Third round options on Woodward Boundary study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

What? The Bethesda Elementary zone is definitely not all walkable to Whitman. I’m not certain any of it is.

[Anonymous]

The Woodacres boundary includes kids that are in the walk zone for Whitman and can easily walk to school which will be lost in Option F. As noted above, there seems to be no real reason for making this change and I can't see how flipping Woodacres and Bethesda ES benefits either community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

What? The Bethesda Elementary zone is definitely not all walkable to Whitman. I’m not certain any of it is.

Bethesda Elementary School is 1.7 miles from Whitman which is in the walk zone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Woodacres boundary includes kids that are in the walk zone for Whitman and can easily walk to school which will be lost in Option F. As noted above, there seems to be no real reason for making this change and I can't see how flipping Woodacres and Bethesda ES benefits either community.

Demographics and facility utilization are two reasons. It does reduce proximity somewhat but it is literally impossible to send every neighborhood to the closest high school, and many neighborhoods experience this now and will continue to do so.

[Anonymous]

You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

[Anonymous]

Here's the Bethesda Beat summary article:

https://bethesdamagazine.com/2025/12/03/mcps-boundary-study/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Yeah, I like it too. And you could probably just use the same maps but keep the SSIMS kids at SSIMS if it doesn't close, although that would leave Eastern pretty small.

[Anonymous]

My cynical take is that Wood Acres didn’t advocate hard enough for themselves in prior rounds and now the Board is going to see if they push back. I think the switch is kind of silly between BCC and Whitman but if this gets the “it impacted BCC and Whitman too” idiots to shut up, then I can live with it.

[Anonymous]

But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else notice that none of the three new options send SSIMS students to Sligo? In all three, current SSIMS students go to either Eastern or TPMS. Begs the question of the size they are going to make eastern (presumably huge, which is terrible) and also puts in question the future of ms magnets. The only way they will have enough room to accommodate all those kids at eastern and TPMS is if they do away with the magnets. What a disaster this plan is. Why would they spend all that money to renovate Sligo if it won’t be taking on more kids? What will happen to language immersion if they close SSIMS? Did they come up with this entire plan —after— releasing the first two rounds of options? Taylor is ruining east county with this half baked idiotic plan.

SSIMS will split between Eastern, and then TPMS instead of Sligo?

It's too bad that Taylor can't take the considered advice of experienced staff before he announces his sweeping changes. It would keep his impulsiveness in better check if he developed that habit. There is a lot of whipsaw going on with major changes being announced every time there is a new version of the boundaries. PP said it correctly: it's a carnival show.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else notice that none of the three new options send SSIMS students to Sligo? In all three, current SSIMS students go to either Eastern or TPMS. Begs the question of the size they are going to make eastern (presumably huge, which is terrible) and also puts in question the future of ms magnets. The only way they will have enough room to accommodate all those kids at eastern and TPMS is if they do away with the magnets. What a disaster this plan is. Why would they spend all that money to renovate Sligo if it won’t be taking on more kids? What will happen to language immersion if they close SSIMS? Did they come up with this entire plan —after— releasing the first two rounds of options? Taylor is ruining east county with this half baked idiotic plan.

SSIMS will split between Eastern, and then TPMS instead of Sligo?

It's too bad that Taylor can't take the considered advice of experienced staff before he announces his sweeping changes. It would keep his impulsiveness in better check if he developed that habit. There is a lot of whipsaw going on with major changes being announced every time there is a new version of the boundaries. PP said it correctly: it's a carnival show.

What are you talking about? All three of the new options contemplate adding hundreds of students to Sligo once SSIMS closes. See, e.g., option F (where Sligo’s student body goes from 699 in 2025 to 1065 in 2031).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

Wood Acres WAS impacted in the first round of options. They pushed back and that option was gone in the revisions. This new option is way more detrimental than the last one because it also impacts high school (the old version only impacted middle school).

There will be a big fight over this one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Woodacres boundary includes kids that are in the walk zone for Whitman and can easily walk to school which will be lost in Option F. As noted above, there seems to be no real reason for making this change and I can't see how flipping Woodacres and Bethesda ES benefits either community.

Demographics and facility utilization are two reasons. It does reduce proximity somewhat but it is literally impossible to send every neighborhood to the closest high school, and many neighborhoods experience this now and will continue to do so.

Geographic proximity should always be the number 1 consideration because of the impact on families and students. People move to specific neighborhoods for neighborhood schools because they identify with that community of people. Trying to reshuffle in an attempt to change demographics doesn’t work. This flip changes proximity a lot. There are major roads (Mass Ave, River Road, Wisconsin Ave) dividing these schools. Removing walkability in high school is crazy.