Woodward HS boundary study - BCC, Blair, Einstein, WJ, Kennedy, Northwood, Wheaton, Whitman impacts

[Anonymous]

Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Why move one of them to Northwood?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Northwood's expanded capacity is already going to be filled up with kids reassigned from Blair or other DCC schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Northwood's expanded capacity is already going to be filled up with kids reassigned from Blair or other DCC schools.

They could move a magnet from Blair to Northwood, instead of reassigning kids from other DCC schools. Why should a super overcrowded school house 2 magnets? And that way, both schools would get the benefit of having a magnet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Not exactly a magnet but the dual enrollment middle college program at Northwood is blowing up and will only grow with the new building.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Northwood's expanded capacity is already going to be filled up with kids reassigned from Blair or other DCC schools.

They could move a magnet from Blair to Northwood, instead of reassigning kids from other DCC schools. Why should a super overcrowded school house 2 magnets? And that way, both schools would get the benefit of having a magnet.

The whole point of expanding capacity at Northwood was to add capacity to the DCC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Not exactly a magnet but the dual enrollment middle college program at Northwood is blowing up and will only grow with the new building.

Didn't DCUM say dual enrollment is a scam?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

That's just dumb. Besides, we need more magnets not fewer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The 'vocational magnets' are at Edison (next door to Wheaton HS) and at Seneca Valley. These programs have large and specially-built facilities and can't just be inserted easily into existing school buildings.

Sure they can. Don't be such a Debbie downer.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Strange take about the system catering to Silver Spring. If that were the case, you'd see resources going there instead of, say, to the brand new elementary in Potomac and the upcoming brand new high school in Bethesda, the subject of this thread.

Instead, we see no high school options pursued inside the beltway where one is desperately needed, SSIMS/SCES treated like a redheaded stepchild, HVES given the three-card Monty and Eastern downright ignored. TPMS, Pinecrest and Woodlin, you say? Well, shucks, it helps to have some wealthy folks in certain catchments...

Hey, waaaaaiit a minute...could it be that politicians pay lip service to the bulk of the electorate to garner the popular vote but bend to monied interests when it comes to brass tacks? Nah, couldn't be!

Then you don't have a problem moving the Blair magnet closer to mid-county where all students can access them? Same distance from every corner of MC?

And schools like Wootton crumbing? Schools with asbestos? You don't care about them?

Please. Save it for someone who's a bit more naive.

Wootton is fine and the Blair magnet is not movable.

Everything is movable. If it means it's equitable bus ride for entire county, then it should move.

It's easy to determine.

Average bus ride time per students to Magnet if it's in Blair vs if it's in Woodward. That data should clearly show which is better for average students who have attended magnet in the last 2 years. For this calculation, 25 reserved seats shouldn't be counted because they are not county wide, that will anyway go to wherever magnet is.

Blair mostly serves students near it so it makes the most sense to keep it there.

It would be better to add a vocational magnet to Woodward or Wootton to help diversify that part of the county.

Agree, Blair magnet is situated ideally now, but West county really needs a vocational magnet to help diversify the segregated school.

Woodward should have a vocational magnet? Have you been by the Woodward site lately? The building project is well underway. It has to be ready for Northwood in 14 months. Whatever you might think should happen, it's not going to happen.

+1 and the vocational magnet is currently at Wheaton which is pretty close to Woodward.

It would be best if it were at one of the least diverse schools like Churchill or Whitman because they have so many chronic issues with racism. Greater diversity would greatly help improve the climate in that community.

The county needs more of these types of programs. The idea of one size fits all is how we end up with these honors for all nonsense.

If there's a program like this at Wheaton now, that's great, but we need several. Similarly, we could double or triple the number of STEM magnets and it would better serve the greater community.

PP, I'm asking sincerely: do you live in Montgomery County, and how/where do you acquire your information about MCPS? If I were calling for more vocational programs, I would, at minimum, first try to educate myself about the number and location of existing vocational programs.

Many of the posters have no kids in MCPS, don't live in the county and get their information from DCUM and online.

Many get their information from Pravda and the RNC.

[Anonymous]

So much of this is because of poor planning. Some of that is on MCPS, but most of that is on the county (M-NCPPC/Planning Board/County Council). It only takes one period of time where development-favorable policies are enacted -- increased density allowances, reprieve of impact taxes, exceptions to land set-asides for municipal needs (schools among them) -- and developers jump, with there really being no way to unwind it later. Throw in some short-sighted school closures that came with long-term, giveaway leases to favored special interests by the county executive/council. Then cook that up with 25 years of chronic council underfunding of capital projects ("Hey, let's just ask them to push these out a few years..."), and you get too many students and not enough school spaces.

This has happened in many areas of the county, but down-county, most especially Wheaton & below, was particularly affected because of the relative scarcity of undeveloped land combined with relatively high density. And when Blair got moved to its current outside-the-beltway location, it was during that facility closure period, so they weren't attending to back-filling to cover the deeper inside-the-beltway area. West of the tracks still had Whitman & BCC, and they got insulated (what a shock!).

Similarly shocking is that MCPS, when faced with the cost of provisioning a new HS closer to downtown SS/Takoma Park, elected to turn their efforts towards relief of WJ, instead -- the Woodward solution was less expensive and posed far fewer problems, despite the community complaints (that happens no matter the location/configuration -- can't please 'em all). They had to sell that with the nod to some kind of relief for DCC -- more crowded, in general, than anything to the west of the tracks, with more coming from demographics and the differential effects of the noted development-friendly policies; however, the nature of that might be just from the marginal pull of a Woodward magnet.

If that ends up being the case, and if more holistic boundary shifts are avoided, it will be because of the fine efforts of the W-area contingent, those here and elsewhere. Like it or not, the Federal government delegates school administration to the states (or, perhaps more Constitutionally precise, it is reserved to the states, despite any Federal funding/regulation), and MD delegates it to county-level districts, not town. MCPS, then, has the responsibility to provide reasonably equivalent educational services to all of its students (equal protection). Neighborhood schools, sensible boundaries and easily-accessible magnets are great ideas, but only if you're making sure to get your county decision-makers in line to pony up to provide that to everybody, not just ensure/preserve that for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Northwood's expanded capacity is already going to be filled up with kids reassigned from Blair or other DCC schools.

They could move a magnet from Blair to Northwood, instead of reassigning kids from other DCC schools. Why should a super overcrowded school house 2 magnets? And that way, both schools would get the benefit of having a magnet.

The whole point of expanding capacity at Northwood was to add capacity to the DCC.

This would have the same impact on capacity without needing to redraw boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

That's just dumb. Besides, we need more magnets not fewer.

I agree we need more magnets. But moving Blair's would do nothing to improve that. They should focus their energies on finding sites for additional magnets, while keeping the existing ones in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So much of this is because of poor planning. Some of that is on MCPS, but most of that is on the county (M-NCPPC/Planning Board/County Council). It only takes one period of time where development-favorable policies are enacted -- increased density allowances, reprieve of impact taxes, exceptions to land set-asides for municipal needs (schools among them) -- and developers jump, with there really being no way to unwind it later. Throw in some short-sighted school closures that came with long-term, giveaway leases to favored special interests by the county executive/council. Then cook that up with 25 years of chronic council underfunding of capital projects ("Hey, let's just ask them to push these out a few years..."), and you get too many students and not enough school spaces.

This has happened in many areas of the county, but down-county, most especially Wheaton & below, was particularly affected because of the relative scarcity of undeveloped land combined with relatively high density. And when Blair got moved to its current outside-the-beltway location, it was during that facility closure period, so they weren't attending to back-filling to cover the deeper inside-the-beltway area. West of the tracks still had Whitman & BCC, and they got insulated (what a shock!).

Similarly shocking is that MCPS, when faced with the cost of provisioning a new HS closer to downtown SS/Takoma Park, elected to turn their efforts towards relief of WJ, instead -- the Woodward solution was less expensive and posed far fewer problems, despite the community complaints (that happens no matter the location/configuration -- can't please 'em all). They had to sell that with the nod to some kind of relief for DCC -- more crowded, in general, than anything to the west of the tracks, with more coming from demographics and the differential effects of the noted development-friendly policies; however, the nature of that might be just from the marginal pull of a Woodward magnet.

If that ends up being the case, and if more holistic boundary shifts are avoided, it will be because of the fine efforts of the W-area contingent, those here and elsewhere. Like it or not, the Federal government delegates school administration to the states (or, perhaps more Constitutionally precise, it is reserved to the states, despite any Federal funding/regulation), and MD delegates it to county-level districts, not town. MCPS, then, has the responsibility to provide reasonably equivalent educational services to all of its students (equal protection). Neighborhood schools, sensible boundaries and easily-accessible magnets are great ideas, but only if you're making sure to get your county decision-makers in line to pony up to provide that to everybody, not just ensure/preserve that for yourself.

There's no land in SS for a high school, and MoCo doesn't have the stomach to spend the tens of million to acquire (and still more to deal with all the lawsuits when they use adverse possession to assemble a property) when the Woodward property was already in the portfolio.

As to WJ - this year it's 650 students over capacity. That's more than half the entire DCC overage across all 5 high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blair has two magnets. Why not move one of them to Northwood when it reopens with more space?

Northwood's expanded capacity is already going to be filled up with kids reassigned from Blair or other DCC schools.

They could move a magnet from Blair to Northwood, instead of reassigning kids from other DCC schools. Why should a super overcrowded school house 2 magnets? And that way, both schools would get the benefit of having a magnet.

The whole point of expanding capacity at Northwood was to add capacity to the DCC.

This would have the same impact on capacity without needing to redraw boundaries.

Moving one magnet program? No, it wouldn't. How big do you think the magnet programs are?