Anonymous wrote:
Right, the in boundary Hardy families want so much for Hardy to be a "neighborhood school" but fail to see how easy it is to accomplish that....just send their kids to the neighborhood school. Easy.

Deal feeders understandably want to maintain their established pattern. Janney or Murch should be upset to have the rug pulled out from under them. Why should the feeder pattern that works for them and that they take full advantage of be taken away?

Another ridiculous and irrelevant argument by Hardy feeder families.

No, I am not a JKLM parent, not even close.

You have some good synopsis, but there is no chance in hell -- none -- that Murch will cease to feed into Deal. In any scenario.

The school properties are 150 yards from each other.

Right, the in boundary Hardy families want so much for Hardy to be a "neighborhood school" but fail to see how easy it is to accomplish that....just send their kids to the neighborhood school. Easy.

Deal feeders understandably want to maintain their established pattern. Janney or Murch should be upset to have the rug pulled out from under them. Why should the feeder pattern that works for them and that they take full advantage of be taken away?

Another ridiculous and irrelevant argument by Hardy feeder families.

No, I am not a JKLM parent, not even close.

The feeders to Hardy have less and less IB kids as the you get to higher grades. IB folks tend to leave the neighborhoods or switch to privates. Their children are replaced by OOBounders.

I expect Murch also has increasing numbers of OOB as the grades go up.

I've seen people pull their kids early because a) they move to bigger housing stock somewhere, b) they don't like MS options so apply earlier than 5th to privates so that they have another year or two to try again if need be, or c) they wanted a neighborhood school feel and see that fading in the higher grades - and by leaving prove out their worries.

Anonymous wrote:
So tired of the Hardy in boundary crowd making up reasons why in boundary percentages are low. "Off site for reno (it's been done for years), we don't like the principal (he's gone), we don't want to take the space away from the oob kids (because we want our own little Palisades Middle School backed by Mary Cheh)"... and now... "it can never be a neighborhood school because there aren't enough neighborhood kids". Such nonsense.

You know what I'm tired of? The insistence that the reason Hardy has low acceptance among the people in-boundary for it is not because of the school, but because of the people who are in-boundary. Massachusetts Avenue divides Ward 3 -- the north side is in-boundary for Deal, the south side for Hardy. Do you really believe there is some fundamental difference between the north-siders and the south-siders? I can tell you that I know lots of south-siders who would kill for the chance to send their kids to Deal. Lots of south-siders send their kids to Latin, and increasingly Basis. Enrollment at all of the south-side elementaries is soaring, and tons of south-side high school kids go to Wilson. It's not that there is something that happens to you when you cross Massachusetts avenue that makes you averse to public education. Hardy is just not appealing. We can argue about the reasons, but the proof is in the numbers.

If the problem really were the attitudes of the south-siders, and not the school, the north-siders, who embrace public middle school enthusiastically, would have no problem sending their kids there, right? Shall we go to a PTA meeting at Janney or Murch and float the idea of switching to Hardy? No problem, right?

You can't count Eaton as a Hardy feeder, kids there have the option of Hardy or Deal and just about all of them go to Deal. So move 457 kids from the Hardy column to the Deal column. Plus you forgot about Oyster, kids who are in-boundary at Oyster are in-boundary at Deal. That's 38% of Oyster, or another 257 kids. Plus there's the strip along the eastern edge of Rock Creek Park, I don't even know how to count that. With those adjustments, I get 3586 attending Deal feeder schools and 1331 attending Hardy feeders. The comparison was per seat: Deal has a stated capacity of 910 and Hardy has 540. So Deal has 3.9 feeder kids per seat and Hardy has 2.5. Yeah, it's not two and a half any more, but it's not nothing.

When I ran the numbers a year ago Deal had 3,837 in its feeders and Hardy had 911, which is where the two and a half number came from. According to DCPS numbers the population of Deal feeders has actually declined this year, while the Hardy feeders have grown by over 40%. This is probably good news for Hardy, but it make take a few years for the impact to be felt.

"Incidentally, this is true not just at the elementary school level but at the middle school level. The primary reason that Deal is bursting at the seams and Hardy is 90% OOB is that Deal has roughly 2 and a half times as many kids in its feeder schools per seat as Hardy does. "

BS...the main reason that Hardy has 86% OOB is because the feeder school in-boundary parents don't send their kids there. Plain and simple.

The actual number of in boundary middle schoolers may be a "secret" according to the pp, but I am pretty sure there are more than 57 kids (14% of 412 students at Hardy). Hyde-308 students
Mann- 290 students, Stoddert-347 students, Key-386 students, Eaton-457. Not all IB for those schools but M,S,K all about 80% IB

Deal.....3319 kids in feeder schools/1014 kids enrolled at Deal=3.25
Hardy...1788 kids in feeder schools/412 kids enrolled at Hardy=4.3

Let's say it another way, Deal is more than double the size of Hardy so has double the number of feeder school kids.

So tired of the Hardy in boundary crowd making up reasons why in boundary percentages are low. "Off site for reno (it's been done for years), we don't like the principal (he's gone), we don't want to take the space away from the oob kids (because we want our own little Palisades Middle School backed by Mary Cheh)"... and now... "it can never be a neighborhood school because there aren't enough neighborhood kids". Such nonsense.

Sorry to divert this away from the Murch conversation. That number does seem high for Murch, but in any case, it's a great school regardless of where the students live. Isn't that the point?

PP is completely off-- in a very odd way.

Deal and Wilson are packed because of the feeder system + schools that work. Neither had many lottery openings last year but are packed with OOB students. They come up via the feeder system which has been going on since Rhee put it into place. Once upon a time OOB kids got Into the Ward 3 schools on a regular basis. As the schools have gotten stronger that isn't the case any longer as more IB kids stay in the DCPS system. The mismatch doesn't come from how many kids live IB (Cap Hill is a perfect example-- loads of kids in schools all over the city) but in the strength of the schools. Additionally, Hardy feeders are generally full too. Due to a weak program (not for long I think) the kids from the feeders opted for other schools.

Anonymous wrote:
I await this revelation. The way I've heard it, is that Eaton & Hearst are OOB escape-schools for families in other wards. No-one who can afford to live in those catchment areas, would even consider public school, at least not the local DCPS. Not so sure about either Murch or Lafayette, but that whole "open school" 70s thing is even stupider today then it was then. Janney might as well be in Rockthesda.

Loads of CP residents send their kids to Eaton and Hearst. You must not be from around here. My neighbors just moved to our street specifically for Eaton.

Anonymous wrote:Because there will always be a large number of wealthy people who will pay for private school even if they have an excellent public option, because they are misinformed about the dubious benefits of a private school education. This in turns opens spots for OOB students. It's really not that mysterious.

I don't think you understand what the IB number represents. It's not the percentage of IB kids who chose to go to the school. That number is secret. I'm sure DCPS knows it, but there's no way they're letting it out. You can get an idea of the order of magnitude of that number by looking at the census. In the 2010 census there were slightly over 10,000 kids under 18 living in Ward 3. There are roughly 2600 Ward 3 kids who attend DCPS. Considering that roughly 1/4 of under-18 kids are too young for school, that means that roughly 1/3 of Ward 3 kids attend DCPS. If I had to guess I'd say that Murch is probably higher than average in Ward 3, but that's just a guess, the real number is secret.

If one school has a particularly high OOB number it does not mean that the families in that school district are particularly unlikely to attend DCPS. Moving school boundaries is essentially impossible in DC, and it hasn't been done in a meaningful way since the end of segregation. The reason that some schools are bursting at the seams with trailers in the parking lot, and others have big OOB populations, is that there is a mismatch between the schools we have, the school boundaries we have, and the number of families living within those boundaries who wish to attend DCPS.

Incidentally, this is true not just at the elementary school level but at the middle school level. The primary reason that Deal is bursting at the seams and Hardy is 90% OOB is that Deal has roughly 2 and a half times as many kids in its feeder schools <i>per seat</i> as Hardy does.

Another Cleveland Parker here, yes, we send our kids to Eaton and love it.

Perfect fit for us. Kids from all over the city and great test scores-for the objective measures. Great vibe and lots of fun extras for the non-measurables. Not to mention down to Earth parents and a staff that focuses on kids.

2010-2011 demographic info from the school profile PDF on DCPS website says 77% in boundary that year.

http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/pdf/murch2011.pdf

56% is simply wrong. I remember the IB percentage being in the 70's or 80's just a couple of years ago, and in the last couple of years it has become almost impossible to get in as OOB. this year the first two OOB with siblings for pre-K were called a day or two before count day in October. we are doing the lottery as OOB with sibling preference this year for our youngest child and our only hope is to get first in line as OOB with sibling in the wait list and to get at the very last moment in October before count day, if everything goes like this year (but every year it gets more difficult to get in).
or maybe our best hope is that some parents unfamiliar with the school are fooled by the wrong info given by DCPS concerning the percentage of OOB kids, do not apply for pre-K and live some spots open (just kidding)

Murch PreK parent... I also think it might be a typo. I remember looking at the DCPS profile last year and it was a higher number...in the 70s or 80s? In fact when I noticed the 56 percent figure a few months ago, I emailed the DCPS rapid response team to ask about it, out of curiosity. Got no response.

My DC's class has 20 students, and one of them is OOB with sibling preference. The other 19 are in-bounds. I don't have a feel for the upper grades.

I thought Murch had some children bused in?

But I agree that it must be a typo.

It must be sibling preference. Last year Murch only had one OOB spot available and that was for 5th grade.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/data/dcps-lottery-12-13.html

The 56% figure just can't be right.