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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I also meant to add that the whole idea of building out/trailers for option schools doesn't happen for good reasons. I think people who are not in option programs often see them as quick fixes for short-term student population surges in neighborhood schools. While they absolutely help meet surges within the system, you can't just pop up and dump trailers in options programs. Why? Once you admit students you have to be prepared to host them for the whole journey of the program. If you admit 2X immersion students from K one year because of a demographic surge, you have to then be able to host them through5th or 8th. You don't kick out students later and say "sorry, we only let you in for a year because your neighborhood was crowded."[/quote]

Um...so you're saying you can't expand option schools because you're stuck with the kids all the way through; but you can over-extend a neighborhood school with no definite timeframe for any boundary shifts or additions or new schools being built. That it's not fair to kick-out program kids; but you can kick-out neighborhood kids.

Option schools should not be insurance policies for families to avoid overcrowding. I get the not kicking-out because it means a different curriculum (immersion, for example...ATS, not a different program per se; just what all neighborhood schools should be doing. Montessori and HB, not a huge deal either as far as programs, IMO but others will disagree)  Anyway, I disagree. You don't get to ditch out of your undesired neighborhood school and then also be protected from overcrowding.  [/quote]

Its not that options are insurance policies for families in crowded neighborhoods, they are not at all. For starters, you have to get in one, and all options are limited by the very few open seats available every year. It's just that once you get in an option, that program must be ready to carry you all the way through, and in most options that means 8th grade. On the flip side, you are guaranteed a seat in your neighborhood. That may seem obvious but it's a big difference when you are designing a school system. If the Jamestown-to-Yorktown pyramid is important to you, all you have to do is be in-boundary and you're guaranteed a seat, no matter how overcrowded. Your neighborhood school must either add trailers or, in reality, reassign you to a new neighborhood in order to accommodate you. Another option is giving you preference to transfer to another school. But many people apply to  get into Montessori or Immersion and never get the chance to begin with. There are pros and cons to both pathways, they just come in different ways. [/quote]

Yes, I understand how it works. My point is, being in an option program should not protect you from overcrowding just because you're in an option program. Those schools need to be able to expand and accommodate additional growth as part of the overall "balancing enrollment" management. Option programs can (and have) taken on trailers just like neighborhood schools. Your statement "that the whole idea of building out/trailers for option schools doesn't happen for good reasons" is wrong. Nobody was ever going to kick students out after a year or two and - what? - send them back to their neighborhood school because it was no longer overcrowded??  Claremont immersion used to be one of the most over-crowded schools in the system.  HBW, however, has always been protected from higher enrollment and crowding. THAT's not right. Small class sizes and a manageable enrollment within the size of the facility is just as important to other programs - even neighborhood programs - as it supposedly is for HBW. [/quote]

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