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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
BOE members ask to add elementary schools to Woodward, Crown, Damascus boundary studies
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Anonymous
It's the excuse not to renovate schools with asbestos. |
Anonymous
Good news, that is not what taxpayers (or MCPS) are doing! |
Anonymous
I don’t see how building crown is helping renovating schools with asbestos. On the opposite, these renovation projects keep being postponed because of building crown is a priority. |
Anonymous
Building Crown is less expensive than the 4 expansion/renovation projects that were on the books. |
Anonymous
| Wasn't there some provision where the Crown site was only MCPS's to build on within a specified timeframe, and if they didn't build a school by some deadline, then they would lose the rights to the land? |
Anonymous
But these expansion/renovation projects still need to be done. Building crown does not solve the problem of these old asbestos buildings. |
Anonymous
Many land dedications have expiration dates. I believe Crown was one of them. |
Anonymous
The way the BoE is going, I think that vouchers and Charters will eventually be on the table again. MCPS is more political than academic. Once a Public School system goes on the decline, I can't think of a case where it bounced back and became really excellent? It's a vicious cycle. As fewer parents send their kids into Public School or a school system plays games with resourcing kids' education; there's less taxpayers / voters willing to fund it. Once a county gets a 'bad school' rep, it starts losing educated parents (and the tax dollars that go with it). The Public School becomes a dumping ground for kids who's parents can't afford private school. I think we're seeing it happening already with MCPS' declining National Rankings. It used to be pretty good 20 years ago, but now? Look at the "famous graduates" from the schools. Are they Nobel Laureates? President's? Billionaire CEOs? MCPS can bash sources like U.S. News all day long, but it doesn't change the fact that that's the National perception that colleges look at. It's sad. |
Anonymous
I suggested an extremely similar sentiment in another thread and got a lot of snide comments back. I see this redistricting effort as a crossroads. I agree that our public schools have seen some decline, but I think our top public schools are still doing very well. They have excellent performance, and they are still attracting people who value their kids getting a strong public education. What I really hope happens is that BOE uses Woodward and Crown as opportunities to create new clusters of high performing school without disrupting top performers. I think if you leave the proven communities be and build new facilities, you will naturally attract good staff and families from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds who value a strong public education. This is a recipe for creating another top school and adding it to the list. If BOE instead chooses to make sweeping changes to its top schools for political reasons, and the ratings start to tank, I think they will send their best schools into a tailspin like you described and our net performance will drop significantly. We'll see how it plays out. I'm choosing to stay optimistic. |
Anonymous
| I hope they use Woodward and crown as a means too create greater diversity and all MCPS schools. This is the only path too improvement. |
Anonymous
Those are top schools because they exclude the influx of undocumented immigrants that have otherwise changed the county. When I look a little deeper, it seems schools are as good as ever; just demographics have changed. I object to classifying schools as top schools because they have segregated boundaries. Diversity won't make them any less. You just need to accept that this is happening. |
Anonymous
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I just can’t understand why BOE does not think about what really makes the schools better.
We live in East county, even though the DCUMs despise us, enjoyed the neighborhood ES and MS. We have a diverse group of family friends who we have known since K. But the safety at HS and the direction that MCPS is heading worries us all, and kids who could get into magnets will leave, who could afford privates will leave. One of the private school’s tour I’ve attended had 6 parents, 4 were from MCPS. 3 were from East county schools, probably originally never thought about sending kids to private schools. As pp above, I hope the Woodward will bring in positive new vibes in to the community, and MCPS heads back to its great shape that it uses to be. |
Anonymous
Unfortunately this goes against everything MCPS says it stands for. Equity takes from the top and gives to the bottom. So they're going to redo boundaries with that same mindset and it's going to be a disaster. I hope I'm wrong. |
Anonymous
"Exclusion" implies that these schools or their staff are actively choosing not to allow in immigrants. That is not true. The home values that are zoned to these schools are higher because parents who value education compete for them. Undocumented immigrants have fewer resources, so fewer of them can afford to live in these school districts. In our school system, a middle class family of any race or background can buy a townhouse or condo zoned to a top tier school and their kids will join a peer group of high performers. If you break those communities, and break that system, everybody loses. BOE has a choice of whether or not they want to allow those schools to flourish. If they don't, and their performance tanks, I'm not going to "accept that it is happening", I'm going to pull my kids out and put them in a classroom with focused peers who want to succeed. |
Anonymous
DCUM's gonna DCUM. 
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