Schools by county versus town

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

Newton is like Chevy Chase wealthy, not surprising

Yes, so the schools are like those Chevy Chase and McLean would have if the parents there weren't also subsiding the education for the kids in Wheaton and Annandale.

It's kind of bizarre how the liberals from New England seem to think that system is admirable.

Yes, I second this. The town system seems fantastic if you're in a rich town, but many more kids live in middling or poor towns. With a county system, the rich subsidize the poor so you get less of a vicious circle where the poor stay poor.

A county system ensures the poorer areas also get decent services. People talk about NY towns being so great, but they aren't referring to the school systems in Queens or the Bronx typically. The couple of problems I see with a county system are that sometimes they are too efficient. Schools can be quite large because they don't have to reside inside a certain boundary line. Also, the communities themselves are not as cohesive. This is why towns like Vienna are so popular. They get the benefit of using a county system, but also have a local government to bring more cohesiveness to the community. Reston and McLean also have a similar setup even though they are not incorporated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

+1 wrt my Massachusetts town.

I miss having a voice in local government, including the local school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

Newton is like Chevy Chase wealthy, not surprising

Yes, so the schools are like those Chevy Chase and McLean would have if the parents there weren't also subsiding the education for the kids in Wheaton and Annandale.

It's kind of bizarre how the liberals from New England seem to think that system is admirable.

Yes, I second this. The town system seems fantastic if you're in a rich town, but many more kids live in middling or poor towns. With a county system, the rich subsidize the poor so you get less of a vicious circle where the poor stay poor.

Yes and no. The town I grew up in had affluent residents, less-affluent residents, and residents who live in public housing. All of the kids attended the same high school.

MCPS on the other hand is extremely stratified from a SES perspective. Whitman, e.g., has <5% FARMS population whereas many of the schools in eastern MoCo have >70% FARMS population. The effect is the same as if e.g. Bethesda were a different town from Wheaton.

IMO the culprit is housing policy, but that is a different conversation, I suppose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

Newton is like Chevy Chase wealthy, not surprising

Yes, so the schools are like those Chevy Chase and McLean would have if the parents there weren't also subsiding the education for the kids in Wheaton and Annandale.

It's kind of bizarre how the liberals from New England seem to think that system is admirable.

Yes, I second this. The town system seems fantastic if you're in a rich town, but many more kids live in middling or poor towns. With a county system, the rich subsidize the poor so you get less of a vicious circle where the poor stay poor.

Yes and no. The town I grew up in had affluent residents, less-affluent residents, and residents who live in public housing. All of the kids attended the same high school.

MCPS on the other hand is extremely stratified from a SES perspective. Whitman, e.g., has <5% FARMS population whereas many of the schools in eastern MoCo have >70% FARMS population. The effect is the same as if e.g. Bethesda were a different town from Wheaton.

IMO the culprit is housing policy, but that is a different conversation, I suppose.

But the poor area high school is heavily subsidized by the Bethesda residents. Do you really want Bethesda and Potomac to be their own school district?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

Newton is like Chevy Chase wealthy, not surprising

Yet in my MA summer town the school is not great, offers very few advanced classes, sends surprisingly few kids to 4 year colleges and even fewer to 4 year colleges of any note. The town recently merged schools with a neighboring town to try to get some economies of scale and better services to students. And this is a town that benefits from wealthy retirees and RE taxes on very expensive summer houses so has a healthier budget than some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

+1 wrt my Massachusetts town.

I miss having a voice in local government, including the local school system.

Feel free to show up to tomorrow's meeting. These happen all the time.

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[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yup, from new England and some towns had great schools because that's what the residents focused in, some had crappy schools. Fwiw the facilities and staff where I grew up (Newton MA) put ffx and MoCo to shame. Yes even at Whitman.

Newton is like Chevy Chase wealthy, not surprising

Yes, so the schools are like those Chevy Chase and McLean would have if the parents there weren't also subsiding the education for the kids in Wheaton and Annandale.

It's kind of bizarre how the liberals from New England seem to think that system is admirable.

Yes, I second this. The town system seems fantastic if you're in a rich town, but many more kids live in middling or poor towns. With a county system, the rich subsidize the poor so you get less of a vicious circle where the poor stay poor.

I agree with this too. I grew up in Fairfield County, CT and while many of the school districts are fantastic, Bridgeport, CT is a poor town (surrounded by wealthy ones) and their schools were TERRIBLE. They would have benefitted greatly from a county system.

[Anonymous]

I loved the town school system where I grew up in NY state. My siblings loved it too. They send their kids to the same schools we attended. But they pay 5 times what I pay in property taxes in order to support those schools.

[Anonymous]

Another one who grew up in a NYC suburb with a smallish school district. I loved it at the time and thrived in all the advanced offerings, but now watch with sadness at what it has become and lost over the past generation. Which makes me happy that I now live in FCPS, where there is a much smaller divide among the haves and have nots. (And our property taxes are much cheaper here than back home in NY.)

[Anonymous]

Glad I grew up out west where school districts are separate entities from city and county governments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Glad I grew up out west where school districts are separate entities from city and county governments.

Did you pay a separate school tax and elect school officials? I'm curious how this works.

[Anonymous]

"Yes, so the schools are like those Chevy Chase and McLean would have if the parents there weren't also subsiding the education for the kids in Wheaton and Annandale.

It's kind of bizarre how the liberals from New England seem to think that system is admirable. "

If you are rich and only care about your kid obviously a town system is better. If you can see past your own front door a bit then you will acknowledge that county systems help at least in part to address some of the massive advantages rich areas enjoy over poorer areas.

[Anonymous]

The only thing I don't like about county systems is that they try to be so efficient that they end up making their schools overly large.

[Anonymous]

Great feedback from everyone. Ive been so curious asvto how the two types of systems compare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only thing I don't like about county systems is that they try to be so efficient that they end up making their schools overly large.

The bus fleet dictates school schedules -- in the small town-based district where I grew up, all the schools started at 8:30am, the elementary, middle, and high schools.

This is minor, but an effect of the efficiency of the large county-based districts.