Split articulation (bussing) for the new BCC Middle School?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

And we are talking about the middle school anyway. RHES couldn't be any farther from Westland without being upcounty.

RHPS to Westland MS is 6 miles.

Perhaps you intended your statement as hyperbole?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

That is because they are shipped from silver spring, you don't live near westland if you're poor. There are hardly any Black kids or non-embassy Hispanic outside of the concentration of Apartments around RHES. If RHES wants a neighborhood school so bad send them to the downcounty consortium and let them pick where they go. .

"Shipped"?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do all schools have to have poor kids? Why cant a nice corner of the county simply keep to their own? Ok so town boundaries don't have to be respected so does that mean we can ignore county boundaries too? How about sending some of the really poor PG kids to Rosemary Hills to give them a leg up? It is all about and better for the kids right? Or does resource grabs only work in one direction for the disenfranchised?

Why are people entitled to move to a nickel area and expect dime piers in the better neighborhood? You guys are simply going down the rabbit hole DC went down and their "best" High School (Wilson) has a 25% dropout rate. Which pretty much breaks down the whole the poor kids do better when dropped into rich schools. All you really end up with is administrations that scramble to keep the troublemakers penned up and away from the rich kids. Even Blair fluffs the numbers by importing the best and brightest and the regular kids might never even meet a magnate kid.

Town boundaries are not relevant in a county-based school system. You betray the fact that you see black kids in Montgomery County as just as little a part of your community as kids in PG county. Plus, you spelled magnet wrong.

Right. The magnate kids are the ones in the PP's neighborhood.

Magnate/magnet comes up in this context quite frequently on DCUM, but I haven't yet stopped thinking it's funny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do all schools have to have poor kids? Why cant a nice corner of the county simply keep to their own? Ok so town boundaries don't have to be respected so does that mean we can ignore county boundaries too? How about sending some of the really poor PG kids to Rosemary Hills to give them a leg up? It is all about and better for the kids right? Or does resource grabs only work in one direction for the disenfranchised?

Why are people entitled to move to a nickel area and expect dime piers in the better neighborhood? You guys are simply going down the rabbit hole DC went down and their "best" High School (Wilson) has a 25% dropout rate. Which pretty much breaks down the whole the poor kids do better when dropped into rich schools. All you really end up with is administrations that scramble to keep the troublemakers penned up and away from the rich kids. Even Blair fluffs the numbers by importing the best and brightest and the regular kids might never even meet a magnate kid.

Town boundaries are not relevant in a county-based school system. You betray the fact that you see black kids in Montgomery County as just as little a part of your community as kids in PG county. Plus, you spelled magnet wrong.

Do others wish we could have a town-based system instead of a county-based system? I found it so shocking when we moved here. The one good thing is that it helps to provide kids with a mediocre education. But DH and I both grew up elsewhere, and it was nice to have a town-based system where you could know your school board and really get involved. We wish that we could live in a town with a mayor, rather than a county executive. MCPS has something like 26 high schools. If you're used to a massive district, I guess you think it's fine. But if you've seen a town-based system, you may agree it's much better for parents and students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do others wish we could have a town-based system instead of a county-based system? I found it so shocking when we moved here. The one good thing is that it helps to provide kids with a mediocre education. But DH and I both grew up elsewhere, and it was nice to have a town-based system where you could know your school board and really get involved. We wish that we could live in a town with a mayor, rather than a county executive. MCPS has something like 26 high schools. If you're used to a massive district, I guess you think it's fine. But if you've seen a town-based system, you may agree it's much better for parents and students.

No, I don't. Public education in a county-based system is already inequitable enough. I can't imagine the inequity if there were Bethesda Public Schools, Olney Public Schools, Gaithersburg Public Schools, etc.

If you want to really get involved, then get involved. Plenty of people do get involved. And you don't have to get involved in all 25 high schools. Get involved in your kid's high school, just like you would if there were only one high school in the district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do all schools have to have poor kids? Why cant a nice corner of the county simply keep to their own? Ok so town boundaries don't have to be respected so does that mean we can ignore county boundaries too? How about sending some of the really poor PG kids to Rosemary Hills to give them a leg up? It is all about and better for the kids right? Or does resource grabs only work in one direction for the disenfranchised?

Why are people entitled to move to a nickel area and expect dime piers in the better neighborhood? You guys are simply going down the rabbit hole DC went down and their "best" High School (Wilson) has a 25% dropout rate. Which pretty much breaks down the whole the poor kids do better when dropped into rich schools. All you really end up with is administrations that scramble to keep the troublemakers penned up and away from the rich kids. Even Blair fluffs the numbers by importing the best and brightest and the regular kids might never even meet a magnate kid.

Because the general assumption is that everybody has a right to a good public education, not just people whose parents can afford to buy in expensive neighborhoods.

But aren't all the schools staffed by similarly qualified teachers and with the same curriculum? And more resources for the higher FARMS schools? So why is busing needed to offer a good public education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But aren't all the schools staffed by similarly qualified teachers and with the same curriculum? And more resources for the higher FARMS schools? So why is busing needed to offer a good public education?

Why did you decide to live in Bethesda or Chevy Chase instead of another location that was just as convenient but has high-poverty schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But aren't all the schools staffed by similarly qualified teachers and with the same curriculum? And more resources for the higher FARMS schools? So why is busing needed to offer a good public education?

Why did you decide to live in Bethesda or Chevy Chase instead of another location that was just as convenient but has high-poverty schools?

Because I'm risk averse with regard to crime (which is higher in higher poverty areas) and I wanted to be close to family, which is west of DC, so east would be a dumb choice for us. Now could you answer my question?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But aren't all the schools staffed by similarly qualified teachers and with the same curriculum? And more resources for the higher FARMS schools? So why is busing needed to offer a good public education?

Why did you decide to live in Bethesda or Chevy Chase instead of another location that was just as convenient but has high-poverty schools?

Because I'm risk averse with regard to crime (which is higher in higher poverty areas) and I wanted to be close to family, which is west of DC, so east would be a dumb choice for us. Now could you answer my question?

And the public schools had nothing to do with it. How nice! I hope that, when another one of the innumerable threads comes up on this forum about which of the wealthy/white schools in Bethesda/Potomac/Chevy Chase is the best in MCPS, you will post that all of the schools in MCPS are similarly good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But aren't all the schools staffed by similarly qualified teachers and with the same curriculum? And more resources for the higher FARMS schools? So why is busing needed to offer a good public education?

Why did you decide to live in Bethesda or Chevy Chase instead of another location that was just as convenient but has high-poverty schools?

Because I'm risk averse with regard to crime (which is higher in higher poverty areas) and I wanted to be close to family, which is west of DC, so east would be a dumb choice for us. Now could you answer my question?

And the public schools had nothing to do with it. How nice! I hope that, when another one of the innumerable threads comes up on this forum about which of the wealthy/white schools in Bethesda/Potomac/Chevy Chase is the best in MCPS, you will post that all of the schools in MCPS are similarly good.

I am not one that says the Ws are best. I'm sure some schools are better than others because I think individual principals and teachers make a difference, but unlike you i don't think a school is worse because it has more poor kids. If I had realized student teacher ratios were so much better in early elementary in focus and title 1 schools when we bought our house (pre-kids, so we were ignorant), I would have located there. My friends who did are much happier with their kids early education than we are.

[Anonymous]

I live in the Village of Chevy Chase (on the Somerset ES not the Rosemary Hills side of the line) and really have no problems with my kids going to a diverse middle school. Westland is so big as it is, the Somerset kids barely see their friends in classes. If we wanted to live in an all-white community, we would have picked a neighborhood in the Whitman district. We welcome the diversity of BCC, and if my kids have to go a little farther so they see more socioeconomic diversity in their lives (which they will have to eventually anyway), I'm not opposed to it.

[Anonymous]

I heard a rumor mcps might be closing Sligo MS and sending kids who live west of Georgia Ave. to the new BCC MS. Kids living east of Georgia would go to Newport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard a rumor mcps might be closing Sligo MS and sending kids who live west of Georgia Ave. to the new BCC MS. Kids living east of Georgia would go to Newport.

That would be pretty stupid. The enrollment in the BCC cluster is continuing to rise, to close a middle school and transfer students over and close an existing school would not make any sense. I think you are just trying to stir the pot. Pot stirrer.

Although, we are talking about MCPS, there is no telling what is on their agenda.

[Anonymous]

I am the pp, the part where I wrote to "close a middle school" should be "to open a new middle school".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard a rumor mcps might be closing Sligo MS and sending kids who live west of Georgia Ave. to the new BCC MS. Kids living east of Georgia would go to Newport.

That's a fun rumor to have invented.