Pros
Teachers have a lot of autonomy at BASIS Independent McLean. Your courses have to cover the required topics; beyond that, you can teach them however you like if students and parents don’t complain. Management won’t have a clue what goes on in your classroom otherwise (see below). That can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your need for support. Management also goes out of its way to be kind and polite to teachers throughout the year. Until the end of the year, when next year’s schedule and teaching assignments are thrashed out (see below again). Like you can read at other Basis Independent Network schools, staff goes from golden to completely expendable. They need you until they don’t, then bye-bye.
Cons
You have been warned. Do you see ANY positive reviews here from former BIM teachers after four years? They were probably too fed up and moved on. I only circled back when I heard this latest news, so applicants would understand the school they are trying to work for. This will take some space, and it is purely my opinion based on secondhand info circulating in the Basis parent community now, not anything I learned back when I worked there. Put simply, BIM is swimming in red ink and will continue to exist only as long as its second group of owners is as eager to lose money there as the first. Every year could be its last at this rate. Quick background - the doors opened in a HUGE building in 2016, Half the building was finished out as a school and the rest left for later. But they pay rent on all of it. The first two years, the head of school was gone by the end of the year. But they were on a growth track by year three with their third HOS. Then the original BASIS parent company sold their private schools to a Chinese private equity company, and the third HOS quit immediately. Very few new parents who had signed up for next fall followed through. Enrollment was lower in year four than year three. No growth. A fourth new head of school was reportedly turning things around in that fourth year when the BIN CEO showed up and announced to parents that the school planned to sublet the second half of the building, not renovate it with all the facilities that previous heads of school had promised. BOOM. Parent confidence and loyalty were shattered. Just to try to save a few bucks. BIM doesn’t release its enrollment numbers, so only they know for sure what impact that self-inflicted wound had. But they were laying off teachers at the end of the 2019-2020 school year unexpectedly, which was widely reported. Fewer students, fewer teachers required. As noted above, a formal teacher review system is promised every year and never implemented. It’s unlikely that any teacher there has any paperwork in their file to say if they are good, bad, or indifferent. Probably makes it easier to lay people off with no notice when the school’s enrollment and teaching schedule shrink. Many things promised there turn out to be vapor in the end. None of this is inside or secret information. Ask any parent who has been there since the start.
