How Do I Register My Student In Germantown School District

A revised Germantown Municipal School District policy regarding transfer students could impact hundreds of students currently enrolled in district schools, according to district officials. The amended policy, which was given final approving by the district lath Tuesday, means non-resident transfer students volition no longer be guaranteed a identify at a Germantown schoolhouse until an "exit year," like 5th or eighth class.

Transfer applications volition at present be reviewed annually and students who do not reside in Germantown could be forced to transfer out of the commune due to overcrowding, leaving some students and parents unsure whether they volition be able to continue at the same school from year to yr. Germantown residents who wish to transfer to a district school outside their zone could be impacted as well. However, transfer students who already nourish Germantown Schools volition take an edge in claiming open up enrollment spots in future years.

Superintendent Jason Manuel said the changes would benefit all Germanton schools students and stressed the policy didn't automatically forestall non-resident students from being able to transfer into or continue on in the district or Germantown residents from existence able to transfer within the district.

"We are still accepting transfers. We simply tin't guarantee them at this time," he said.

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Directed at unproblematic, center schools

Overcrowding in the school commune has been the primary motivation to tighten the policy and "rightsize" the commune, Manuel said. The new policy is targeted at the commune'south elementary and middle schools, which have born the brunt of the overcrowding in the district.

Masonry workers lay cinder block walls as construction continues on Germantown Municipal School District's new Forest Hill Elementary, which will open next year.

The commune is building a new schoolhouse, Forest Hill Simple, which is expected to open up its doors to pupils in Baronial, merely Manuel said the new school does not erase the need to tighten the transfer procedure.

"This doesn't stop us from allowing transfers. Information technology just gives the district the power to allow transfers based on available seats and based on grade bands and schools so we won't take a situation where we're over capacity," Manuel said.

District officials said the transfer policy would not have the same affect on Houston High School students, where transfer students are actively recruited. Public information office Kate Crowder said 550 of the more than 1,800 students who attend the high school were transfer students, based on the school's 20-day count.

Of the near 6,000 students currently enrolled in Germantown schools, 18 percentage are transfer students, including children of district employees, according to numbers provided by the commune Wednesday. Manuel said he did not have a demographic breakdown of transfer students, simply he did not believe the policy would have a asymmetric impact on minority students.

Demand for loftier-performing schools

Since the school district was formed five years ago, some parents and guardians of children in other school districts have worked to transfer the students into the high-performing schools. Amidst its accolades, the district has had the highest ACT composite score in the country for iii years in a row, according to the land department of educational activity.

Education enquiry shows many factors tin can affect whether a student from a lower-achieving school transfers to a higher-achieving schoolhouse. Studies indicate that when students in lower-achieving schools are given the opportunity to transfer to higher-achieving schools, white students, higher-achieving students and students from wealthy families are more probable to take the opportunity.

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Researchers plant that if information near school transfers is "costly" to obtain —whether financially difficult, intellectually taxing or linguistically challenging — lower-income families will often make decisions based on what information is easiest to access.

Many of the states with open enrollment programs require schoolhouse districts to develop their own open enrollment policies, according to Benjamin Erwin, who researches pedagogy for the National Briefing of Country Legislatures. Because those policies are typically district specific, information technology was hard to say how mutual a policy like the Germantown school district's is, he said in an email.

According to the Pedagogy Commission of united states of america, Tennessee does not fix out what a commune'south priorities should be when accepting students through open enrollment, merely the land does require districts to enroll the children of teachers who exercise not live in the district.

Students looking to transfer into the commune will be prioritized in the post-obit order, according to the commune's policy:

District employees' children
University students
Currently enrolled students (students will be given college priority the longer they accept been attending district schools)
Siblings of a currently enrolled student
Children of urban center of Germantown employees
Non-resident children from Shelby County
Non-resident children from Tennessee
Non-resident children from other states.

The commune board of education initially approved changes to the transfer policy in October before giving the final thumbs up this calendar week. No major changes were fabricated to the policy between the two readings.

A letter of the alphabet explaining the amended policy has been sent to the parents or guardians of all students who could exist impacted by the changes, officials said. Open enrollment for the 2019-2020 school twelvemonth will begin Jan. 28.

Corinne Kennedy covers Germantown for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at Corinne.Kennedy@CommercialAppeal.com or on Twitter @CorinneSKennedy

By the numbers

According to Germantown Municipal School District officials, hither's how many students at commune elementary and middle schools are not Germantown residents.

Dogwood Simple School: 902 students, 46 nonresidents

Farmington Uncomplicated School: 876 students, 60 nonresidents

Riverdale Unproblematic School: 1382 students, 340 nonresidents

Houston Center School: 954 students, 84 nonresidents