Real Talk - are MCPS schools safe anymore?

[Anonymous]

The schools are fine. We are dealing with individual outlier students and situations. Expect one bad year where you may have troubled student in class who needs a lot of support.

Bomb threats are not new. They happened when we were kids too but were much less publicized to the general community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bomb threats are disruptive but not dangerous. And we had them in my rust belt small town in the 1990s as well, so I think some of it just hearing about things more. You didn’t use to hear about things impacting neighborhood high schools before the internet.

We had bomb threats in my southern HS in the 80s. I think I spent about 1/3 of the first month of my freshman year in the parking lot. Copycats, bored kids, easy availability of anonymous pay phones.

[Anonymous]

Op, I would never ask for an opinion of MCPS on this forum. The people who are married to it are vultures and deny any cracks in the surface. To you I say, if you have to ask the question you already have your answer. I pulled my DD in kindergarten and moved her to private. This is after her older siblings went to MCPS, they were her half sisters who lived with us full time and were a decade or so ahead of her. It was different back then, the girls loved it and the teachers were not overwhelmed. We were excited to have our youngest be able to walk to her schools in our neighborhood and follow in her siblings footsteps. That experience lasted half of the kindergarten school year and we moved her to private without any regrets and at the encouragement of her siblings. Very sad that parents defend what once was the number one school district in this country and its continued downfall. Private.

[Anonymous]

Bullying and racial bias are more of a concern or threat to my child’s safety than a bomb or mass shooting.

[Anonymous]

Don't be absurd yes they are safe.

MCPS has like 160,000 students a day.

RW nutjobs are gas lighting. Just like they did in Loudoun County. How did that work out for those folks? Badly they got Youngkin the criminal and the RW lawsuits are all dismissed or thrown out. I think there might be one left it will go no where.

People need to wake up to the insanity of the religious right. They have planned. this for over 20 years. They know what they are doing and you all fall for it hook line and sinker til it's too late.

Does MCPS have challenges of course, but the fear-mongering is over the top absurdity.

[Anonymous]

They arent.

Virtual (albeit it'll take 10 years) is the future of ALL schools.

To be honest, thats where it should be. If you stepped foot in a school today, you wouldnt see kids learning like you would have 1950-2019.

They are all on their phones. It's sad but its true. Parents arent any help. "I need to be in contact with my child."

99.9% of texts are parents.

How did we get here?

[Anonymous]

The fact is violence can find your child anywhere. Even at a private school though private schools have the ability to expel a problem student quickly. We have done public and private. The private actually had less security but I will say that it felt safer. Either way, the odds are overwhelmingly in your child’s favor in MCPS. I hate bomb threats and understand why they need to investigate but when has there ever actually been a school bombing in MCPS or anywhere in the DC area? I do not believe there’s been one in my lifetime. And I don’t believe there’s been one anywhere in the country. School shootings are to me scarier. The odds are still very very low but it is hard to see the news and then drop your kids at school. I have done a fairly good job keeping the worry in check but the latest threat at Wootton (our HS) hit too close to home. I was very upset. Yet I sent my son off to school each day since because I think these things can happen anywhere. The school and police did their job well and averted a shooting. Now everyone is vigilant and the perpetrator isn’t free. I remind myself that the kids who will actually strike out violently are true outliers. My kids are at least as safe at school as at Nats Park, on the metro or at the mall. And my gut says they are actually much safer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, I would never ask for an opinion of MCPS on this forum. The people who are married to it are vultures and deny any cracks in the surface. To you I say, if you have to ask the question you already have your answer. I pulled my DD in kindergarten and moved her to private. This is after her older siblings went to MCPS, they were her half sisters who lived with us full time and were a decade or so ahead of her. It was different back then, the girls loved it and the teachers were not overwhelmed. We were excited to have our youngest be able to walk to her schools in our neighborhood and follow in her siblings footsteps. That experience lasted half of the kindergarten school year and we moved her to private without any regrets and at the encouragement of her siblings. Very sad that parents defend what once was the number one school district in this country and its continued downfall. Private.

No everyone is rich enough for a private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They arent.

Virtual (albeit it'll take 10 years) is the future of ALL schools.

To be honest, thats where it should be. If you stepped foot in a school today, you wouldnt see kids learning like you would have 1950-2019.

They are all on their phones. It's sad but its true. Parents arent any help. "I need to be in contact with my child."

99.9% of texts are parents.

How did we get here?

So you want to get kids off phones and put them on computers all day?

Yeah, that’ll solve all our problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They arent.

Virtual (albeit it'll take 10 years) is the future of ALL schools.

To be honest, thats where it should be. If you stepped foot in a school today, you wouldnt see kids learning like you would have 1950-2019.

They are all on their phones. It's sad but its true. Parents arent any help. "I need to be in contact with my child."

99.9% of texts are parents.

How did we get here?

Probably not for virtual. Mcps has a waitlist and they are not expanding the program.

With all the bomb threats and other stuff, phones are a necessity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They arent.

Virtual (albeit it'll take 10 years) is the future of ALL schools.

To be honest, thats where it should be. If you stepped foot in a school today, you wouldnt see kids learning like you would have 1950-2019.

They are all on their phones. It's sad but its true. Parents arent any help. "I need to be in contact with my child."

99.9% of texts are parents.

How did we get here?

So you want to get kids off phones and put them on computers all day?

Yeah, that’ll solve all our problems.

DP... yeah? My kid is in Virtual Virginia. They probably know more than your kid does and they don't face the fears MCPS provides on a daily basis. Yeah, we're good. They even have best friends! They are on teams! Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Yes, they're by and large fine. Most of this is just being blown of proportion by far-right activists with a political agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they're by and large fine. Most of this is just being blown of proportion by far-right activists with a political agenda.

People who use, rinse, recycle, repeat....

You? Yeah...boring. Out of touch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bomb threats are disruptive but not dangerous. And we had them in my rust belt small town in the 1990s as well, so I think some of it just hearing about things more. You didn’t use to hear about things impacting neighborhood high schools before the internet.

We had bomb threats in my southern HS in the 80s. I think I spent about 1/3 of the first month of my freshman year in the parking lot. Copycats, bored kids, easy availability of anonymous pay phones.

+1 I definitely remember bomb threats in Bethesda in the 90s. And I was at a private school.

[Anonymous]

Never a threat of a mass shooting in the 90s at a MoCo school