the word has spread about my blog considering I've only just started. Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement for me to continue blogging!

Amongst the interesting people that I spoke to at the Ball, were a few ex-ISK parents as well as BISC parents who knew of families that left ISK for BISC. By now I'm sure you are curious to know why some of these families left ISK.

I was told that last year, a middle school student was terribly bullied by her fellow classmates and ISK was unable to deal with the situation so her parents decided to move her to BISC. She is now happily settled in her current environment because BISC has a "bullying policy" for their school (something that ISK is lacking). It was also mentioned to me that many other students moved to BISC because their parents expect a higher standard of education for their children, and so far, these parents were positively impressed by BISC. Another parent mentioned that she's only keeping her child at ISK because they lived near the school and driving into the city center would be too difficult due to the traffic.

Now, I find it a little ironic that despite many families leaving ISK due to what they perceived as low standards of education and educational leadership, in the ISK Annual Report 2012-2013 which was sent to parents last week, the ex-Chairman Jeff Gaskell stated and I quote:

"...parents and students chose to come to and stay at ISK because of our school's reputation for academic excellence." 

A penny for your thoughts anyone?

The plot thickens!

Since my previous blog where I questioned who is responsible for education at ISK? There is no doubt in my mind that the responsibility for education ultimately lies with the School Board.

Like many parents, when it's time to elect a new Board member, I try to choose people that I believe will serve in the school's best interest - education being the number one priority! I also thought it's very democratic of ISK to allow parents to elect members to sit on the Board to represent the parent's interests. However, when I started reading into the ISK Policy Manual and did a little investigation, I found something very unsettling.

For those who are unfamiliar with the School Board structure, here it is in a nut shell:

• There are 9 voting members on the Board
• One (1) Chair person from U.S. Consulate
• One (1) other U.S. Consulate representative
• Two (2) appointed members - nominated by a simple majority of the sitting Board members
• Five (5) elected members
• Board members will be appointed or elected for 3-year terms.
• Board decisions are made by majority vote (ie. 5 votes on a full sitting Board)

Now, here's the interesting part...drum roll...

According to the Policy Manual:

"If a vacancy among elected positions occurs during the school year, the Board may nominate and appoint by majority vote a new member to serve until the next election is held, or longer, until the end of the term of the vacating member, at the discretion of the Board."

Basically, this means that despite giving parents the power to elect five (5) members, if an elected member leaves their position (say) after 6 months, then the Board has the power to appoint who they want to replace that person for the remaining 2.5 years.

By now, my curious mind started to wonder again. Why would the Board appoint someone for the remainder of the term instead of calling for a re-election at the next school year? The plot thickens!

The ISK website unfortunately, doesn't provide any information on how each Board member got on the Board (I'm not surprised). But here's what I managed to dig out:

• Ellen Germain (Chair person from U.S. Consulate)
• Charity Boyette (U.S. Consulate representative)
• Barbara Myrczek (Elected in 2011)
• Waclaw Sierek (Elected in 2012)
• Magdalena Figas (Elected in 2013)
• Edwin Bennaars (Appointed in 2012 to replace Erik van der Steen???)
• Allen Haberberg (Appointed in 2013)
• Kara McDonald (Appointed in 2013 to replace Alex Dudhia for 2 years)
• Jörg von Weiler (Appointed???)

Please feel free to leave a comment and correct anything that's inaccurate. 

I'd really like someone to correct me because if I'm right, we now have a situation where there are only 3 elected Board members instead of 5. This is not only unjust, but unethical because parents' rights to elect are taken away when existing Board members are allowed to appoint another person for replacement.

Thinking about this further, it's entirely possible that one day, the School Board will consist of only appointed Board members who can steer the school in a direction that isn't in the best interest for our children's education or well-being.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the existing Board members are doing anything that would go against the interests of parents - after all, some of them also have children attending ISK. However, I'm really struggling to trust or accept a school policy that supposedly gave parents the power to elect 5 Board members, but we ended up with only 3 elected members.

I would like to see ISK's Governance Committee revise the policy immediately to ensure that appointed replacements stay on the Board only until the next election. This will give parents an opportunity to re-elect who we want on the Board to ensure that they represent the parent's interest.

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