WaPo article about school overcrowding

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

The article discussed one school in Montgomery County. One.

They discussed Bethesda ES, but the online article showed photos of WJ high school as well.

[Anonymous]

Good that MCPS is finally hiring a consulting group to do forecasts properly. Didn't appreciate the comment from MoCo councilmember Craig Rice that preferences are changing too fast for the forecasts to manage. The forecasts have been underpredicting enrollment for years. It's just that MoCo has no solution, so they prefer to underforecast and then act surprised as if no one could have predicted the overcrowding.

Essie McGuire, Montgomery schools’ executive director for operations, said its enrollment projections are about 99 percent accurate at a county level. But she said the countywide calculations have masked changes in individual neighborhoods. Statistically speaking, she said, it’s also more difficult to predict the future at a more detailed school level.

The school system recently hired a consulting group to help update its enrollment forecasting models and respond more quickly to rapid changes, particularly in high-growth areas.

“We just really felt the planning and demographic and land-use environment has changed so significantly in Montgomery County in recent years,” McGuire said. “We felt it was time to look at the tools we were using to see if adjustments needed to be made.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Ok they discussed 2 schools, relax people like you don’t focus on the real issue at hand. Stick to the damn issue, over crowded schools in Virginia and Maryland counties close to DC.

[Anonymous]

It was kind of a vague article--I guess with 3 states/the district, they couldn't get into the details of why the overcrowding is occurring. But in Maryland/MCPS, I do think a lot of it (at least for Bethesda Elementary School) is the desire to build apartment buildings for revenue, and not worry about the consequences for school enrollment and have the projections perpetuate the erroneous assumption that families don't live in apartment buildings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

The article discussed one school in Montgomery County. One.

They discussed Bethesda ES, but the online article showed photos of WJ high school as well.

Oh, a photo! Why didn't you say so?

Gimme a break. The post staff took a stock photo from one of the four? five? jurisdictions discussed and dropped it in there.

If this really is your complaint, you are just looking for something to be annoyed about.

[Anonymous]

People keep saying that hordes of people are leaving MCPS, but then why are so many MCPS schools overcrowded, both affluent and non affluent areas. Where are all these people coming from if there are no jobs here and there is massive flight from here like some people keep saying there is?

School overcrowding seems to be an issue pretty much in every densely populated area from west to east coast. I'm originally from CA, and they have similar over crowding issues, and they do with less money in their budget, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Seems like lazy reporting, like the reporters just talked to their friends and neighbors, and didn't make any effort to reach out to people in other schools.

Sometimes it is the more affluent communities that can get issues raised to a higher profile, and then get the problems addressed for ALL students.

Agreed, but why not do 1 W school and 1 DCC? Otherwise, it is a distorted picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Seems like lazy reporting, like the reporters just talked to their friends and neighbors, and didn't make any effort to reach out to people in other schools.

Sometimes it is the more affluent communities that can get issues raised to a higher profile, and then get the problems addressed for ALL students.

Agreed, but why not do 1 W school and 1 DCC? Otherwise, it is a distorted picture.

I'm just glad they're reporting on this period. Maybe school districts will do a better job with their projections if they know people are watching.

[Anonymous]

Nothing new in the article, parents have been complaining about overcrowding for years. That mcps still blames the recession of 2008 ofor overcrowding? Give me a break, that was 10 years ago. Move on.

If you've been to any meetings with the new consultants, you won't be impressed. I haven't seen any changes, and we probably won't either, unless there's a big influx of money. That isn't going to happen. So we're stuck with overcrowding, no response from MCPS, and most more concerned with opportunity gap than overcrowding anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

The article discussed one school in Montgomery County. One.

They discussed Bethesda ES, but the online article showed photos of WJ high school as well.

Oh, a photo! Why didn't you say so?

Gimme a break. The post staff took a stock photo from one of the four? five? jurisdictions discussed and dropped it in there.

If this really is your complaint, you are just looking for something to be annoyed about.

I didn't post the original comment. I was just mentioning the photo in case people who read online saw something that wasn't in the paper version. Settle down. Is this comment really worth all your outrage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Seems like lazy reporting, like the reporters just talked to their friends and neighbors, and didn't make any effort to reach out to people in other schools.

Sometimes it is the more affluent communities that can get issues raised to a higher profile, and then get the problems addressed for ALL students.

Not really. The joke is that wealthy mcps schools will get Capital Improvements and poor schools get more esol teachers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Seems like lazy reporting, like the reporters just talked to their friends and neighbors, and didn't make any effort to reach out to people in other schools.

Sometimes it is the more affluent communities that can get issues raised to a higher profile, and then get the problems addressed for ALL students.

Not really. The joke is that wealthy mcps schools will get Capital Improvements and poor schools get more esol teachers

As a parent in a supposed affluent area, I’d take another teacher so we don’t have 30+ kids per class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It bugged me that the featured MCPS schools were in affluent communities. Working class families care about overcrowding as well.

Seems like lazy reporting, like the reporters just talked to their friends and neighbors, and didn't make any effort to reach out to people in other schools.

Sometimes it is the more affluent communities that can get issues raised to a higher profile, and then get the problems addressed for ALL students.

Not really. The joke is that wealthy mcps schools will get Capital Improvements and poor schools get more esol teachers

As a parent in a supposed affluent area, I’d take another teacher so we don’t have 30+ kids per class.

+1 I'm also a parent in an affluent overcrowded school where the MoCo Council keeps authorizing development even though school capacity isn't there. It's a lot of willful blindness and a lack of interest in education issues as opposed to making developers happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But it's not just development -- in DC one elementary school (Lafayette) is at 900 students, 100 over it's projected and max capacity...in a school built TWO years ago. There haven't been any large developments built in its catchment area at all.

This is really true for all of Ward 3 - sure there have been some small projects in Glover Park and Tenleytown but other parts of the neighborhood have seen little to no new housing units built.

And there are so many fewer kids per housing unit than there were 50 years ago.

I actually read the history of Janney book a couple of years ago and for about 30 years (30's to 60's) Janney actually had between 450-500 students per year in a school building that was less than half the square footage of the current building that is hosting about 710 students. There was no pre-K back then (and I believe the school included 6th grade and no idea if K was half day or not) so with the massive expansions of all of the Ward 3 elementary schools (pending Eaton of course) I really wonder if the square footage per student and teacher ratios aren't actually much better than they've historically been.

Still I assume there is a lot more squirrely stuff going on than we realize when it comes to OOB kids getting in via some means or another because it really does defy common sense that there are apparently so many more neighborhood kids than their used to be - I'm sure the private schools also used to be much smaller though granted there is a lot less catholic school capacity than there used to be.

[Anonymous]

Class sizes in asia are bigger.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2012/02/18/classroom-crush