Initial boundary options for Woodward study area are up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

So very tone deaf. Have an ounce of empathy. It’s not all about your pretty maps and charts. These are real families with real lives, many of whom are already being impacted by the DOGE efforts. And these changes under option 3 will devastate anyone who gets bussed — whether to the East or the West — from the closest school to their home. Moving will be hard to stay close to home.

But no one is getting bussed east. Equity fixing is at the expense of bussing east to west and making it "those" kids come to the "nice school". Not the other way around.

DP. What are you talking about? Kids that right by B-CC are being bussed to Blair under option 3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing is for sure, nothing will be the same. Except Whitman. Whitman will be exactly the same.

What about Churchill. They are not impacted at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing is for sure, nothing will be the same. Except Whitman. Whitman will be exactly the same.

What about Churchill. They are not impacted at all?

Not part of the Woodward study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When will this take effect? If a student is in their last year of MS then will they be moved to a new school for 1 year??

No,current 8th graders will stay at their schools to finish 11th and 12th grade.

So 10th graders have to move schools? That’s pretty cruel to do to kids at that age. I guess there is no regard for the social impact of that move.

Yep, and 7th graders too (this year's 4th graders.) Brutal right after their first year adjusting to middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing is for sure, nothing will be the same. Except Whitman. Whitman will be exactly the same.

What about Churchill. They are not impacted at all?

They're in the Crown study, we'll see those options next week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When will this take effect? If a student is in their last year of MS then will they be moved to a new school for 1 year??

No,current 8th graders will stay at their schools to finish 11th and 12th grade.

So 10th graders have to move schools? That’s pretty cruel to do to kids at that age. I guess there is no regard for the social impact of that move.

Yep, and 7th graders too (this year's 4th graders.) Brutal right after their first year adjusting to middle school.

There needs to be pushback on this. Kids are still adjusting from the awful covid closures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

So very tone deaf. Have an ounce of empathy. It’s not all about your pretty maps and charts. These are real families with real lives, many of whom are already being impacted by the DOGE efforts. And these changes under option 3 will devastate anyone who gets bussed — whether to the East or the West — from the closest school to their home. Moving will be hard to stay close to home.

Is option 3 really that bad? I feel like most kids have like a 15-30 minute commute to high school right now, right? Are there that many neighborhoods in option 3 that would be significantly outside that range?

Omg no. 10 minutes at most for us.

So that's a good bit less than a mile walk, right? I don't think that's typical for most people. I think it's more common to be in the 1-2 mile range which would take a lot longer.

I'm 2.2 miles from our hs....5 min drive at this time of night. Of course worse with traffic on old georgetown

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Split articuation is non issue to me. I want to see good utilization and less travel time and balance the schools as much as possible.

Total opposite for me. Split articulation is the biggest issue to me.

Curious, what’s your concern? One of the options would have split articulation for us but both DH and I went to a split articulation middle so it feels normal. Was actually fun to have friends from rival schools in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Split articuation is non issue to me. I want to see good utilization and less travel time and balance the schools as much as possible.

Total opposite for me. Split articulation is the biggest issue to me.

Curious, what’s your concern? One of the options would have split articulation for us but both DH and I went to a split articulation middle so it feels normal. Was actually fun to have friends from rival schools in high school.

Having friends from rivals MS in HS is not necessarily split articulation. Split articulation means that your kid's friends from MS might go to a different high school. That happens to us in ES (from Rosemary Hills, some go to NCC and others to CCES) and it breaks apart friendships. That's why I think it should be avoided. -DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Split articuation is non issue to me. I want to see good utilization and less travel time and balance the schools as much as possible.

Total opposite for me. Split articulation is the biggest issue to me.

Curious, what’s your concern? One of the options would have split articulation for us but both DH and I went to a split articulation middle so it feels normal. Was actually fun to have friends from rival schools in high school.

Having friends from rivals MS in HS is not necessarily split articulation. Split articulation means that your kid's friends from MS might go to a different high school. That happens to us in ES (from Rosemary Hills, some go to NCC and others to CCES) and it breaks apart friendships. That's why I think it should be avoided. -DP

And to add to my post ... We fought to have kids from NCC and CCES come back together for MS in the Silver Creek boundary study. They are now all at SCMS. And now every single option on the table places them in different schools. Very frustrating.

[Anonymous]

The patchwork quilt that is Option 3 will cost an extra arm and leg in transportation. I thought walking and neighborhood schools was one of the 4 criteria?

[Anonymous]

Feels like an incredible amount of overreaction happening. Bottom line - we are lucky the county is adding two new high schools to help alleviate the overcrowding which has been a huge problem for years. Our children will thrive wherever they go to school and will benefit way more from relaxed, happy parents than a particular school. However we hope our kids will respond to not getting *exactly* what they want should be what we model for them. Hug your kids and tell them whichever school they go to will be awesome. And it will be!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Feels like an incredible amount of overreaction happening. Bottom line - we are lucky the county is adding two new high schools to help alleviate the overcrowding which has been a huge problem for years. Our children will thrive wherever they go to school and will benefit way more from relaxed, happy parents than a particular school. However we hope our kids will respond to not getting *exactly* what they want should be what we model for them. Hug your kids and tell them whichever school they go to will be awesome. And it will be!

Nope, sorry, any options that would have my kid go from walking a few minutes to HS to having to take a 30 minute bus ride across the county are not ok by me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just reminding everyone that every option is going to have people within walking distance of one school sent to a different school further away, and neighbors on neighboring streets zoned to different schools. That's inevitable due to the geography of where schools are located and the nature of boundaries. It is true of some people now and will be true of different people in different options. The fact that it is true of you personally in one or another of the options does not make that option any worse than the others. Feel free to complain that you personally don't like it, but please try to restrain yourself on the "this is a terrible option because my family happens to be the ones close to X school who have to take a bus somewhere further away."

Very true. In the current system we can walk to Northwood and Blair but are zoned for Einstein. Only one of the four options switches us to a school we could walk to.

Same. That won't change. Blair serves too large and area that has no other school further south of it. We need a downtown SS/TP High school that will never be built.

It makes no sense not to have a school down county.

They had the chance a decade ago, but balked at the options/cost, as the county had done a terrible job with planning in decades prior -- allowing all the development and not preserving workable school space inside the Beltway and east of Rock Creek. So they moved on to reopen Woodward, instead, but that didn't mean the capacity problems to the east magically went away. Now we have this. Thank "Saint" Pat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feels like an incredible amount of overreaction happening. Bottom line - we are lucky the county is adding two new high schools to help alleviate the overcrowding which has been a huge problem for years. Our children will thrive wherever they go to school and will benefit way more from relaxed, happy parents than a particular school. However we hope our kids will respond to not getting *exactly* what they want should be what we model for them. Hug your kids and tell them whichever school they go to will be awesome. And it will be!

Nope, sorry, any options that would have my kid go from walking a few minutes to HS to having to take a 30 minute bus ride across the county are not ok by me.

Yup, and sorry not sorry, but people have a right to be pissed if their neighborhood is currently zoned for one of the best high schools in the county and will be redistricted to one of the worst, which will also require a 30+ minute drive through the county while passing four other high schools.