Which jklmm?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who on earth bothers to post on these threads trashing other schools that presumably you have no experience with??
If you have first hand experience with a school and it was negative, great, post about that. But if you're just passing on rumor and insults, what's the point??

Completely agree. It's as if your kid's public school is a status symbol or something. Probably the same people who are concernes with the "prestige" of their address.

It doesn't always correlate. Many folks for example would consider Cleveland Park or Georgetown to be desirable neighborhoods ("prestige" addresses if you like). But the quality of the neighborhood schools, Hyde or even John Eaton, do not match the perceived quality of the neighborhoods where they are located. No one is discussing their inclusion in the JKLM group.

You are right! Everybody knows that educational quality correlates most highly with consecutive alphabetical order.

I agree. There's no way Hyde is gaining acceptance until we can find a high quality I school. Otherwise it just throws the whole thing off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:So-- what is the answer? How will Janney accommodate the mandatory 10%?

What is the plan if not to change the boundary?

Get a waiver on the grounds that the school is already over-capacity.

There are other schools at or much more over-capacity. Why should Janney be treated differently?

So, what's the plan for good neighborhood schools that are over capacity? The only lever is to reduce OOB enrollment, but some of these schools have barely any OOB students. So where does that leave those same schools after they've tried to tweak their boundaries to accommodate some new set aside? Eventually tell neighborhood families to send their kids EOTP?

What about Murch? They are over capacity but choosing to accept OOB. There is no central planning in DCPS.

I support the Murch renovation, but think it's nuts for a neighborhood school that is over capacity to take significant OOB. OOB enrollment was intended as a program to use surplus seats in schools perceived as more desirable than a student's regular neighborhood option. If those seats basically no longer exist, then OOB enrollment needs to be throttled back. Eliminate future lottery spots and let the OOB kids who are currently there cycle through. I realize that there's a lot of political pressure to maximize the number of OOB lottery spots in WOTP schools, but doing so is an expensive option as it stretches teaching resources, forces students to "learn" in trailers and results in expensive building projects to increase the sizes of the schools -- all a time when DC has been closing schools elsewhere in DC.

Who ever said that Murch was going to accept more OOB? We are overcapcity - even if we do the renovation due to the constraints of NPS land and a historical building - we still can't couldn't house our current enrollement for the amount of square footage per student.

[Anonymous]

Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Murch accepts OOB via an autism program and will fill spots left open when a student leaves most typically at the pre-k level. I have multiple kids at Murch (none in pre-k) and each of them have had new kids start after the year has begun. None have been OOB and most (if not all) have been embassy kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Yes, it does. Murch would still be way overcrowded with just IB kids. The school's cpacity is 450, but it's enrollment is 650. Only about 65 kids are OOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Yes, it does. Murch would still be way overcrowded with just IB kids. The school's cpacity is 450, but it's enrollment is 650. Only about 65 kids are OOB.

Hearst is a better example. They're something like over 80% OOB (!) yet expanding classroom space (in addition to adding a multipurpose room and library which are needed no matter the student body size).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Murch is huge with IB kids. Again, the DCPS profile on Murch is wrong. They simply will not fix the typo that made the white% the same as the IB%. It is incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Yes, it does. Murch would still be way overcrowded with just IB kids. The school's cpacity is 450, but it's enrollment is 650. Only about 65 kids are OOB.

This is correct. Also the 450 figure DCPS uses includes the "temporary" Kaufmann trailer/building that houses 5 classrooms and has been there since 1980, so true capacity is about 388.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Murch is huge with IB kids. Again, the DCPS profile on Murch is wrong. They simply will not fix the typo that made the white% the same as the IB%. It is incorrect.

Murch is presently sitting just at the the 10% required OOB. This about a 4% drop in OOB from last year.

[Anonymous]

I know multiple kids who got calls for OOB spots at Murch this year. So the overall OOB rate may be fairly low but they are still offering OOB spots to some kids (which I personally think is shortsighted).

[Anonymous]

They should not keep accepting OOB while they are worried about overcrowding, that doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does Murch accept any OOB if it is so overcrowded?

Mann keeps its class sizes small by not taking lots of OOB. I Think this is a reasonable question. Janney is huge with IB kids - Murch doesn't face that issue.

Yes, it does. Murch would still be way overcrowded with just IB kids. The school's cpacity is 450, but it's enrollment is 650. Only about 65 kids are OOB.

Hearst is a better example. They're something like over 80% OOB (!) yet expanding classroom space (in addition to adding a multipurpose room and library which are needed no matter the student body size).

Here we go again. Almost everything tells me not to take the bait. But I can't help myself. Are any of these anti-Hearst people actually from our school or are they just people who don't like the school's makeup? Ok. I won't take the bait. I will drink coffee instead. Hearst is a great school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know multiple kids who got calls for OOB spots at Murch this year. So the overall OOB rate may be fairly low but they are still offering OOB spots to some kids (which I personally think is shortsighted).

This is very odd. So you know multiple kids who applied to a school without openings and many of them got spots? Yeah right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know multiple kids who got calls for OOB spots at Murch this year. So the overall OOB rate may be fairly low but they are still offering OOB spots to some kids (which I personally think is shortsighted).

This is very odd. So you know multiple kids who applied to a school without openings and many of them got spots? Yeah right.

I agree it is odd, but it is also true; I am not making it up (and would have no incentive to do so). I think people list schools that don't technically have spots on their lottery form anyway, in the hope that they will get in, and I know multiple OOB kids who have gotten in at Murch or Janney at various points in time, including this summer and fall. (Usually in K and above).