Overcrowding at Walter johnson

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know WJ freshman class size this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know WJ freshman class size this year?

They do not count until Sept 30, when all the international students have hopefully been enrolled (quite the process). Same for all schools it comes out after 9/30

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

This. It’s not just WJ. Our school is overcrowded also. All the recent high-density housing with condos/apartments/townhouses squeezed into every last corner of the county is not helping. And it will continue to get worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

Yet they will never be held accountable. Nobody in MCPS is ever held accountable for their poor decisions and lack of planning. And our kids suffer because of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know WJ freshman class size this year?

WJ has just welcomed its largest class ever - 900+ students - they received many more freshmen enrollments than expected, possibly because of new families moving to the area (due to rise in housing options) and students returning to public schools from private post-Covid. WJ is immensely crowded and is understaffed, as well. Class sizes are quite large this year and there are now 15 portable classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

This. It’s not just WJ. Our school is overcrowded also. All the recent high-density housing with condos/apartments/townhouses squeezed into every last corner of the county is not helping. And it will continue to get worse.

Indeed, happening all over. And believe it or not in the clusters over here in the west we also have high density housing and apartments and the like. Perhaps start a thread with the name of your high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

Yet they will never be held accountable. Nobody in MCPS is ever held accountable for their poor decisions and lack of planning. And our kids suffer because of it.

So true! My kid is in college now, however, anyone attending Wyngate in the late-2000’s could see how crowded it was 12 (!) years ago and know that many of those kids and and more would reach high WJ at some point. Ashburton has been extremely overcrowded! At least five neighbors on my block, who pay taxes that help support the school system, have their kids enrolled in private schools for a number of reasons with one of them being to escape overcrowded-ness. Not everyone has this option— I understand— and to be sure planners need to do better. Unrelated but somewhat related, I read that over 33,000 vehicle owners have been ticketed so far this year for passing a stopped school bus with its lights on. The ticket is $250 – – apparently that is not a deterrent! Perhaps raise it to $1000 and plow that money back into our schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

Yet they will never be held accountable. Nobody in MCPS is ever held accountable for their poor decisions and lack of planning. And our kids suffer because of it.

So true! My kid is in college now, however, anyone attending Wyngate in the late-2000’s could see how crowded it was 12 (!) years ago and know that many of those kids and and more would reach high WJ at some point. Ashburton has been extremely overcrowded! At least five neighbors on my block, who pay taxes that help support the school system, have their kids enrolled in private schools for a number of reasons with one of them being to escape overcrowded-ness. Not everyone has this option— I understand— and to be sure planners need to do better. Unrelated but somewhat related, I read that over 33,000 vehicle owners have been ticketed so far this year for passing a stopped school bus with its lights on. The ticket is $250 – – apparently that is not a deterrent! Perhaps raise it to $1000 and plow that money back into our schools.

More recently the overcrowding at Ashburton has stabalized - not growing so much year over year - but it has been replaced by a boom at the other end of the cluster. Lux Manor and Farmland

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Classic vapor ware from MCPS - this school will actually be complete in 2035

source?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classic vapor ware from MCPS - this school will actually be complete in 2035

source?

joke

[Anonymous]

The 6 ESes that feed WJ at normL full capacity provide about 750 students per year. That seems to be the floor for WJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

Yet they will never be held accountable. Nobody in MCPS is ever held accountable for their poor decisions and lack of planning. And our kids suffer because of it.

So true! My kid is in college now, however, anyone attending Wyngate in the late-2000’s could see how crowded it was 12 (!) years ago and know that many of those kids and and more would reach high WJ at some point. Ashburton has been extremely overcrowded! At least five neighbors on my block, who pay taxes that help support the school system, have their kids enrolled in private schools for a number of reasons with one of them being to escape overcrowded-ness. Not everyone has this option— I understand— and to be sure planners need to do better. Unrelated but somewhat related, I read that over 33,000 vehicle owners have been ticketed so far this year for passing a stopped school bus with its lights on. The ticket is $250 – – apparently that is not a deterrent! Perhaps raise it to $1000 and plow that money back into our schools.

Excellent idea! And it should generate widespread support, especially considering that poor child who was injured last week by some idiot who passed a stopped school bus.

Though, I will point out that MCPS has enough money. The problem is that MCPS wastes money on useless initiatives, versus on things that actually matter - teacher salary, smaller class sizes, solid curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Yup, this was entirely predictable but as with everything else the country is reactive rather than proactive. It’s inexcusable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:550 students over at WJ sounds dangerously overcrowded, and 2026 is still quite a few years away. They should open Woodward immediately after the construction is finished & find alternative plans for housing Northwood students. It will only get worse. The only other option is redistricting some of the incoming 9th graders next year to a different high school, but it appears that no other HS around WJ has the room.

So an east county school that badly needs a renovation will get the short straw again??? Developers of all housing including condos and apartments need to provide adequate funding for school construction, the old false paradigm that people with kids don't live in multi housing units is very detrimental. All this could have been predicted and alarm bells were raised many years ago about population trends.

Don't worry, it is not going to happen. Northwood will go in for 2 years (with no fields, no aux gym, etc), and then some from WJ and some from DCC will go in 2026.

This is partly due to the incompetence of the long range planning staff and partly due to lack of funding (which means other peiorities) priorities.

Keep in mind, 3 HSs opening pretty much together is unheard of (Northwood, Woodward and Crown).

That said, as per the bold above, alarm bells were raised by parents many years back, and MCPS staff (then Capital Planning now Long Range Plannin), stalled, delayed, and denied. Their incompetence is truly astounding.

So, are you saying that the 2026-2027 school year is the first possible year that students from WJ will started attending school in the new building in the old Woodward space? When will families within the cluster know whether their kids will either be eligible to attend there or will be "forced" to do so?

And thank you to the cluster parents who have tracked this topic and advocated for our cluster's needs for so many years.