Big proposed class size increases for Title 1 and focus schools next year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Parents don’t want to parent and want schools to do it.

Sure. It’s just a choice, right? Never mind the thousands of $$ in tutors and enrichment activities that some parents can afford while others cannot. Never mind language barriers and parents who may not have an education themselves. They just choose to be poor.

People are not hiring tutors for K-2 in most cases. And plenty of FARMS kids are not EML and have parents who are native English speakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trying to make sense of the proposed class size changes in the operating budget that was just released (page 349/appendix C): https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/budget/fy2027/2027operatingbudget.pdf

Looks to me like they are planning to implement big class size increases next year in grades K-2 for Title 1 and Focus schools-- the staffing guidelines for these higher-poverty schools used to be 18 per class and have been at 19 the past two years, and the proposal has class sizes at 20-21 for K, 21-22 for 1st, and 22-23 for 2nd for higher-FARMS schools depending on FARMS share-- meaning as much as a 4-child increase in class size from this year and a 5-child increase from what it used to be pre-2024.

They are suggesting modest improvements in class size (around 1-3 fewer kids per class) for richer elementary schools and for grades 3-5 (no changes in MS or HS that I can see), but honestly it doesn't seem wise to me to do that at the expense of the youngest kids at the highest-FARMS schools... those are the formative years to get kids on a solid footing in reading and math, and if they fall further behind in these bigger classes, it's just going to cost more for intervention later on (besides just being the wrong thing to do for those kids and their future), especially with the new state requirement to hold back kids who aren't reading proficiently by 3rd.

Has anyone heard/seen anything more about this elsewhere, as far as how MCPS is justifying the change? It's pretty troubling to me.

Taylor operates like a hedge fund CEO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was looking at the budget to check this out. I am definitely no budget expert. But it looks like *more* schools with poverty indicators will actually experience the benefits of having a reduced class size, but yet the current smaller number of Title I / Focus school will have an increase. This is because there are now three tiers in addition to the base (which is only about 25 schools in the base). In a way, this means more students experiencing poverty will receive the benefits of the funds. A lot of the Tier 3 schools which currently experience the Title I / focus benefits will be at a 1:20 ratio (K as an example) If it is currently at 19, that is on average one extra student but then hundreds of other students in poverty will go from classes of 25+ to a class ratio of 1:21 or 22 (tier 2 and 3). I guess I see it as trying to support more pockets of poverty throughout the district instead of hyperfocusing on just some communities in poverty. But, like I said I am no budget professional so maybe I’m seeing it wrong.

It also looked like there is a $7 million dollar decrease in Title I funds coming from the state!

Thanks Governor Moore!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trying to make sense of the proposed class size changes in the operating budget that was just released (page 349/appendix C): https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/budget/fy2027/2027operatingbudget.pdf

Looks to me like they are planning to implement big class size increases next year in grades K-2 for Title 1 and Focus schools-- the staffing guidelines for these higher-poverty schools used to be 18 per class and have been at 19 the past two years, and the proposal has class sizes at 20-21 for K, 21-22 for 1st, and 22-23 for 2nd for higher-FARMS schools depending on FARMS share-- meaning as much as a 4-child increase in class size from this year and a 5-child increase from what it used to be pre-2024.

They are suggesting modest improvements in class size (around 1-3 fewer kids per class) for richer elementary schools and for grades 3-5 (no changes in MS or HS that I can see), but honestly it doesn't seem wise to me to do that at the expense of the youngest kids at the highest-FARMS schools... those are the formative years to get kids on a solid footing in reading and math, and if they fall further behind in these bigger classes, it's just going to cost more for intervention later on (besides just being the wrong thing to do for those kids and their future), especially with the new state requirement to hold back kids who aren't reading proficiently by 3rd.

Has anyone heard/seen anything more about this elsewhere, as far as how MCPS is justifying the change? It's pretty troubling to me.

Has the Black and Brown Coalition protested this?

[Anonymous]

Looks like for high poverty schools, class sizes will go up for K-2 and either stay the same or go down for 3-5th grade. So they might not be saving any money from the high poverty schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

How much money do they get from the state for FARMs stidents next year, and how much are they spending to support FARMs students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

You keep repeating this same line. You haven’t shown any evidence they don’t spend all of that specific money to serve farms kids. You also have no evidence they are taking that specific money and using it for non farms kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

You keep repeating this same line. You haven’t shown any evidence they don’t spend all of that specific money to serve farms kids. You also have no evidence they are taking that specific money and using it for non farms kids.

I have shared a link to a report that showed this. What is more telling is that MCPS doesn't track the money they spend serving FARMS kids. It's not documented anywhere in the budget. For all their talk of equity they can't even show us the numbers? Gmafb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

How much money do they get from the state for FARMs stidents next year, and how much are they spending to support FARMs students?

Why are you asking a rando on DCUM? MCPS is the only entity that can track and report this and they don't do that. Every few years someone else does this analysis and finds the same bs. Ask more of MCPS please.

[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:Wow Taylor has some serious cojones to do this to low income elementary schools when outcomes are so bad.

And his budget one pager makes it look like he is adding funding to increase equity when he is almost certainly reducing funding for low income schools.

SMH

Outcomes are going to be bad no matter what. It doesn't matter if the class sizes are 5, 10, 20, or 30. Staffing should be the same as all the other schools.

If class size doesn't matter then why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

Less class clowns per class = less teacher distraction = more attention on rach student.

So the poorest kids with the worst outcomes don't need extra attention but yours do?

I am having a hard time understanding the issue with poor families. I come from another country with much less wealth than US. Education was seen as a priority in all families, poor or wealthy. There was a push from inside the family to be be good in school. If one misbehaves, one is disciplined at home. Here we have so much entitlement. If so much money was invested in smaller classrooms, where are the results? How do we have so many failing students?

Exactly. It doesn't matter how small the classes are in the low performing schools. It is a complete waste of resources.

It's not, though. Yes, there are absolutely kids who are borderline impossible to reach, or whose daily life is so traumatic and/or chaotic that they struggle to function in school.

But we don't really have any choice but to try to reach them, because the alternative is creating a permanent underclass with no possibility to escape generational poverty. Like the PP, I came here from a country that is broadly poorer than the United States and where educational standards are generally higher.

However, my country is also happy to leave entire ethnic groups in poverty forever. Also to decide a child's educational path starting at 6, and their lifelong professional/academic path at 13.

That system is only better if you're at the top of it, and it's also fundamentally unstable for society.

Everyone agrees we should try to reach/help those kids. This is not like your home country where we collectively choose to leave groups of kids behind. But school funding and resources aren’t unlimited, so someone needs to decide how much we can afford to allocate in one direction because it will obviously affect what we can spend on other priorities and budget items. There are plenty of people in this county (and on this board) who would gladly put 50 kids in each classroom at Whitman so kids in high farms schools could have a teacher for every 10 kids. Obviously that’s an extreme example but the truth is there isn’t great consensus on where to draw the line. The amount of poverty in the county is relatively new, unprecedented, and increasing rapidly. It’s tricky to calibrate the scale tilting in a county that was only recently mostly middle to UMC.

MCPS literally gets money from the state based on the number of FARMS kids in the state and doesn't spend all of it to serve FARMS kids. The notion that let's use this money to decrease class sizes for non-poor kids is preposterous and blatantly self serving. If class sizes don't matter, why do you want smaller class sizes for your kid?

You keep repeating this same line. You haven’t shown any evidence they don’t spend all of that specific money to serve farms kids. You also have no evidence they are taking that specific money and using it for non farms kids.

I have shared a link to a report that showed this. What is more telling is that MCPS doesn't track the money they spend serving FARMS kids. It's not documented anywhere in the budget. For all their talk of equity they can't even show us the numbers? Gmafb.

If they don’t track it and it’s not documented and they don’t show us the numbers, then how can you keep saying they get money from the state for this purpose and don’t spend it all? How would you know?

[Anonymous]

The state should be funding Tile 1 and Focus directly instead of forcing everyone to waste money on these BS "pre professional" certificates and reshuffling math courses.

MoCo shouldn't be the unfunded dumping ground for the state's poor immigrants.