Murray Elementary School is tucked away on Morgantown Road, a small thoroughfare that intersects 250 West on the way from Charlottesville to Crozet. Built in the 1960s, Murray was a segregated elementary school that served the African American families that lived on this byway sandwiched between the railroad tracks and route 250.
Murray, like so many county schools, has had multiple additions built over the years. Like many of the county elementary schools, Murray has 2 playgrounds– one serving the older grades, another serving the younger. These playgrounds are located off wings with classrooms for each age group. Unlike other schools, which emphasize soothing blue and greens as accents, Murray has strategically included energizing bright washes of red on selected walls.
Principal Green provided me with a much needed lesson in the ways that schools must work to staff each grade completely– basically, each school has an allotment of FTEs (full time equivalents) that are to be assigned to instruction. There are standards for student to teacher ratios that must be maintained. Before the beginning of the school year, each school’s enrollment is projected– based upon previously enrolled students, those who registered the previous spring, and those who indicated that they were moving out of the district. Ten days into the school year, the actual numbers of who has shown up are recalibrated, and allotments of staffing are changed accordingly. At this point, additional teachers may need to be hired or reassigned to meet the higher or lower enrollments of the school.
Because Murray’s district is solidly suburban without much undeveloped land, their student numbers remain fairly stable. Unlike other schools, there are not 200 hundred new residential units being added to the district, with the accompanying families with school age children. Murray still experiences growth and change, of course. One phenomena is that as families experience financial hardship, more families will live in one dwelling or apartment, so even without more units being added to an area, more children live in district.
Murray is not overcrowded, but it is full. While it could accept more students, it would be at the cost of areas that serve teachers and administration. Collaboration, planning and professional development require space. While a private school might have a strictly maintained number of available seats for each grade, a public school has the mission of educating all students living in a given area. A school might have 300 enrolled students, but it’s unlikely that each year that there will be precisely 50 students in each grade level. Schools have to be able to be flexible to accommodate “bubble” years where there is one grade level that is significantly larger than others. I am impressed by how each principal has to creatively solve puzzles of space and personnel while meeting the requirements of federal, state and local mandates, and the needs and desires of students and parents.
