Are there any schools that are reasonably central for all the schools in regions 3 and 4, to be able to have 3 versions of some programs rather than 6? (Schools would be Churchill, WJ, Woodward, Wheaton, Kennedy, Magruder, RM, Rockville, and Wootton.) |
This is a problemm. I could see them doing a per-school reserve (with seats opening to others if there are not enough applications), but that would be ability-related-need inequitable. Better might be to have admissions heuristics that adjust for relative inequity of prior experience/exposure, but their previously adopted paradigms (e.g., locally normed MAP) have, thus far, been more hammers than scalpels, and, again, even distribution is not a guarantee. |
RM and Woodward is probably central. |
are you serious? What do you think MCPS can do to reduce FARMS rates in Whitman, Churchill, Wootton, even WJ, BCC and QO? These schools especially the first 3 are quite far away from lower priced housing to be able to increase FARMS rates without bussing kids in and out SIGNIFICANT distances. You’d be talking about adding 30-60 minutes each day of travel time to bring kids from day Silver Spring to Whitman or Gaithersburg HS to Churchill. How is that good for the students or the community at large (added traffic/costs)? A better solution is to promote affordable housing options in certain areas, but even that is a challenge when in many of these school clusters there’s barely any new development. |
I kind of beat up QO in some of these threads because they're making out as bandits in both the proposed regions and the opening of Crown. The Crown area is primarily coming from QO and taking away ten percent of QO's FARMS rate. And QO has traditionally always been grouped with Northwest. In some of these proposals, they're taking some of the apartment/townhome communities from QO and sending to Northwest or Crown, specifically the Brown Station ES area. They could very easily have QO take the northern areas from it, take parts of Diamond ES, all of Brown Station, even possibly parts of Watkins Mill and Great Seneca Creek. And their FARMS rates will be roughly the same as it is now. Then Crown can run along the same parallel, going a bit north to take som eof the Gaithersburg HS area but also going south taking more of the North Potomac areas. Most of the regions are fairly balanced and not bad. The two unbalanced ones are regions 2 and 6. Again QO is in region 6 but due to proximity, can easily be swapped with Northwest or Crown. Then the boundaries can be played around with to have it make sense to swap Seneca Valley, Damasicus or Clarksburg. Region 2 is kind of harder because of how far away it is from all the other schools. But proximity/time apparently isn't a factor. For example for Whitman to Northwood's actual site on University Blvd is 8.7 mile/28 minutes direct route, avoiding highways, according to Google Maps. Mapping Paint Branch High School to Walter Johnson avoiding highways shows it to be 13.1 miles with a 33 minute ride. So a five mile/five minute difference from some already current proposed options? The other schools can probably find similar combinations where distance/direct drive time is about equivalent to what is currently proposed as well. |
Springbrook to Whitman, avoiding highways shows 13.1 miles 34 minutes
Springbrook to WJ, avoiding highways, 10.7 miles, 30 minutes Blake to WJ, avoiding highways, 12.9 miles, 32 minutes Watkins Mill High School to Wootton, 10.5 miles, 30 minutes Watkins Mill High School to QO, 6.7 miles, 20 minutes Are those far off from what they have now: Kennedy to Wootton, 9.4 miles, 25 minutes Damascus to Quince Orchard, 14.8 miles, 30 minutes |
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More like 50 mins during rush hours |
I agree but it's still what they have in their proposals. So no reason why they can't add the other school combination into their proposals too. If they're not looking into improving the schools that need the most help or access to resources. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't even bother with major disruptions or expensive options that don't make sense. Besides trying to balance FARMS rates, to have schools not go over a certain FARMS rate (upper 20s) other school systems pour a lot of money into programs and initiatives focusing on the high risk initiatives. Like ACTUALLY trying to help them improve. Not just trying to mix up their numbers so they get diluted and not look as bad. Maybe MCPS does that too and I'm just not aware of it. But I don't see any of the things going on addressing the lower performing/bottom ranked schools in MCPS. |
The potential Crown area was relatively basic and Crown had the potential to be a decent school. About the same level as QO and Northwest. With all of their changes, they made QO a lot lower FARMS rate and Crown a relatively higher FARMS rate school. About the same as Seneca Valley, Northwest in some proposals, etc.
And families are willing to have their kids travel to good schools. This includes current established programs like Blair, Poolesville and RM. But also the next tier down of more open programs like at Pinecrest, Argyle and Parkland, where we do know families that commute an hour to go to some of those schools because they see it as better than their home schools and/or they're attracted to the CES or magnet tag attached to those schools. The problem MCPS has with these programs is having strong enough programs to have a good number of students at a highly ranked home school go to a lower school. |
Swapping QO for Seneca Valley would have a significant impact on FARMS rates in regions 5 and 6 with minimal geographic impact. |
RM is not central for its regions. That would be Rockville. But RM is central to the county. |
II wonder about the number of involuntary teacher transfers that may occur with new programs and relocated programs. |
The question was whether it would be feasible to have programs serving two regions so that there are only 3 copies of some programs rather than 6. One proposal was to pair 1 with 2, 3 with 4, and 5 with 6. PP was saying that RM or Woodward could work for programs serving both regions 3 and 4. |
Average FARMS in the county is something in the 40s, no? So they'd be looking to keep a maximum closer to, say, 55% (and a minimum somewhere in the 30s) if they were to go the balancing route. Helping low-performing schools improve would be great. Balancing things that way might take huge chunks of funding away from the higher-performing schools and/or massively increased taxes. |
No, it's only 40 because of the extremes. Very few schools with high FARMS rates, then balanced out by schools with really low FARMS rates, which brings it down to 40. And part of the issue is that the extremes are grouped together in the regions. ie NEC cluster and the schools in the Gaithersburg area. Taking those extremes out, the average FARMS rate would be about upper 30s and consist the majority of schools except the really high and really low ones. |