Did anyone else go to the train wreck meeting at JWMS last night?

[Anonymous]

^ are at

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Guarantee they will only move out the remaining side of King Farm to Gaithersburg High School. Not the entire ES. They don't have the capacity and the school is actually in the city of Rockville. They won't move the whole school to the city of Gaithersburg. Then they will probably move Fallsgrove to Crown. RM will still have 5 schools going to it unless they move Twinbrook to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill.

Bwahahaha. No chance that Twinbrook moves to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill. The homeowners in those districts will never stand for it, and the BOE will kowtow to the noisiest and richest parents, like always.

There is no way they take Twinbrook out of RM. You know, diversity being the key word and all.

Actually, they could easily move Twinbrook to Frost/Wootton (or split it between Frost/CJ). That would actually make sense, because it would lower the FARMS rate at RM and boost it in Wootton. This would allow them to move one of the Wootton ES zones to Crown Farm, which would make geographic sense anyway.

I have read this scenario too...with Maryvale possibly moving to RM instead.

I'm not really sure why you'd need to move Maryvale or anything else to RM. The purpose of Crown HS is to normalize the capacity in the affected clusters, and RM needs an ES removed to get back to normal capacity. If you moved TB to Wootton, it allows you to move some geographically close ESs in Wootton into Crown. In the end, you address the capacity problem, somewhat lower the FARMS rate at RM, QO and GB, and somewhat raise it at Wootton. You're also left with more geographically contiguous clusters. Seems like an improvement all the way around.

The capacity problem may already be gone if RM is no longer a county wide IB magnet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Guarantee they will only move out the remaining side of King Farm to Gaithersburg High School. Not the entire ES. They don't have the capacity and the school is actually in the city of Rockville. They won't move the whole school to the city of Gaithersburg. Then they will probably move Fallsgrove to Crown. RM will still have 5 schools going to it unless they move Twinbrook to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill.

Bwahahaha. No chance that Twinbrook moves to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill. The homeowners in those districts will never stand for it, and the BOE will kowtow to the noisiest and richest parents, like always.

There is no way they take Twinbrook out of RM. You know, diversity being the key word and all.

Actually, they could easily move Twinbrook to Frost/Wootton (or split it between Frost/CJ). That would actually make sense, because it would lower the FARMS rate at RM and boost it in Wootton. This would allow them to move one of the Wootton ES zones to Crown Farm, which would make geographic sense anyway.

I have read this scenario too...with Maryvale possibly moving to RM instead.

Part of Maryvale ES boundary is within walking zone to Rockville HS, which it is currently zoned to. That would be terrible.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04230map.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Guarantee they will only move out the remaining side of King Farm to Gaithersburg High School. Not the entire ES. They don't have the capacity and the school is actually in the city of Rockville. They won't move the whole school to the city of Gaithersburg. Then they will probably move Fallsgrove to Crown. RM will still have 5 schools going to it unless they move Twinbrook to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill.

Bwahahaha. No chance that Twinbrook moves to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill. The homeowners in those districts will never stand for it, and the BOE will kowtow to the noisiest and richest parents, like always.

There is no way they take Twinbrook out of RM. You know, diversity being the key word and all.

Actually, they could easily move Twinbrook to Frost/Wootton (or split it between Frost/CJ). That would actually make sense, because it would lower the FARMS rate at RM and boost it in Wootton. This would allow them to move one of the Wootton ES zones to Crown Farm, which would make geographic sense anyway.

I have read this scenario too...with Maryvale possibly moving to RM instead.

I'm not really sure why you'd need to move Maryvale or anything else to RM. The purpose of Crown HS is to normalize the capacity in the affected clusters, and RM needs an ES removed to get back to normal capacity. If you moved TB to Wootton, it allows you to move some geographically close ESs in Wootton into Crown. In the end, you address the capacity problem, somewhat lower the FARMS rate at RM, QO and GB, and somewhat raise it at Wootton. You're also left with more geographically contiguous clusters. Seems like an improvement all the way around.

The capacity problem may already be gone if RM is no longer a county wide IB magnet.

I haven't been following that issue closely, but isn't the proposal more to add localized IB centers elsewhere in the county, and just pull the 100 students from a narrower portion of the county? I thought the overall plan was to expand IB access, not just eliminate the program. Either way, even if you took out the IB program (an unlikely outcome IMO), RM would still project overcapacity in the future. And Crown is already approved and on the way, so it's inevitable that some of RM is going to be pulled out and shifted somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Guarantee they will only move out the remaining side of King Farm to Gaithersburg High School. Not the entire ES. They don't have the capacity and the school is actually in the city of Rockville. They won't move the whole school to the city of Gaithersburg. Then they will probably move Fallsgrove to Crown. RM will still have 5 schools going to it unless they move Twinbrook to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill.

Bwahahaha. No chance that Twinbrook moves to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill. The homeowners in those districts will never stand for it, and the BOE will kowtow to the noisiest and richest parents, like always.

There is no way they take Twinbrook out of RM. You know, diversity being the key word and all.

Actually, they could easily move Twinbrook to Frost/Wootton (or split it between Frost/CJ). That would actually make sense, because it would lower the FARMS rate at RM and boost it in Wootton. This would allow them to move one of the Wootton ES zones to Crown Farm, which would make geographic sense anyway.

I have read this scenario too...with Maryvale possibly moving to RM instead.

I'm not really sure why you'd need to move Maryvale or anything else to RM. The purpose of Crown HS is to normalize the capacity in the affected clusters, and RM needs an ES removed to get back to normal capacity. If you moved TB to Wootton, it allows you to move some geographically close ESs in Wootton into Crown. In the end, you address the capacity problem, somewhat lower the FARMS rate at RM, QO and GB, and somewhat raise it at Wootton. You're also left with more geographically contiguous clusters. Seems like an improvement all the way around.

To turn RM into a regional IB grogram, MCPS would have to redo the zones that they just created. Much more likely it will be like Rockville or BCC.

The capacity problem may already be gone if RM is no longer a county wide IB magnet.

I haven't been following that issue closely, but isn't the proposal more to add localized IB centers elsewhere in the county, and just pull the 100 students from a narrower portion of the county? I thought the overall plan was to expand IB access, not just eliminate the program. Either way, even if you took out the IB program (an unlikely outcome IMO), RM would still project overcapacity in the future. And Crown is already approved and on the way, so it's inevitable that some of RM is going to be pulled out and shifted somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To turn RM into a regional IB grogram, MCPS would have to redo the zones that they just created. Much more likely it will be like Rockville or BCC.

Again, I haven't been following all this, but it would seem a weird choice to me to go the BCC route at RM. There are already 25 in-cluster seats reserved for RM, so is there really the demand to turn it into something like BCC? I don't see why there's any reason to eliminate it as a county-wide option, but if they were going to do that, it would seem more logical to me to make it like Kennedy, Springbrook and Watsons Mill, and just redo the zones again. Unlike changing cluster maps, there's no real problem with constantly changing IB maps. Overall, my point is that I think they're going to want to keep 100 IB seats at RM for non-RM cluster students - otherwise, they'd just be eliminating the program entirely. It'd just be a continuation of JW, and the program would become a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To turn RM into a regional IB grogram, MCPS would have to redo the zones that they just created. Much more likely it will be like Rockville or BCC.

Again, I haven't been following all this, but it would seem a weird choice to me to go the BCC route at RM. There are already 25 in-cluster seats reserved for RM, so is there really the demand to turn it into something like BCC? I don't see why there's any reason to eliminate it as a county-wide option, but if they were going to do that, it would seem more logical to me to make it like Kennedy, Springbrook and Watsons Mill, and just redo the zones again. Unlike changing cluster maps, there's no real problem with constantly changing IB maps. Overall, my point is that I think they're going to want to keep 100 IB seats at RM for non-RM cluster students - otherwise, they'd just be eliminating the program entirely. It'd just be a continuation of JW, and the program would become a joke.

No, it would be like the program at BCC and Rockville HS, which are local programs -DP

But I do think it should at minimum be a regional, otherwise, there would no regional program on the western side of the county, which would suck commute wise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ahh, julius west. To accurately describe this school, I think I will resort to my old favorite google review of it and say that it is “crusty”. Don’t send your kids here- even if they’re too dumb to get into the magnets. Private is the way to go if you must.

Lol! Too bad we can’t afford private. I really despise JW... it’s so creepy. But we can afford a house in that area, it’s a nice neighborhood and DD wants to be with her friends... didn’t apply to the magnets

Honestly, all the RM feeders including the ESs are trainwrecks. RM is only a “good” school because of the IB, yet it’s still considered a decent school despite being a 7/10 on greatschools while blair is 9/10 and everyone knows about the magnet advantage! It’s probably the worst school in MCPS (The neighborhood, not the magnet)

College Gardens is a decent feeder!

Though isn’t all of MCPS just a train wreck in general?

PP here. I am actually specifically referring to college gardens. The area might be decent but the school itself as well as the cohort is terrible, the staff is rude and downright abusive to students, and the type of parents who send their kids there are just... hard to deal with. It’s a “good” school but there is definitely something off about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ahh, julius west. To accurately describe this school, I think I will resort to my old favorite google review of it and say that it is “crusty”. Don’t send your kids here- even if they’re too dumb to get into the magnets. Private is the way to go if you must.

Lol! Too bad we can’t afford private. I really despise JW... it’s so creepy. But we can afford a house in that area, it’s a nice neighborhood and DD wants to be with her friends... didn’t apply to the magnets

Honestly, all the RM feeders including the ESs are trainwrecks. RM is only a “good” school because of the IB, yet it’s still considered a decent school despite being a 7/10 on greatschools while blair is 9/10 and everyone knows about the magnet advantage! It’s probably the worst school in MCPS (The neighborhood, not the magnet)

College Gardens is a decent feeder!

Though isn’t all of MCPS just a train wreck in general?

PP here. I am actually specifically referring to college gardens. The area might be decent but the school itself as well as the cohort is terrible, the staff is rude and downright abusive to students, and the type of parents who send their kids there are just... hard to deal with. It’s a “good” school but there is definitely something off about it.

I live in the CG area. I have not heard this type of criticism from our neighbors and did not feel that way when my kids attended. I would think the school has become more cohesive without the Chinese Magnet. It is a pretty diverse place so I am not sure what category you are grouping all the parents into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ahh, julius west. To accurately describe this school, I think I will resort to my old favorite google review of it and say that it is “crusty”. Don’t send your kids here- even if they’re too dumb to get into the magnets. Private is the way to go if you must.

Lol! Too bad we can’t afford private. I really despise JW... it’s so creepy. But we can afford a house in that area, it’s a nice neighborhood and DD wants to be with her friends... didn’t apply to the magnets

Honestly, all the RM feeders including the ESs are trainwrecks. RM is only a “good” school because of the IB, yet it’s still considered a decent school despite being a 7/10 on greatschools while blair is 9/10 and everyone knows about the magnet advantage! It’s probably the worst school in MCPS (The neighborhood, not the magnet)

College Gardens is a decent feeder!

Though isn’t all of MCPS just a train wreck in general?

PP here. I am actually specifically referring to college gardens. The area might be decent but the school itself as well as the cohort is terrible, the staff is rude and downright abusive to students, and the type of parents who send their kids there are just... hard to deal with. It’s a “good” school but there is definitely something off about it.

I live in the CG area. I have not heard this type of criticism from our neighbors and did not feel that way when my kids attended. I would think the school has become more cohesive without the Chinese Magnet. It is a pretty diverse place so I am not sure what category you are grouping all the parents into.

I'm another former CG parent. My guess is that poster had the difficult kid/were difficult themselves but is blaming the school/community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with Julius West is that it has too many students. It will be over 1500 next year. The classes are packed and you have too many kids who need attention. Some students end up taking up all the time from teachers and admin due to behavior problems.

How is this possible? Are you telling us that the rising 6th grade class has 600?!? Current 7th grade is about 400, current 6th grade is around 500.

I believe someone said 620 kids at the meeting.

That is terrible

Wait until all the overdevelopment is completed, including the housing at Twinbrook Quarter. Plus there are a good number of townhomes and apartments that will fill up near Metro. JW will be completely overwhelmed. Developers say that kids don’t live in apartments/condos/townhouses, but with the changing demographics, that is no longer the case.

These large middle schools are horrible for the kids. Especially at this age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Guarantee they will only move out the remaining side of King Farm to Gaithersburg High School. Not the entire ES. They don't have the capacity and the school is actually in the city of Rockville. They won't move the whole school to the city of Gaithersburg. Then they will probably move Fallsgrove to Crown. RM will still have 5 schools going to it unless they move Twinbrook to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill.

Bwahahaha. No chance that Twinbrook moves to Whitman, Johnson, or Churchill. The homeowners in those districts will never stand for it, and the BOE will kowtow to the noisiest and richest parents, like always.

There is no way they take Twinbrook out of RM. You know, diversity being the key word and all.

Actually, they could easily move Twinbrook to Frost/Wootton (or split it between Frost/CJ). That would actually make sense, because it would lower the FARMS rate at RM and boost it in Wootton. This would allow them to move one of the Wootton ES zones to Crown Farm, which would make geographic sense anyway.

I have read this scenario too...with Maryvale possibly moving to RM instead.

If they take out Twinbrook, they will definitely replace it with another lower-income school. Maryvale would be a definite option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with Julius West is that it has too many students. It will be over 1500 next year. The classes are packed and you have too many kids who need attention. Some students end up taking up all the time from teachers and admin due to behavior problems.

How is this possible? Are you telling us that the rising 6th grade class has 600?!? Current 7th grade is about 400, current 6th grade is around 500.

I believe someone said 620 kids at the meeting.

That is terrible

Wait until all the overdevelopment is completed, including the housing at Twinbrook Quarter. Plus there are a good number of townhomes and apartments that will fill up near Metro. JW will be completely overwhelmed. Developers say that kids don’t live in apartments/condos/townhouses, but with the changing demographics, that is no longer the case.

These large middle schools are horrible for the kids. Especially at this age.

The new Twinbrook Development is already part of Wooten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with Julius West is that it has too many students. It will be over 1500 next year. The classes are packed and you have too many kids who need attention. Some students end up taking up all the time from teachers and admin due to behavior problems.

How is this possible? Are you telling us that the rising 6th grade class has 600?!? Current 7th grade is about 400, current 6th grade is around 500.

I believe someone said 620 kids at the meeting.

That is terrible

Wait until all the overdevelopment is completed, including the housing at Twinbrook Quarter. Plus there are a good number of townhomes and apartments that will fill up near Metro. JW will be completely overwhelmed. Developers say that kids don’t live in apartments/condos/townhouses, but with the changing demographics, that is no longer the case.

These large middle schools are horrible for the kids. Especially at this age.

The new Twinbrook Development is already part of Wooten.

No, Twinbrook Quarter [which is between Rockville Pike and Chapman Ave] is mostly part of WJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with Julius West is that it has too many students. It will be over 1500 next year. The classes are packed and you have too many kids who need attention. Some students end up taking up all the time from teachers and admin due to behavior problems.

How is this possible? Are you telling us that the rising 6th grade class has 600?!? Current 7th grade is about 400, current 6th grade is around 500.

I believe someone said 620 kids at the meeting.

That is terrible

Wait until all the overdevelopment is completed, including the housing at Twinbrook Quarter. Plus there are a good number of townhomes and apartments that will fill up near Metro. JW will be completely overwhelmed. Developers say that kids don’t live in apartments/condos/townhouses, but with the changing demographics, that is no longer the case.

These large middle schools are horrible for the kids. Especially at this age.

The new Twinbrook Development is already part of Wooten.

No, Twinbrook Quarter [which is between Rockville Pike and Chapman Ave] is mostly part of WJ.

OK WJ...but not RM.