Initial boundary options for Woodward study area are up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

I'm not a Whitman parent but honestly, I don't think diversity should be the end-all be-all. Option 3 sucks for a lot of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I listened to the zoom call and did not like the happy/cheery attitudes of the speakers. This is very disruptive to people’s families with all the bussing across county in option 3 and they are laughing and so proud of all their tools.

That seemed incredibly tone deaf to me.

Yup. It's all shiny and pretty and so removed from the communities. We have 160k students. It's about them and their families.

Well they did fire the PR firm that was going to handle public engagement. This is what you get when they do it themselves.

So very tone deaf. Have an ounce of empathy. It’s not all about your pretty maps and charts. These are real families with real lives, many of whom are already being impacted by the DOGE efforts. And these changes under option 3 will devastate anyone who gets bussed — whether to the East or the West — from the closest school to their home. Moving will be hard to stay close to home.

But no one is getting bussed east. Equity fixing is at the expense of bussing east to west and making it "those" kids come to the "nice school". Not the other way around.

Plenty of kids are bussed east under option 3. Farmland => Kennedy. Garrett Park => Wheaton.

Garrett park to Wheaton makes no sense. Do the planners have no concept of the county.

Farmland to Kennedy makes even less sense.

Whoever drew the maps seems unaware of the train tracks on Montrose and thinks people can teleport across Rock Creek Park. What lunacy.

Is it even legal for a school bus to cross train tracks? I ask in all seriousness. Also that is a busy crossing (Randolph) with MARC and freight trains that take forever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s the irony. The wealthier kids will not move from WJ to Kennedy. MCPS surely knows that. These neighborhoods will become exclusively for families that go to private school (many already do). And that’s ok (a shame but it’s ok).

It will be our poorer and international students who go to Kennedy. Those will be the families on long bus rides to Kennedy. These are families who are struggling already due to federal cuts. I’m so sorry for them. We had a good thing here at WJ for so many years and thought we could keep that really special, diverse community going at Woodward, but it looks like the county has other ideas.

I mean if you’re going to drive to Kennedy you might as well drive to Good Counsel. No brainer.

Sorry - what cuts are you talking about?

Our neighborhood is largely NIH.

3 out of the 4 options would be fine for WJ. Option 3 is not great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

I'm not a Whitman parent but honestly, I don't think diversity should be the end-all be-all. Option 3 sucks for a lot of people.

I mean, could we just get super simple and say let’s pick the option that sucks for the fewest people? Maximize happiness?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

Yes, let’s rearrange the entire county just to add diversity to Whitman. That makes sense, isn’t at all biased, and will certainly not cause a massive revolt.

No need to do that. Simply take a chunk of Whitman and swap it with a chuck of high farm area with 15-20 minute bus ride. Keep bus ride to 20 minutes and make sure we are not taking in walk zone.

Whitman desperately needs diversity otherwise we will keep seeing racist stuff in Whitman in future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

I'm not a Whitman parent but honestly, I don't think diversity should be the end-all be-all. Option 3 sucks for a lot of people.

I mean, could we just get super simple and say let’s pick the option that sucks for the fewest people? Maximize happiness?

If it were that easy, it would be a much simpler process! But how would you do that? Every option sucks for a significant number of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s the irony. The wealthier kids will not move from WJ to Kennedy. MCPS surely knows that. These neighborhoods will become exclusively for families that go to private school (many already do). And that’s ok (a shame but it’s ok).

It will be our poorer and international students who go to Kennedy. Those will be the families on long bus rides to Kennedy. These are families who are struggling already due to federal cuts. I’m so sorry for them. We had a good thing here at WJ for so many years and thought we could keep that really special, diverse community going at Woodward, but it looks like the county has other ideas.

I mean if you’re going to drive to Kennedy you might as well drive to Good Counsel. No brainer.

Sorry - what cuts are you talking about?

Our neighborhood is largely NIH.

3 out of the 4 options would be fine for WJ. Option 3 is not great.

It's juut inital options. There will be plenty of options similar to option 3 in next rounds. Some may be worse and some better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

Yes, let’s rearrange the entire county just to add diversity to Whitman. That makes sense, isn’t at all biased, and will certainly not cause a massive revolt.

No need to do that. Simply take a chunk of Whitman and swap it with a chuck of high farm area with 15-20 minute bus ride. Keep bus ride to 20 minutes and make sure we are not taking in walk zone.

Whitman desperately needs diversity otherwise we will keep seeing racist stuff in Whitman in future.

No, it doesn’t NEED diversity and busing in a bunch of poor kids will piss off their families who now have to trek across county to get to events. The kids won’t be able to stay for extra curricular activities and won’t be able to pay for them, further ostracizing them from neighborhood events and students.

You can’t force “diversity” unless people are living close to one another and participating in the same activities before and after school and that’s not happening in Bethesda. It’s the same challenge first gen college students face when matriculating to an affluent university. They can “afford” to get there but they can’t afford to participate the way affluent students can. I’m sorry but that’s the truth. And all the while, you’ll really piss off the locals and raise the costs to MCPS, much less the political fallout to the Board from doing so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

Yes, let’s rearrange the entire county just to add diversity to Whitman. That makes sense, isn’t at all biased, and will certainly not cause a massive revolt.

No need to do that. Simply take a chunk of Whitman and swap it with a chuck of high farm area with 15-20 minute bus ride. Keep bus ride to 20 minutes and make sure we are not taking in walk zone.

Whitman desperately needs diversity otherwise we will keep seeing racist stuff in Whitman in future.

So we are doing this to make the Whitman kids less racist?! It’s not the job of the east county families/MCPS to fix you.

[Anonymous]

In prior boundary studies for elementary, I have seen MCPS break it down by actual numbered neighborhoods to understand the patterns. It would help if they would have more granularity like that here. I can't figure out how they're splitting the articulation for Ashburton ES in Option 4, as an example

[Anonymous]

I know option 3 = bad, but which option is good?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know option 3 = bad, but which option is good?

Probably option 1 or 4 for most people. Ask what is going to cause the least community pushback and cost to MCPS.

[Anonymous]

They should just have the Tilden MS kids matriculate to Woodward and add some kids from Einstein and Wheaton to fill the seats. Leave everything else alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know option 3 = bad, but which option is good?

I'd say option 2 -- good utilization and reasonable looking distances/clusters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option 3 is the only one that addressed diversity/demographics. Not perfect but with some tweaks they can make it work.

They should definitely do option 3 with some tweaks. It's the only option that can add real diversity to Whitman.

Yes, let’s rearrange the entire county just to add diversity to Whitman. That makes sense, isn’t at all biased, and will certainly not cause a massive revolt.

No need to do that. Simply take a chunk of Whitman and swap it with a chuck of high farm area with 15-20 minute bus ride. Keep bus ride to 20 minutes and make sure we are not taking in walk zone.

Whitman desperately needs diversity otherwise we will keep seeing racist stuff in Whitman in future.

What chunk of Whitman is a 15-20 minute ride (in rush hour) from a high FARMS area?

You could move certain apartment buildings in downtown Bethesda to help some, but it would have to be super targeted because everything else in downtown Bethesda is definitely not FARMS.