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[quote=Anonymous]Another Hearst parent here.  I can only speak for myself and other parents I know, but I don't feel any real tension between IB and OOB at the school.  Both "groups" (which is a little funny because it is not like we walk around with label attached to us) are very invested in the school and contribute a lot to the community.  Both IB and OOB kids are doing well and getting a great education.  And as some other posters noted, many OOB families are actually pretty close to school (Mount Pleasant, Crestwood, etc.).

As an IB parent, I don't really care whether my child's classmates are IB or OOB.  I only care that they are willing to participate in the school community.  I think what the principal has articulated (my interpretation) is that sometimes we get new children at upper grades who are behind grade level and that costs all of us resources that could be devoted to more students (and can hurt our test scores).  That is just not an issue at the lower grades (heck in my own child's class I see several very strong kids coming in from OOB) and she is not putting any restraints on taking OOB children (other than the lottery).  The earlier 4th grade posters said that their children are on grade level (again my interpretation) and that is great.  But we'd welcome you either way.

As to the small class sizes, I think folks need to give the principal a break.  Again my interpretation, but she was saying that she would try to not take in additional student at the upper grades, but rather have a little larger class at 2nd grade and maybe let the numbers run off a bit.  Maybe she spoke in too strong a terms or folks heard her that way, but taking a couple of Grade 4 students or whatever in my mind doesn't necessarily violate the spirit of what she said.

I would also point out that Hearst is not in danger of having its class sizes blow up too large.  A Janney or Murch is full of IB kids and has to take everyone.  Hearst with its large OOB population only has to take IB kids.  So maybe the school is off some year, take in too many kids off the waitlist, and some kids show up in September, and the numbers tick up a bit (from experience we often have folks move before September too, so it can go either way), but it has much more control over class sizes.  And overall one thing I really appreciate is that the whole school is small, not just individual class sizes.  Dr. B knew our child's name from the first day of school.[/quote]

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