Rosemary Hills ES vs. Rock Creek Forest ES

[Anonymous]

Re class warfare --

I certainly don't see wealthier people in the CC and Bethesda areas "looking down their noses" at other races or income levels. However, our personal experience has been that a lot of CC and Bethesda parents and teachers make assumptions that everyone can afford certain things at school -- spring break trips to Europe, raising significant charity funds, lack of interest in raising after school scholarship money, etc. I think this stems more from a lack of awareness that we exist in the cluster rather than a deliberate decision that the famiiiies in our school with fewer financial resources are intrinsically less worthy than the wealthy (speaking as one of those with pretty limited financial resources.) Perhaps a better way to describe our experience has been that the school academic and outside-school social environment is "not very inclusive."

East Bethesda parents worked hard to finally pull their kids out of the RHPS/BES/NCC/CCES pairing originally set up to correct a history of racial segregation in schools, but the ostensible reason to pull out of the pairing was the fact that BES students had to matriculate into an upper elementary that already had K-2 students and so wasn't as welcoming as those upper elementaries (CC and NCC) that are 3-6. I personally don't believe that the reason for lobbying to exit the pairing was racially-based.

That said, the representation that everyone who goes to RHPS and RCF are wealthy is incorrect. It's certainly not true that the median housing price east of Conn is $750 K in this school cluster. Or if it is true, then the median hides a significant housing price/income range. There are areas of housing -- Summit Hills, RCF Gardens, Rolling Terrace and a few other pockets of pretty low income housing/families. Many homes on the East side of Sundale are in the 350-500K range (still not poverty level, admittedly).

The result of these housing patterns is that more minority, immigrant, non-English speaking and/or limited financial means kids go to RHPS and RCF than, say, Bethesda or Somerset. This means that, statistically speaking, there are more kids who come to school without a foundation in key K skills like letter recognition, literacy, etc., and who have limited home academic support. Of course, IMO, these students have as much cognitive capacity as any other students in the cluster, but, IME, there is also a significant amount of "quiet" bias in the classroom. I personally have seen several teachers at RHPS and the associated upper school my DC attended with very limited expectations for these kids in the classroom, both in terms of academic expectations and behavioral expectations. I wish this were different. It could and should be different.

Historically, RHPS was the "black" elementary school and Bethesda, CC and NCC were among the "white" schools. The school-pairing scheme did away with segregation, and since then housing patterns have probably made these areas less segregated as well. While these areas have become less segregated over time, there are some (including myself) who opposed the siting of the new middle school because it's location risked a return to the old cluster divisions, where race and wealth of families signficantly determined educational opportunities. These concerns were not the basis for the suit, but they did form a part of the overall opposition to the siting.

As other PP's stated there's been no official move to change the BCC cluster boundaries. But, one does wonder what will happen to BCC in the long term (20-30+ years) since BCC land space is limited, and significant residential development proceeds in Bethesda and at Chevy Chase Lake.

As other DCUM threads are discussing, segregation or (re-segregation) is still an issue in the county.