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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Fact, both undocumented and documented immigration is on a downward slope and has been for years. I know it is both convenient and politically au courant to blame immigrants for everything, but the facts aren't with you here.

[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.

+1. The W posters here are almost certainly against immigration control and think any discussion of curbing immigration is a sign of racism. Yet, they want to cut themselves off from the areas where the poorer immgrants live so they don’t have to deal with the problems that accompany large scale immigration from poor countries.

[Anonymous]

Once again, OP is unhinged and the train of this argument left the rails about 5 topic posting ago. Best to ignore OO while she heads toward her fifth tantrum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Baltimore City is an independent city. It's been separate from Baltimore County since 1851. For practical purposes, it's a county. There is no other independent city in Maryland. I am the PP you're responding to; I am not the PP who posted all of the useful links about Maryland government. If you want to change the status quo in Maryland, I suggest that you start by reading them.

In other parts of the county that are not Maryland, they do things differently from the way that Maryland does things, be

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

What you are proposing is a state issue, not a local issue. Per the Maryland constitution, the state is responsible for educating its children. They have formally delegated this authority counties. They are not going to upend the entire state system of education to allow for the formation of the breakaway Republic of Bethesda. So sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Once again, OP is unhinged and the train of this argument left the rails about 5 topic posting ago. Best to ignore OO while she heads toward her fifth tantrum.

It’s more than OP that’s unhinged. I’m beginning to suspect this site has been taken over by bots or Russian trolls. People talking about drunk captains and making English grammar mistakes that no English speaker (even rudimentary) would make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

+1. The W posters here are almost certainly against immigration control and think any discussion of curbing immigration is a sign of racism. Yet, they want to cut themselves off from the areas where the poorer immgrants live so they don’t have to deal with the problems that accompany large scale immigration from poor countries.

There is no way for you to know the opinions of the W posters about federal immigration policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. The W posters here are almost certainly against immigration control and think any discussion of curbing immigration is a sign of racism. Yet, they want to cut themselves off from the areas where the poorer immgrants live so they don’t have to deal with the problems that accompany large scale immigration from poor countries.

There is no way for you to know the opinions of the W posters about federal immigration policy.

Yeah, we've heard too much already LOL

[Anonymous]

What you are proposing is a state issue, not a local issue. Per the Maryland constitution, the state is responsible for educating its children. They have formally delegated this authority counties. They are not going to upend the entire state system of education to allow for the formation of the breakaway Republic of Bethesda. So sorry.

No - practically every state constitution establishes the responsibility of the state to educate its children. This is basic. The provision of public school at the county level is required to cover all students but the mandate doesn't restrict it to being the sole method of providing public education. Many states have independent school districts break off and a county level school system remains to cover students not within those boundaries. This is very common in rural areas. You can live within a county that has a county level school system but based on your location you may not be zoned for the county school but the independent school district.

You do not need the Republic of Bethesda. You do not need a separate political entity. You do not need to upend the state system. It upends MCPS. It brings change to an area that feels immune yes but its far from impossible. MD is a small state but its not some rare unicorn that has an iron clad lock on doing things the way that it has been for 70 years just to keep MCPS happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

What you are proposing is a state issue, not a local issue. Per the Maryland constitution, the state is responsible for educating its children. They have formally delegated this authority counties. They are not going to upend the entire state system of education to allow for the formation of the breakaway Republic of Bethesda. So sorry.

+1
Seriously - stop and educate yourself with the provided links before making proposals that make no sense in the actual, existing framework of the law.

[Anonymous]

Chevy Chase MD has a separate foundation established to fund school activities that at one time had over 1M in it. They really can't spend it on anything because there are so many restrictions on how fundraising dollars can be spent in schools. CC/Bethesda would have the means to pursue splitting which would establish the process for other independent districts to follow. You wouldn't end up with 26 different districts but you could end up with more manageable and rational groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Do you live in a W district? People are pissed off. School PTAs are sending around the email from the GT group and MCPS. A much broader group of people now know that W schools are no longer eligible for magnets yet our tax dollars go toward them just like the other 100+ school.

I think things like not having to accept things like 2.0, allowing an area to decide if it wants to raise taxes that go directly toward smaller class sizes rather than just having their taxes raised and getting fewer teachers, allowing PTA to fund raise for meaningful things in the school not just the social stuff are pretty compelling.

The W schools aren't getting much from MCPS.

Really? And yet I'm always reading on DCUM about how the Western/Wealthy/White schools in the school district (i.e., MCPS) are so much better than the pitiful schools in Ganglandia and Hinterlandia, to which no caring parent would send their child. Are you saying that's not so?

W schools are better not because they're getting any special treat from MCPS. W schools are better because of the the family involvements in education from those communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

And another fact we all agree on! Consensus Day DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

And another fact we all agree on! Consensus Day DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

yeah, we loved how the "Board" and "Pearsons" or whatever small group teacher committee decided to give 80% of all ES students P for Proficient in 2012-2017 plus zero comments on their "report card."
They tried defending it for awhile.
Then they silently stopped it. Took 5 years to fix that BS.