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]

OP here. If you truly don't think it's a perverse result when a school that has 25% of its student body in trailers, that, when advocating for funding for its renovations, crowed to everyone who who listen that a building made for 488 students now is almost 200 students over capacity, that had its boundaries reduced due to overcrowding but now adds ~60 OOB kids, I really don't know what to say. I appreciate the small class size my child has experienced in K this year, but the school is HUGE. As a new family, it can be hard to get to know people.  That's what I meant by sense of community -- not sure what code you are trying to read, but it sounds like you have your own issues to deal with.

And I have heard other parents complain about not getting into Xday, not getting a spot on a Murch Stoddert team, etc.  I also assume it's hard it on the specials teachers -- there is one art, one PE teacher, etc. for the entire school. The bigger the school, the more kids they have to get to know and manage. I'm not trying to blame the OOB families at all, I'm just saying that there is an impact when you add more kids to an already very overcrowded and large school. [/quote]

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