New Woodward High School
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Anonymous
That's good news. I'm glad to see they're finally after 40 years going to do something other than capitulate to the Karens. |
Anonymous
Is this because they want to achieve equity goals at the cost of excellence as many say on dcum? |
Anonymous
What is it that's supposedly objectionable about the boundaries for Gaithersburg ES #8, which is now known as Harriet Tubman ES? https://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/HarrietTubmanES.pdf |
Anonymous
https://gis.mcpsmd.org/boundarystudypdfs/GaithersburgES8_2ndRoundOptions.pdf Slide Maybe that according to slide 3, Total Numbers of Survey Respondents was 8? I find it difficult to believe that only 8 families cared about which school their child attends. |
Anonymous
Perhaps more care just not enough to fill out the survey. |
Anonymous
+1. Perhaps in November of 2020, residents of the Gaithersburg cluster had more pressing concerns than filling out the second boundary study survey in as many months. |
Anonymous
Or maybe it was done in a way that people didn't understand the impact (more likely). I believe parents normally trust the school system, thinking they act in parent's best interests. However, the more I learn about MCPS, the more realize how politically-driven they are. Case in point, look at the ES and MS boundaries in the slide deck. Really strange to see broken up boundaries like that. |
Anonymous
What does that mean? And what does any of this have to do with Woodward, which is theoretically the topic of this thread? |
Anonymous
Ex. Summit Hall, Rosemont, Gaithersburg, and Mill Creek Towne are all over capacity while Washington Grove and Candlewood could absorb some of that overflow and still has crazy non-contiguous boundaries drawn. What makes you believe Woodward would be any better? |
Anonymous
Well, for one thing, this was a boundary study which by design looked at options only within one cluster. And your examples are incorrect. Once the new boundaries are fully in effect, none of the Gaithersburg cluster elementary schools will be over capacity with the exception of Strawberry Knoll, which was mentioned during the board meetings as a candidate for inclusion in a future Magruder and Watkins Mill cross-cluster study, which could alleviate MCT's overcrowding, among others. Woodward will be a much different set of circumstances, given that three to six clusters could be included in the study, and a whole new cluster could be created as a result. |
Anonymous
You're saying Washington Grove and Candlewood will both remain undercapacity even though it could have off-loaded students from adjacent clusters, to help with overcrowding of other adjacent clusters? What kind of logic is that? You also skipped over the wacky non-contiguous boundary part? What's your response to that? Let me guess, it was like that before so it's not our fault? |
Anonymous
No schools from adjacent clusters were part of that study, so Candlewood and MCT were outside of the scope. I don't know why, but that's the scope that was proposed by the dept of capital planning and approved by the board. I agree the non-contiguous boundaries look ridiculous (both the before and after versions), but I think they ended up that way for the middle schools partly because the two schools were built so close to each other (about a mile apart). |
Anonymous
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I've not seen anyone mention a very logistically simple answer.
There are two middle schools that feed WJ, Tilden and NB. The boundary of the 2 is roughly 270. Tilden is the north half of WJ and NB the south half. WJ will be split into two - NB will feed WJ, Tilden will feed Woodward. The "old" WJ will effectively "seed" 2 news schools at about 60-70% capacity (based on 2028-2029 projected WJ enrollment of 3100, WJ capacity of 2250, Woodward Capacity of 2150). Viers Mill ES, which currently feeds Wheaton, is very close to Woodward and fits nicely geographically. It's about about 2/3 Hispanic. This will round out Woodward for capacity, diversity, and proximity. It will also help alleviate overcrowding at Wheaton. There are no simple answers to "round out" the new WJ since the Einstein bordering ES's are all within its walk zone. What would make the most sense is to add Woodlin to BCC and WJ would pull one ES from BCC, possibly North Chevy Chase. Yes, this "new" WJ would probably not be as "diverse", but Woodward would, BCC would, AND Wheaton and Einstein would be less over crowded. In the big-picture it's a net-win and the boundaries won't have any Islands. The alternative would be to add Woodlin directly to WJ. It would create an island and be further then Einstein, but it would resolve some of the other issues mentioned above. It would also be a horrible bus ride in beltway traffic, if I were a parent there I wouldn't be very happy. |
Anonymous
One problem with just sending Tilden to Woodward and keeping NB at WJ is that the island north of Tuckerman and adjacent to Woodward itself is zoned for NB too. That island should certainly be rezoned for Woodward. But then you would have split articulations at both the ES and MS levels. Also part of Viers Mill is within the Wheaton HS walk zone. Like you said, no simple answers. |
Anonymous
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Yup, not perfect answers but I think it’s the “least bad”. I know the BOE doesn’t want to change ES boundaries but they could swap that island adjacent to Woodward which is mapped to Kensington parkwood with the other side of tuckerman which is mapped to Garrett park.
In reality the only way to get “clean” geographic boundaries with a broadly diverse student body is to redraw the ES boundaries across the county and I don’t think anyone is MCPS or the BOE is up for that challenge. In the mean time it’s “what’s the least bad that makes the most sense”. Crown is an even bigger question mark since there is no clean “split” option like they can do with WJ… |