Initial boundary options for Woodward study area are up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And if we are doing something costly to help poor kids is this the thing that actually helps? Versus improving schools.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the option 3. It tries to bring much needed diversity in many schools.

WJ becomes 30%, Woodward 50% and Whitman 20% FARMS?

MCPS needs to calculate bus time and see if it's practical. As long as bus rude is not longer than 20-25 minutes, it will work. Longer than than is impractical.

It’s not practical bc it’s a logistical nightmare and expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Very few can afford to do that.

[Anonymous]

Do poor kids want to be bused all over the county?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do poor kids want to be bused all over the county?

Option 3 has both poor kids being bussed to wealthy school communities and rich kids being bussed to poorer school communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do poor kids want to be bused all over the county?

Option 3 has both poor kids being bussed to wealthy school communities and rich kids being bussed to poorer school communities.

I understand that but we are hearing from the DCUM crowd who generally sways more wealthy. We aren’t going to hear here from the poorer families that are also being impacted. It seems to be taken as a given, though, that the poorer families will be pleased to be bused everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do poor kids want to be bused all over the county?

Option 3 has both poor kids being bussed to wealthy school communities and rich kids being bussed to poorer school communities.

I understand that but we are hearing from the DCUM crowd who generally sways more wealthy. We aren’t going to hear here from the poorer families that are also being impacted. It seems to be taken as a given, though, that the poorer families will be pleased to be bused everywhere.

Why would lower income kids want to be bussed and pleased? I’d be super pissed as we deliberately bought in a lesser neighborhood as it’s more down to earth and what we could afford at the time. We could easily afford to move but that’s not the world we want our kids in. Bussing is a huge issue for parents without cars, health issues, etc to get kids back and forth for activities, late drop offs, sports, etc. But, we also know what we say has zero impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if we are doing something costly to help poor kids is this the thing that actually helps? Versus improving schools.

No, it's not! Bussing white kids to low performing, high-minority schools will NOT make them better.

If MCPS wants to improve lower performing, high-minority/FARMS schools, they need to:

1) Prioritize hiring and retaining quality school leadership. If you look at many of the high schools in the bottom rung of MCPS, you'll find admin deficiencies. It's very hard for a school to thrive with ineffective or incompetent leadership

2) Take a hard look at instructional quality. Lower performing schools tend to have a higher proportion of inexperienced teachers, since rookie teachers don't get as much of a voice in where they're placed compared to their veteran counterparts. These newbie teachers flounder and struggle. Some of them flame out and quit the profession, in fact. If MCPS had competent school leaders who were capable of evaluating and improving classroom instruction, you'd see improvements in the school. The problem is improving instructional quality is the job of the admin team, but as mentioned in the point above, many of these lower performing schools have incompetent or low-performing admin teams.

3) More money for resources and programming. The higher performing schools in MCPS have an abundance of resources that ensure supplies and programming are available to their kids that is usually supplied by active and resourced PTAs. Lower performing MCPS schools tend to have smaller or inactive PTAs that can't fill those gaps. Taylor's school-based equity funding in the budget for next year is meant to close this gap. We'll have to see how it goes.

We’ve been lobbying for more advanced classes and aps for next year and were told no. It’s the principals decision. This is all for show to distract from all the other issues that have not been addressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Many will not due to lack of space at privates and cost. Most of us cannot afford $50-70k per child and that money is better spent on college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the option 3. It tries to bring much needed diversity in many schools.

WJ becomes 30%, Woodward 50% and Whitman 20% FARMS?

MCPS needs to calculate bus time and see if it's practical. As long as bus rude is not longer than 20-25 minutes, it will work. Longer than than is impractical.

Many local bus times are 30-60 minutes so these bus times easily could be over an hour. We live 10 minutes from two schools and it takes one 30 minutes, another an hour to get home with the routes and stops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do poor kids want to be bused all over the county?

Option 3 has both poor kids being bussed to wealthy school communities and rich kids being bussed to poorer school communities.

I understand that but we are hearing from the DCUM crowd who generally sways more wealthy. We aren’t going to hear here from the poorer families that are also being impacted. It seems to be taken as a given, though, that the poorer families will be pleased to be bused everywhere.

Why would lower income kids want to be bussed and pleased? I’d be super pissed as we deliberately bought in a lesser neighborhood as it’s more down to earth and what we could afford at the time. We could easily afford to move but that’s not the world we want our kids in. Bussing is a huge issue for parents without cars, health issues, etc to get kids back and forth for activities, late drop offs, sports, etc. But, we also know what we say has zero impact.

What leads you to believe you can have zero impact?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Many will not due to lack of space at privates and cost. Most of us cannot afford $50-70k per child and that money is better spent on college.

Good thing Sandy Springs is keeping the doors open.

To buy a house in the neighborhoods they are talking about busing East, a family needs to make $500K plus. I’m guessing there is room in that budget for private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Many will not due to lack of space at privates and cost. Most of us cannot afford $50-70k per child and that money is better spent on college.

Good thing Sandy Springs is keeping the doors open.

To buy a house in the neighborhoods they are talking about busing East, a family needs to make $500K plus. I’m guessing there is room in that budget for private schools.

Of course, it does help with over utilization to move wealthy families out of the public schools. But I think we really need to consider if that’s the kind of communities we want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Many will not due to lack of space at privates and cost. Most of us cannot afford $50-70k per child and that money is better spent on college.

Good thing Sandy Springs is keeping the doors open.

To buy a house in the neighborhoods they are talking about busing East, a family needs to make $500K plus. I’m guessing there is room in that budget for private schools.

As noted upthread, the median household income in the Chevy Chase zip code is $200k. So more than half the households in CC definitely aren’t making $500k plus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is most definitely on the table! Sorry but a badly needed change is coming.

Agree it’s in the table. Parents who oppose it should organize now.

But if it does happen, many parents will move/go private to avoid it. That’s just the reality.

Many will not due to lack of space at privates and cost. Most of us cannot afford $50-70k per child and that money is better spent on college.

Good thing Sandy Springs is keeping the doors open.

To buy a house in the neighborhoods they are talking about busing East, a family needs to make $500K plus. I’m guessing there is room in that budget for private schools.

As noted upthread, the median household income in the Chevy Chase zip code is $200k. So more than half the households in CC definitely aren’t making $500k plus.

Single family homeowners, the new ones at least, do. I could never afford my house if I had to buy it today!