I don't think they're invested in conveying Northwood doesn't need an auditorium, but that Northwood may not have access to one for a few years because of the construction scheduling and budgeting. I guess MCPS could cut CO bloat to fund this stuff but they've never been willing before. |
Then why do they keep posting, over and over and over and over, that Northwood-at-Woodward doesn't need an auditorium? |
It's in the post. They don't want to pay taxes for someone else's services, reasonable equivalence or not. That's why they deflect to the only-if-we-cut-CO-bloat boogeyman (instead of, "well, yes, we should be ensuring those services, responding to the realities of related inflation, and not underfunding MCPS CIP needs year after year")... ...as if there's nothing else to do about it or as if the one is necessarily connected to the other and that it should be on the Northwood community to get any bloat eliminated. |
Northwood will get an auditorium and a brand new school. Woodward is the one without an auditorium and other stuff and the only reason why people care is it will be another W school for rich kids and those kids should have the best according to their parents. |
Woodward will get one, just not right away due to MCPS's mismanagement of their spending. That is the bigger issue and someone needs to deal with MCPS spending and make serious cuts to non-essential things. They try to cut essential things, scream poverty and get more money. They don't need more money, they need to stop the wasteful spending. |
It is on all families to get rid of the bloat. And, reelecting the same board members who have failed is is not a good place to start. |
Northwood amd its performing arts program will not have an auditorium during their years at Woodward. Nor will they have playing fields. And they will be dealing with the disruptions of ongoing construction (for the benefit, mostly, of WJ families) and long commutes. And the current SSIMS students that will be going to Northwood already are dealing with construction, there. Some might see a new building on University on the other side of this fiasco and a few rising freshmen might have lotteried in elsewhere in the DCC (not nearly enough room for all who may have desired that, and the current auditorium predicament became public after the inital choice process), but, even with those, your attitude towards the value of their educational experience is pretty callous. |
OK. All on all families. Not just on Northwood families. And it shouldn't be with Northwood families bearing a differential brunt in the meantime. Go for new BOE members, sure, but turnover of 3 out of 7 at the end of the year that is not a fix to the current problem. It's the County Council's hold on purse-strings for present projects placed on top of their decades of underfunding that set the stage for this in the first place. |
The BOE has the money to do what's important to them. That is the issue. They moved into new offices last year that they had remodeled and new furniture when the space was being used by another group and very nice already. |
Misuse of funds, perceived or real, does not counter the facts that: Northwood students are being put in an inequitable situation that families were promised would not occur, without an option presented that reasonably would mitigate that inequity. The County Council has underfunded school facility needs for decades, with ongoing deficits in condition and capacity the result, and the Northwood holding situation is among them. If the funds need to be better managed (and I'm not saying no, there), the County needs to get better oversight, which will require its own funding. Holding students' equitable treatment hostage to the resolution of that, however, is unconscionable. |
Do you have a source for what "families were promised"? |
Short demands for proof are overused rhetorical ploys. If you would like to research, yourself, the meetings that were attended by MCPS over the years, be my guest. Do you have a comprehensive list of links to detailed notes from all of the MCPS meetings (not just BOE meetings and the little they leave on the construction project page) on the subject that shows no indication to the community that there would be an auditorium in place for Northwood occupancy? No? Because the earlier version of the project detailed the fields as unavailable during that occupancy, but did not detail a missing auditorium. You can claim, "But that's not a promise," but you would be wrong in any meaningful sense. In gaining grudging assent for the plan, Northwood stakeholders were given an authoritative impression that MCPS then, after BOE approval that relied on that grudging assent, changed to their detriment. And there does not appear to be an equitable and workable plan to address the shortcoming. Whatever the underlying causes of the change, inflation, underfunding, fiscal mismanagement or otherwise, that lack of proper mitigation is a failure that should be rectified. And the note about the County Council's fiscal responsibility in this whole mess stands, in any case. |
If the wasteful spending were under control, they could fund it and also repair or replace other schools that desperately need updating. |
And, as stated, it is not just to keep Northwood students (and staff, and those of other MCPS schools in particularly inequitable circumstances) on the short end of the stick while society figures out whether there is addressable waste and, if so what to do about it. Worse, still, is just claiming that there is without making the effort to figure it out, happy to string out the inequity as long as it doesn't hit one's own community. |
There is no such thing as equity in mcps. |