Third round options on Woodward Boundary study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think part of the issue is that the current system has kids staying together from RS to MS to HS and the reality of the locations of the schools—especially middle schools—is not particularly conducive for doing that. Why couldn’t Wood Acres be zoned for Westland and Whitman? Some BE families live closer to Pyle so why could t they go there and then either Ww or BCC. I think switching up the mix of kids would actually be pretty positive in terms of behaviors and social dynamics.

I agree. People make such a huge deal out of split articulations when it’s not that bad at all. Kids make different friends when they move from one level to the other anyways, and there will always be “split articulation” in the sense that many kids will go to magnet programs anyways.

It’s not the split that is the issue but the schools assigned to. Let’s be real.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

I actually think MCPS will cater to PP's kids. MCPS loves wealthy families who quietly hire tutors to correct MCPS's failures. Makes MCPS look good and Taylor needs them to stay in the system to get the cushiest possible edtech job after he leaves.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

I actually think MCPS will cater to PP's kids. MCPS loves wealthy families who quietly hire tutors to correct MCPS's failures. Makes MCPS look good and Taylor needs them to stay in the system to get the cushiest possible edtech job after he leaves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

Please. It’s not unreasonable to expect your kid in public school to attend the high school closest to them in proximity. The sleep issue is such a big deal for high school students that schools across the country have been reconsidering high school start times to allow kids to start later. No one says parents should just get their kids to bed earlier. Teenagers are wired to stay awake later in the evening and need to sleep later in the morning.

It is much more asinine to make an entire school district switch to a further away high school so the county can say they had a minor increase in diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

Please. It’s not unreasonable to expect your kid in public school to attend the high school closest to them in proximity. The sleep issue is such a big deal for high school students that schools across the country have been reconsidering high school start times to allow kids to start later. No one says parents should just get their kids to bed earlier. Teenagers are wired to stay awake later in the evening and need to sleep later in the morning.

It is much more asinine to make an entire school district switch to a further away high school so the county can say they had a minor increase in diversity.

That actually is unreasonable. It is physically impossible to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

Agree. It is sending kids farther away to school without meaningfully changing demographics.

Wood Acres parents are going to get this option squashed, as they should. Lots of upheaval and extra transportation costs with little to know upside, including demographic. Or they may persuade the board to keep the rest of this option but not flip the BE and Wood Acres kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

Wood Acres kids will still be driven to middle and high school by their parents. They will just be driven to Holton and Landon (and probably a few other private schools) rather than to Whitman and BBC. If you want to siphon some higher income people out of MCPS this option is a good way to do it.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if after you complete the survey, you can go back to edit your comments later?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

Bethesda Elementary has 100 kids per grade with about 20 FARMS kids per grade. Wood Acres has about 100 kids per grade and about 8 FARMS kids per grade. If you are only sending 9th and 10th graders in 2027 to the new HS, that’s 40 FARMS kids heading to Whitman from BCC, but 16 FARMS kids heading away from Whitman and to BCC. You think out of the over 2000 kids who attend Whitman the extra 24 kids are going to make a significant difference from a demographic standpoint? These schools have that many kids enroll/unroll on a regular basis.

It's significantly fewer high needs kids for BCC to serve. Is it huge? No, but it will benefit BCC to my have a lower needs student body. Just a few weeks ago people were talking about a FARMS rate tipping point of 20% in the literature. While I don't think 20% is necessarily the only number that matters, this change would put BCC just below that number.

This supposed slight benefit (a few more/less FARMS kids) in exchange for inconveniencing hundreds of families by sending them to a school double the distance and driving time. FARMS kids don’t want to attend schools further away because it decreases their ability to participate in after school activities. The cost / benefit analysis doesn’t work here. The goal of the boundary study should have been addressing overcrowding at the two schools at focus in the study, not how can we rejigger the whole county to make everyone miserable (in the name of equity).

i don't live there but don't really understand the uproar over distance-- for parts of BE Whitman is closer and Pyle is significantly closer than westland...

and don't understand the complaints about crossing wisconsin-- how do people think all the current students on the other side of wisconsin walk?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

Please. It’s not unreasonable to expect your kid in public school to attend the high school closest to them in proximity. The sleep issue is such a big deal for high school students that schools across the country have been reconsidering high school start times to allow kids to start later. No one says parents should just get their kids to bed earlier. Teenagers are wired to stay awake later in the evening and need to sleep later in the morning.

It is much more asinine to make an entire school district switch to a further away high school so the county can say they had a minor increase in diversity.

You are the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option F clearly balances facility utilization, proximity and demographics quite well. And without doing anything completely insane. I love it but I wish there was an Option H to keep SSIMS open but everything else the same.

Option F flips two elementary schools (Wood Acres and Bethesda Elementary) to the others middle and high school for no apparent reason. Neither school population benefits from the switch. Both populations have a further distance for high school and Bethesda Elementary kids lose walkability to BCC in a downtown core. It increases bus, car traffic, and safety issues.

I mean I don't care if they switch them back as it doesn't affect me, but it is important to balance demographics as having a high needs population makes it harder to manage a school and they don't get extra funding for this. And neither Wood Acres nor Bethesda would be buses very far - Bethesda ES wouldn't require busing at all. And Wood Acres kids will get a bus instead of being driven by their parents/friends which will reduce traffic and increase safety. I get people will be upset but there are real benefits to this.

I have no stake here (I’m in the other study area), but have you ever been in downtown Bethesda between 7-9AM or 3-6PM? The last thing we need is more cars/buses on the road in Bethesda!

While the distance may not initially sound terrible, when you factor in the time for bus stops and travel on major roads during rush hour, the bus commute could easily be 30-40 minutes. More travel time equals less sleep for teenagers.

Or, parents make sure their kids go to bed earlier. You clearly have a stake as you are commenting.

I do have a stake as I have two kids with sleep disorders that would be negativelyimpacted. It is hard enough to get them to sleep at a decent time in elementary and middle school. I will have little ability to control when they go to bed in high school. We literally switched one of the kids from private school to public school because of the later start time and ability to get more sleep.

You need to homeschool if you want a school program that wil cater to your kids individually.

Please. It’s not unreasonable to expect your kid in public school to attend the high school closest to them in proximity. The sleep issue is such a big deal for high school students that schools across the country have been reconsidering high school start times to allow kids to start later. No one says parents should just get their kids to bed earlier. Teenagers are wired to stay awake later in the evening and need to sleep later in the morning.

It is much more asinine to make an entire school district switch to a further away high school so the county can say they had a minor increase in diversity.

You cannot have kids in HS or ones in activities. If you move school later, sports are later and not all schools have lights, then the kids have to walk home in the dark as there is no bus. And, if you move things later, kids just go to bed later. That may work for you but not the rest of us. The walk isn't safe and we don't get bus so the earlier is better to drop them off on the way to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know if after you complete the survey, you can go back to edit your comments later?

Anyone know this?

[Anonymous]

When is the final choice made? March?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When is the final choice made? March?

Yes, but the Superintendent's recommendation will be presented the first week of February.

[Anonymous]

I am new to this discussion.

Can anyone summarize how big a downgrade Tilden area going to Woodward will be compared to WJ?

Is Art is done deal for Woodward or some chane of Stem oriented programs can still happen? \

If Whitman safe from all these changes?