Murch or Yu-Ying

[Anonymous]

I have two offers for yu-ying and Murch? I have not had the advantage of visiting Murch during the school year and do not know any parents there. I have not even seen the facilities. Any feedback on Murch Pre-K would be great.

[Anonymous]

To me it's a no-brainer: Murch. Good test scores, active parents, they're revamping the playing field right now. Plus, Murch has awesome kindergarten teachers (I don't know the current pre-K teachers, but I've heard good things). I've heard positive things about Yu Ying, but unless you have a particular interest in Chinese language, I think it's so new that I wouldn't risk it.

[Anonymous]

Is this Pre-K? Are you in-bounds for Murch? If so then DEFINATELY Yu Ying. If you don't like it, you can always go to Murch anyway. OTOH, if you don't take the Yu Ying slot while it's available then your child is out of luck.

[Anonymous]

We love Murch--DS is going to 5th grade this year. We have had great experience, amazing teachers and wonderful parents.

[Anonymous]

We chose Yu Ying mainly b/c we hated the principal at Murch and felt that the classrooms were pretty shabby. Plus, suprisingly, very little diversity in preK. But I think there may be a new principal this year and Murch has much better outdoor space and sports. If your kid is sports oriented I would do Murch. Our DD is not, and we also felt she would be happier in a less traditional school. As a pp mentioned, we were ready to switch to Murch for K if YY wasn't working out but we've had no regrets and are staying with Yu Ying.

[Anonymous]

I must admit that I thought that the facilities were shabby at Murch. By th way my DC is going to Pre-K. Are the Pre-K facilities at Murch held in the main building? I did feel that the faciliites at Yu-Ying were much better. However, I was concerned that the teaching staff seemed a little young at Yu-Ying. Would you say that the Yu-ying class sized are smaller than at Murch?

[Anonymous]

Murch has a separate building with 5 classrooms, last year held 3 K and 2 preK. This coming year there will be 3 preK, don't know which class will be heading into the main building (either one of the K or one of the preK). DCPS class size for preK and K is targeted at 20 with 1 teacher/ 1 aide. At Murch, all in boundary K students must be admitted so it can go much higher than 20. For example, the registrar at Janney told me this week that Janney K classes are 26/27 right now.

At Yu Ying, class size is 25 with 1 teacher 1 aide, at all grade levels. An advantage of charters is that class size is controlled, no one has the right to attend based on living in boundary. I would expect as kids drop out for whatever reason during the year from Yu Ying, the class size would go down. At DCPS schools, class size tends to go up during the year as in boundary students transfer in (newly moved to neighborhood, dropped out of charter/parochial to come back to home school).

DCPS only provides aides for K/ preK (at least in years past, there has been some talk in various budget rounds about possibly having more aides in 09-10) Some schools have aides paid by PTA at higher grades, I believe Murch has done this in previous years.

As mentioned here, Yu Ying doesn't have much outdoor space, just one small playground area, no soccer field etc.

Murch only has one multi-purpose room/ auditorium / gym and kids eat lunch in their classrooms. Yu Ying preK eat in classrooms, K to 2 in multi purpose room.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

new to this topic--are there many asian and native chinese speakers at Yu-ying. What is the schools diversity like? Also curiois: What neighborhods across the city represent most of the students?

[Anonymous]

I don't think that there are many native speakers at the school. Hopefully, that will change. I think Yu Ying tends to draw from all neighborhoods -- maybe a bit less from Wards 7 and 8, a bit more from Mt. Pleasant/Adams Morgan area.

I think Murch and Yu Ying are two completely different programs and you should base the decision on what you want for your child -- Murch = local neighborhood traditional school; Yu Ying = IB program and a second language.

Being in an immersion program is difficult at first and kids, at least mine, had a tough transition (I would say expect it to be hard the first 6-8 weeks). I am biased. I love Yu Ying's program. I love hearing my kids in the back seat of the car arguing over the correct way to say something in Mandarin and feel that Yu Ying was the right decision for our kids. But, I also miss being in our neighborhood school and having all their friends be local.