Blair Magnet moving to Kennedy or Springbrook

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I agree. I think this is very likely to happen. There is just no other way to improve Kennedy without moving the Blair magnet. To be attractive and prestigious a magnet has to pull from across the entire county. The consortium only or school based magnets may offer some more interesting content programming but they do very little to shift the performance of the school. There also is no where to redistrict other neighborhoods out of Blair. The surrounding schools are just as overcrowded. Blair is already almost twice the size of Northwood and Kennedy.

Its solves a bunch of problems and at the end of the day is basically just moving a magnet from one DCC school to another DCC school.

Like the Visual Art Center magnet at Einstein and the Global Ecology magnet at Poolesville, you mean?

The Blair SMACS magnet does not pull from the entire county. I guess it's not attractive and prestigious.

[Anonymous]

Poolesville Global Ecology and Blair SMACs pull from across the county. The point is that to be prestigious and rigorous the program needs a large enough area to pull the very best students. You don't get that with consortium only or smaller.

You can't just slap the word magnet or IB onto a program within a school and expect it draw people to move into the area changing the demographics. The only way to draw more MC and UMC into Kennedy is to move a county wide magnet that is desirable to the very best students into it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Poolesville Global Ecology and Blair SMACs pull from across the county. The point is that to be prestigious and rigorous the program needs a large enough area to pull the very best students. You don't get that with consortium only or smaller.

You can't just slap the word magnet or IB onto a program within a school and expect it draw people to move into the area changing the demographics. The only way to draw more MC and UMC into Kennedy is to move a county wide magnet that is desirable to the very best students into it.

Blair SMACS does NOT pull from across the county.

[Anonymous]

Blair SMACS does NOT pull from across the county.

If Blair does not pull from across the county, then why are some of the screw Kennedy posters saying that it can't move because W parents would never let their kids go to Kennedy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Blair SMACS does NOT pull from across the county.

If Blair does not pull from across the county, then why are some of the screw Kennedy posters saying that it can't move because W parents would never let their kids go to Kennedy?

Blair SMAC pulls from 16 high schools including all of the W's. Poolesville SMAC pulls from the other 9. It is amazing how people have so much to say but know so little about the programs they are talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Blair SMACS does NOT pull from across the county.

If Blair does not pull from across the county, then why are some of the screw Kennedy posters saying that it can't move because W parents would never let their kids go to Kennedy?

Blair SMAC pulls from 16 high schools including all of the W's. Poolesville SMAC pulls from the other 9. It is amazing how people have so much to say but know so little about the programs they are talking about.

+1K

[Anonymous]

Blair pulls from across the county. It just isn't a county-wide magnet. It is bringing in kids who are outside of the DCC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blair pulls from across the county. It just isn't a county-wide magnet. It is bringing in kids who are outside of the DCC.

Outside of the DCC, yes. Across the county, no. Perhaps a visual aid will help:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair pulls from across the county. It just isn't a county-wide magnet. It is bringing in kids who are outside of the DCC.

Outside of the DCC, yes. Across the county, no. Perhaps a visual aid will help:

And ignore RMIB being on that map. It's countywide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Unlikely that those students would be willing to go to Kennedy. Program will lose its current status and selectivity. Pretty much suicide for the program.

I don't buy this. Maybe TP in boundary Blair SMAC parents won't send their kids but the OOB and other DCC parents will. For the few who will not, there are plenty of top applicants that will gladly take a spot. As long as the entire program moves, it keeps the county wide aspect and it doesn't become a watered down magnet it will have the same draw.

The parents that would be afraid to send their kid to Kennedy would have been afraid to send the kid to Blair. Outside the DCC, people aren't drawing the same distinctions that people inside the DCC draw about the areas.

W parent here. I am not sure about this. I spoke to lots of parents who had kids at Blair before we agreed to let dc go to the magnet program. We were impressed by what we heard about the non magnet teachers, the large number of high achieving neighborhood kids who would be in non magnet classes and the enormous number of active clubs - drama, debate, Model UN, Silver Chips (the award winning newspaper), One Blair. Many of these clubs are highly integrated. The same is true of the athletic teams. Close to 30% of magnet students are varsity athletes. I wanted my child to attend a well- run, high school where he would be well integrated into the fabric of the school. That may well happen at Kennedy or Springbrook but it is likely to take years or decades and I think it would be a tough sell for many parents in the meantime.

[Anonymous]

What is up with that small white area that is cut off from the rest of its cluster and placed in the Upcounty Magnets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is up with that small white area that is cut off from the rest of its cluster and placed in the Upcounty Magnets?

Yeah, that is odd. It's the northern tip of the area zoned for Greenwood/Rosa Parks/Sherwood, and it's almost all farmland with only a small number of houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is up with that small white area that is cut off from the rest of its cluster and placed in the Upcounty Magnets?

Yeah, that is odd. It's the northern tip of the area zoned for Greenwood/Rosa Parks/Sherwood, and it's almost all farmland with only a small number of houses.

It may just be a map error. The magnet program description indicates all of Sherwood is in the Blair catchment: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/high/magnet-science.aspx

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is up with that small white area that is cut off from the rest of its cluster and placed in the Upcounty Magnets?

Yeah, that is odd. It's the northern tip of the area zoned for Greenwood/Rosa Parks/Sherwood, and it's almost all farmland with only a small number of houses.

It may just be a map error. The magnet program description indicates all of Sherwood is in the Blair catchment: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/high/magnet-science.aspx

Looks like it's the Unity Area which was reassigned from Gaithersburg to Sherwood in 2017:
http://gis.mcpsmd.org/boundarystudypdfs/UnityBOEAdoptedBoundary.pdf

[Anonymous]

You are just parsing words. Blair is pretty far from Olney. It is across the county.