11964 Dorsett Rd
Austin, TX 78727

Communication with this, and just AISD in general, is awful. Everyone tells you a different thing, and to get calls back takes forever. There is just no follow through. It must be bad leadership from the top because it’s across the board. This district has lots of money, so hire more staff, or improve your work culture to retain more employees because your services to students and parents is not good.

Murchison Middle School is an incredibly unwelcoming school with no interest in communicating with families or involving them in their child's learning experience. It is actually the policy of teachers to not communciate with parents - my 6th grader was told, multiple times, "We don't believe in emailing parents." I reached out to everyone I could think of as my previously happy, A/B student began bringing home grades ranging from 0-50, and missing assignments. I could not get any one to respond to me, and she spent the entire year receiving failing grades. Administration never bothered to respond to my emails or requests for help. All of the school events and extracurriculars were similarly run. There is no interaction with parents or involvement with the family. Furthermore, all learning is done through the screen. Teachers do not seem interested in teaching, or in ensuring that their students are learning. If students sink, then they sink. We will be withdrawing our daughter from this school. I recommend looking into charter schools, or transferring to other schools in AISD, unless your student is a perfect student who never needs additional support or accommodations.

My children have been at Summitt for a number of years, and I'm commenting because I see a lot of comments about the school prior to some fairly big changes. Specifically, prior to the current principal there was some turnover associated with personnel issues. At the same time, one of my children was targeted for bad behavior despite being in a very disorganized, poorly-run classroom about which there was rare and ineffective communication. So we'd hear nothing for long periods and then suddenly the phone was ringing off the hook with sudden problems that actually had been going on for a long time. We were also approached at dropoff by a teacher who was not even my child's teacher, who seemed to be angry at us for not curbing behavior that we had no idea had occurred. Some of this behavior was due to disabilities, and so we went through the IEP process, which at this point several years later I now know was not the correct process. It did not feel as though the school and we were operating as a team, and it did not feel like we had any choice in the accommodations that they felt they should make. Around that same time, ASID broadly sacked many of the special ed staff "to improve morale," during which it was hard for them to actually get much done in that area. That said, since that era, and with new leadership, my children have had great support -- one with an IEP and one without -- and have had a great school experience. Despite the turnover, there are many teachers of fairly long tenure there, who are effective classroom educators. The dual language program appears to be going strong and adds cultural opportunities regardless of enrollment in the program. Overall, Summitt is now a well-run school with relatively good services.