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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Murch is overcrowded.  Three new class sections were added this year in order to avoid having class sizes exceeding 30 students per room.  New trailers were brought onto the property and placed on the bluetop and in the staff parking.  Staff parking went from 45 parking spaces to 15.  Arrangements are still being made to find parking in the neighborhood for the staff.

The Murch property is one small block with no room to expand into additional parcels.  Part of that block is actually National Park Service land and so building on it may be problematic.  Expanding beyond the current footprint would necessarily take away staff parking and/or playground space.  So, more students, more staff, less parking and smaller playground.

Murch is overcrowded.[/quote]

Can you clarify in which grades? The lowest grades seem to be in much better shape, however I am not fully aware of the situation.[/quote]

This year, there are 3 PK classes, 5 classes each of K, 1st, and 2nd, and 4 classes each of 3rd, 4th, and 5th.    The three new classes are one each of K, 1, and 2.

As mentioned before, Murch also has a city-wide autism program, and I believe we have also added a new autism PK class this year.

The school feels so much more crowded compared to last year, with the new trailers (there were already quite a few, but the new ones take up most of the parking lot and part of the play area).  I believe the entire 4th and 5th grades are now in trailers.  We got an email from the school asking people not to drive to school if at all possible, because parking will be tighter in the neighborhood due to the loss of the staff parking lot.

As a PP mentioned, there are almost no OOB students in the lower grades.  The growth in enrollment, and the addition of new classes, is because of growth of IB demand.

A 5th grade parent last year told me more than 90% of the 5th grade was going on to Deal.
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Few other things.  Don't you think that five classes per grade is too big for an elementary school?  With kids in the older grades as well as younger I still see children who I've never seen before and we've been there 5 years+.    It is insane.

Secondly as someone mentioned our enrollment is expected to increase mainly because the apartment buildings along Connecticut provide a more affordable way for people to get in a decent school district.  Which gives us some diversity.  Also, we have a fair number of embassies who have rotating staff so children come and go every few years.  Again - great for diversity and International Night - hard for planning.  Hopefully, other schools will improve across the city and relieve the crush on Murch and other schools.
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As a Murch parent, my primary concern is appropriate space and safety. How many kids are in the school doesn't really concern me; I have friends in Arlington, and their ESs are similarly large. As long as class sizes are under control (which they are at Murch now that they added the fifth sections in the early grades), I don't feel like I need to know everyone I see on the playground.

But on the premise that the Murch expansion might not be able to accommodate all of the IB kids, there's still a problem...and one that redrawing boundaries alone probably won't fix. How long before Hearst inevitably attracts more IB kids--as Eaton has--and becomes overcrowded? [/quote]

In short, one year.  Hearst is too small to handle all of the capacity needed. Hearst only has two classrooms per grade. The incoming grades are about half in bound already, so at a maximum it can only relieve Murch of 1 class per grade, or half a class from Murch and half a class from Janney. It helps, and the new boundary will do that - I predict the new proposed boundary as currently drawn will fill Hearst's incoming classes with students from inside the boundary in the first year after the switch, at which point it is effectively 100% IB with set asides (even though the upper grades will still have a high percentage of OOB students who are entitled to remain there, as they should be, with OOB numbers dwindling as each class graduates). But both Murch and Janney will remain overcrowded even after that shift. Murch and Janney each have more than twice the number of classes as Hearst with 5 classes per grade each in the incoming classes from second grade down (which means they [b]will[/b] be 800-student schools by 2017 -- that is a known fact based on current enrollment, not a prediction -- and neither can or should be built that big). Even if Murch can be built to be as big as or bigger than Janney, which won't happen until 2017, you still have more overflow than Hearst can absorb between the two schools. So the big questions is: can Murch be built big enough to accommodate 700-800 students? A feasibility study is underway to answer this question.

The hope with the new boundaries seems to be that shifting some of Murch to Lafayette as well will manage these current, known numbers. The problem is that the numbers show no signs of slowing down, enrollment keeps exceeding predictions, and new multi-family buildings keep getting approved for construction. A new school should be on the table before any more housing development is approved in the area.

Also, based on the size of the current second grade classes of the feeder schools in the new boundary, Deal's incoming class starting in 2018 will have 24 classes. That's a lot of 6th graders. By 2020 that makes 72 classes or about 1650 students in one middle school. And that is if there is NO growth in today's classes of K-2 (wishful thinking). That also does not include accommodating the new requirements for at risk set asides, which I support, but which do not seem to have been adequately thought through from a numbers standpoint. Based on these numbers, the proposed changes have begun to, but have not fully addressed the capacity needs in this area.[/quote]

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