MCPS planning very limited regional program transportation (HS pickups only)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Im confused
we are in the NE consortium right now
Blake/ PB/Springbrook. I know that Sherwood is getting added to make our region.
Are you saying that if I live in PB area but my kid goes to Blake, there will be no bus from close to my house?
How do you all know this already. It hasnt even started?

The Board is voting to end the NE Consortium and the Down County Consortium in a few weeks. All students will be assigned to their home school, no options to rank/pick a consortium. They have a proposal for launching new regional programs that kids can apply to at the other schools in their regions (your region is the current NEC schools plus Sherwood), but if your child is accepted and wants to go it appears that there will be very limited transportation to those programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im confused
we are in the NE consortium right now
Blake/ PB/Springbrook. I know that Sherwood is getting added to make our region.
Are you saying that if I live in PB area but my kid goes to Blake, there will be no bus from close to my house?
How do you all know this already. It hasnt even started?

The Board is voting to end the NE Consortium and the Down County Consortium in a few weeks. All students will be assigned to their home school, no options to rank/pick a consortium. They have a proposal for launching new regional programs that kids can apply to at the other schools in their regions (your region is the current NEC schools plus Sherwood), but if your child is accepted and wants to go it appears that there will be very limited transportation to those programs.

Thanks for explaining
seems crazy to offer a regional choice but then not provide a bus

[Anonymous]

Sort of off topic but transportation related.
If my kid does a sport there are only busses on Tues and Thurs. So my kid has to get picked up on the other days.
We can do that somehow, but that makes sports not equitable either if the kid cant get home after practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sort of off topic but transportation related.
If my kid does a sport there are only busses on Tues and Thurs. So my kid has to get picked up on the other days.
We can do that somehow, but that makes sports not equitable either if the kid cant get home after practice.

Some schools don’t even have activity buses on any days. The truth is that things are wildly uneven from school to school. The other truth is that parents have needed to assist with pick up for extracurriculars forever.

[Anonymous]

This is what happens when urbanites run a county school system.

[Anonymous]

I'm just confused how this will work:

Lets assume High School A currently has 2,000 kids.
Let's just assume for sake of argument they would all want to stay at High School A. Now let's assume that 400 kids from other schools apply to be in the regional program at High School A.

What happens? Are 400 kids from High School A moved to other schools, even though their home school is their first pick? Is there a priority for staying in your neighborhood school?

I'm trying to figure out if this is like the NYC model, where kids have to apply for basically any school and most kids are not at all guaranteed to go to the school closest to their home. Everyone seems to hate that system.

Or is it more like the current magnet system, where you always have a spot at your home school but there's an option to apply for a program at another school if you want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I'm just confused how this will work:

Lets assume High School A currently has 2,000 kids.
Let's just assume for sake of argument they would all want to stay at High School A. Now let's assume that 400 kids from other schools apply to be in the regional program at High School A.

What happens? Are 400 kids from High School A moved to other schools, even though their home school is their first pick? Is there a priority for staying in your neighborhood school?

I'm trying to figure out if this is like the NYC model, where kids have to apply for basically any school and most kids are not at all guaranteed to go to the school closest to their home. Everyone seems to hate that system.

Or is it more like the current magnet system, where you always have a spot at your home school but there's an option to apply for a program at another school if you want.

The students are able to secure their home school slot. Mr. O added a +/-20% errorbar to account for the scenario you described except not at the extreme end. This error range will put some HSs at the tipping point being under- or over- capacity. They currently use the equal partitioning assumption to assign programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I'm just confused how this will work:

Lets assume High School A currently has 2,000 kids.
Let's just assume for sake of argument they would all want to stay at High School A. Now let's assume that 400 kids from other schools apply to be in the regional program at High School A.

What happens? Are 400 kids from High School A moved to other schools, even though their home school is their first pick? Is there a priority for staying in your neighborhood school?

I'm trying to figure out if this is like the NYC model, where kids have to apply for basically any school and most kids are not at all guaranteed to go to the school closest to their home. Everyone seems to hate that system.

Or is it more like the current magnet system, where you always have a spot at your home school but there's an option to apply for a program at another school if you want.

No, it's basically like the current magnet system. You are assigned to your home school unless you apply for and accept a spot at a different school. So in your scenario, if everyone from school A stays at school A and they also host programs with a capacity of 400, the school would just be overcapacity or they might choose to shrink that program or move it to another school to address the capacity issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sort of off topic but transportation related.
If my kid does a sport there are only busses on Tues and Thurs. So my kid has to get picked up on the other days.
We can do that somehow, but that makes sports not equitable either if the kid cant get home after practice.

You also have yo bring them back and forth for games and the buses may not line up with the time your kids leave.

[Anonymous]

Do HS kids normally stay at after school to attend activities or do class project?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I'm just confused how this will work:

Lets assume High School A currently has 2,000 kids.
Let's just assume for sake of argument they would all want to stay at High School A. Now let's assume that 400 kids from other schools apply to be in the regional program at High School A.

What happens? Are 400 kids from High School A moved to other schools, even though their home school is their first pick? Is there a priority for staying in your neighborhood school?

I'm trying to figure out if this is like the NYC model, where kids have to apply for basically any school and most kids are not at all guaranteed to go to the school closest to their home. Everyone seems to hate that system.

Or is it more like the current magnet system, where you always have a spot at your home school but there's an option to apply for a program at another school if you want.

They are probably only going to let a handful from each school go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do HS kids normally stay at after school to attend activities or do class project?

Activities, sports, band yes. Class projects no. But, we have one activity that starts at 5 or so so the kids have to stay at school, for basically 12 hours or go home and come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before my kid started MCPS I used to not fully understand all the complaining. But we are only 1.5 years in and I just can't with these people. This is all just a huge, expensive distraction from the reality that they are graduating a large majority of kids not graduate proficient in math and reading.

Yep - how much is this regional disaster going to cost us?

And in the meantime, the school district is writing its own English Language Arts curriculum for high schools. You might have wondered why that refrigerator curriculum looked haphazard and cast such a low bar. Why can't we buy externally developed and externally evaluated curriculum as the Maryland Blueprint requires? Because we are spending untold millions on implementing up to 100 ill-designed regional programs that will also utilize homemade curriculum.

hahahaha.. another 2.0 disaster. My kids started MCPS when they implemented 2.0, and I was willing to give it a chance. I defended it on this forum. What I dummy I was. 2.0 was a freakin disaster and MCPS thinks they can write their own curriculum at the HS level?

So glad we are done with MCPS this spring.

HS level curricula have been MCPS-created, including the Magnets.

Magnet curriculum is created essentially by a handful of talented teachers targeted at the current magnet student body. For example, discrete math follows the AOPS intermediate number theory with adding in a lot of college-level proofing concepts, which is too easy for students who regularly attend various math competitions, but too hard to students who only master AP Calc and AP stat but do not have math competition experience. Now we are talking about implementing this course to 6 programs with largely diluted math competitor student body. This equals to a death announcement for this course basically.

Or a change for the course to accommodate those who don’t do math competitions on the weekend nor whose parents haven’t been math prepping them since ES.

Why should kids who have mastered AP Calc an AP Stars not be qualified to take Discrete math?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before my kid started MCPS I used to not fully understand all the complaining. But we are only 1.5 years in and I just can't with these people. This is all just a huge, expensive distraction from the reality that they are graduating a large majority of kids not graduate proficient in math and reading.

Yep - how much is this regional disaster going to cost us?

And in the meantime, the school district is writing its own English Language Arts curriculum for high schools. You might have wondered why that refrigerator curriculum looked haphazard and cast such a low bar. Why can't we buy externally developed and externally evaluated curriculum as the Maryland Blueprint requires? Because we are spending untold millions on implementing up to 100 ill-designed regional programs that will also utilize homemade curriculum.

hahahaha.. another 2.0 disaster. My kids started MCPS when they implemented 2.0, and I was willing to give it a chance. I defended it on this forum. What I dummy I was. 2.0 was a freakin disaster and MCPS thinks they can write their own curriculum at the HS level?

So glad we are done with MCPS this spring.

HS level curricula have been MCPS-created, including the Magnets.

Magnet curriculum is created essentially by a handful of talented teachers targeted at the current magnet student body. For example, discrete math follows the AOPS intermediate number theory with adding in a lot of college-level proofing concepts, which is too easy for students who regularly attend various math competitions, but too hard to students who only master AP Calc and AP stat but do not have math competition experience. Now we are talking about implementing this course to 6 programs with largely diluted math competitor student body. This equals to a death announcement for this course basically.

Or a change for the course to accommodate those who don’t do math competitions on the weekend nor whose parents haven’t been math prepping them since ES.

Why should kids who have mastered AP Calc an AP Stars not be qualified to take Discrete math?

No, you don't get me (or maybe my description is misleading). Students who had or had not taken AP Calc and AP Stat can both take discrete math. It doesn't require calculus or statistics knowledge in a large sense, but it's a totally different area in mathematics. Have you heard of "Fermat's Last Theorem"? It is the branch of pure mathematics dedicated to studying the properties, relationships, and patterns of integers. This is one area that necessary for HS math contesters, but no use for the rest students who do not want to compete in math contests or not interested in majoring in pure math major in college. This course will absolutely disappear in the regional program as you won't have enough students interested and capable of doing this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I'm just confused how this will work:

Lets assume High School A currently has 2,000 kids.
Let's just assume for sake of argument they would all want to stay at High School A. Now let's assume that 400 kids from other schools apply to be in the regional program at High School A.

What happens? Are 400 kids from High School A moved to other schools, even though their home school is their first pick? Is there a priority for staying in your neighborhood school?

I'm trying to figure out if this is like the NYC model, where kids have to apply for basically any school and most kids are not at all guaranteed to go to the school closest to their home. Everyone seems to hate that system.

Or is it more like the current magnet system, where you always have a spot at your home school but there's an option to apply for a program at another school if you want.

No, it's basically like the current magnet system. You are assigned to your home school unless you apply for and accept a spot at a different school. So in your scenario, if everyone from school A stays at school A and they also host programs with a capacity of 400, the school would just be overcapacity or they might choose to shrink that program or move it to another school to address the capacity issues.

This is exactly why they predict Einstein will be at 155% capacity due to the popularity of the programs that will be offered at that school. Silvestre specifically asked Taylor about this at the work session on Tuesday, 3/3