unilaterally place their child at Blanchard regardless of the class size of the grade level to which the child is enrolling. This dynamic will be addressed later in this memo in greater detail.
One additional feature of the regional agreement that is not noted as often is that residents of Acton are also afforded their own version of a “hometown guarantee.” In this case, Acton residents are provided the ability to exclude Blanchard as a potential placement for their child and limit enrollment options to the five (5) elementary schools in Acton.
Original Principles of Open Enrollment In its original form, the system of Open Enrollment complemented an approach to elementary education that placed greater emphasis and value on individual school autonomy. There emerged a belief that offering families a menu of schools with varying areas of emphasis and teaching practices would be a strength of the District, as it would provide families and students a range of options that may suit their particular and potentially differing priorities in terms of their child’s educational experience. There was also the belief that schools that have families attend as a choice would have the benefit of greater buy-in and investment of those families in the school, its methods, and its goals. This is one of the reasons why the District’s enrollment policy, described in detail below, provides placement preference at a particular school to students who have older siblings in the District who attended or are attending that school. The preference was not simply in service of the obvious logistical benefits of a family’s children attending the same school, but also with a belief that this supported long-term relationship building between the school and a family. The ideals and explanations offered are similar to those that colleges and universities often espouse when explaining the value of legacy admissions. In many of the schools, the emphasis on autonomy and individual school identity was also embraced by the staff as an opportunity to have decisions related to teaching and learning (curriculum selection, teaching methods, assessments) and school events rest more significantly in the hands of school-based educators and administrators. For many years, the notion of a “loose-tight” relationship was used to describe the relationship between the individual elementary schools and the district as a larger encompassing entity. While not a perfect analogy, there existed an approach similar to the relationship between the federal government and individual state governments. In a loose-tight arrangement, the District would establish very general parameters and expectations in various areas of a school’s academic program and other school services within which each school had to operate. Within those broad parameters, schools would have the autonomy to make independent decisions.
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