I feel sorry for your kids that they have a parent with this nasty attitude and don't care that maybe it is working for some students. Why do you even care? What is your agenda? It has zero impacts on you. |
Of course it does. Budgets are zero-sum. Each dollar spent on VA is a dollar not going to more effective programs and resources. |
. DP and I do have empathy at the potential disruption to your families - but did you really not realize this was a pandemic program? There was never long term funding allocated. |
If a good virtual program is your top priority, why wait? There are far better options out there than what MCPS cobbled together. If you’re not tethered to MoCo for other reasons, that is. Tons of people move for better schools, this isn’t any different. |
All together maybe, but I don't know many Middle Schools with 250 students like the virtual middle school. |
Wow, the trolls are strong in this thread! ![]() |
Naw. If MCPS decided to build a new experimental school a few years ago and I opted to roll the dice to attend, I wouldn’t be up in arms if attendance dropped 40% two years in a row and the system started asking whether it’s wise to keep the school open. |
Right! The entitlement is strong too! |
Poole Middle only has 432. Should that be closed too? |
Better solution. Let’s shut down your child’s school. |
The cost is minimal compared to many other wasteful things mcps does. It has. Sri impact on you. |
MAP is also the test that the evaluators used to look at how MVA students were making progress compared to their peers attending in-person school. "Students attending Virtual Academy in Grades 3, 4, and 5 were significantly less likely than their inperson peers to meet their projected growth in reading in Spring 2022. Within student service groups, MVA students receiving FARMS were significantly less likely than their inperson peers to meet their projected growth in reading in Spring 2022, but EMLs did not differ between the two groups. Among Asian, Black or African American, White, and Hispanic/Latino students, MVA students were significantly less likely to meet projected reading growth compared with their inperson peers." The other item that really stands out is chronic absences. Overall, absences in MS and HS were similar to in-person counterparts, but chronic absences among MVA kids were alarmingly high in the elementary grades in particular. Almost a quarter of MVA kids in 2nd - 5th grades were chronically absent. That's a shocking figure. If this were about mental or physical health, you'd expect the figures to be static across grades or even higher for MS and HS. The numbers being so high among the youngest kids suggests something else may be at play, either families enrolling in MVA to facilitate Disney trips in the off-season, or more nefarious motivations such as removing kids from the line of view of mandatory reporters. |
It's an ongoing program (for now) that costs millions of dollars a year to operate. Everyone here seems to acknowledge that it can't go on in its current form, so some people are proposing that we expand it in ways that will make even more expensive. Of course there's a budget impact. |
Yes, it's almost as expensive as what they spent on bocce equipment for PE. |
Did they analyze where VA students would be sitting physically/mock up an update to the CIP projections vs capacity table? |