Cliff Notes summary of MCPS boundary study fight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thing is about home values.

That's a big part of it, but it's also strongly connected to racism.

How will any of this change?

Even if we "brown out" the country, likes will attract likes. college educated? You'll have friends and colleagues who are also in white collar professions.

And if the schools are "leveled" by race and SES, you'll find ways to send your kids to private. And you'll still be in a neighborhood with others "like you." You'll find your people.

Humans are tribal by nature. We seek others who are like us. And sadly, money is one way to separate folks.

And everyone is also entitled to the same high-quality public education regardless where they live. Unfortunately, there are good and bad schools at least that’s what people on this board constantly say. Addressing this so all students can rise to their potential seem like the right thing to do.

Are you for real??? No one is entitled to anything, you get what you pay for. Sad but true.

No, the public school system is not set up as a fee-for-service system. And especially not on a housing-fee-for-school-service system.

Very true but I think many of the posters here fail to grasp this.

My issue is that I bought my house by making an agreement with a bank. I got a loan for a house in a W cluster. I agreed to leverage my time and treasure to buy a house zoned for a school that was good for my child. I do not approve of the Montgomery county Board of Education deciding that my bank should charge me the same for a now cheaper house. All so the BoE can say they “ we got revenge on the W schools for being too homogeneous.” The bank doesn’t care and will still charge me the same every month.

Here’s the main point: you made a mistake. You bought your house based on one set of assumptions, and you were wrong. Some people buy oceanfront property that crumbles into the sea, some people’s homes are lost in tornadoes, and some people’s homes lose value because boundaries change. You said it right at the beginning: you made an agreement with a bank. You didn’t sign a contract with MCPS. You might have invested in Bitcoin or Google stock or whatever, but it is really not my child’s fault or the fault of any child in the county that you stand to lose a little money, so please don’t punish the children.

I am guessing a good part (but not all) of Wootton goes to Northwest and QO and then part of Churchill goes to Wootton. That opens some room at Churchill for some students from RM and/or WJ.

The question is really whether the particular neighborhoods that might shift to new schools would change diversity at all. This could be determined by looking at ES composition, but I haven’t done that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thing is about home values.

That's a big part of it, but it's also strongly connected to racism.

How will any of this change?

Even if we "brown out" the country, likes will attract likes. college educated? You'll have friends and colleagues who are also in white collar professions.

And if the schools are "leveled" by race and SES, you'll find ways to send your kids to private. And you'll still be in a neighborhood with others "like you." You'll find your people.

Humans are tribal by nature. We seek others who are like us. And sadly, money is one way to separate folks.

And everyone is also entitled to the same high-quality public education regardless where they live. Unfortunately, there are good and bad schools at least that’s what people on this board constantly say. Addressing this so all students can rise to their potential seem like the right thing to do.

Are you for real??? No one is entitled to anything, you get what you pay for. Sad but true.

No, the public school system is not set up as a fee-for-service system. And especially not on a housing-fee-for-school-service system.

Very true but I think many of the posters here fail to grasp this.

My issue is that I bought my house by making an agreement with a bank. I got a loan for a house in a W cluster. I agreed to leverage my time and treasure to buy a house zoned for a school that was good for my child. I do not approve of the Montgomery county Board of Education deciding that my bank should charge me the same for a now cheaper house. All so the BoE can say they “ we got revenge on the W schools for being too homogeneous.” The bank doesn’t care and will still charge me the same every month.

Here’s the main point: you made a mistake. You bought your house based on one set of assumptions, and you were wrong. Some people buy oceanfront property that crumbles into the sea, some people’s homes are lost in tornadoes, and some people’s homes lose value because boundaries change. You said it right at the beginning: you made an agreement with a bank. You didn’t sign a contract with MCPS. You might have invested in Bitcoin or Google stock or whatever, but it is really not my child’s fault or the fault of any child in the county that you stand to lose a little money, so please don’t punish the children.

I am guessing a good part (but not all) of Wootton goes to Northwest and QO and then part of Churchill goes to Wootton. That opens some room at Churchill for some students from RM and/or WJ.a

The question is really whether the particular neighborhoods that might shift to new schools would change diversity at all. This could be determined by looking at ES composition, but I haven’t done that.

Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

County taxpayers.

The boundaries haven't been looked at systematically since the 1980s, there are under-capacity schools next to over-capacity schools, there are a lot of kids on buses going a long way. NOT doing a boundary analysis at this point would be mismanagement.

[Anonymous]

The only people who will be helped by rezoning at this level will be MCPS administrators who can hide behind averaged scores. From the MCPS perspective its better to have more low average schools than several high schools and low ranked schools because they get more grief about having the rock bottom scoring schools. It does not matter to them that there are tons of kids in the mediocre school failing at the same level as when they were in the low ranked schools.

The controversy surrounding rezoning is also distracting from all the other problems within MCPS so its a win for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only people who will be helped by rezoning at this level will be MCPS administrators who can hide behind averaged scores. From the MCPS perspective its better to have more low average schools than several high schools and low ranked schools because they get more grief about having the rock bottom scoring schools. It does not matter to them that there are tons of kids in the mediocre school failing at the same level as when they were in the low ranked schools.

The controversy surrounding rezoning is also distracting from all the other problems within MCPS so its a win for them.

They often put the weakest and greenest principals in the W schools where the scores are fine. If those schools start to have an influx of kids with greater needs and scores begin to drop, they also should reshuffle the administrators. Some of them can barely hack it now, when the biggest issue is an underperforming teacher driving parents mad.

[Anonymous]

They need to fix east county. I bet they could find several kids willing to be bussed to whitman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only people who will be helped by rezoning at this level will be MCPS administrators who can hide behind averaged scores. From the MCPS perspective its better to have more low average schools than several high schools and low ranked schools because they get more grief about having the rock bottom scoring schools. It does not matter to them that there are tons of kids in the mediocre school failing at the same level as when they were in the low ranked schools.

The controversy surrounding rezoning is also distracting from all the other problems within MCPS so its a win for them.

They often put the weakest and greenest principals in the W schools where the scores are fine. If those schools start to have an influx of kids with greater needs and scores begin to drop, they also should reshuffle the administrators. Some of them can barely hack it now, when the biggest issue is an underperforming teacher driving parents mad.

Wasn't Dr. Benz at a W for like 30 years? You got to stop making these baseless generalizations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

Why fix boundaries where there isn’t a problem? Do you want them to all be a perfect circle? Never going to happen. It’s wasteful and harms communities and kids to break up schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

Why fix boundaries where there isn’t a problem? Do you want them to all be a perfect circle? Never going to happen. It’s wasteful and harms communities and kids to break up schools.

Because there are several problems that have been discussed ad museum already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only people who will be helped by rezoning at this level will be MCPS administrators who can hide behind averaged scores. From the MCPS perspective its better to have more low average schools than several high schools and low ranked schools because they get more grief about having the rock bottom scoring schools. It does not matter to them that there are tons of kids in the mediocre school failing at the same level as when they were in the low ranked schools.

The controversy surrounding rezoning is also distracting from all the other problems within MCPS so its a win for them.

They often put the weakest and greenest principals in the W schools where the scores are fine. If those schools start to have an influx of kids with greater needs and scores begin to drop, they also should reshuffle the administrators. Some of them can barely hack it now, when the biggest issue is an underperforming teacher driving parents mad.

Wasn't Dr. Benz at a W for like 30 years? You got to stop making these baseless generalizations.

Yes and was perhaps the longest serving principal in the county before retiring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

Why fix boundaries where there isn’t a problem? Do you want them to all be a perfect circle? Never going to happen. It’s wasteful and harms communities and kids to break up schools.

As others have pointed out, there are two new high schools opening in the western part of the county. This revision's been a long time coming for a lot of reasons (including multiple zones that were gerrymandered due to the population patterns at the time) but the most pressing issue is how to fill two entire schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

Why fix boundaries where there isn’t a problem? Do you want them to all be a perfect circle? Never going to happen. It’s wasteful and harms communities and kids to break up schools.

As others have pointed out, there are two new high schools opening in the western part of the county. This revision's been a long time coming for a lot of reasons (including multiple zones that were gerrymandered due to the population patterns at the time) but the most pressing issue is how to fill two entire schools.

Also, there's the issue with segregation augmented by the county's housing policy and outdated boundaries that result in overcrowded schools being adjacent to ones with hundreds of empty desks. This article provides a lot of the information.

https://ggwash.org/view/71803/montgomery-county-is-finally-talking-about-its-segregated-schools.-but-can-we-fix-them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

County taxpayers.

The boundaries haven't been looked at systematically since the 1980s, there are under-capacity schools next to over-capacity schools, there are a lot of kids on buses going a long way. NOT doing a boundary analysis at this point would be mismanagement.

Well said! Amazing to me that we have schools sitting under capacity and some so far over capacity. Taxpayers should want this study! Signed - Wootton Cluster Parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is really going to be helped by this kind of musical chairs approach to redistricting? Are kids who move from WJ to Churchill , or Churchill to Wootton, really going to be better off? Will it signficantly change the FARMS mix of the various schools? Seems like a lot of inconvenience to families for not much in the way of concrete results.

Shift people around as little as possible to deal with disparities in capacity in the various schools --- which even critics will find defensible, even if it is not something that they welcome -- and leave it at that.

DP... despite what some people think, the boundary analysis is not just about diversity. It's taking a look at our current boundaries, and even in the western side of the county, some of the boundaries are wacky. Those need to be redrawn, too.

Why fix boundaries where there isn’t a problem? Do you want them to all be a perfect circle? Never going to happen. It’s wasteful and harms communities and kids to break up schools.

This would be a good question, if there weren't problems.

But since there are problems, it's an irrelevant question.