Proposed New Regions

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Just noodling...

Will W students have more or fewer magnet opportunities? It would seem if Blair retains the SMCS magnet, there would be more slots available there, with its only drawing from 1/3 to 1/4 of the population it currently serves. It would be no further away. It would seem that the switch of IB available from RM to B-CC would, likewise, offer more seats to Whitman for a similar reason while being considerably closer.

Are Whitman students heavily favoring Poolesville Ecology over their own Social Justice and worrying about the loss of that specific opportunity? (Might these sunset, in any case?)

Am I missing something about the above? Or is it just that those in the Whitman-zoned area are hoping that, with enough complaint, the move to regionalization will result in placement of one or more of the highest-academic-caliber magnets at the school within that region which consistently has demonstrated the highest academic results from their in-bounds population? If that is an option, does it present a solution that better meets overall need across the region, or does it do the opposite?

RM and BCC are not in the same region, so your point is moot.

Whitman won't get a program. The program will be placed in the lower performing schools. That's why it's called a "magnet".

Each school will have 1-2 programs.

5 schools each hosting 1-2 programs and offer bus routes to the rest of 4 schools in the same region. That’s like at least 10-20 buses added each region and then multiplies by 6.

Yeah it’s insanity. They should add zero special new programs to schools like Whitman, Churchill, WJ, Wootton, BCC, even QO and Northwest. Instead they should have 2 schools per region housing programs (and perhaps just 3 maybe 4 regions). I’d go as far as saying that Crown and Woodward to a lesser extent should house a significant number of programs. Reduces number of busses, helps get kids going to a fewer number of schools causing less traffic.

I venture to say you have no idea how transportation is working now and how many programs exist. There are central stops, buses drop off/pickup at more than one school.

And the new model will create more bus routes.

Maybe. But if the DCC and NEC are ending that will reduce the number of bus routes too.

And boundary option 3 for Woodward will increase bus routes.

Overall it would have been nice if anyone thought about transportation times and costs, and the overlap of the boundary and program analyses.

This was brought up in this meeting with a Julie Yang and a Chevy Chase group. https://youtu.be/sBTZM3Au00w?si=P7VUd7omsTuV8fnb Questions start about 17 minutes in.

I was struck by the comments from a mom that did work with transportation on the Silver Creek boundary study. Transportation said it absolutely was not feasible to transport kids east/west yet that’s all over the boundary and program changes.

Thanks for posting that meeting link. Very helpful to watch.

[Anonymous]

All other issues with these proposed regions aside, it's absolutely irresponsible to be making plans that don't take the realities of MCPS' transportation capabilities into account.

MCPS already struggles with the bus routes it has - creating these regions should be an opportunity to use fewer bus routes, not more.

One of my kids is a special education student who is bused to a school out of our neighborhood - and buses have always been an issue. 30 minutes late is pretty normal, no shows happen occasionally, and one year the bus was so late and so erratic that I gave up and drove every morning instead. Can't imagine the mess if MCPS created new regions that rely on buses they can't provide (or at least can't provide reliably).