Reply to Why is Murch accepting so many OOB students?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are at Murch and constantly hear about how overcrowded the school is.  Anyone have insight into why Murch is accepting 10 OOB per grade next year, whereas Janney/Lafayette/etc. each have 0 to 2 OOB spots for each grade?  I certainly understand the impulse to increase diversity and how OOB student do (and have traditionally) enriched the student body, but how can the crumbling and full to the gills facilities accept 60 more students?[/quote]

OP, where did you get this information?  Is it published somewhere?[/quote]

OP here.  It's available on myschooldc.org.  Gaming the system or not, this seems like a ridiculous result.  You still have to put those extra classes somewhere (i.e., more trailers.) And there are other issues -- stresses on specials, getting into extracurricular classes, sense of community -- that a larger student body certainly impacts.  Besides the fact that it really seems to undercut the constant moaning about how overcrowded our school is if we are offering 10% of our spaces each year to OOB students.   I agree with other posters, if my home was in the portion of the former Murch boundary that was rezoned to Hearst, I would be livid.  Not that Hearst is not a great school -- it is -- but that the impetus behind the boundary reconfiguration is a complete fallacy when this many OOB kids are added every year.[/quote]

To repeat: THIS WILL NOT RESULT IN THE ADDITION OF CLASSES OR THE NEED FOR MORE TRAILERS. These kids are filling spaces in classes that already exist. If these kids didn't attend, Murch would have fewer classes at each grade level with more kids per class than they have this year.

And I've personally seen no stress on extracurriculars or specials. Or the sense of community. THe last one, at least, is purely subjective--I don't really understand how the additional kids and their families have a negative impact here, but maybe "sense of community" is code for something else, OP?

Really, you are the first Murch parent I've heard complain about this. I certainly understand the argument others are making that bringing more kids into the Deal/Wilson path creates overcrowding down the line (assuming the kids come from areas that don't feed Deal and Wilson otherwise), but in terms of impact on Murch, specifically, I don't see evidence of an actual problem.[/quote]i

Actually, as a Murch parent I have heard quite a few complaints about this from anyone who actually knows what is going on.  This really was sprung on us unfairly.  Too late for anyone to deal with.  A lot of it came down to the fact that they counted all of our physical space including crappy trailers and trailers used for admin functions as classroom space so we had "extra room".  This is part of the reason why Murch is so ridicoulously overcrowded.  Instead of letting us server the in bounds population which can vary wildly from year to year due to apartment dwellers and all the embassies - they stuff all our classes to the gills.  Then, when we have extra space because we have grown to five classes per grade - they stuff more in.  So, they we add another class per grade.  Our principal is great but DCPS still appears to have it in for us.

It would be nice if Janney and Lafayette shared our pain - esp Janney in that nicely twice renovated building![/quote]

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