Schools splitting from large ineffective school systems - could the 4 Ws split from MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What's happened the last 15 years is that the poor parts of the county are all that MCPS deals with.

Half of bethesda with kids already is in private or parochial. and it's not because they're trust fund families, it's because they had an open mind about MCPS and were excited at some point, but no longer are.

Really? How odd that the public schools in Bethesda are over capacity, then.

[Anonymous]

I would like more classes in Spanish for mi children. The signs around school in Spanish are help, but why not the teaching too? thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for breaking up MCPS, in the name of bureaucratic ease. It's much too big, from an administrative standpoint.

However, what you all are proposing is essentially, "let's split off from the poor parts of the county because we don't want to deal with them."

1. That's horrific, from an ethical standpoint.
2. It's just wrong. The "W" schools aren't the only strong ones in MCPS.

What's happened the last 15 years is that the poor parts of the county are all that MCPS deals with.

Half of bethesda with kids already is in private or parochial. and it's not because they're trust fund families, it's because they had an open mind about MCPS and were excited at some point, but no longer are.

THat's not the fault of MCPS, It's their job to educate everyone, and yes, it costs more money to educate the poor. If you don't like this, then stop voting in politicians who support the continuous welcoming of illegal immigrants to this county. I bet majority of you who are complaining are the same people who call Trump supporters racists for wanting to curb illegal immigration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I wasn't the one who floated the idea, but since I am a product of private schools and send my kids to public school in Bethesda... I wouldn't be against it.

Please realize that the wall you speak of is already there, in real estate value. Creating a different public school system in Bethesda won't change anything.

School ratings affect property values. A ranch in W district is worth more than an MCM house in SS with decent lot due to schools.

The DCC could change to become county wide and that would level property values.

Granted, it will never happen because of the type of residents of W schools would never let it.

Just like they don’t want tax rates rates raised on their country clubs
http://www.theseventhstate.com/?p=9503

How bad is my wife's commute to Tyson's if we lived in Silver Spring. Is SIlver Spring some magnet utopia or something? What's the big deal. Maybe if we worked in Baltimore or by Union station or is that the green line? Could spend 40 minutes on the green line to downtown...?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- please realize that just because you bought into a rich, all white school and paid good money for it, doesn't make you immune to the problems of the county. #2 If you want real effective solutions and an open discussion with others outside of the W schools, then you need to not propose solutions that are going to further perpetuate the segregation that already exists in this county. You are promoting a W vs. Non-W mentality that I think is very unhealthy for this county.

Agree, I wish more urban ppl in DC realized how messed up big MoCo is so they wouldn't consider moving here.

It's a big sanctuary state with big teacher/admin union expenses and a terrible curriculum focused on bringing up math and reading scores for the bottom students. Money is sloshing every which way, ineffectively and inefficiently. If MoCo were a company it'd be Chapter 11 already.

[Anonymous]

NP - This thread is off the rails crazy, but I shouldn't be surprised. For those of you who are so lacking in understanding of Maryland's government, here are some references to get you started. Before proposing random ideas based on how you think things work, or how they worked where you came from, how about educating yourself about how things actually work HERE? That is of course assuming you are actually interested in advocating effectively for change. If really all you want to do is stir up a sh!tstorm of complaining, then DCUM is definitely your place.

The Constitution of Maryland: http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/const.html
An overview of the government organization: http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/govern.html
Constitution section XI-A pertaining to Local Legislation (allows adoption of a county charter) (1915): http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/11aar.html
Constitution section XI-E pertaining to Municipal Corporations (1954): http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/11ear.html
Constitution section XI-F pertaining to Code Counties (1966): http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/43const/html/11far.html

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Maryland#Local_government

At the local level, Maryland is notable among U.S. states for having a relatively small number of local governments. Maryland is also unique among Northeastern states in that it has fairly strong county governments. In most Northeastern states, counties are administrative divisions with little (and in the case of New England, almost nonexistent) authority, and most local government is at the town or city level. This is not true for Maryland's 23 counties, some of which have substantial authority. There are three forms of county government available to the state's counties. ...

Commissioner Counties
In 1827, the General Assembly authorized elected boards of county commissioners for each county. Counties governed by commissioners have no authority to act in local matters without the express prior consent of the General Assembly. In the areas where they do have authority to legislate, that authority is narrowly construed. The Constitution adopted in 1867 kept the power to pass public local laws vested in the General Assembly, which gave a lot of control over county government to county delegations in the General Assembly. As a result of this, the General Assembly spends considerable time dealing with local issues, ordinances, and expenditures. ...

Charter Counties
Due partly to the large amount of time spent by the state legislature on local matters, the Maryland Constitution was amended in 1915 to allow counties the option of operating under a charter form of government, with substantial home rule power. To adopt this form of government, the voters of the county must approve the charter which their charter board drafts. ...

Code Home Rule Counties
Due to the reluctance of many counties to adopt a charter form of government, despite wanting a measure of home rule, the Maryland Constitution was again amended in 1966 to create a third class of county government, the "code county" status. If two thirds of a county's commissioners adopt a resolution that the county become a code county and a majority of the voters approve of the resolution, the county becomes a code county. In a code county, the county commissioners have home-rule powers, and may enact legislation in the areas of the "express powers" of the charter counties. In addition, the commissioners retain all the powers of commissioners in commissioner counties. However, there is no charter, and the limits on indebtedness are stricter. The General Assembly can only legislate for the code counties as a class. ...

Basically, as the Maryland General Assembly (MGA) time became more bogged down with local issues, they pushed more responsibility down to the local level, with the counties being the primary organizational level. In 1954 they stopped incorporating cities and towns - existing ones remained and kept whatever local authority they had, but new cities are not incorporated. The (MGA) can create special taxing districts for a specific purpose, as outlined in the particular legislation, but I think after 1966, they even stopped that. Everything is county level now.

And here is another link with a nice summary of the various levels of organization for commissions and authorities that oversee different things, including the schools. https://www2.census.gov/govs/cog/gc0212md.pdf

*phew*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for breaking up MCPS, in the name of bureaucratic ease. It's much too big, from an administrative standpoint.

However, what you all are proposing is essentially, "let's split off from the poor parts of the county because we don't want to deal with them."

1. That's horrific, from an ethical standpoint.
2. It's just wrong. The "W" schools aren't the only strong ones in MCPS.

What's happened the last 15 years is that the poor parts of the county are all that MCPS deals with.

Half of bethesda with kids already is in private or parochial. and it's not because they're trust fund families, it's because they had an open mind about MCPS and were excited at some point, but no longer are.

THat's not the fault of MCPS, It's their job to educate everyone, and yes, it costs more money to educate the poor. If you don't like this, then stop voting in politicians who support the continuous welcoming of illegal immigrants to this county. I bet majority of you who are complaining are the same people who call Trump supporters racists for wanting to curb illegal immigration.

super, glad we all agree on the facts then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the only ppl we see throwing curse words and F bombs are you two. class act I see.

anyone can look at a map and drive the beltway at 7am and, better yet, 5pm and see that the magnet locations are not meant to serve the whole county.

They don't serve the whole county. Well, except for the Visual Arts program at Einstein and the Global Ecology program at Poolesville.

Glad we agree on that fact too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the only ppl we see throwing curse words and F bombs are you two. class act I see.

anyone can look at a map and drive the beltway at 7am and, better yet, 5pm and see that the magnet locations are not meant to serve the whole county.

They don't serve the whole county. Well, except for the Visual Arts program at Einstein and the Global Ecology program at Poolesville.

Glad we agree on that fact too.

Nobody says that they do.

[Anonymous]

Yet Baltimore City is a separate school district from Baltimore County. You don't have to incorporate a new town or city to have a separate school system. On the west coast there are many instances where separate smaller school districts broke away from their larger county or city level-wide district decades ago. Many of these smaller districts are geographically contiguous but draw their boundaries across towns, across part of a city and town, across part of an unincorporated area and city or town etc etc. Courts do not like it when smaller areas try to split off and draw a gerrymandered area but there is often precedent for supporting local representation where disfunction in a larger school system exists.

Would this be easy? No, MCPS would fight this with everything that it has. It would put far more effort into maintaining its own power base than it has ever put forward in actually educating students. This is exactly why it should be pursued.

A great example is the recent experiment with grading in elementary school. Parents were never consulted about doing away with normal measurements and adopting the P standard system. Parents were furious and complained. Many teachers didn't like it either. MCPS could care less - it was their little experiment. They met any complaint with the usual arrogance of oh well people always complain, oh well we're better than Detroit, oh well you just don't understand the brilliance behind our new little system. It was a pile of BS! The MCPS apologist posters was all over these boards constantly with her two line condensing little posts with no logic. Now, MCPS has done away with their little experiment and they are actually surprised that they aren't receiving lots of pats on their backs for doing it. It doesn't occur to them that they screwed ES students for several years. They don't care, they get to experiment with the kids as much as they want. The system is so big that it is completely unaccountable to the people that it serves.

Smaller systems aren't perfect by any means but they don't allow the level of corruption, ineptitude and utter lack of accountability that exists with MCPS. The W schools have cause to separate and it is probably the only way to protect their schools and students from MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm all for breaking up MCPS, in the name of bureaucratic ease. It's much too big, from an administrative standpoint.

However, what you all are proposing is essentially, "let's split off from the poor parts of the county because we don't want to deal with them."

1. That's horrific, from an ethical standpoint.
2. It's just wrong. The "W" schools aren't the only strong ones in MCPS.

What's happened the last 15 years is that the poor parts of the county are all that MCPS deals with.

Half of bethesda with kids already is in private or parochial. and it's not because they're trust fund families, it's because they had an open mind about MCPS and were excited at some point, but no longer are.

THat's not the fault of MCPS, It's their job to educate everyone, and yes, it costs more money to educate the poor. If you don't like this, then stop voting in politicians who support the continuous welcoming of illegal immigrants to this county. I bet majority of you who are complaining are the same people who call Trump supporters racists for wanting to curb illegal immigration.

super, glad we all agree on the facts then.

Except some of your facts are wrong. Half of Bethesda kids are NOT in private. Also, do you agree on the solution that we need to stop voting for liberal politicians who want to leave the doors wide open for illegal immigrants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet Baltimore City is a separate school district from Baltimore County.

Baltimore City is a separate political jurisdiction from Baltimore County.

Aren't posters on DCUM -- especially posters in the so-called W schools -- supposed to be super-educated and super-smart? And yet they don't know the most basic information about state and local government in Maryland.

[Anonymous]

This really has nothing to do with illegal immigration. MCPS would love for you to believe that its problems are just because of illegal immigrants. Its failing all students.

[Anonymous]

Baltimore City is a separate political jurisdiction from Baltimore County.

Aren't posters on DCUM -- especially posters in the so-called W schools -- supposed to be super-educated and super-smart? And yet they don't know the most basic information about state and local government in Maryland.

You tried to argue that school systems in MD could only be county based. The previous post pointed out that Baltimore is not a county.

You tried to point out that MD is not incorporating more towns. OK - fine. In other parts of the country, school districts split off without being aligned to a separate political jurisdiction.

You told people to stop looking at other parts of the country and inferred that no one should try to change the status quo.

You ended your post with *phew*. I guess you work with MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This really has nothing to do with illegal immigration. MCPS would love for you to believe that its problems are just because of illegal immigrants. Its failing all students.

But majority of the complainers here keep talking about how MCPS spends more money on the poorer schools while ignoring the wealthier schools. The fact is, there's only so much money that we have to deal with. The fact is it costs a ton of money to educate, support, and feed poor students. Fact, many of the illegal immigrants in this county are poor.