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As my wife and I will be visiting the area next week and have elementary school age children I had requested a tour and got the following reply,
"Good afternoon Mr. and Mrs. xxxxx,
Thank you for the email and your interest in Weddington Elementary. Due to the considerable amount of requests for a tour of the school, we reserve all tours for families who have secured a housing purchase agreement or the children are currently enrolled. If you would like to review our school data, I encourage you to search the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and click on N.C. School Report Cards.
Also, we are currently planning one afternoon a month to provide a tour to any family interested in our school. You will not need a purchase agreement or enroll your children to participate. The first tour will be in March. The dates will be forthcoming and posted on our school website.
I hope this is helpful. Have a nice evening.
Sincerely,
Kristen Zappa Sebek
Principal
Weddington Elementary School"
My reply was as follows as we are both pretty surprised to say the least at our request being denied;
Kristen, thank you for the prompt reply and I realize that you must entertain a lot of these requests, however, we are disappointed to say the least regarding your seemingly new policy to not do these tours upon request without having a home purchase agreement in place?! That seems like putting the cart before the horse don't you agree? How could someone make an informed decision regarding a home purchase before seeing the schools? In my opinion it defies logic and common sense. I can appreciate you moving to a "monthly" tour schedule, however, this doesn't help anyone who would be coming from out-of-state, we are personally driving over 13 hours one-way for this trip. As I understand, you are an employee of a publicly funded school and I would think that a providing a tour upon request would be something that could be routinely accommodated for prospective home buyers. It is our sincere hope that you pass along our feedback and consider revisiting/revising your new policies relating to touring the school.
Is moving to the area now considered so great that public employees don't even attempt to make an effort to attract potential newcomers????????????
I suspect the answer is that the school is already over capacity so there is little incentive to "attract" new students. In fact, there is a disincentive to do so. An unfortunate side effect of desirability.
I have no idea how many tours are requested. Do they get one request per week, five per day, etc? I really don't know. But that school has great reviews/ratings and is possibly over capacity, so yes, there's no need to attempt to make an effort to attract potential newcomers. They already have enough customers in the pipeline. And based on the tone of your reply, I highly doubt they're looking to attract newcomers who think their policy defies logic and common sense.
I haven't gotten to the point where I've toured schools yet, but I wouldn't expect them to do one-off tours to anybody who asks, especially since many people won't actually buy a house in that area. I think a group tour once a month is fine.
And you mentioned twice that she's a public employee. Living 13 hours away, you realize that you're not part of the public that's actually funding her, right? If she's spending less time giving tours and more time focusing on the school itself, that's a good thing to the families that are funding her.
I understand researching school performance prior to buying a house, but what will a tour of the school provide? If they didn't have pretty paint colors on the walls, would that really sway your decision?
Why do private schools have tours if it doesn't matter. Answering as a parent, Yes - I have removed a school from my list because I didn't like the "culture" I perceived when I visited.
Why do private schools have tours if it doesn't matter. Answering as a parent, Yes - I have removed a school from my list because I didn't like the "culture" I perceived when I visited.
"Culture"? lol....should I take a guess, helicopter parent?
Why do private schools have tours if it doesn't matter.
Because private schools are very expensive and they have to "sell" themselves in order to convince people to make that investment, especially when you are already paying for the public alternative.
This is in response to the smart alex that wanted to know what it mattered. As a parent, the school culture matters. I'm not sure why that is funny or comment worthy. That's the entire reason we have such growth in the school choice/charter movement. Why would someone think parents making the choice to send their kids to public school care any less about the "culture" of the school they send their children to.
This is in response to the smart alex that wanted to know what it mattered. As a parent, the school culture matters. I'm not sure why that is funny or comment worthy. That's the entire reason we have such growth in the school choice/charter movement. Why would someone think parents making the choice to send their kids to public school care any less about the "culture" of the school they send their children to.
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