514 Irving St NW
Washington, DC 20010

The best part was the Special Education Unit and the English Department. The ninth grade academy is a mess along with that despicable Assistant Principal. He has no parental compassion and communication skills

My son is in the headstart program for PK-3, so this is our first year with this school. There are many reasons why we are very glad we had the opportunity to enroll him on Bruce Monroe. First, because he is being educated in a bilingual, immersive environment, and after almost a year his Spanish is pretty good. Secondly, the school is small and very family oriented. All parents are pretty involved in the school's events and very active and interested in their kid's education. The staff is incredibly helpful, polite and approachable. I was surprised that they called all the students by their names. Almost every day, the director or the assistant director are at the school's door to greet the students as they come in. I have never dealt with them closely, but I heard other parents say that they are very friendly and take parents concerns very seriously. Thirdly, the teachers are extremely dedicated, very friendly and very well trained. My kid's English teacher got a Fullbright to study Pre-K playful education in Europe and his Spanish teacher got an important PCS award for his teaching and involvement with the community. Overall, we are very pleased with the school.

The staff work very hard but the expectations of them from administration seem unreasonable. There always seem to be staffing issues- high teacher turnover, unfilled teacher positions, staff out/ resigning. In the primary classrooms, the class sizes are more reasonable than lower elementary and upper elementary. In primary, there are also 2 adults in the classroom and only 1 in the upper grades where the class sizes are over 25 students in most classes. Supervision of students during non-academic times seems to be a challenge due to the staffing issues. Behavior issues are not addressed consistently which results in undesirable behaviors increasing instead of decreasing and ultimately disrupting learning. There don't seem to be any consequences in elementary for misbehavior. There are also issues with communication from administration to both families and staff. Do not expect to receive prompt responses from administration unless you have an important role in the school community. I think that this school could improve significantly if administration was more open to disclosing the problems within the school and working with families and staff to create and implement a plan to address the problems.