Wes Moore Wants to Destroy Your Neighborhood
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Anonymous
Anonymous
Proof? |
Anonymous
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The 4 th amendment disagrees with the Sherrff
Screw off ice |
Anonymous
Actually they do according to current laws |
Anonymous
They do. Do you think your kids have a right to attend Whitman vs Gaithersburg? If you want Whitman go pay 20-40k a year in property tax vs 5k. If that’s not an option, how is that someone else’s problem? |
Anonymous
DP. People have the right to reasonably equivalent public services. They don't have a right to go to a particular school, but they do have a right to similar access to reasonably similar academics (at both primary/secondary and at all levels of rigor, not just the minimal adequate to achieve graduation) across the district, as the district, not the pyramid, is the level at which the state has set the mandate to provide educational services. |
Anonymous
Only way you're going to get "reasonably similiar" is with "reasonably similiar" SES demographics. |
Anonymous
No, that would be more related to achieving the same outcomes. Providing reasonably similar academics in the sense mentioned has to do with ensuring reasonably equivalent opportunity/access to classes commensurate with individual ability/providing commensurate supports in accordance with individual need. That is the obligation of the system so as not to institutionally reinforce SES disparity. |
Anonymous
All MoCo schools will get your kid into Top 25 schools if your kid is smart enough. I should know, my kids went to a MoCo school pyramid that is mocked on this board and each got into multiple Ivies. The difference is the nature of their surroundings -- in the W schools, they're surrounded by privileged kids with the same goals, and in the non-W schools, it may take more self-motivation. I think we actually viewed it as an advantage in the college admissions process that my kids didn't have as much competition from others at their school -- after all, Harvard/Princeton/Yale/etc can't take 20 people from Whitman. |
Anonymous
Not saying you are one, but this is the kind of claim made by conservatives all the time -- "anyone can succeed in America if they just try hard enough" -- completely ignoring that the government's obligation is to provide equal protections to its citizenry (at least that is what has been espoused), failing to acknowledge the additional burden placed on the negatively affected population (making success, though not impossible, less likely for them than it would be with that reasonable equivalence), and effectively victim-blaming. Might as well call it Jim Crow, Jr. The anecdote also may be dated. Take a look at that school, now. Did any opportunities/advanced options of which your DCs took advantage get discontinued in the past few years? Because that is what has been seen. While pathway to a university education is not insignificant, it is as much or more the learning opportunities afforded during a student's primary/secondary experience on which MCPS should focus, and it certainly is much more their responsibility. |
Anonymous
So the solution is to create more sprawl and build even further out from central locations??? Urban sprawl = more traffic and less useful public transportation systems 8 homes per acre of land (or 5445 SF of land for each home) on the public sewer line seems very reasonable. |
Anonymous
The areas in the Kentlands with detached homes have more than 8 per acre. |
Anonymous
MCPS focuses heavily on making sure schools with high FARMS rates have the same or more options that a Whitman cluster school. just look at the ESL support in a whitman cluster versus any other, its significantly higher, which means more $'s have to be spent. MCPS constantly cuts extracurriculars to ensure that immigrants(especially) have the tools needed to become better. I dont think MCPS has any issues with providing (or trying to provide) equal protections to citizens and noncitizens. however, the county council wants to infiltrate the Whitman cluster with cheap housing, they just do. they rather have MCPS schools average a 5 rating across the board, than have one cluster that has 9 +, in the name of equity. But thats problematic, if they lower the cluster school ratings, property value goes down, more kids hit private, many move and they end up in a bigger deficit. While I think this law is ridiculous, I dont imagine the council or the governor want to mess with the tax base out of the western side of the county. |
Anonymous
This is misleading, but perhaps unintentionally? Suggesting that there are, generally, more options at high-FARMS schools than at a place like Whitman is laughable, especially when higher-end academics are typically that about which the DCUM populace (and many more) cares. All the APs, broader and deeper languages, MVC...IYKYK, you know? EML should be supported coincident with the individual need, just like anything else. Where there are greater EML needs, say, maybe, where there are many more EML-designated students, the support needs to be more. Ditto higher funding to support academic need where the challenges correlated with FARMS, both directly and indirectly, are higher. And note that some, if not most, of this funding has not applied at the secondary/HS level, despite the differential needs there, either new or remaining from primary. Even the superintendent's relatively new equity add-on doesn't come close to supporting that. (His noting that one school gets twice as much as another is misleading, itself -- twice as much added on, but that still represents a relatively marginal amount when compared to the overall operating budget for a school.) One simply could look at the registration options available across schools (the OLO report, though flawed, shows some of this) to know that broader availability of higher-end academics is concentrated in wealthy areas, and the HS of the cluster mentioned is one example. This is entirely indicative of there being not enough differential funding to meet individual need on an equitable basis, not to mention that it also contributes to a vicious cycle of lower expectations that fosters lower achievement. If that all came from individuals/families, that might be one thing, but MCPS institutionally drives it. For any individual, the system-provided experience should be reasonably similar no matter where one lives within the system. Sure, it's nice to live in a particular house, and nearby housing stock, proximity to employment centers, etc., may make that better still, and that might naturally make the market price for such a property high. However, there really is no social benefit which would point to compounding that with differential publicly provided addressing of an individual's educational need. Private school? Sure, but then not on the societal dime, and, while certain federal/state funding follows public school enrollment, it's a relatively small percentage of the MCPS budget. Each additional student going to, say, Landon (if not to cover an MCPS-unadressable accommodation) actually means more available from the local pool of tax revenue for others. Should we want that? I'd say no, but, again, the answer shouldn't amount to any greater system-determined opportunity for wealthy areas to keep resident students in public; instead, it should be providing excellent education across the board such that there would be little or no reason for choosing a private for purely academic purposes. One could go with immigrant blaming, as distasteful as that might be, but 1) whomever is considered part of the society deserves those equal protections, 2) that includes any who have a local cohort that includes a high proportion of those experiencing associated need, and 3) the extracurriculars (still differentially available, similar to the offered classes, and even at the elementary level -- ever checked into the kinds of field trips offered across disparate clusters?) can be had if the community (MCPS request & County Executive/Council assent) steps up with the funding. They'd just need to make it a high enough priority, say, versus keeping taxes at a certain level or setting up payment-in-lieu-of-tax schemes that tend to line developer pockets to accomplish (to limited effect) the oft-derided (justified or not) housing densification...which, if you look at the zoning change particulars, the maps and the additional corridor plans they've pressed (e.g., U Blvd), clearly is set up to affect lower east county communities more than those in Bethesda or Chevy Chase. Regarding that dichotomy, and the note about tax base, while I don't see a benefit in intentionally quashing high-end property values, I'd wager that we would see greater revenue, not less, if one considers the overall effect when including in the calculus the increases in property values in the much larger areas newly experiencing academic opportunity coming up to par. It's a big county, the current divide is wide, and the area property-value benefit of excellent public schooling currently accrues disproportionately to a minority of residents, who tend to be relatively wealthy. Again, let's keep the 9+! Better to budget & fund the system well enough to afford, thoughout the county, that excellence (at least from the perspective of opportunities/supports provided; outcomes are another matter, depending far more on individual ability & interest in academics). |