Basic Info
Lucy V. Barnsley ES is located at 14516 Nadine Drive, Rockville, MD 20853. The principal is Mr. Andrew Winter.
Rating
Please rate your experience at this school with respect to the following aspects on a scale from 0 to 10.- Inclusiveness: Does the school have a culture of inclusion and inclusive practices in place (e.g., co-teaching)? Are these practices effectively and systematically implemented?
- Staffing and resources: Does the school have staff and resources to accommodate a wide range of special needs?
- Cooperation: Does the school staff exhibit a cooperative approach by accepting/requesting the parents' input, listening to concerns, and attempting to resolve disagreements?
- Communication: Does the school implement progress monitoring plans? Does the staff regularly communicate with parents with respect to their child's progress and challenges? Is the staff responsive when contacted?
- Academic expectations: Does the staff systematically set high expectations for students with special needs? Does the staff systematically raise expectations when IEP goals are met ahead of time?
Lucy V. Barnsley ES
Principal Winters seems to be maniacally against special needs kids. He appears to enjoy manipulating parents. He does everything he can to keep parents from communicating directly with teachers and from helping in the classroom. Maybe MCPS put it’s gifted and learning disabled program in his school because this principal is totally unwilling to work collaboratively through IEP processes and makes advocating nearly impossible, he seems to enjoy fighting parents and preventing the county from paying to give kids an education, and he absolutely seems to lack sympathy towards kids with special needs?
Prejudice and discrimination are routine and not subtle at this school. My child came out in the fifth grade at Barnsley and was told they couldn’t talk about their gender openly and couldn’t keep using the bathroom they were use to using between classes.
My kid was also given work two grade levels below what they had successfully completed the previous year. In addition, although my kid very much wanted to stay in an advanced math class and was voluntarily and adequately doing the work without accommodations for a slow processing speed, she was going to be removed from the class. The Barnsley GT/LD program is the place to go if you need to be convinced that homeschooling is a better option than MCPS.
While they tried, over the spring, the GTLD program left a lot to the parents. They did not use para educators to help special needs students. Rather than adjusting the curriculum to the new normal and supporting working parents, they continued on with pre-planned and open-ended research projects that were very difficult for special needs students to complete independenly. Brief office hours were not enough to help these kids and parents had to miss work to help them. Other teachers relied solely on boring videos that were not engaging to students and did not teach them anything. SN students are also not able to navigate all the zoom links and they required support. Para educators should have helped. The platforms used were hard to learn and manage.
The response from the school was unhelpful advocating for the teachers and not really recognizing the big burdens placed on parents who are trying to hold down jobs.
We cannot forget that special needs students have IEPS for a reason. We can’t magically expect they can all of a sudden do things and manage tasks without their usual supports that they could never have done pre-pandemic.
Parents cannot be expected to play the role of para educators and also hold down their actual jobs.