To the lawyers here..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The 6 regional magnets were created for equity - but all the 6 regional magnets do not have the same program pathways.

Some program pathways are available just for that region - Wheaton engineering which is criteria based, the Aviation program in Magruder, the Video production pathway in Churchill and so on.

If my kid wanted to apply for those pathways but cannot apply since we don't belong to that region and the program is available only to the schools in that region, do I have a case if I sue MCPS and produce all the evidence where they stated that the regional magnets were created for equity.

There are other ways to challenge these decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s no entitlement that all schools in the same district or all districts in the state have the same educational programs and opportunities available. If you could show a lack of access on the basis of race, national origin, or disability, you *might* have a claim. But you’d a) need to have a child from the harmed group and b) generally need to show an intent to discriminate (disparate impact claims are basically dead).

This is your high quality answer right here, OP. There is no legal theory on which to build a case, and the only way you might be able to make a case is if you could show that MCPS deliberately placed certain programs in certain communities in ways that harmed a protected class. That's not the case, however. The "regions" are pretty diverse, and while I'm not thrilled with the placement of the programs that best fit my kids' interests, I don't think that was intentional -- it's just bad luck for my family.

They literally placed criteria humanities and arts programs in the wealthiest schools AND are allowing them to have a home seat preference, thus disadvantaging the poorer, more likely to be Black and brown kids. And when called out by the design team members, they said it was because of their “asset map”, either because they’re too stupid to understand that relying on today’s assets bakes in inequities or because they think parents are too stupid to notice.

That entire team is terrible.

[Anonymous]

As it's grade time the forum is rife with finding advice to artificially or fraudulently boost grades. Why does everyone think it's ok to ask the teacher to fraud. They are taking our jobs and our salaries away. I wonder who they are going to fire first. .probably the one who have a problem frauding data of grades and violence reports

[Anonymous]

It's not equity. They are fudgeing numbers.

They are saying they are opening up more seats than previously available because of having each program area in each region, however in highly competitive regions like the W schools, those seats are actually less than what's required.

The number of seats should be relative to the approximate population of eligible students (e.g. 25%) to capture an equitable population.

Of course I understand they have to be able to support with teachers and capacity, but the reality is the number of eligible students at these schools are way higher than the 60 seats they plan to make available for each program.

At Whitman, for example, with 500 kids per grade, only 10% would be eligible for a criteria-based seat as currently designed, whereas over 30% are at a PL 4 on ELA MCAP with roughly the same percent with PL4 on Science MCAP.

I understand it's more than currently get in with the current lottery, but it's still not enough, especially when the seats are for both inbounds and other region high schools. If 30 seats are reserved for inbounds, that still only leaves about 5-6 seats for kids from other region high schools. How is that different from what's currently happening?? The math is not mathing.

[Anonymous]

The math isn't mathing because this is MCPS where math suffers, even amongst staff.