Initial boundary options for Crown/Damascus study

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I hope MCPS redistricts Wayside to Wootton. Those parents are the biggest crybabies on earth and nobody else in the Churchill cluster will care if they are not in the "community" anymore. Churchill is overcrowded and some of you need to leave. Enough with the bs excuses about mental health and IEP plans. I hope MCPS doesn't fall for their bs, and many of us will testify against them. We need to start a petition against theirs called "DONT OVERCROWD CHURCHILL."


There is absolutely no new building going on in Potomac to affect Churchill. If the district was stricter on COSA you wouldn’t even be overcrowded. And even now, it is slight.

All other school districts have a lot of new residences and more overcrowding to deal with.

I have no fight in this. My kids go to Rockville. But Ritchie Park is 7min to Wootton. Half of Ritchie Park would be walkers. Wayside is 15min (without morning traffic) and there would be zero walkers.

It makes no sense to pull all of Wayside. They pass 3 other ES that go to Churchill or RM on the way to Wootton. If anything, it makes much more sense to pull the closest neighborhoods of both of those schools.

This needs to be a long term plan and not re-arranging and split articulations. It really isn’t that hard, but MCPS worries so much on SES and diversity that the map looks absolutely ridiculous. And the fact that Magruder or Rockville weren’t even considered in all of this means they truly don’t care about SES and diversity anyway. So at least make these boundaries clean and walkable
Anonymous
I just hope they don't redistrict QO with any striver schools. Purposely avoided buying in Wootton and Walter Johnson because of all the tiger moms and academic culture. Football, D1 sports, and parents who like to hang out at the beach and tanning salons for fun is the vibe. I think everyone chose their school and neighborhood because it matched their vibe, and they should be allowed to say.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I just hope they don't redistrict QO with any striver schools. Purposely avoided buying in Wootton and Walter Johnson because of all the tiger moms and academic culture. Football, D1 sports, and parents who like to hang out at the beach and tanning salons for fun is the vibe. I think everyone chose their school and neighborhood because it matched their vibe, and they should be allowed to say.



While I agree that we bought where we did because of these factors and don't want to change that, if it ultimately MAKES SENSE to change, then it needs to. The problem is that these options operate under the improper constraint that ES boundaries cannot change.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:I think 4 is the most reasonable/non drastic scenario.


Option 4 is one of the more drastic options after option 3.
Option 1 followed by option 2 seems better for most.

Option 1 does not address the capacity issues for several HS.
Options 1 and 2 boundary for MS is crazy, creating islands, once again.


I think we go with Option 5: Express that the board update the scope as required to address the issues.

No. Just go with one of the options (tweak it a little bit only if absolutely necessary) and address more important issues. I don't want to see MCPS spending more time and resources on this.


You mean like the 10 million dollars and 2 years they spent researching a later start time for high schoolers only to increase it by 20min lol.

MCPS is full of bloat and wastefulness. We could get the top 10 kids in every high school to come together and make up better boundary options than whoever they paid to do this checkerboard.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


I’m in Wayside and am in the part that has gone to Churchill for as long as I can remember, probably since 70s. Think near Potomac Community Center. The designated walk zone is right across Falls Rd yet our side isn’t considered walkable? I agree big chunk of Potomac ES and Wayside are closer to Wootton or QO or equidistant. Think they should have redistributed elementary schools as then it’d make far more sense. Part of Wayside moves to Beverly Farms, Wayside could pull in Coldspring and then no need to spend money to build a new ES there. All of the Churchill ES are 100-200 students under capacity and none of that is changing anytime soon. There’s no new development in Churchill.

Lastly I’ll add that a big chunk of Wayside was meant to go to Travilah and Frost/Wootton but the BOE redistricted them to Wayside/Churchill due to overcrowding in Wootton. That’s what’s likely led to this result and it’s frustrating because parents at the time expressed concerns over this and were told there’d be no issues.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


Also thanks for your insight into the capacity, as someone who graduated Churchill 20 years ago it’s not much larger today than it was then and no capacity problems then.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I’m serious…
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:This is hands-down my favorite option! If only I could cast a vote for it right now—or better yet, nominate you to lead the BOE!

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Anonymous wrote:My bad, i read the table wrong. Yes, the numbers are all about the same.

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Option 1&3: Churchill Asian increased from 33% to 37%, FARMS decreased from 10.9% to 9.9%. Wootton Asian increased from 37.4% to 43.2% and FARMS decreased from 13.4% to 11.9%.

I'm pretty sure the current options will exacerbate educational inequality, but I amsatisfied. I wonder can we reduce the FARMS to 5% or even lower for Churchill?


Are we looking at different data set? For all 4 options, Churchill Asian decrease from 37% to34.7% and farm from 9.9% to 9.8%.


Yes Wootton already the most Asian school becomes more so in all scenarios. WTF makes no sense. I have a ton of Asian friends so nothing wrong with it at all, but why further perpetuate the stereotype of Wootton and increase the nicknames for it.


All these Asian families you are talking about want to stay at Wootton. And you are speaking on behalf of them saying, "why perpetuate the stereotype?". HILARIOUS. Please say it to their face.


Far from it! Currently it’s like 37% Asian at Wootton. They should all stay there as Wootton shouldn’t be touched IMO.

My comment was saying it makes little sense to make the Asian population increase at Wootton and decrease at Churchill just to move Wayside ES as the only impacted school for Churchill to Wootton. Churchill and Wootton should be left alone just like Whitman. Other than that island that goes to Wootton I can see making sense at Crown, but even that if all those people wish to stay at Wootton which isn’t crowded just let them!


I can’t tell if you’re serious or joking?

🙏
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Travilah and dufief should go to QO and Kentlands should go to Crown with all the other City of Gaithersburg schools.


That is very logical. North Potomac, Travilah, and Darnestown go to Ridgeview / QO. The City of Gaithersburg schools go to Lakelands / Crown. Falls Grove and Ritchie Park to Wooton.


I have said this for a long time, before any boundary discussion. It is the most elegant contiguous solution. Of course people have their preferences based on past experience but none of that matters in these discussions. Now Kentlands leaving is a new topic of course with Crown, but agree with City boundaries being logical here, and having enough students to fill Crown in one swath.


Yup. Same reason why Fallsgrove and Ritchie Park should go to Wootton and all of King Farm to RM.


RM parent here and I would totally support that. Lets be real, "unofficially" most of King Farm goes to RM, even the Gaithersburg HS part. So tired of RPES parents whining about Wootton. I get it, you want to go to W school and not RM.

Nah. I'm in the RPES cluster, and a lot of parents here would rather stay at RM than go to Wootton. I'm the PP who has stated repeatedly that MCPS is not going to move RPES to Wootton. And I'm fine with that.

RM Main Street is really nice. They did a great job. Kids love having open lunch. My kids enjoy/ed their time at RM. Many years ago when we moved here, we looked at homes from N. Potomac down to Kensington (I think we looked at over 40 homes). We could afford homes in Potomac. We chose the RM cluster for a reason.

Wootton is also falling apart (shame on MCPS).


I am the PP you are responding to. We were in the same boat. Chose RM over W/Potomac schools and I am actually happy we did.


Ok simmer down lol. If RM didn’t have the IB program it would be a trash. It brought in RPES to make it better and home equity is 70-100K less in many SFH neighborhoods. So then added IB. Then they added Fallsgrove. But the school can’t hide its core issues


Why don’t you simmer down? Wootton is the most irrelevant W school that everyone forgets exists. Parents from Churchill are revolting against their kids attending Wootton. It has an ugly building, is located in a terrible town/zip-code, and is all the way out in the middle of nowhere. If the plastics were W schools, Wootton would Gretchen Wieners. Wootton is truly the worst. Too poor/low income to be a real W and exists in the shadows of Whitman and Churchill, and too rich to be interesting enough to have scandalous incidents and fights.


Yes let’s go to RM, where it is “interesting and poor enough” to have incidents and fights daily on top of the locked bathrooms. Are you for real?!?

Wootton doesn’t care about anything but academics and a few sports. It is not entitled, basic MC/UMC and has no daily issues. That’s why home prices right next to the RM district that look identical are 100K more expensive. Families will pay to get into a decent school that prefers academics over scandals.

I mean your post is just laughable. I think you proved the PP point about RM.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I think 4 is the most reasonable/non drastic scenario.


Option 4 is one of the more drastic options after option 3.
Option 1 followed by option 2 seems better for most.

Option 1 does not address the capacity issues for several HS.
Options 1 and 2 boundary for MS is crazy, creating islands, once again.


I think we go with Option 5: Express that the board update the scope as required to address the issues.

No. Just go with one of the options (tweak it a little bit only if absolutely necessary) and address more important issues. I don't want to see MCPS spending more time and resources on this.


You mean like the 10 million dollars and 2 years they spent researching a later start time for high schoolers only to increase it by 20min lol.

MCPS is full of bloat and wastefulness. We could get the top 10 kids in every high school to come together and make up better boundary options than whoever they paid to do this checkerboard.


AMEN
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


+1

Wayside going to Wootton should be the least controversial decision in entire boundary change. Wayside going to Wootton makes perfect sense. Folks who are arguing about leave this school or that school are missing the point. Boundaries will change when we have 2-3 near HS a same time. We can't leave schools.

No boundary will cover all bases, but positive outweighs negative in moving Wayside to Woottoon.


In regards to the previous commens about Wayside and Wootton, I think one of the things that doesn't look like is being taken into account these initial options is the community or neighborhood feel.

Parts of the area that go to Wayside are borderline Wootton.

But the school itself and likely the majority of the area is right around the corner from the Potomac Community Center. When my kids had activities at Wayside it took me less then five minutes, if even that, to get from Wayside ES to the community center where I hung around there while they were at the activity.

So it's likely that families in that area do activities more in the Potomac area and with most of the students going to Churchill.

One benefit of activities is that it does give my kids opportunities to interact with kids from other areas where they would likely never have.

But one of the things we hoped to get out of activities is for our kids to interact with their classmates and neighbors outside of school. That helps build the camaraderie and friendships in school.

It's likewise for the northwestern area of Wootton near the Gaithersburg/North Potomac/Rockville divide. Gaithersburg and Rockville have their own separate organizations. Such as for baseball UMAC (Uppper Montgomery Baseball Club) vs RBBA (Rockville Baseball Association), MSI (Montgomery Soccer Inc) vs SAM (Soccer Association of Maryland), Gaithersburg City rec sports and camps vs Rockville City rec sports and camps. For our family we're at the point where we recognize a lot of the other families in the leagues on other teams and makes the area seem a lot smaller because you see them around and helps with the community feel. And the leagues and organizations in the other city seems like a while another world to us.

So in some of the proposals, they have students attending a school in one city, where most of the students probably do activities in a particular area. But then move a subset of the students from that school into another area, where the majority of students from that area are involved in other organizations for the same type of activities.

They should at the very least keep students from the same elementary school together.


This is my biggest concern with the change as one who lives a 3 minute walk from the Potomac Community Center, I’d have been fine with a Wayside split since the bridges are a natural dividing line which is honestly where things become far and a pain and cause congestion etc.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


+1

Wayside going to Wootton should be the least controversial decision in entire boundary change. Wayside going to Wootton makes perfect sense. Folks who are arguing about leave this school or that school are missing the point. Boundaries will change when we have 2-3 near HS a same time. We can't leave schools.

No boundary will cover all bases, but positive outweighs negative in moving Wayside to Woottoon.


In regards to the previous commens about Wayside and Wootton, I think one of the things that doesn't look like is being taken into account these initial options is the community or neighborhood feel.

Parts of the area that go to Wayside are borderline Wootton.

But the school itself and likely the majority of the area is right around the corner from the Potomac Community Center. When my kids had activities at Wayside it took me less then five minutes, if even that, to get from Wayside ES to the community center where I hung around there while they were at the activity.

So it's likely that families in that area do activities more in the Potomac area and with most of the students going to Churchill.

One benefit of activities is that it does give my kids opportunities to interact with kids from other areas where they would likely never have.

But one of the things we hoped to get out of activities is for our kids to interact with their classmates and neighbors outside of school. That helps build the camaraderie and friendships in school.

It's likewise for the northwestern area of Wootton near the Gaithersburg/North Potomac/Rockville divide. Gaithersburg and Rockville have their own separate organizations. Such as for baseball UMAC (Uppper Montgomery Baseball Club) vs RBBA (Rockville Baseball Association), MSI (Montgomery Soccer Inc) vs SAM (Soccer Association of Maryland), Gaithersburg City rec sports and camps vs Rockville City rec sports and camps. For our family we're at the point where we recognize a lot of the other families in the leagues on other teams and makes the area seem a lot smaller because you see them around and helps with the community feel. And the leagues and organizations in the other city seems like a while another world to us.

So in some of the proposals, they have students attending a school in one city, where most of the students probably do activities in a particular area. But then move a subset of the students from that school into another area, where the majority of students from that area are involved in other organizations for the same type of activities.

They should at the very least keep students from the same elementary school together.


Agreed re: keeping elementary kids together, but the problem is the elementary boundaries are all messed up. Thry need to restart at the foundation by redoing elementary boundaries and that will fix most of the split articulation issues at the middle and high school labels.

And why has no one mentioned that Tobytown students should go to Potomac ES and Churchill instead of Travilah and Wootton.


Where’s Tobytown? And do they currently go to Potomac? If so I’m assuming that’s the area that should go to Travilah!
Anonymous
Does anyone remember when RM builders wanted a skeleton unfinished 3rd floor when they were rebuilding and the board denied it saying they expected RM to stay below capacity. And I believe it reached capacity in 3 years and went over in 5 years. A bunch of CLOWNS
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
You mean like the 10 million dollars and 2 years they spent researching a later start time for high schoolers only to increase it by 20min lol.

MCPS is full of bloat and wastefulness. We could get the top 10 kids in every high school to come together and make up better boundary options than whoever they paid to do this checkerboard.


YES! Passion project for a few HS kids - will get them into college! And be free to the taxpayers. Win-Win.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


+1

Wayside going to Wootton should be the least controversial decision in entire boundary change. Wayside going to Wootton makes perfect sense. Folks who are arguing about leave this school or that school are missing the point. Boundaries will change when we have 2-3 near HS a same time. We can't leave schools.

No boundary will cover all bases, but positive outweighs negative in moving Wayside to Woottoon.


In regards to the previous commens about Wayside and Wootton, I think one of the things that doesn't look like is being taken into account these initial options is the community or neighborhood feel.

Parts of the area that go to Wayside are borderline Wootton.

But the school itself and likely the majority of the area is right around the corner from the Potomac Community Center. When my kids had activities at Wayside it took me less then five minutes, if even that, to get from Wayside ES to the community center where I hung around there while they were at the activity.

So it's likely that families in that area do activities more in the Potomac area and with most of the students going to Churchill.

One benefit of activities is that it does give my kids opportunities to interact with kids from other areas where they would likely never have.

But one of the things we hoped to get out of activities is for our kids to interact with their classmates and neighbors outside of school. That helps build the camaraderie and friendships in school.

It's likewise for the northwestern area of Wootton near the Gaithersburg/North Potomac/Rockville divide. Gaithersburg and Rockville have their own separate organizations. Such as for baseball UMAC (Uppper Montgomery Baseball Club) vs RBBA (Rockville Baseball Association), MSI (Montgomery Soccer Inc) vs SAM (Soccer Association of Maryland), Gaithersburg City rec sports and camps vs Rockville City rec sports and camps. For our family we're at the point where we recognize a lot of the other families in the leagues on other teams and makes the area seem a lot smaller because you see them around and helps with the community feel. And the leagues and organizations in the other city seems like a while another world to us.

So in some of the proposals, they have students attending a school in one city, where most of the students probably do activities in a particular area. But then move a subset of the students from that school into another area, where the majority of students from that area are involved in other organizations for the same type of activities.

They should at the very least keep students from the same elementary school together.


I think this is an interesting point, but isn't this just mostly a function of the catchment areas of the schools? Changing these will just change which activities people choose to participate in, although in some cases the distances might be too large.


Yes this is the issue I have with moving Wayside as I’m at the edge right near Potomac Community Centet. Right now we’re literally a 5 minute drive to about 60% of Churchill. 10 minutes would cover almost 100%. However with the switch I’d be maybe 5 minutes to only about 10-15% of the Wootton cluster which would be the part of Wayside before the one lane bridges. 10 mins would maybe expand that to about 35% of the district. Probably would be 20 minutes to get to 100% of the district, and make that 25 in rush hour.

redistricting elementary schools both here and everywhere would have been the ideal solution. In lieu of that, I feel a split articulation so half of wayside stays together with half going to MS with others going to Wootton and the rest going to MS with Churchill would be ideal
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Moving Wayside out of Churchill helps with utilization. How else will they get Churchill below 100%?


It’s a BS utilization at Churchill. They’ve reduced capacity by 100 seats from when it first opened. What happened did the school shrink? Churchill has just had a period of a few years with higher enrollment which was consistently in lower figures and never had a portable until a year or two I believe. Kids there have stated it’s not crowded aside from the portable there’s no evidence to that.


Churchill parent here. There's no problem with Churchill being overcapacity. Yes, there are a couple of portables and I'm sure those teachers aren't excited about them. But I've never felt Churchill had too many kids generally. It's not hurting education or the social environment. And there's not much new construction in this area, so I wouldn't expect the problem to become worse in the next decade.

I have always wondered, though, why there are kids sooo far west that come to Churchill. Those are largely Wayside kids, and some Potomac kids. So yes, to drive from Wayside ES to Wootton HS, it may be about the same distance as going to from Wayside ES to Churchill HS. But a huge part of that geography is far closer to Wootton than to Churchill. Same with the Northern part of the Potomac ES boundaries. The culprit is that they're not looking at ES boundaries. I'd be interested in knowing the *average* student's bus time to both high schools-- there is certainly some house that is closer to Churchill and some house that is closer to Wootton. In sum, I think, capacity-wise, it would be fine for Wayside to continue to go to Churchill. But I think the quality of life for the average Wayside kid might improve by going to the closer school.


Wayside families definitely closer to Churchill for the most part. For us, it is 3 miles more to Wootton than to Churchill and an additional 10 minutes (give or take) round trip. Not horrible but doesn't make sense.

The Wayside families that should never been zoned to Wayside in the first place are in the Potomac Glen area. There are three other elementary schools closer to that neighborhood, namely Lakewood, Stone Mill, and Travilah. Why they were ever zoned for Wayside/Churchill is bizarre, but from what I understand the contractor that built that development had some connections with Montgomery County politicians who made it happen. That is the only area that should be rezoned to Wootton and to the appropriate elementary school. The rest of Wayside belongs at Churchill.


Yup there was a lot of uproar and concern among ALL of Wayside and Churchill at the time that it’d lead to overcrowding. It was done to alleviate crowding at Wootton at the time. I mentioned this to a neighbor recently who reminded me of that and that at a community meeting the Board assured the schools that this wouldn’t impact them or crowding and that if it did they’d look into an addition at Churchill. Shame on the BOE.

See page 11 here: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/boe/meetings/minutes/1990/minutes.112690.pdf
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