Initial boundary options for Crown/Damascus study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS made a huge mistake not rezoning the elementary school boundaries. Had they build that foundation the MS/HS boundaries would make much more sense

Wouldn't really make any difference. It just adds another change to complain about.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:To no one’s surprise, very little change to Churchill under any of the options.

I’m in the small part that is changing. It’s pretty nuts because I live in the area right by the Potomac Community Center. That part of Wayside has been Churchill since its opening. We are literally 1.7-2 miles from Churchill yet the four options have us moving to Wootton which is 15-20 minutes a day longer commute. Not to mention this brings the Wootton boundary so far south. Very disappointed mostly because of Wootton being incredibly old/asbestos, the aforementioned increased time, and the fact that our neighborhood is very much part of the community with Beverly Farms, Bells Mill, Potomac and Seven Locks ES.

A big chunk of Wayside was developed in the mid 90s and originally was meant to go to Frost and Wootton but due to overcrowding at both, they moved them to the then under crowded Churchill.

Additionally a huge section of Potomac ES would stay at Churchill and drive past much of Wayside on the way. Whereas those areas might be equidistant from each, they are far closer to North Potomac community wise and should look different.

They really needed to redo ES boundaries as some are quite wacky and massively large. Also whoever was bright enough to build both Cabin John and Hoover MS within a mile from each other made a big mistake. A MS up closer to QO/Wootton/Crown would have been so much better.

The MS to HS splits are going to be pretty messy from both under these options.

How about putting this area in crown? That's a brand new school.

That's at least 8 miles from the community around Wayside ES to Crown HS. Are you being serious? Put kids on a 25-minute bus ride instead of letting them walk or bike to their school?

Exactly lol that makes no sense!

[Anonymous]

Split articulation from MS to HS is bad for kids. Having kids change schools between 9th and 10th is just cruel. Changing schools and all new kids. So dumb. 4 yr plans are made in Jan of 8th grade. Classes may be different. Having to start over in clubs, sports, etc. just terrible. They should at least start changes only in 9th grade and 6th grade. Not 10th or 7th. So it takes an extra year to transition, fine.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My bad, i read the table wrong. Yes, the numbers are all about the same.

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Anonymous wrote:Option 1&3: Churchill Asian increased from 33% to 37%, FARMS decreased from 10.9% to 9.9%. Wootton Asian increased from 37.4% to 43.2% and FARMS decreased from 13.4% to 11.9%.

I'm pretty sure the current options will exacerbate educational inequality, but I amsatisfied. I wonder can we reduce the FARMS to 5% or even lower for Churchill?

Are we looking at different data set? For all 4 options, Churchill Asian decrease from 37% to34.7% and farm from 9.9% to 9.8%.

So why even mess with Wootton families and force them to move out to QO and crown? There are only losers and the ones being moved out are the relatively poorer ones. Financial hit on them will be devastating. What’s even worse is that their kids will have to be separated from their friends. This kind of double whammy is too much.

Every school is going to experience change when a new school opens. They are not going to leave Wootton and Churchill as is in a boundary study. Can you imagine the backlash? And at least for Wootton there are definitely neighborhoods in the Wootton cluster close to Crown, some even walking distance like part of Fallsmead's boundary. And DuFief area is nowhere near Wootton. Ridgeview or Lakelands Park and QO makes much more sense for DuFief.

Every option has at least two Wootton elementary school impacted. What’s even worse in option 2 and 4 are small neighborhoods in both Lakewood and stone mill gets split. Who has empathy on these few kids who will have to be separated from their friends since 5 to a new high school with nobody else???

Kids are resilient. They will make new friends, especially when they are younger.

No my kids are not resilient. I hope your kids get the same change and be resilient

They have. My one kid moved ES 2x. They are now in college, at an oos internship making good money.

Moving in ES is totally different from being forced to move in HS. If you don’t wear my shoes, then don’t tell me kids are resilient

My kid also went to a different MS. But, there are kids today who go to a different HS due to split articulation from MS. They are fine.

Kids are resilient if you teach them to be. They won't be resilient if you push the "your world is going to fall apart" attitude onto your kids.

If it’s split 50/50 or close to that it’s fine. Now it’s the 5-10% gets split out. You can keep talking your kids are resilient crap but have some empathy on these kids.

Right, we are talking about options (2 & 4) that involve taking small groups/neighborhoods out of their elementary school block and switching them to a new high school with very few of the kids they've been going to school with since kindergarten. While I'm generally a fan of minimizing split articulation, I think this sort of split articulation that targets small groups and sends them off with an entirely new set of kids for high school is particularly problematic.

Absolutely! I’ve been banging this drum for a while. Lots of large elementary schools geographically that inevitably there’s a dividing point and half or so is closer to HS A and half closer to HS B. For example Potomac ES and Wayside ES both go quite south to quite north. Splitting each with about half going to Wootton and half going to Churchill would be understandable. However if this were to occur it’d be bad to have each of the Wootton bound ES zones go to Hoover and then separate as like 15-20% of the 8th grade class. Instead in this case going to CJMS so they could continue with a big chunk of new Wootton friends would be better.

The problem of having such a massive boundary study is the domino effect of a change here causing a change there and so on and so forth. It’s pretty damn impossible to do such a large study. IMO they should have moved closest zones to Crown to fill it in and left all else alone.

[Anonymous]

both of these studies especially Crown are making me think that one was a waste of money. It’d have been far better to devote the $150M or whatever was spent on Crown into spending it on an addition at each HS with a need. Spending 25M x 6 prevents this from becoming a debacle.

Additionally from an ongoing operational cost standpoint, far more efficient to have fewer but larger schools so long as we’re not taking about 3000+ high schools everywhere.

Think of all the wasted staff to run the school. Economics of having 2 less principals, 6 less assistant principals, 2 less biz managers, etc not to mention the facility upkeep. Feels like way more inefficient.

[Anonymous]

Yes this was totally mismanaged. We are going to rip people out of schools they want to stay in and taxpayers are footing the bill for it. Complete and utter incompetence.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the problem is the name of school!. If the new school were call something like "Wootton North School" or "Wootton 2.0", and they sent over some Wootton teachers and share the same Wootton curriculum - would will that make the move easier? It's still Wootton, just with a fresh coat of paint.

[Anonymous]

Dufief will have to go to QO because nobody wants to go to the school we are all paying hundreds of millions of dollars for that nobody asked for, and they are the easiest to move against their will.

[Anonymous]

Y'all really aren't grasping the concept of an iterative process. This is the first round. There will be another round, and maybe another after that. The options will keep changing between now and January.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:After a few clicks, I see that we are zoned for RM now, and under no option is that changing. Being in walk zone that makes sense. So, my only responsibility is to pop some popcorn and season it right and watch the school board members try to out-woke each other for the next 6 months changing up the school zones. I cant wait to hear the feedback on Woodward-3. To be honest even some of the RM options are islanding and nonsensical. But I dont have a dog in this hunt.

Same here. I have a student in RM now and the school is totally overcrowded, none of the options really address that. IMHO splitting Ritchie Park makes the most sense for RM cluster (Options 2 and 4).
On a separate note, it is impossible to actually believe MCPS tables, when you look at utilization and and other percentages in HS impact tables, RM has exactly the same numbers of students and utilization percentages as Gaithersburg HS, despite being different sizes. Something is off there. As a veteran of Bayard Rustin study, in my experience MCPS numbers/tables are only correct or look at right data about only half of the time.

.Your opinion is pretty terrible. Splitting Ritchie Park is absolutely the worst, especially Option 2! The school doesn't even have 400 kids. It's like 60 per grade. When you split it, the southern portion probably has about half the students, so, 30 per grade. You take those 30 kids and put them in Cabin John MS, where they only know the 60 kids from the older grades that came in from RPES. SO they don't even know 10% of their schoolmates. Then they get to know them over a couple years only to be moved out again as a group of 30 to RM, where they join the rest of the current cluster that has a close-knit relationship with each other. In that group of 2000, they only know 120 of the kids, 6%!

The cabin john assignment of option 2 for RPES will lead to the exclusion of RPES-boundary students from many community activities and clubs that were already formed from neighborhood kids

Cold Spring ES currently have split articulation back to Wootton HS after going to Cabin John MS. Are these kids excluded from community activities and clubs when they go to Wootton?

Yes, actually. Competition things for stuff like robotics leagues that span through high school will prefer to keep the same kids together. Plus, the split articulation of Cold Spring to CJMS to Wooton is part of a larger group. SO the Cold Spring students move AS A LARGER GROUP with others in CJMS to Wootton, so it isn't like they go to Wootton knowing nobody but their original Cold Spring group. Also, I personally know of bullying that occurs at CJMS where the kids who go to Churchill bully the ones who go to Wootton as inferior.

That doesn't seem to stop people from buying into the Cold Spring neighborhood, though, where home values are $1.2mil+. Apparently, even with the split articulation, homebuyers prefer that to, say, buying into the next neighborhood that goes to RM where there is currently no split articulation.

What a terrible comment. Besides that we shouldn't use home prices as a guide here, let's just end your poor attempt at a refute right now.

Cold Spring ES has a capacity of 460. It has a total enrollment of only 350. Worse, because it is a CES location, something like 100 of those students are out of the boundary area. So only about 250 students even come from the boundary itself. That means parents with elementary-school-age children are not buying there. When they do get older and go to Cabin John, they stay with the kids from Stone Mill ES at least when they then move on to Wootton. So it seems that there is trouble selling in this neighborhood for the elementary school at least, though many factors play into that. At least they have had a little bit of a cohort that stays together through high school.

As I stated, split articulation doesn't stop people from buying into the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes this was totally mismanaged. We are going to rip people out of schools they want to stay in and taxpayers are footing the bill for it. Complete and utter incompetence.

? a new school is being built to deal with overcrowding. Some people will have to move.

What a weird post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:both of these studies especially Crown are making me think that one was a waste of money. It’d have been far better to devote the $150M or whatever was spent on Crown into spending it on an addition at each HS with a need. Spending 25M x 6 prevents this from becoming a debacle.

Additionally from an ongoing operational cost standpoint, far more efficient to have fewer but larger schools so long as we’re not taking about 3000+ high schools everywhere.

Think of all the wasted staff to run the school. Economics of having 2 less principals, 6 less assistant principals, 2 less biz managers, etc not to mention the facility upkeep. Feels like way more inefficient.

I thought about this, too, about just adding to the existing schools, especially given the demographic cliff, but I think the problem for some of the schools is that they lack space to build an addition.

About 10 years ago JWMS had a large addition. It's now already at over capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS made a huge mistake not rezoning the elementary school boundaries. Had they build that foundation the MS/HS boundaries would make much more sense

Wouldn't really make any difference. It just adds another change to complain about.

+1. If they were doing all schools, many people would be complaining about the new ES zones too!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Split articulation from MS to HS is bad for kids. Having kids change schools between 9th and 10th is just cruel. Changing schools and all new kids. So dumb. 4 yr plans are made in Jan of 8th grade. Classes may be different. Having to start over in clubs, sports, etc. just terrible. They should at least start changes only in 9th grade and 6th grade. Not 10th or 7th. So it takes an extra year to transition, fine.

This. All of this.

[Anonymous]

These arguments on here are the same ones we have heard at every boundary changes. Look into the past to understand the future.