DCC and NEC families, how do you feel about them (likely) going away?

[Anonymous]

Curious folks' reaction to the announcement at the board meeting that MCPS will be recommending the elimination of the DCC and NEC. How do families with middle and high schoolers in those clusters feel about that? They say having the regional programs will be almost as good, do you agree? Is this something you plan to support, oppose, or do you not really care? I have little kids in one of these regions and curious to understand more how people feel about it.

[Anonymous]

Very disappointed but we chose our home school for our first kid, which had very little in the advanced academics, so being able to lottery into another school for our other kid was far better, as they have way better opportunities. If they could bring more opportunities to all schools, that would be the ideal, as transportation is a huge issue.

[Anonymous]

The DCC was always better in theory than in practice. It's time for a new model.

[Anonymous]

I'm fine with it. I hope it's not too disruptive for the kids caught in the middle of the transition, but I'm not wedded long term to a particular set up.

[Anonymous]

Current DCC parent and I'm fine with it. There was little genuine choice and most kids stuck with home schools or magnets.

The new approach seems better

[Anonymous]

I'm a Kennedy parent. I don't think the DCC has done well by Kennedy. I think the regional model could be better, but I'm not confident MCPS will execute the regional program competently so I anticipate it'll be a messy, chaotic transition.

[Anonymous]

I'm fine with it.

[Anonymous]

I’m open to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

While some parents and families have been happy to be able to select a school, the consortia model has been an abject failure.

The original reason the NEC and DCC were created was so that MCPS/BOE didn't have to draw hard boundary lines when Blake opened and Northwood reopened. Boundary studies and hard boundary lines are divisive and controversial (see what is happening now with Woodward/Crown). Instead, they opted to make soft boundary lines with a promise that families would have choices.

What has happened over time is:

1. The signature programs have become less and less "signature". There really is very little difference in course offerings from school to school within the consortia.

2. The schools in the consortia have very little sense of community, with lots of vertical articulation challenges. Listen to all the outcry about splitting elementary and middle schools in the Crown/Woodward studies. There is a reason those communities are against splitting their feeder schools. In the NEC and DCC, it is splitting feeders on steroids.

3. MCPS is spending significant money by sending five buses to every DCC bus stop and three to every NEC bus stop.

4. In the NEC in particular, there was a goal to try to socially engineer demographics in the three schools through the choice lottery system. As time went on though, the NEC as a whole became more and more homogenous. Twenty years ago, Blake was the "white" school, PB the "black" school and Springbrook the "Hispanic" school. The three schools look very similar to each other now.

5. Extracurricular activity involvement becomes a real challenge in the consortia. Getting rides home after practices or rehearsals or back to school for games or concerts is a big challenge when everyone lives to spread out. Add in the challenge that families don't know each other well and carpooling to/from school activities is extremely difficult.

6. In the DCC in particular, things were never going to be on an even playing field when comparing the schools. From Blair's specialty programs to Wheaton's brand new school, some of the schools were always going to get the short end of the stick (Kennedy and Northwood in particular). Northwood's new facility will hopefully improve things, but the long layover at Woodward exacerbated the gap.

Staff at the schools will be ecstatic if/when the consortia go away. Families will initially be upset - any time choice is taken away it isn't popular. But going away from the consortia is in the best interests of MCPS and the individual schools.

It will be interesting to see if these "region" models have the same negative impacts on all 25 schools, or if the number of students going to their non-home school is minimal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While some parents and families have been happy to be able to select a school, the consortia model has been an abject failure.

The original reason the NEC and DCC were created was so that MCPS/BOE didn't have to draw hard boundary lines when Blake opened and Northwood reopened. Boundary studies and hard boundary lines are divisive and controversial (see what is happening now with Woodward/Crown). Instead, they opted to make soft boundary lines with a promise that families would have choices.

What has happened over time is:

1. The signature programs have become less and less "signature". There really is very little difference in course offerings from school to school within the consortia.

2. The schools in the consortia have very little sense of community, with lots of vertical articulation challenges. Listen to all the outcry about splitting elementary and middle schools in the Crown/Woodward studies. There is a reason those communities are against splitting their feeder schools. In the NEC and DCC, it is splitting feeders on steroids.

3. MCPS is spending significant money by sending five buses to every DCC bus stop and three to every NEC bus stop.

4. In the NEC in particular, there was a goal to try to socially engineer demographics in the three schools through the choice lottery system. As time went on though, the NEC as a whole became more and more homogenous. Twenty years ago, Blake was the "white" school, PB the "black" school and Springbrook the "Hispanic" school. The three schools look very similar to each other now.

5. Extracurricular activity involvement becomes a real challenge in the consortia. Getting rides home after practices or rehearsals or back to school for games or concerts is a big challenge when everyone lives to spread out. Add in the challenge that families don't know each other well and carpooling to/from school activities is extremely difficult.

6. In the DCC in particular, things were never going to be on an even playing field when comparing the schools. From Blair's specialty programs to Wheaton's brand new school, some of the schools were always going to get the short end of the stick (Kennedy and Northwood in particular). Northwood's new facility will hopefully improve things, but the long layover at Woodward exacerbated the gap.

Staff at the schools will be ecstatic if/when the consortia go away. Families will initially be upset - any time choice is taken away it isn't popular. But going away from the consortia is in the best interests of MCPS and the individual schools.

It will be interesting to see if these "region" models have the same negative impacts on all 25 schools, or if the number of students going to their non-home school is minimal.

The consortium schools have a huge sense of community and kids often interact with kids at other schools. In one activity we are in the kids in all the schools are supportive and when something bad happened at one school all the kids reached out to that school and showed huge support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Current DCC parent and I'm fine with it. There was little genuine choice and most kids stuck with home schools or magnets.

The new approach seems better

Current NEC parent and I agree completely. It’s time for the NEC and DCC to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Staff at the schools will be ecstatic if/when the consortia go away.

Why do you say that?

[Anonymous]

The consortium schools have a huge sense of community and kids often interact with kids at other schools. In one activity we are in the kids in all the schools are supportive and when something bad happened at one school all the kids reached out to that school and showed huge support.


They do have a sense of community between each other, but the experience of being in a true "community" school (which is what the non-consortia schools are referred to as) is much different than that at a consortia school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Staff at the schools will be ecstatic if/when the consortia go away.

Why do you say that?

It is extremely difficult to overcome the challenges of having so many students coming from various areas, both from a vertical articulation standpoint and getting the community to support the school.

High school counselors and administrators, in an ideal situation, work closely with their feeder middle schools to ensure smooth transitions to high school. It's much easier to do with one or two middle schools where almost every student goes to the same high school. Much more challenging when there are so many middle schools and they are split between either three or five high schools.

Getting students to participate in after school activities is a challenge when transportation is a challenge in the consortia.

The families and community are not connected to the consortia schools to the degree they are in the community schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Staff at the schools will be ecstatic if/when the consortia go away.

Why do you say that?

It is extremely difficult to overcome the challenges of having so many students coming from various areas, both from a vertical articulation standpoint and getting the community to support the school.

High school counselors and administrators, in an ideal situation, work closely with their feeder middle schools to ensure smooth transitions to high school. It's much easier to do with one or two middle schools where almost every student goes to the same high school. Much more challenging when there are so many middle schools and they are split between either three or five high schools.

Getting students to participate in after school activities is a challenge when transportation is a challenge in the consortia.

The families and community are not connected to the consortia schools to the degree they are in the community schools.

I wonder if these issues will now be spread throughout the county with the regional model though. Maybe they should just focus on having a core set of AP/IB classes actually offered at each school.