Initial boundary options for Woodward study area are up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just reminding everyone that every option is going to have people within walking distance of one school sent to a different school further away, and neighbors on neighboring streets zoned to different schools. That's inevitable due to the geography of where schools are located and the nature of boundaries. It is true of some people now and will be true of different people in different options. The fact that it is true of you personally in one or another of the options does not make that option any worse than the others. Feel free to complain that you personally don't like it, but please try to restrain yourself on the "this is a terrible option because my family happens to be the ones close to X school who have to take a bus somewhere further away."

Very true. In the current system we can walk to Northwood and Blair but are zoned for Einstein. Only one of the four options switches us to a school we could walk to.

Same. That won't change. Blair serves too large and area that has no other school further south of it. We need a downtown SS/TP High school that will never be built.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Somebody needs to ask the families at Northwood how all the bidding is going for them being bussed to Woodward now as a holding school. It looks horrible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Somebody needs to ask the families at Northwood how all the bidding is going for them being bussed to Woodward now as a holding school. It looks horrible

*bussing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

So very tone deaf. Have an ounce of empathy. It’s not all about your pretty maps and charts. These are real families with real lives, many of whom are already being impacted by the DOGE efforts. And these changes under option 3 will devastate anyone who gets bussed — whether to the East or the West — from the closest school to their home. Moving will be hard to stay close to home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cool, cool. None of these options changes where we’re zoned so I guess I go by who my kids classmates will be…/

What neighborhood are you in?

Somerset. All options have us still at BCC. I’m happy about that

None of the options had Whitman students going elsewhere as I recall. Maybe some of them should be taken cross county and not to a magnet program for equity.

Not happening. They'd rather import a token number of students (i.e., bus kids) from across the county in the name of DEI. MCPS still has to think about property tax revenues and they ain't killing the golden goose.

Actually, two of the options do move Whitman students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have not read all 11 pages, because I cannot believe all of you are so ridiculous to think that any of these are a final option, or anything close to it. Have you never been part of a bounday study? This is step 1, show options that represent each of the 4 factors. Step 2 will show some balance (one can only hope, as usually step 2 is shown at the same time as step 1).

This has been a huge waste of time to date

Disagree. If people don’t speak up, they could easily end up with some variation of option 3. And we may end up with that even with lots of folks speaking up in opposition.

My kids would have to get up so early for the bus under option 3. I don’t know what we will do. Probably move once the boundaries are set.

Where do you live and how long would the ride be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was expecting a range of options on the demographics/equalizing FARMS dimension. But options 1, 2 and 4 do basically nothing to improve on that front, or in some cases make things worse. And option 3 is only a moderate improvement, the kind of thing I would have expected as a middle-ground option between "no improvement on demographics/diversity" and "significant improvement on demographics/diversity."

I feel like all the options other than #3 are non-starters. #3 has plenty of flaws but it feels like we need to focus on iterating off of it to make it better. It's ridiculous to have some schools with 6% FARMS rates and some schools with over 60% FARMS rates (or up to 75% at some middle schools!) and have 3 of the 4 options not do a thing to try to address that.

Disasgree. Option 3 will be off the table quickly. Look at how many HS have noncontiguous boundaries. You just can't level the FARMs rates in schools in a county that has so much housing segregation.

Yeah. If kids in summit hills (which is going to be expanded in the next 10 years) go to Whitman then kids from Whitman can be bussed to Wheaton. They have to commit to something based on geographies and then level the resources based on FARMS rates to balance more.

Yes. I don’t know why they are so focused on only splitting up WJ with all the bussing. They could bus Whitman just as easily.

+1

Area of whitman can be split for bussing. No need to only focus on splitting WJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just reminding everyone that every option is going to have people within walking distance of one school sent to a different school further away, and neighbors on neighboring streets zoned to different schools. That's inevitable due to the geography of where schools are located and the nature of boundaries. It is true of some people now and will be true of different people in different options. The fact that it is true of you personally in one or another of the options does not make that option any worse than the others. Feel free to complain that you personally don't like it, but please try to restrain yourself on the "this is a terrible option because my family happens to be the ones close to X school who have to take a bus somewhere further away."

Very true. In the current system we can walk to Northwood and Blair but are zoned for Einstein. Only one of the four options switches us to a school we could walk to.

With the dcc you can lottery into another school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

So very tone deaf. Have an ounce of empathy. It’s not all about your pretty maps and charts. These are real families with real lives, many of whom are already being impacted by the DOGE efforts. And these changes under option 3 will devastate anyone who gets bussed — whether to the East or the West — from the closest school to their home. Moving will be hard to stay close to home.

Is option 3 really that bad? I feel like most kids have like a 15-30 minute commute to high school right now, right? Are there that many neighborhoods in option 3 that would be significantly outside that range?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have not read all 11 pages, because I cannot believe all of you are so ridiculous to think that any of these are a final option, or anything close to it. Have you never been part of a bounday study? This is step 1, show options that represent each of the 4 factors. Step 2 will show some balance (one can only hope, as usually step 2 is shown at the same time as step 1).

This has been a huge waste of time to date

Disagree. If people don’t speak up, they could easily end up with some variation of option 3. And we may end up with that even with lots of folks speaking up in opposition.

My kids would have to get up so early for the bus under option 3. I don’t know what we will do. Probably move once the boundaries are set.

Where do you live and how long would the ride be?

Farmland. Without traffic 20 minutes to Kennedy. With traffic (it’s Randolph Rd all the way and there are ALWAYS backups and bottlenecks), 45 minutes. That’s just crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have not read all 11 pages, because I cannot believe all of you are so ridiculous to think that any of these are a final option, or anything close to it. Have you never been part of a bounday study? This is step 1, show options that represent each of the 4 factors. Step 2 will show some balance (one can only hope, as usually step 2 is shown at the same time as step 1).

This has been a huge waste of time to date

Disagree. If people don’t speak up, they could easily end up with some variation of option 3. And we may end up with that even with lots of folks speaking up in opposition.

My kids would have to get up so early for the bus under option 3. I don’t know what we will do. Probably move once the boundaries are set.

Where do you live and how long would the ride be?

Farmland. Without traffic 20 minutes to Kennedy. With traffic (it’s Randolph Rd all the way and there are ALWAYS backups and bottlenecks), 45 minutes. That’s just crazy.

Woodward is 5 minutes by car, 15 by bike. It’s our neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Options 2-4 have a ton of split articulation. I wish there was another option with less split articulation.

It’s already split articulation with the myriad of options families get in MCPS for immersion, CES, magnets, lotteries, etc to go anywhere except their home school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When will this take effect? If a student is in their last year of MS then will they be moved to a new school for 1 year??

No,current 8th graders will stay at their schools to finish 11th and 12th grade.