What does tabling the SSIMS closure mean for the boundary options?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

SSIMS has both Spanish Immersion and French Immersion. I think Spanish is larger. They also would go there regardless of zoning.

Actually no, Spanish Immersion is now just the neighborhood kids (Rolling Terrace, or other immersion kids already zoned for SSIMS). Rolling Terrace is zoned away from SSIMS in many of the boundary options. I do think that’s a loss. Not sure how that community feels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

There are folks in the closer neighborhoods who would favor a new facility, even if it means SSIMS closure and dispersion among Sligo, Eastern and TPMS. There are folks in the more extended SSIMS-feeder elementary catchments who would favor SSIMS staying open.

The communities are not monolithic. Except that, like the Wootton folks (see those threads), almost everyone currently zoned to SSIMS would prefer for a new SSIMS to be built on site, instead of it turning into a holding school, with Sligo Creek ES being relocated. Unfortunately, also like Wootton, the financials and logistics of the situation don't seem likely to work in their favor.

Those save-SSIMS folks are just catching their breath after MCPS approved the delay in the closure decision for a year following what might have been not really even 2 months (effectively due to the Thanksgiving break, not to mention the divided attention of MCPS with all the rest going on) of engagement after the original idea of closure was floated. (That move likely was window dressing, though.) I don't think there are many at all who don't care about those from the feeder elementaries that might be moved, either out of SSIMS or into it, with the current boundary study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

SSIMS has both Spanish Immersion and French Immersion. I think Spanish is larger. They also would go there regardless of zoning.

Actually no, Spanish Immersion is now just the neighborhood kids (Rolling Terrace, or other immersion kids already zoned for SSIMS). Rolling Terrace is zoned away from SSIMS in many of the boundary options. I do think that’s a loss. Not sure how that community feels.

Are there really that few from RTES (whole school dual immersion, no?) plus those in-bounds at the Rock Creek Forest full-immersion program that continue? There are only 30-40 per grade in French.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

SSIMS has both Spanish Immersion and French Immersion. I think Spanish is larger. They also would go there regardless of zoning.

Actually no, Spanish Immersion is now just the neighborhood kids (Rolling Terrace, or other immersion kids already zoned for SSIMS). Rolling Terrace is zoned away from SSIMS in many of the boundary options. I do think that’s a loss. Not sure how that community feels.

Are there really that few from RTES (whole school dual immersion, no?) plus those in-bounds at the Rock Creek Forest full-immersion program that continue? There are only 30-40 per grade in French.

I’m not sure. They dramatically scaled back who can go to SSIMS for Spanish a couple of years ago because of overcrowding.

The potential RTES boundary change looks like one of several in the county that may compromise a middle school pathway for dual immersion kids. I think that would probably be a shame, but I have not heard or seen much from the RTES community about this. I also don’t know if doing Spanish at TPMS is possibly on the agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

Roughly half of SSIMS gets zoned away in options A-D (I think it might be more than half, actually.) Only SCES and Highland View kids stay-- all the Rolling Terrace, Montgomery Knolls/Pine Crest, and Forest Knolls kids leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

Roughly half of SSIMS gets zoned away in options A-D (I think it might be more than half, actually.) Only SCES and Highland View kids stay-- all the Rolling Terrace, Montgomery Knolls/Pine Crest, and Forest Knolls kids leave.

I see. This is more extensive than I realized. Forest Knolls seems closer to Sligo. I am not sure why Forest Knolls families cannot theoretically oppose closing an area middle school but being fine with being rezoned for Sligo.

This is hypothetical, because I am not familiar with actual people in this category. Like many of the families most impacted by proposed middle school changes, my kids aren’t there yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

Roughly half of SSIMS gets zoned away in options A-D (I think it might be more than half, actually.) Only SCES and Highland View kids stay-- all the Rolling Terrace, Montgomery Knolls/Pine Crest, and Forest Knolls kids leave.

SCES is, literally, in the same building. Highland View ES is very walkable -- 2 blocks campus-to-campus, though the catchment extends several blocks more.

Most of Montgomery Knolls/Pinecrest go to Eastern. It's an artifact of past poorly executed boundary studies and the attempt to link SSIMS more or less directly with Northwood's catchment (itself poorly designed) that has the western bit go to SSIMS, and they are closer to Sligo MS (its own boundaries poorly designed by the link with Einstein). They, and Forest Knolls, probably should be walking to Sligo (or taking the much shorter bus ride if crossing University is a no-go). TPMS is only a hair farther than SSIMS from RTES, though closer/easier from a transportation perspective. Meanwhile, much of Woodlin is easily more accessible to SSIMS or TPMS than Sligo.

If they aren't looking at true relief by shifting everything west in a cascade (and they should, but they won't, for reasons we know all too well), a somewhat counter-clockwise rotation of these catchments among Sligo MS, TPMS and Eastern (and SSIMS, if it is to stay open), along with elementary boundary adjustments, would seem to make sense, given proximity/accessibility and the desire to avoid crossings of major roadways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

This person is being deliberately obtuse about something that is actually very easy to understand. The Save our Schools group was formed because of the proposed closure and relocation of SSIMS and SCES, not because of the boundary study (which was already well underway when Taylor announced his plans to convert the two schools into holding schools). The advocacy and communication from the group has been very clear all along: don't close these two schools in the heart of DTSS, renovate them instead.

The boundaries of SSIMS -- just like every other middle school involved in the Woodward boundary study -- will likely have to change. That has been clear from every single one of the 11 options that has been floated in the study, including the first 8 options that were released before Taylor dropped the SSIMS closure bomb. The best way to communicate your agreement or disagreement with those proposed changes is to fill out the survey. No one is stopping anyone from doing that, least of all the Save our Schools group (I'm sure all of them are filling out the survey too). But they are not advocating about the boundaries of SSIMS, they are advocating about the existence of SSIMS. It is really not that hard to understand the difference.

The only reason I can think of why this person is claiming this was a "bait and switch" is that they want to cast aspersions on the Save our Schools group because they disagree with keeping SSIMS open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

This person is being deliberately obtuse about something that is actually very easy to understand. The Save our Schools group was formed because of the proposed closure and relocation of SSIMS and SCES, not because of the boundary study (which was already well underway when Taylor announced his plans to convert the two schools into holding schools). The advocacy and communication from the group has been very clear all along: don't close these two schools in the heart of DTSS, renovate them instead.

The boundaries of SSIMS -- just like every other middle school involved in the Woodward boundary study -- will likely have to change. That has been clear from every single one of the 11 options that has been floated in the study, including the first 8 options that were released before Taylor dropped the SSIMS closure bomb. The best way to communicate your agreement or disagreement with those proposed changes is to fill out the survey. No one is stopping anyone from doing that, least of all the Save our Schools group (I'm sure all of them are filling out the survey too). But they are not advocating about the boundaries of SSIMS, they are advocating about the existence of SSIMS. It is really not that hard to understand the difference.

The only reason I can think of why this person is claiming this was a "bait and switch" is that they want to cast aspersions on the Save our Schools group because they disagree with keeping SSIMS open.

I promise I am not being deliberately obtuse. Are you? Did you really think when you said "we at SSIMS love our school and want to keep it for our kids, please support us in our fight for our school!" people would somehow understand that it secretly meant "this is actually about a few hundred of us who live very close to SSIMS and want to keep it for our kids... we don't care if their classmates get to stay"?

Also I promise that this is not about me or anyone else wanting to SSIMS to close (even though it probably is in the best interests of MCPS as a whole to close it)-- I have always supported keeping SSIMS open for SSIMS families if they want it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with the apparent plan of close-in families to throw the rest of the SSIMS community (as well as far-away schools like Woodlin and Flora Singer who don't want to go to SSIMS) under the bus as soon as they get what they want for their individual family.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

This person is being deliberately obtuse about something that is actually very easy to understand. The Save our Schools group was formed because of the proposed closure and relocation of SSIMS and SCES, not because of the boundary study (which was already well underway when Taylor announced his plans to convert the two schools into holding schools). The advocacy and communication from the group has been very clear all along: don't close these two schools in the heart of DTSS, renovate them instead.

The boundaries of SSIMS -- just like every other middle school involved in the Woodward boundary study -- will likely have to change. That has been clear from every single one of the 11 options that has been floated in the study, including the first 8 options that were released before Taylor dropped the SSIMS closure bomb. The best way to communicate your agreement or disagreement with those proposed changes is to fill out the survey. No one is stopping anyone from doing that, least of all the Save our Schools group (I'm sure all of them are filling out the survey too). But they are not advocating about the boundaries of SSIMS, they are advocating about the existence of SSIMS. It is really not that hard to understand the difference.

The only reason I can think of why this person is claiming this was a "bait and switch" is that they want to cast aspersions on the Save our Schools group because they disagree with keeping SSIMS open.

I promise I am not being deliberately obtuse. Are you? Did you really think when you said "we at SSIMS love our school and want to keep it for our kids, please support us in our fight for our school!" people would somehow understand that it secretly meant "this is actually about a few hundred of us who live very close to SSIMS and want to keep it for our kids... we don't care if their classmates get to stay"?

Also I promise that this is not about me or anyone else wanting to SSIMS to close (even though it probably is in the best interests of MCPS as a whole to close it)-- I have always supported keeping SSIMS open for SSIMS families if they want it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with the apparent plan of close-in families to throw the rest of the SSIMS community (as well as far-away schools like Woodlin and Flora Singer who don't want to go to SSIMS) under the bus as soon as they get what they want for their individual family.

You say you are not being deliberately obtuse, and yet you keep repeating the same complaint without engaging any of the points that have been made in response.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

This person is being deliberately obtuse about something that is actually very easy to understand. The Save our Schools group was formed because of the proposed closure and relocation of SSIMS and SCES, not because of the boundary study (which was already well underway when Taylor announced his plans to convert the two schools into holding schools). The advocacy and communication from the group has been very clear all along: don't close these two schools in the heart of DTSS, renovate them instead.

The boundaries of SSIMS -- just like every other middle school involved in the Woodward boundary study -- will likely have to change. That has been clear from every single one of the 11 options that has been floated in the study, including the first 8 options that were released before Taylor dropped the SSIMS closure bomb. The best way to communicate your agreement or disagreement with those proposed changes is to fill out the survey. No one is stopping anyone from doing that, least of all the Save our Schools group (I'm sure all of them are filling out the survey too). But they are not advocating about the boundaries of SSIMS, they are advocating about the existence of SSIMS. It is really not that hard to understand the difference.

The only reason I can think of why this person is claiming this was a "bait and switch" is that they want to cast aspersions on the Save our Schools group because they disagree with keeping SSIMS open.

I promise I am not being deliberately obtuse. Are you? Did you really think when you said "we at SSIMS love our school and want to keep it for our kids, please support us in our fight for our school!" people would somehow understand that it secretly meant "this is actually about a few hundred of us who live very close to SSIMS and want to keep it for our kids... we don't care if their classmates get to stay"?

Also I promise that this is not about me or anyone else wanting to SSIMS to close (even though it probably is in the best interests of MCPS as a whole to close it)-- I have always supported keeping SSIMS open for SSIMS families if they want it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with the apparent plan of close-in families to throw the rest of the SSIMS community (as well as far-away schools like Woodlin and Flora Singer who don't want to go to SSIMS) under the bus as soon as they get what they want for their individual family.

DP. You have a very odd take on all of this. The previous poster explained it very well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

This person is being deliberately obtuse about something that is actually very easy to understand. The Save our Schools group was formed because of the proposed closure and relocation of SSIMS and SCES, not because of the boundary study (which was already well underway when Taylor announced his plans to convert the two schools into holding schools). The advocacy and communication from the group has been very clear all along: don't close these two schools in the heart of DTSS, renovate them instead.

The boundaries of SSIMS -- just like every other middle school involved in the Woodward boundary study -- will likely have to change. That has been clear from every single one of the 11 options that has been floated in the study, including the first 8 options that were released before Taylor dropped the SSIMS closure bomb. The best way to communicate your agreement or disagreement with those proposed changes is to fill out the survey. No one is stopping anyone from doing that, least of all the Save our Schools group (I'm sure all of them are filling out the survey too). But they are not advocating about the boundaries of SSIMS, they are advocating about the existence of SSIMS. It is really not that hard to understand the difference.

The only reason I can think of why this person is claiming this was a "bait and switch" is that they want to cast aspersions on the Save our Schools group because they disagree with keeping SSIMS open.

I promise I am not being deliberately obtuse. Are you? Did you really think when you said "we at SSIMS love our school and want to keep it for our kids, please support us in our fight for our school!" people would somehow understand that it secretly meant "this is actually about a few hundred of us who live very close to SSIMS and want to keep it for our kids... we don't care if their classmates get to stay"?

Also I promise that this is not about me or anyone else wanting to SSIMS to close (even though it probably is in the best interests of MCPS as a whole to close it)-- I have always supported keeping SSIMS open for SSIMS families if they want it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with the apparent plan of close-in families to throw the rest of the SSIMS community (as well as far-away schools like Woodlin and Flora Singer who don't want to go to SSIMS) under the bus as soon as they get what they want for their individual family.

You say you are not being deliberately obtuse, and yet you keep repeating the same complaint without engaging any of the points that have been made in response.

Yeah. There really is no reason to be characterizing the save-SSIMS folks from the two immediately proximate elementary schools as having an "apparent plan...to throw the rest of the SSIMS community (as well as far-away schools like Woodlin and Flora Singer who don't want to go to SSIMS) under the bus as soon as they get what they want for their individual family." I don't see that at all.

[Anonymous]

My takeis that this person is likely zoned to Woodlin or Flora Singer and doesn't want to go to SSIMS. They were relieved when the closure was proposed bc it meant they didn't have to go there (as many of the A-D options have them doing). And now that the Save our Schools people have successfully gotten a delay, they are mad at them.

That's the only explanation that makes sense. Nothing that the Save our Schools people have put out (on their yard signs, on their web site, social media, etc) has been about keeping current students zoned to SSIMS at SSIMS. It has all been about keeping the schools open and renovating them in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My takeis that this person is likely zoned to Woodlin or Flora Singer and doesn't want to go to SSIMS. They were relieved when the closure was proposed bc it meant they didn't have to go there (as many of the A-D options have them doing). And now that the Save our Schools people have successfully gotten a delay, they are mad at them.

That's the only explanation that makes sense. Nothing that the Save our Schools people have put out (on their yard signs, on their web site, social media, etc) has been about keeping current students zoned to SSIMS at SSIMS. It has all been about keeping the schools open and renovating them in place.

If that's the case, it would be a miscomprehension of the import of the delay. MCPS would have to include in the upcoming elementary study under which they would fit that delay authorization to change the middle school zoning, anyway, and have it effective at the same time (starting in the fall of 27).

If the closure is a foregone conclusion and the delay for engagement more of a formality than an opportunity to keep the school open, those communities almost certainly would be staying at Sligo MS, though Sligo, itself, and some portion of the current SSIMS catchment then apportioned to Sligo, would occupy the SSIMS structure as a holding school for a couple of years.

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Anonymous wrote:You can say they’re separate decisions, but right now the only options that don’t close SSIMS also involve huge shuffling of students to and away from that school. Everyone from the 4 MSs affected should advocate for that to be changed.

+1000.

Especially the SSiMS families who were the ones who insisted on postponing the closure decision. If the majority of the current SSIMS community was desperate to keep SSIMS (I assume they were or else it would have been really selfish of a minority of them to fight this hard to keep it), they should also all band together to make sure they all stay at SSIMS, and none of the rest of us get reassigned there.

Rest-of-us poster: apply for a COSA or go private if you are so concerned about your student going to SSIMS. I think what the SSIMS community is hoping for is to keep their community together as well as keeping a school in the neighborhood. Who the hell wants to live next to two permanent holding schools that have health safety issues because the district never properly renovated them.

This community's treatment by MCPS would never fly in west county.

+1

I’m not sure who PP is angry at but maybe they’re not actually that familiar with the save our schools folks.

+1

This poster is laser focused only on how this proposal—which would affect thousands of kids and many SS communities—would affect just their individual child. This is not about your kid! It’s about east county losing an entire middle school and the creation of the largest middle school in the whole county.

Stop blaming families for advocating to keep their school, and for asking to be treated with some modicum of respect by Taylor rather than completely gaslit and bulldozed over.

Nobody's blaming anyone for trying to keep their school. I think it's great that SSiMS families love their school and want to stay there.

However, if what some people are implying is true-- that this is primarily about SCES families wanting to keep SSIMS for their own kids, but they don't care about their kids' classmates staying at SSiMS and so they don't see the boundaries as part of their "save our schools" fight because *they* will be zoned there no matter what-- that's pretty messed up.

(Or if they're saying it's fine for those other families to be zoned away because they don't want to stay at SSIMS in the first place and the "save our schools" campaign just pretended that the whole SSIMS community desperately wanted to keep SSIMS when it was really only a couple hundred families in the close-in neighborhood, that is also messed up, but in a different way.)

Sorry, what? It’s not enough that we’re fighting to keep our neighborhood schools, fighting against mega middle schools, fighting to stay at SSIMS, needing to somehow advocate for Northwood and regional programming…. We also need to rally to make sure other neighborhoods are zoned correctly?

Oof. Is this seriously the way SCES families think? That SSIMS is "our neighborhood school" and everyone else who goes there is from "other neighborhoods" whose interests it feels vaguely ridiculous to be asked to care about?

This person is a troll deliberately stirring the pot and using what parents are saying against them.

Not a troll, just someone annoyed I supported what I thought was a unified community who loved their middle school and were committed to fighting to all be able to stay there together... only to discover that apparently it was just a small neighborhood near the school that is satisfied as soon as they know they're not moving and don't care what anyone else at the school thinks or wants, but were happy to give everyone else in the county the impression they were speaking on behalf of the majority of the SSIMS community because it gave them a better chance to advance their own narrow interests.

You’re not making any sense at all. Can you please explain what neighborhood or school you think is being mistreated by the parents who are trying to keep two schools open?

I think this person is just annoyed some of the boundary options have their kid rezoned to SSIMS and they were hoping the closure went through.

I think you're exactly right. Also, I've been to the SSIMS and SCES meetings and it's not just the "small neighborhood" near the school that wants SSIMS to stay - there are a ton of SSIMS families not in the immediate neighborhood who were at the meetings and were very vocal about opposing the school closure.

Again, if you don't like some of the boundary options, then tell MCPS that. Whining on an online forum isn't going to get you anywhere.

Not sure what the disconnect is here.

My impression, and the impression I believe the folks trying to save SSIMS were trying to give, was "almost all of us families currently zoned to SSIMS love SSIMS and want to make sure we can keep going to SSIMS, so we are all working together to keep our school." It's pretty self-evident that such a fight needs two steps: 1) keep SSIMS from closing, because then obviously no one can go to SSIMS; 2) keep SSIMS boundaries the same because if they change then many of the families currently at SSiMS will get sent away. (While families living right near SSIMS only had to do step 1 to accomplish their goal, the rest of the SSIMS community needs both step 1 and step 2 to accomplish the goal of keeping SSIMS kids at SSIMS.)

Many of us elsewhere in the county signed the SSIMS petitions, engaged in advocacy to keep SSIMS open, etc, in solidarity and wanting to support the SSIMS community when we saw how badly they wanted to stay at their school, even though otherwise we might have agreed that the closure would make more sense for MCPS as a whole. We assumed we were supporting the SSiMS community in their efforts towards both step 1 (stop the SSIMS closure) and step 2 (stop SSIMS kids from being zoned out of SSIMS), although of course step 1 was naturally much higher profile and step 2 would only need to be discussed after winning step 1 because otherwise it would be irrelevant.

I am genuinely and deeply confused about how suddenly there are SSIMS people acting like step 1 and step 2 are unrelated. You all said that SSIMS families love SSIMS and want to stay there, which obviously involves not just keeping the school open but keeping the boundaries the same. If the SSIMS community is now not all working together to keep the current SSIMS boundaries, there are only two other options, right? Either 1) the further-away families never cared about staying at SSIMS in the first place, in which case close-in families misrepresented the opinions of the larger school community in their advocacy; or 2) the further-away families do care about staying at SSIMS but the closer-in families think that since accomplishing step 1 solved their personal problems, it's fine to stop there and leave the rest of the neighborhoods to advocate for step 2 on their own (meaning that even though many of us from elsewhere supported SSIMS as a whole just because it was the right thing to do, some SSIMS families don't even see helping their own kids' classmates stay at SSIMS as something they should care about and organize around.) Is there some option or explanation besides those two?

Is there something I am missing? I honestly don't understand how we're talking past each other. I am absolutely not trying to stir the pot here, just frustrated at what feels like a bait-and-switch, and I would love for there to be a more positive explanation of this, even if it's just "close-in families didn't really think about step 2 before because it didn't affect them personally, but are now realizing that it is important to support the rest of their school community by advocating for boundaries that keep SSIMS together."

Don’t underestimate how much of the opposition to closing SSIMS was about retaining an area middle school and keeping those school sizes down. Also, a significant portion of the opposition came from French Immersion families who will go there regardless of the zoning.

Otherwise, you’re talking very generally. Which neighborhoods are looking at potentially being zoned away from SSIMS? I don’t personally know. If you have a problem with the proposed zoning, get specific.

SSIMS has both Spanish Immersion and French Immersion. I think Spanish is larger. They also would go there regardless of zoning.

Actually no, Spanish Immersion is now just the neighborhood kids (Rolling Terrace, or other immersion kids already zoned for SSIMS). Rolling Terrace is zoned away from SSIMS in many of the boundary options. I do think that’s a loss. Not sure how that community feels.

Are there really that few from RTES (whole school dual immersion, no?) plus those in-bounds at the Rock Creek Forest full-immersion program that continue? There are only 30-40 per grade in French.

I’m not sure. They dramatically scaled back who can go to SSIMS for Spanish a couple of years ago because of overcrowding.

The potential RTES boundary change looks like one of several in the county that may compromise a middle school pathway for dual immersion kids. I think that would probably be a shame, but I have not heard or seen much from the RTES community about this. I also don’t know if doing Spanish at TPMS is possibly on the agenda.

TPMS may be under-enrolled once they do to the middle schools what they are doing to the high schools, re: program contraction of the countywide programs. So, there might be room for RTES' programming at TPMS.