White flight from MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP

I agree with you to a certain extent.

FTR: I have ancestors who arrived with the very earliest settlers on one side and ancestors who arrived right around 1900 on the other side.

The part I think you might not appreciate is this: prior generations of immigrants embraced the American culture and quickly assimilated. Within one generation they were fully literate and either bilingual or were abandoning their native language; while they initially settled in ethnic enclaves, their goal was to move on to greener pastures to live among the more affluent and established; they took pride in being American. This isn’t the case at the moment. I think we are headed for a culture war on two fronts with Latinos and Muslims who will become the dominant culture. Hopefully I’m wrong.

This is factually wrong. It's false "history." It's a story anti-immigration people in the US have been telling themselves for over a century. Previous immigrants were good, but THESE immigrants NOW are different and bad! It's also a story rooted in bigotry and racism.

You are wrong.

FTR, I’m not saying all immigrants are bad. I’m saying they aren’t assimilating at the same rates.

Why?

Instead of Europeans who arrived in droves in the early 1900s who were gleefully pursuing an American way of life, we have huge numbers of new immigrants who are clinging to their native culture.

New immigrants are very religious: evangelical Christians (Africa and Central/South America) and Muslims. Instead of assimilating, both groups stick together and have their own agenda. They aren’t thrilled with American culture; they are here for economic reasons and safety.

Some new immigrants are gang-affiliated. That’s just a fact. We wouldn’t be pouring so much money into anti-gang efforts if it weren’t such a big issue. The problem is these guys wreak havoc in latino communities here…creating the same situation good people fled in the first place. And now it’s our county’s problem.

That's just plain wrong. I don't know where you learned that, but it's wrong. Extremely wrong. It would hard for it to be wrong-er, unless you were making assertions that violate the physical laws of the universe, like "Instead of Europeans who arrived in droves in the early 1900s who were gleefully creating and destroying matter..."

+1 This is absolutely a counterfactual narrative. I wonder if PP has ever been to a large Northeastern city. It they had, they might notice neighborhoods like "Little Italy," "Little Warsaw," and "Chinatown."

They might have noticed that different Catholic parishes served different ethnicities, or that organizations like the Knights of Columbus and the Polish National Alliance flourished during that time period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP

I agree with you to a certain extent.

FTR: I have ancestors who arrived with the very earliest settlers on one side and ancestors who arrived right around 1900 on the other side.

The part I think you might not appreciate is this: prior generations of immigrants embraced the American culture and quickly assimilated. Within one generation they were fully literate and either bilingual or were abandoning their native language; while they initially settled in ethnic enclaves, their goal was to move on to greener pastures to live among the more affluent and established; they took pride in being American. This isn’t the case at the moment. I think we are headed for a culture war on two fronts with Latinos and Muslims who will become the dominant culture. Hopefully I’m wrong.

This is factually wrong. It's false "history." It's a story anti-immigration people in the US have been telling themselves for over a century. Previous immigrants were good, but THESE immigrants NOW are different and bad! It's also a story rooted in bigotry and racism.

True but people who love Bill O'Reilly or Tucker believe this stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Sigh.

ICYMI:

We already pay inflated taxes in MoCo. It’s a big reason why the county has documented the shrinking tax base: lots of families left for Northern VA about a decade ago and continue to settle there.

And MoCo already increased our taxes in recent years. I would happily pay more if the county levied yet another increase and improved the schools. I’m sure they will go up, but I’m not hopeful they will change the curriculum or do anything to address the growing crime.

How old are your kids and how many do you have, pp?

I have a handful. My oldest is currently in college and I have observed the devolution of the curriculum over the last 15+ years.

I wish mcps would strive to function like private schools. They could take simple steps, but they don’t. They need to recognize their lower standards and everyone gets a medal approach to education just doesn’t work.

Have you seen the entrance exam for private schools? 8th graders take it in the fall and I was blown away by the vocabulary needed to succeed. We are starting test prep now with vocabulary books…since mcps doesn’t teach vocabulary or grammar.

Do you have a kid taking a foreign language? Good luck learning a foreign language without understanding grammar.

PS - Mcps does a ridiculous job teaching foreign language. Ridiculous.

What a terrible idea.

Riiiiiiggggghhhhtttt

Because smaller class sizes would be a tragedy.

Establishing high expectations and commanding respect would be just awful.

Grouping by ability for critical subjects would be a waste of time. It’s much better to have the 3rd grade teacher cycle through 10 or 15 minute groups to teach reading/writing while the rest of the class works independently in groups on worksheets.

Grammar and vocabulary are a waste of time. It’s better for kids to figure it out…or not. Plus, per mcps, students magically absorb such things as teachers cover science, history, etc. Lol.

If you don’t get it, you just don’t get it.

If you don't get why public schools are not, should not be, and cannot be more like private schools, you just don't get it.

Please enlighten us.

ICYMI: mcps largely operated like private schools decades ago. They grouped by ability. They had order and higher standards.

Perhaps you are too young to remember that mcps used to be nationally regarded as a high performing school system.

Who's "us"?

But no, I will leave it as an exercise for the reader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I get what you are saying. But Sheinbein wasn’t a menace to the community or school. He ended up murdering a friend.

And I’ve heard similar sentiments from MoCo staffers from various agencies along the lines of, “No need to worry about the Latino gang violence because they only kill each other…it’s not like the black gang violence in the 90s that spilled out into public spaces in CA/NY or what happens in Baltimore.”

That’s a very dangerous mindset because it accepts the low level crime already happening in terms of break-ins/theft and car accidents (oof, the drunk driving is really bad among Latinos) and doesn’t anticipate the more serious crime that is sure to come. It’s a numbers thing coupled with escalation when subcultural norms that drove countless people to leave danger and poor ways in Central America are suddenly the dominant culture in entire schools and neighborhoods.

Heck, just focus on what the county has already documented: chronic absenteeism (which they are now aggressively using as a tool to unenroll these problematic kids) and the dramatic decline of our tax base (aging affluent white population being replaced by Latinos and other immigrants (including Asians) who operate cash businesses and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Both are negatively impacting our schools which are obviously in decline.

If you have kids in mcps in Bethesda, CC, Kensington or Potomac, please don’t poo poo the critics. You aren’t dealing with this in any meaningful way. Ditto to TP and anyone in a HGC or magnet.

Mcps panicked when test scores started to decline and their previously pristine record and nationally regarded public school reputation changed. Their solution was to lower the bar so everyone would succeed. Instead they created a race to the bottom and everyone suffered. The curriculum is ridiculous. No grammar?!?! No rigor?!?! California is reinstating cursive and I bet mcps will add it back in 5 years or so.

I’d pay more taxes if the schools were better. Seriously.

Instead, I’m exploring private high school.

How would you do this? Just send an extra check to the county every year?

"Explore private high school" if you want. That's your choice.

-white person who lives in Ganglandia and is getting increasingly impatient with white people's apparent inability to get over ourselves

Sigh.

ICYMI:

We already pay inflated taxes in MoCo. It’s a big reason why the county has documented the shrinking tax base: lots of families left for Northern VA about a decade ago and continue to settle there.

And MoCo already increased our taxes in recent years. I would happily pay more if the county levied yet another increase and improved the schools. I’m sure they will go up, but I’m not hopeful they will change the curriculum or do anything to address the growing crime.

How old are your kids and how many do you have, pp?

I have a handful. My oldest is currently in college and I have observed the devolution of the curriculum over the last 15+ years.

I wish mcps would strive to function like private schools. They could take simple steps, but they don’t. They need to recognize their lower standards and everyone gets a medal approach to education just doesn’t work.

Have you seen the entrance exam for private schools? 8th graders take it in the fall and I was blown away by the vocabulary needed to succeed. We are starting test prep now with vocabulary books…since mcps doesn’t teach vocabulary or grammar.

Do you have a kid taking a foreign language? Good luck learning a foreign language without understanding grammar.

PS - Mcps does a ridiculous job teaching foreign language. Ridiculous.

eh... I don't think public schools do a great job in general of teaching foreign languages. If you really want them to learn a FL you have start early.

I went to Iceland recently and was blown away by how fluent most people there were in English. They learn the English at an early age.

-signed a bilingual person

Yup we should absolutely be starting language education earlier. But it’s a chicken and egg thing I guess- because the US as a whole doesn’t prioritize learning a foreign language and doesn’t teach kids well, there are fewer students who have the ability and desire to go into that profession.

We don’t have the money to go private and I generally love our ES (which is pretty diverse FWIW) but man the poor curriculum is beyond frustrating. Reading especially was bad until MCPS added RGR as a stopgap. But most public school districts were using the balanced literacy junk until pretty recently so there weren’t a lot of viable alternatives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

This is such an uneducated reply by the MCPS administrators, and just serves to further stigmatise ADHD. ADHD often presents with other disorders - what you may be observing is oppositional defiance disorder or something else. There are many people with severe ADHD (myself and my family included) who are respectful, well educated, and positive members of the community.

That said, the “mainstreaming” of those with certain disorders is wreaking havoc (sorry wreakhavoc if you see this!) on our schools.

Parents also need to parent, and far too few do, especially in this area with so many people stressed to the max over unreasonable jobs and commutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

This is such an uneducated reply by the MCPS administrators, and just serves to further stigmatise ADHD. ADHD often presents with other disorders - what you may be observing is oppositional defiance disorder or something else. There are many people with severe ADHD (myself and my family included) who are respectful, well educated, and positive members of the community.

That said, the “mainstreaming” of those with certain disorders is wreaking havoc (sorry wreakhavoc if you see this!) on our schools.

Parents also need to parent, and far too few do, especially in this area with so many people stressed to the max over unreasonable jobs and commutes.

So glad there have been 0 gang related incidents at MCPS in the past 1-2 decades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

I get what you are saying. But Sheinbein wasn’t a menace to the community or school. He ended up murdering a friend.

And I’ve heard similar sentiments from MoCo staffers from various agencies along the lines of, “No need to worry about the Latino gang violence because they only kill each other…it’s not like the black gang violence in the 90s that spilled out into public spaces in CA/NY or what happens in Baltimore.”

That’s a very dangerous mindset because it accepts the low level crime already happening in terms of break-ins/theft and car accidents (oof, the drunk driving is really bad among Latinos) and doesn’t anticipate the more serious crime that is sure to come. It’s a numbers thing coupled with escalation when subcultural norms that drove countless people to leave danger and poor ways in Central America are suddenly the dominant culture in entire schools and neighborhoods.

Heck, just focus on what the county has already documented: chronic absenteeism (which they are now aggressively using as a tool to unenroll these problematic kids) and the dramatic decline of our tax base (aging affluent white population being replaced by Latinos and other immigrants (including Asians) who operate cash businesses and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Both are negatively impacting our schools which are obviously in decline.

If you have kids in mcps in Bethesda, CC, Kensington or Potomac, please don’t poo poo the critics. You aren’t dealing with this in any meaningful way. Ditto to TP and anyone in a HGC or magnet.

Mcps panicked when test scores started to decline and their previously pristine record and nationally regarded public school reputation changed. Their solution was to lower the bar so everyone would succeed. Instead they created a race to the bottom and everyone suffered. The curriculum is ridiculous. No grammar?!?! No rigor?!?! California is reinstating cursive and I bet mcps will add it back in 5 years or so.

I’d pay more taxes if the schools were better. Seriously.

Instead, I’m exploring private high school.

Good for you. It’s what we did too. The privates (including many religiously affiliated schools) are more like what public high schools were like 40 years ago, except of course they are more diverse, which is great, because you see minority kids as leaders. Students thrive in schools where discipline, high expectations, smaller classrooms, and a supportive community exist. Good luck to you.

[Anonymous]

Even at schools such as Walt Whitman and Winston Churchill???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

I get what you are saying. But Sheinbein wasn’t a menace to the community or school. He ended up murdering a friend.

And I’ve heard similar sentiments from MoCo staffers from various agencies along the lines of, “No need to worry about the Latino gang violence because they only kill each other…it’s not like the black gang violence in the 90s that spilled out into public spaces in CA/NY or what happens in Baltimore.”

That’s a very dangerous mindset because it accepts the low level crime already happening in terms of break-ins/theft and car accidents (oof, the drunk driving is really bad among Latinos) and doesn’t anticipate the more serious crime that is sure to come. It’s a numbers thing coupled with escalation when subcultural norms that drove countless people to leave danger and poor ways in Central America are suddenly the dominant culture in entire schools and neighborhoods.

Heck, just focus on what the county has already documented: chronic absenteeism (which they are now aggressively using as a tool to unenroll these problematic kids) and the dramatic decline of our tax base (aging affluent white population being replaced by Latinos and other immigrants (including Asians) who operate cash businesses and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Both are negatively impacting our schools which are obviously in decline.

If you have kids in mcps in Bethesda, CC, Kensington or Potomac, please don’t poo poo the critics. You aren’t dealing with this in any meaningful way. Ditto to TP and anyone in a HGC or magnet.

Mcps panicked when test scores started to decline and their previously pristine record and nationally regarded public school reputation changed. Their solution was to lower the bar so everyone would succeed. Instead they created a race to the bottom and everyone suffered. The curriculum is ridiculous. No grammar?!?! No rigor?!?! California is reinstating cursive and I bet mcps will add it back in 5 years or so.

I’d pay more taxes if the schools were better. Seriously.

Instead, I’m exploring private high school.

Good for you. It’s what we did too. The privates (including many religiously affiliated schools) are more like what public high schools were like 40 years ago, except of course they are more diverse, which is great, because you see minority kids as leaders. Students thrive in schools where discipline, high expectations, smaller classrooms, and a supportive community exist. Good luck to you.

And yet here you are, posting on the MCPS forum, for some reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost everyone in MoCo today has immigrants in their familial past. Just some more recently than others.

This is totally irrelevant to the conversation. Admitting immigrants in the past doesn't obligate us to do it now. Especially at the level we have now, where the Percentage Foreign Born is at record levels.

AKA "I got mine!"

That's what countries do. They decide what is beneficial to their citizens and pursue that policy. Apparently except for us. We are not obligated to take in anyone who wants to come here. I got mine between the 1660s and 1871. Our ancestors built our society and we should be able to benefit from that.

My ancestors thought your nineteenth century ancestors were a bunch of freeloading, @$#&@ papists. I have diaries.

They were, of course, xenophobes.

I bet they'd find it funny that someone with people who came here so recently thinks they had something to do with building this country.

I bring this up not because I believe it--I don't. I'm bringing it up because one of America's unique strengths is its ability to embrace different groups of people and give them opportunities to flourish.

Sadly, so many like you take the wrong lessons from that.

DP

I agree with you to a certain extent.

FTR: I have ancestors who arrived with the very earliest settlers on one side and ancestors who arrived right around 1900 on the other side.

The part I think you might not appreciate is this: prior generations of immigrants embraced the American culture and quickly assimilated. Within one generation they were fully literate and either bilingual or were abandoning their native language; while they initially settled in ethnic enclaves, their goal was to move on to greener pastures to live among the more affluent and established; they took pride in being American. This isn’t the case at the moment. I think we are headed for a culture war on two fronts with Latinos and Muslims who will become the dominant culture. Hopefully I’m wrong.

And this is enabled by our government. When I explained to our French exchange student that part of our ever increasing taxes go to fund translations in umpty dump languages, she laughed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

I get what you are saying. But Sheinbein wasn’t a menace to the community or school. He ended up murdering a friend.

And I’ve heard similar sentiments from MoCo staffers from various agencies along the lines of, “No need to worry about the Latino gang violence because they only kill each other…it’s not like the black gang violence in the 90s that spilled out into public spaces in CA/NY or what happens in Baltimore.”

That’s a very dangerous mindset because it accepts the low level crime already happening in terms of break-ins/theft and car accidents (oof, the drunk driving is really bad among Latinos) and doesn’t anticipate the more serious crime that is sure to come. It’s a numbers thing coupled with escalation when subcultural norms that drove countless people to leave danger and poor ways in Central America are suddenly the dominant culture in entire schools and neighborhoods.

Heck, just focus on what the county has already documented: chronic absenteeism (which they are now aggressively using as a tool to unenroll these problematic kids) and the dramatic decline of our tax base (aging affluent white population being replaced by Latinos and other immigrants (including Asians) who operate cash businesses and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Both are negatively impacting our schools which are obviously in decline.

If you have kids in mcps in Bethesda, CC, Kensington or Potomac, please don’t poo poo the critics. You aren’t dealing with this in any meaningful way. Ditto to TP and anyone in a HGC or magnet.

Mcps panicked when test scores started to decline and their previously pristine record and nationally regarded public school reputation changed. Their solution was to lower the bar so everyone would succeed. Instead they created a race to the bottom and everyone suffered. The curriculum is ridiculous. No grammar?!?! No rigor?!?! California is reinstating cursive and I bet mcps will add it back in 5 years or so.

I’d pay more taxes if the schools were better. Seriously.

Instead, I’m exploring private high school.

Good for you. It’s what we did too. The privates (including many religiously affiliated schools) are more like what public high schools were like 40 years ago, except of course they are more diverse, which is great, because you see minority kids as leaders. Students thrive in schools where discipline, high expectations, smaller classrooms, and a supportive community exist. Good luck to you.

And yet here you are, posting on the MCPS forum, for some reason.

Because I care about MCPS - it educates the vast majority of my neighbors and community members. I live near several schools and my taxes support MCPS. My kids were there for years, and some of their friends still are there. I want to know what is going on. I still donate to MCPS fundraisers too. I want to see it do better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aaron Needle and Samuel Sheinbein. Kennedy High School

There was a crazy group of kids in the Kennedy area at that time. This wasn’t gang related. There were a bunch of weird guys on drugs and some had obvious mental health issues.

My younger sibling knew this crowd back in the day. Sheinbein went nuts.

Here’s the thing, though, gang violence in MCPS is always personal and involves gang members or affiliates. A bunch of weird guys with drug abuse and mental health issues could attack anyone. I’d rather deal with a gang at my school. The last three years, the most disruptive and scariest MS students I’ve had were middle class white boys with obvious anger issues, but no ED code. When a boy ripped up his paper and stomped on a book until the spine broke, I was told this is his ADHD. When another boy muttered curses (not profanity, but spells) and said a group of girls were “just dead cows”, I was told this is his ADHD. This year, I have one with no code at all and, although he walks around grunting loudly, simply takes anything he wants, then makes bull horns and pretends to charge by scraping his feet like hooves if you ask him to stop, I was told that we were not to bother his family. Dad is a lawyer.

I get what you are saying. But Sheinbein wasn’t a menace to the community or school. He ended up murdering a friend.

And I’ve heard similar sentiments from MoCo staffers from various agencies along the lines of, “No need to worry about the Latino gang violence because they only kill each other…it’s not like the black gang violence in the 90s that spilled out into public spaces in CA/NY or what happens in Baltimore.”

That’s a very dangerous mindset because it accepts the low level crime already happening in terms of break-ins/theft and car accidents (oof, the drunk driving is really bad among Latinos) and doesn’t anticipate the more serious crime that is sure to come. It’s a numbers thing coupled with escalation when subcultural norms that drove countless people to leave danger and poor ways in Central America are suddenly the dominant culture in entire schools and neighborhoods.

Heck, just focus on what the county has already documented: chronic absenteeism (which they are now aggressively using as a tool to unenroll these problematic kids) and the dramatic decline of our tax base (aging affluent white population being replaced by Latinos and other immigrants (including Asians) who operate cash businesses and aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Both are negatively impacting our schools which are obviously in decline.

If you have kids in mcps in Bethesda, CC, Kensington or Potomac, please don’t poo poo the critics. You aren’t dealing with this in any meaningful way. Ditto to TP and anyone in a HGC or magnet.

Mcps panicked when test scores started to decline and their previously pristine record and nationally regarded public school reputation changed. Their solution was to lower the bar so everyone would succeed. Instead they created a race to the bottom and everyone suffered. The curriculum is ridiculous. No grammar?!?! No rigor?!?! California is reinstating cursive and I bet mcps will add it back in 5 years or so.

I’d pay more taxes if the schools were better. Seriously.

Instead, I’m exploring private high school.

Good for you. It’s what we did too. The privates (including many religiously affiliated schools) are more like what public high schools were like 40 years ago, except of course they are more diverse, which is great, because you see minority kids as leaders. Students thrive in schools where discipline, high expectations, smaller classrooms, and a supportive community exist. Good luck to you.

And yet here you are, posting on the MCPS forum, for some reason.

Their posts are just fabrications to push their far-right agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even at schools such as Walt Whitman and Winston Churchill???

Of course not. Those are mostly segregated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP

I agree with you to a certain extent.

FTR: I have ancestors who arrived with the very earliest settlers on one side and ancestors who arrived right around 1900 on the other side.

The part I think you might not appreciate is this: prior generations of immigrants embraced the American culture and quickly assimilated. Within one generation they were fully literate and either bilingual or were abandoning their native language; while they initially settled in ethnic enclaves, their goal was to move on to greener pastures to live among the more affluent and established; they took pride in being American. This isn’t the case at the moment. I think we are headed for a culture war on two fronts with Latinos and Muslims who will become the dominant culture. Hopefully I’m wrong.

This is factually wrong. It's false "history." It's a story anti-immigration people in the US have been telling themselves for over a century. Previous immigrants were good, but THESE immigrants NOW are different and bad! It's also a story rooted in bigotry and racism.

True but people who love Bill O'Reilly or Tucker believe this stuff.

I think you might find plenty of ride or die Dems feel the same way.

You might not see this in your bubble.

But this forum is on mcps…and mcps is overwhelmingly blue. I’m a lifelong Dem. I’d never vote for a R.

So it’s rather silly to attribute any post you disagree with as written by a maga idiot. MoCo and mcps simply aren’t overrun with maga idiots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtually every person I know from Mexico and South America are amazing, highly educated, wonderful people. They are cultured, family people, and tremendously value education. So there can't be a problem just because of an increase in "hispanic" people.

Is this sharp rise in the MCPS hispanic population actually due to illegal immigration of poor and/or violent people from central america? If so this is definitely a broader society problem and blame can be placed on on federal government for it's open border polices.

Sounds like you got an MBA from an elite university. Here's the thing: a lot of those people are going back to Latin and South American to run roughshod over the people migrating here illegally.