Cold Spring Kindergarten
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Anonymous
Not on DCUM, they don't. The dialogue goes like this: Poster #1: MCPS does everything wrong, especially [particular issue]! Poster #2: MCPS is a big and complicated school district. There are no easy answers. Poster #1: See, MCPS even does its size wrong! If it were a smaller, less complicated school district, it wouldn't have [particular issue]! |
Anonymous
| I'll give MCPS the benefit of the doubt when I see some efforts to make things better for students at overcrowded schools. I guess you don't care because your snowflake goes to CSES and does not have to worry about a portable. |
Anonymous
My snowflake does not go to CSES. What is worrisome about a portable? I am asking sincerely. |
Anonymous
I really don't think it is a conspiracy (and my kids attend an overcrowded DCC school). Most of this has to do with changing housing patterns. Fewer people are moving to the Churchill and Wooton clusters, while more people are moving close-in to DC. Also, many schools were built in those areas in the 1960s that were of poor quality and need to be replaced. Right now, they consider the need for school renovation/replacement based on the quality of the facilities. Through a separate process, they consider if schools need additions. It would be nice if they could somehow combine these processes, so an older school with many portables gets priority over an older school that is under-capacity. |
Anonymous
Security for one thing. To get into the main building, you have to be buzzed in. To get into a portable, you just have to walk through any open area of the school grounds. Most of the schools around here are not fenced. You can get on the grounds very easily. They leave the portable doors unlocked. If there was ever a shelter in place due to a tornado, those portables are not very safe. The kids would have to leave the portable to go into the main building. I've actually never lived through a tornado, but the thought of my DC having to go outside to get into a main building when there is an imminent tornado around kind of scares me. The other issue is the bathroom issue. To get into the main building at my DC's school, you need a keycard, even from the back of the building. Many a times kids have gone to the bathroom without the key card, only to have to go back (and in some cases the portable isn't that close to the main building) to get the keycard. It's not a huge issue, but it's a pain. It's also very noisy in the portables when other classes are on the playground. My DC said it was really loud and hard to hear the teacher and concentrate. And along those lines, the six portable buildings in my DC's school takes up valuable blacktop space. When the grass is wet, they are only allowed to play on the black top. There is so little room left on the blacktop that they have to split the kids up, one group can play on the blacktop and the other group has to go in the front of the school where the buses stop. And because it's the front of the school and there is a street there, they are not allowed to play with balls. So, when they play out front, they have no balls, no play structures, nothing. They can play tag sure, but it does limit what they can do. And it's really not safe. How do you have one or two adults supervise a hundred kids out front? There is a SN kid in my DC's class. This kid has run off away from the group during recess a couple of times. |
Anonymous
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I personally think if they haven't restructured yet, they will be looking to close CSES in about 5 years. It is cold, dark, open-style classrooms and no gym. RM is getting a 5th elementary school in a few years and Beverly Farms is new, huge and under-enrolled.
My guess is that they will rezone that area and once Fallsgrove goes to the new 5th elementary school, they will send Falls Chapel to Ritchie Park and Copenhaver to Beverly Farms. |
Anonymous
Where do you start? It is a trailer. They stay outside and get moved around from school to school. Issues of mold, no locks, bad weather, right next to blacktop areas for recess, leaving in rain/snow to get to class, swarming bees building nests in the deck wood, must take a friend with you to the bathroom etc.... Then add the fact that they take away large areas of recess blacktop for kids so they have to stay indoors if it is wet out. They also don't have the indoor facilities like cafeteria tables, printers, teacher's lounge, etc... to maintain the amount of kids/staff that are actually included in the school numbers. Our ES school has 5 cafeteria times. The earliest is 10:30am. Ridiculous. Then the amount of money to maintain them, build decks on school grounds to get to them, clean them out yearly, move them if needed, and more I probably don't even know about. To see schools close to the overcrowded school (Dufief next to RC, CS next to RP) is such a slap in the face. No school wants to be so under-enrolled that you lose good teachers yearly, can't get enough parental support, cut back enriching programs because of lack of kids - all while schools near you are so overfilled they are bursting at the seams. MCPS needs to re-look at things. It doesn't have to be a huge costly study and boundary line changeover but allow families in neighboring developments the OPTION to drive their kid to a lower enrolled school when their school is over-enrolled. They apply thru lottery, the principals decide. Done. |
Anonymous
RM #ES 5 is not going to happen now with the budget cuts by the Governor. |
Anonymous
I don't agree with the vendetta poster who is a nut but I do agree that MCPS is at fault here for not taking simple actions and wasting resources. I have never seen an organization so inept that they trip over their own feet every two steps. Its not rocket science that leaving some schools empty while others are cramming kids into portables is not good planning. There is such a thing as interim amelioration. MCPS could easily put in place a policy where open spots in under enrolled schools are available for a COSA lottery. Students zoned for overcrowded schools would be eligible to enter the COSA lottery. Parents would be responsible for getting their kids to the school. The COSA assignment would only renew if the same number of open spots was available at the school the next year and the overcrowding conditions still existed at the original school. |
Anonymous
| I think the vendetta poster is absolutely correct. For all of the reasons set forth by 11:37, MCPS is absolutely screwing certain kids in order to keep people at CSES and BFES (and others, like DuFief) happy. |
Anonymous
Wow, those parents at Cold Spring ES, Beverly Farms ES, and Dufief ES (combined enrollment 942, or 0.6% of total MCPS enrollment) must be super extra powerful. |
Anonymous
Your information is completely incorrect. They just built a new gym and the school is slated for renovation in 2019. |
Anonymous
Cold Spring and Dufief want more families |
Anonymous
| Cold Spring makes me sick every time I drive past it. My kids are at an overcrowded school too. Would be nice to have classes with 15 students and lots of individualized attention. I don't know where DuFief is, but I heard they are also getting special treatment with small classes, extra teachers, and state of the art facilities. |
Anonymous
we live near CS, but go to RP. We'd rather stay at RP, even with the overcrowding. We like the RM cluster. |