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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
Superintendent's Recommendation for Richard Montgomery ES #5 Boundaries
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Anonymous
I am not even from RM cluster. Just following the discussion here. Have there been an attempt by community to raise voice strongly? If central office is not listening despite having valid issues then central office does report to some one. Why not go there? Incompetent officials shouldn't be allowed to remain in these schools. Future of kids shouldn't be taken lightly. MCPS does have limited resource and we all have to work with it, but incompetent employees should be called out and removed from our school system. |
Anonymous
DP.... there have been numerous complaints about Principals in different schools, not just RP, some in W clusters. Those Principals haven't gone anywhere. |
Anonymous
That would make JW and RM even more over enrolled. You are only thinking of ES. Look a bit beyond. |
Anonymous
I provided the data calculated from the zone data given as a part of the study. Here are the rough calculations: 2017 FARMS students = 0.229 * 542 = 124 (from superintendent recommendation) 2016 FARMS rate with RP5 moved to RMES#5 = 25.9% (from option 8 data sheet) 2017 Enrollment with RP5 moved to RMES#5 = 380 (estimated from projections in option 8) 2017 FARMS students with RP5 moved to RMES#5 = .259 * 380 = 98 2017 FARMS rate with RP2 and RP6 moved to RMES#5 = 10.8% (from superintendent recommendation) 2017 Enrollment with RP2 and RP6 moved to RMES #5 = 380 (estimated from projections in superintendent recommendation 2017 FARMS students with RP2 and RP6 moved to RMES#5 = .108 * 380 = 41. Let A = the number of FARMS students in RP5 Let B = the number of FARMS students in RP6+RP2 Let C = the number of all other FARMs students at RP From the original calculations above, we have a system of equations: A + B + C = 118 A + C = 41 B + C = 98 Let's solve it: A + 98 = 118 98 = 118 - A -A = -20 A = 20 20 + C = 41 C = 21 20 + B + 21 = 118 B + 41 = 118 B = 77 Then I just rounded these to A ~= 20 B ~= 80 C ~= 20 |
Anonymous
How many kids are in Falls Gorve? How many kids are in CS without counting magnet? Just trying to see the difference here. |
Anonymous
Thank you for posting it here. It's clear that RP5 has very little FARMs kids and majority of FARMs kids were coming from RP2 and RP6. That's why we are getting a huge drop of 50-60% in FARMs at RP in recommended option. MCPS simply needs to do a better job rather than always sticking RP5 in RP despite being so far away. |
Anonymous
Approximately 540-360=180 kids in falls grove |
Anonymous
Are you really that gullible to believe an article that the BOE and Super talk in? - their job is to totally BS. I had a child in Ritchie Park then and it was absolutely not under enrolled. They said the projections could have made it eventually. That was BS and you all know how terrible the BOE is at their projections. RP had 3 classes in each grade minimum and two bombined 5th grade classes. Only ONE un-used classroom upstairs. The lowest it went to is 81% capacity one year. It was mainly 85%. At the time of the study, Lakewood which was the closest school to Fallsgrove was 78% capacity. They chose Fallsgrove to RP/RM because of the constant issues RP was having, as well as how underperforming RM was even with the IB recently in place. Because the county moved RP in 1990 and RP admissions dropped as families moved their kids out to private. They changed the boundaries in 1995 to help with enrollment and lessen the burden on Beall. RP families were still not happy and even though they saw a 2 year spike in enrollment, more families continued to pull out of the school because of the "lesser" RM district. It is right in the numbers on school digger if you don't believe me. The county and cluster knew what was going on. New idea: Let's move a huge expensive neighborhood to RP instead of Wootton to make RP appealing again. Let's build an expensive town center, and build expensive neighborhoods of single family homes across from West End. This will all make RM more appealing and clean up it's reputation. That is why Lakelands at 78% was overlooked, even though all plot owners of Fallsgrove assumed they were going to Wootton because it is literally up the street. And now RM, which was just built 9 years ago is already over capacity. And the irony is in the article it mentions RP would have "eventually" "possibly" fallen below 2 classrooms per grade which is below the BOE's guidelines for keep a school open. So how in the world has Cold Spring stayed open? They have 1 class in a few grades and are currently at 68% capacity with HGC and 52% without it. Why aren't they shutting that school down? Beverly Farms across the street with their massive new building is at 79% capacity. Potomac ES is getting a brand new building and already have their own in-house immersion program. Once it is done, their projections are 79% going down to 75% in 3 years. Wayside is also brand new and is at 79% capacity. Why isn't the BOE considering shutting any of these schools down like the threat was to RP in 2000? Because it is BS and you all fall for it. You are fight about where the FARMS should go and banging your heads against the wall for one school that took 10 years fighting for, that will STILL bring all 5 schools above 90% capacity. Meanwhile next town over in Potomac, they all have new schools with less than 80% capacity and all less than 5% FARMS. Talk about inequality. |
Anonymous
| Given the choice between a simple explanation and a conspiracy theory, I'll choose the simple explanation. You may choose differently, if you wish. |
Anonymous
They could rezone some of Cold Spring to Beverly Farms if there is a difference which I bet is marginal. Total CS kids minus HGC is about 240. I think Fallsgrove has about 190-200 kids. Move the HGC to Wayside which is more centrally localized and under-enrolled. |
Anonymous
Agree. She has something on someone. 
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Anonymous
The school is not at 53% It is 42%. All other schools (Barnsley, Poolesville, RM, Takoma Park, etc..) all go by complete FARMS. So will RM#5 And again, why build RM#5 in a low income walkable area and expect only 20% FARMS. It will never happen because the walkable zones are RP2 and B2 which have a lot of FARMS. Bussing kids in from another school in a non-FARMS area means a section of RM5 needs to go back to another school. Most of the other areas minus TB3 don't have enough FARMS to make it that significant and it makes the schools lopsided in enrollment. Plus building the shell is a must. That doesn't mean you bus kids 5+ miles away into the school to make perfect percentages. |
Anonymous
We can do all mental arithmetic, but in reality every other kid in the class will be a FARMs kid in RM#5. That's the fact and it doesn't matter how we want to report it. No one is asking to have a perfect distribution of 20%. Just don't create 10% for one school and 53% for another when we are starting with 25-25 distributions. There is no need to bus kids to 6 miles here. There is also no need to bus kids from Fallsgrove to RP. That's too far away. Bus them to a shorter distance to Beall. That will mean some higher SES area from Beall going to RM and RP taking some FARMs kids from other side of 270 which is far closer than Fallsgrove. I do agree that you are never going to balance everything, but keeping Fallsgrove in RP is a sloppy way to do if you want to balance schools. Also, you can simply swap B5 and B6. That itself will help with FARMs rate without doing anything else. There are many ways to balance things here as long as people want to do the right thing. Anyway, no matter what happens , MCPS should make every attempt to keep socioeconomic diversity in all schools. |
Anonymous
I suppose RP5 could have gone to Bell, but then Bell would have to give up a LOT of students from its current assignment un the super's plan, which isn't really doable. |
Anonymous
Domino effect is only application for current students and only for the next few years and then it hardly makes any difference to future students. They will come with set boundaries. But if we pick a sub optimal option then impact will be felt by 100s of thousands of students over the next 20-25 years. Students need to move and if a better long term outcome means more Beall students need to move then so be it. Anyway, Beall is the most impacted school here and if more students needs to move out of Beall then most likely all of them will land up in RM#5. RM#5 is anyway getting most students from Beall. I don't see any long term issue here and even short term impact will be minimal. I am not saying that we should do this. But trying to minimize domino effect at expense of longer term permanent negative impact will be a short sighted decision. Minimizing domino effect should be a much lower in priority. |