Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:Murch is very overcrowded, but it's slated for expansion, which might address the issue. Janney just finished its second expansion and is over-capacity upon opening. There was a lot of static from Janney families whose houses would have been moved into Hearst and the advisory committee made up an expected enrollment number that is low by about 10 percent even in the first year, and said there was no need for redrawing boundaries. Thats what happens when you have an advisory committee made up with people with aspirations for higher office.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's one: Amidon-Bowen. It's not overcrowded now, but 82% of the kids there are from in-boundary, and its current boundary has literally thousands of housing units under construction. They had to add a 3rd section of 2nd graders this year and take over classrooms that had been used by Appletree. PK3 and PK4 had waitlists including in-bounds students (not sure how much these waitlists cleared after the second round of the lottery) and since it's a Title 1 school, all the in-bound families would have a right to attend PK there in 2015-6. Shrinking its boundaries was a good choice because it prevents overcrowding and allowed for a school to open in the Navy Yard area.

Thank you. I don't know a thing about this school so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.

They shrunk Amidon's boundaries so that they would have enough kids to make Van Ness viable (says so quite clearly in the dme report). Regardless, any growth at amidon is probably due to more competition for oob/charter spots and people having to give up and go their inbound school. Let's be honest, the navy yard was never going to make amidon overenrolled, since nobody would have sent their kids there in the first place. Amidon's high in-bound rate is purely a function of all the public housing in the neighborhood, nothing else.

Regardless of what reasons the DME gave, Amidon is filling up and this plan keeps it from getting over-full. Even if Amidon is not everyone's first choice, there are enough kids enrolling that shrinking the boundary prevented overcrowding, which was the question asked. It will be worth seeing how many kids stay past the early grades and how test scores move in the next few years.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's one: Amidon-Bowen. It's not overcrowded now, but 82% of the kids there are from in-boundary, and its current boundary has literally thousands of housing units under construction. They had to add a 3rd section of 2nd graders this year and take over classrooms that had been used by Appletree. PK3 and PK4 had waitlists including in-bounds students (not sure how much these waitlists cleared after the second round of the lottery) and since it's a Title 1 school, all the in-bound families would have a right to attend PK there in 2015-6. Shrinking its boundaries was a good choice because it prevents overcrowding and allowed for a school to open in the Navy Yard area.

Thank you. I don't know a thing about this school so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.

They shrunk Amidon's boundaries so that they would have enough kids to make Van Ness viable (says so quite clearly in the dme report). Regardless, any growth at amidon is probably due to more competition for oob/charter spots and people having to give up and go their inbound school. Let's be honest, the navy yard was never going to make amidon overenrolled, since nobody would have sent their kids there in the first place. Amidon's high in-bound rate is purely a function of all the public housing in the neighborhood, nothing else.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's one: Amidon-Bowen. It's not overcrowded now, but 82% of the kids there are from in-boundary, and its current boundary has literally thousands of housing units under construction. They had to add a 3rd section of 2nd graders this year and take over classrooms that had been used by Appletree. PK3 and PK4 had waitlists including in-bounds students (not sure how much these waitlists cleared after the second round of the lottery) and since it's a Title 1 school, all the in-bound families would have a right to attend PK there in 2015-6. Shrinking its boundaries was a good choice because it prevents overcrowding and allowed for a school to open in the Navy Yard area.

Thank you. I don't know a thing about this school so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Help me then, what implications do you draw. There is, IIUC, a massive overcrowding problem at Wilson. That means redrawing Wilson boundaries, with knock on effects on hgih schools across the district. There is IIUC a massive overcrowding problem at Deal, which means redrawing Deal - the knock on effects of that, combined with general dissatisfaction with EC's means considerable change to MS boundaries. Elementary boundaries are being changed mostly for reasons unrelated to overcrowding, AFAICT - for walkability, to simplify feeder patterns, etc.

In which case the lack of schools on the list has NO implication for the necessity of these changes. Do you agree?

I identified Wilson, Deal and Murch as examples of schools whose overcrowding problems were addressed by the final recommendations in my very first post on this thread. If that is the entire list (which is not the case because two more examples have been added), then the new plan is not addressing wide-spread overcrowding, but rather overcrowding in very few schools. It does seem that this is the case, even with the expanded five member list of schools. Your argument appears to agree with this, but offer a justification.

So, the main implication I draw -- just be clear -- is that the final recommendations only address over-crowding problems at Wilson, Deal, Murch, Stoddert, and Amidon-Bowen (and one poster has made a fairly convincing argument that Stoddert should not be included). Given the prominence of overcrowding as a justification for the boundary and feeder changes, it seems a little underwhelming. A cynical person -- not me because I haven't a single cynical cell in my body -- might be led to believe that overcrowding was hyped in much the same manner as WMDs in the Iraq invasion. Let's hope that's where the comparison ends.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So, the main implication I draw -- just be clear -- is that the final recommendations only address over-crowding problems at Wilson, Deal, Murch, Stoddert, and Amidon-Bowen (and one poster has made a fairly convincing argument that Stoddert should not be included). Given the prominence of overcrowding as a justification for the boundary and feeder changes, it seems a little underwhelming. A cynical person -- not me because I haven't a single cynical cell in my body -- might be led to believe that overcrowding was hyped in much the same manner as WMDs in the Iraq invasion. Let's hope that's where the comparison ends.

Except Wilson HS educates a very high percentage of DC high school students. Deal educates a smaller, but still substantial proportion of DC middle schoolers. And both are among the most sought after schools in their categories in DC (which is why being cut out of them is a big deal. So if its only Wilson and Deal, that hardly is underwhelming - its important to the future of DCPS. And of course DME has hardly attempted to hide the other reasons for the change.

Also note, ovecrowding at Wilson and Deal can be easily verified. It does not rely on a few informants of questionable veracity. So a better parallel might be needed. I would say health care is one - it could be (and I believe was) claimed that ACA only benefited a small number of people who actually had issues getting insured due to pre-existing conditions. But those folks were real, were important, and there were also many other reasons to do it that the admin repeatedly pointed out.