Reply to Feedback on Hearst ES

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hearst’s capacity is 325, and its enrollment for this year is 312. So hardly over capacity. The outrage towards OOB children seems a bit irrational.[/quote]

So basically Hearst will be at capacity in the next year.  The community needs to decide whether Hearst should be enlarged further to maintain significant OOB enrollment.  Would Hearst be okay if DCPS basically imposes a minimum OOB enrollment as they appently are doing as John Eaton is modernized?[/quote]

This is my perhaps naive understanding of how things work. Schools have a building capacity. If that is not filled in a given year, OOB lottery slots are offered. If it is, they’re not. My concern as a dcps parent is how many students there are for each classroom teacher in an elementary school like Hearst. As far as I know, that’s not affected by how many students there are total. If a school goes over capacity, that’s not because of OOB students, it’s because of an increase in IB students. So I’m not sure how OOB students are a problem.[/quote]

Ensuring that a school doesn’t go over coacity is the principal’s job.  As IB enrollment climbs, OOB needs to be managed down.  The problem is that an OOB student has the right to remain at the school through the end of 5th grade (and then to go to overcrowded Deal and Wilson, but that’s a different issue). Add sibling enrollment rights to that, and it can be a long time before an OOB family cycles through the school.  It’s a bit like turning a large ship.  What the principal needs to do, once the school reaches near-capacity and with IB enrollment continuing to climb is to resist political pressure from the central office or the temptation to some marginal per pupil dollars, and to avoid filling spots that may open in certain grades even as the school is quite full.  Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to throttle OOB enrollment back even with the school at capacity.  [/quote]

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