How is Reservoir High School?

[Anonymous]

I'm a DCPS parent thinking of moving to Maryland if we strike out in the HS lottery.

I've done my homework on just about every DCPS and MCPS option, but Howard County seems to be a tougher nut to crack. I'm a former DCPS and PGCPS teacher, so experience has taught me that it's really easy for a school to look good on paper. I try to weigh actual first-hand accounts.

I can't find hardly anything about Reservoir though. Does anyone have any experience they could share?
We're black, middle class, and pretty easy to please I guess. I'm not looking for anything fancy. I'm just trying to find a school where she's represented in the student body AND staff, where they don't lock all the bathrooms because of fights/drugs/crime, where she won't be the richest or poorest kid in the school, and where the teachers aren't miserable and thus her core classes aren't being taught by long-term subs.

Does this sound like Reservoir?

[Anonymous]

I don't live there, but friends do. And I live closer to DC so I've been following the area for a while.
A few things to note is that HOCO redistricts every 10 (maybe?) years, and there's a lot of fighting because wealthier neighborhoods and/or whiter neighborhoods don't want their kids in schools with lower income/kids of color. Currently, there's an interesting split among the Reservoir high school neighborhoods. You have Fulton/Maple Lawn and Laurel, and the Maple Lawn folks generally didn't want to be with the Laurel folks. But both areas are very diverse with respect to race, so in this particular school redistricting fight, it was more about class.

I believe it's a good school, and probably middle of the road for HOCO - like Montgomery Blair. I'm not sure how overcrowded the school it, but that could be an issue.

[Anonymous]

My middle school kids are zoned for Reservoir. I’m also an educator with MCPS. I prefer Reservoir to the MCPS HS that I work at. We are Black and as a North Laurel resident, we are viewed as working class in comparison to the Maple Lawn section.

My mostly Black neighbors are pleased with Reservoir and have shared nothing alarming to me. It’s a great school.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Thank you both!

[Anonymous]

We live in HoCo, and my kids are biracial, I would not have any issue with sending my kids to Reservoir.