How Come BOE Candidate Stephen Austin Won’t Say What His Employment Is??

[Anonymous]

Do you happen to know if that 30% includes kids go to private schools, magnets or gifted and talented? I would imagine a good chunk of that 30% is private schools but I don’t know.

No, they explicitly said these are public school kids who are not in immersion programs, magnets, or being bused to a more distant school for special needs.

These are regular kids, attending their regular school, but there is another school that is closer to their home. Usually that happens because a new school has opened, or expanded, and without a comprehensive boundary analysis, you end up with boundaries that look like this: http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/RosemontES.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I feel like a pawn in this Board of Education race. I am a Latina woman and my kids are in mcps. The implication that white and Asian children are the desired races with the desired higher test scores stings.

Here it is right on MCPS's site:

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/evidence-of-learning-framework/equity-accountability-model.aspx

Their 5 focus groups are:

1. Poor blacks
2. Poor latinos
3. Poor whites/asians
4. All blacks
5. All latinos

So in their own model, they assume latinos and blacks, even those who are well-off, need special focus and help solely because of their race. Latinos are the largest ethnic group among MCPS students (outnumbering whites too), but MCPS has decided that they still need special help. That's how racially-focused MCPS is. It's right on their site.

I was incensed when I finally starting digging and found stuff like that.

Why does this upset you so much? Yes, MCPS tracks the performance of racial/ethnic and economic groups that have traditionally not been able to fully access the curriculum for a variety of reasons. Yes, it is helpful to be able to compare non-FARMS Black kids to FARMS Black kids, in order to try to understand how hundreds of years of institutional racism impact school performance, and how poverty exacerbates those issues.

It's just....data. Some of it is federally mandated, and some of it MCPS has decided is worth disaggregating. Why do you hate data so much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Nothing wrong about PTAs funding "enrichment" at their own schools. Distributing that across all schools would take socialism to a wholly different level.

On the one hand, people say that there's nothing about low-poverty schools that will magically improve poor kids' education.

On the other hand, these same people say that it's fine for PTAs at low-poverty schools to fund enrichment for kids at their schools.

Pick one belief, please. They can't both be true.

They can.... the first is funded from taxes that the county and the state collect from all residents, and the second is a directed contribution/donation.

No, they can't. Either there actually is something about low-poverty schools that will magically improve poor kids' education - namely, PTA-funded enrichment - or the PTAs at low-poverty schools to provide something that kids at low-poverty schools get but kids at high-poverty schools don't, which means that it's actually not fine for them to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So why is it that economic diversity seems to be the primary factor ("especially") that the current BOE is pushing? It has also disregarded proximity at countless BOE meetings where hundreds of parents spoke about the importance of attending neighborhood schools.

No, it doesn't, and no, it hasn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I feel like a pawn in this Board of Education race. I am a Latina woman and my kids are in mcps. The implication that white and Asian children are the desired races with the desired higher test scores stings. One side feels that by mixing and moving white and Asian children into mostly minority schools will fix the problem. Test scores will rise! Money is going to come in from those families and even things out. It’s not that easy. The other side does not want to deal with the real issues that come with lower ses families (The majority being Latino and black).

I don’t know the ins and outs and my ideas don’t take into account the complexity of these issues. I would rather instead of moving based on race and test scores* that more funding is allocated to lower performing schools. I can only speak to the issues within the Latin community and a lot of it is situational because the parents lack education themselves so they are unable to help their own children with school. I wish one of the resources was to even have Night classes to the parents so they could be better equipped to help their children. Have more accessibility to the teachers and administration at their own schools including hiring more staff who speak multiple languages to assist not just the Spanish-speaking community but many other minority communities. If you want children to succeed in schools you need families who are invested in those schools and who care about what is happening in those schools which means a greater community involvement. I think my ideas And how I feel will be flamed by dcum but I feel like I have insight not only to the Latin community but a point of view and experienced that the majority of people here don’t have.

(I think shifting boundaries to help overcrowded schools and under crowded schools is a good idea.)

This is exactly what many of us support. Enrichment and funding at "lower performing" schools instead of doing a redistricting to hide the problems.

Reducing FARMS at a school is not about "hiding the problem". It's about reducing the burden of the specific needs of a high FARMS school. Think of it as "flattening the curve" across MCPS rather than having the all the issues in a handful of schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So why is it that economic diversity seems to be the primary factor ("especially") that the current BOE is pushing? It has also disregarded proximity at countless BOE meetings where hundreds of parents spoke about the importance of attending neighborhood schools.

No, it doesn't, and no, it hasn't.

I'd like PP to come and tell us exactly which BoE decision disregarded the parents' feedback. Yes, people said neighborhood schools were important to them, to which MCPS said "Great, because they are important to us as well."

It's just that folks don't believe MCPS, but there's no facts behind that lack of belief, just feelings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't the whole point of public schools that kids go to schools in their neighborhood? Why are people fighting that?

No.

You can have a public school system where kids go to school based on their home address. You can have a public school system where kids' home address has nothing whatsoever to do with where kids go to school. You can also have private schools that serve kids in their neighborhood - parochial schools for example.

Just because, in the US, public-school attendance is generally based on home address, doesn't mean it has to be that way.

Not to mention that school attendance based on home address doesn't necessarily have much to do with neighborhood schools anyway. Kids in the Cider Mill Apartments in Montgomery Village, by Lake Forest Mall in Gaithersburg, attend Neelsville Middle School in Germantown. Is that their neighborhood school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do you happen to know if that 30% includes kids go to private schools, magnets or gifted and talented? I would imagine a good chunk of that 30% is private schools but I don’t know.

No, they explicitly said these are public school kids who are not in immersion programs, magnets, or being bused to a more distant school for special needs.

These are regular kids, attending their regular school, but there is another school that is closer to their home. Usually that happens because a new school has opened, or expanded, and without a comprehensive boundary analysis, you end up with boundaries that look like this: http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/RosemontES.pdf

That one is actually not too too bad. There are worse. MS boundaries are the worst. I think wxy analysis found that some 37% of MS students don't go to the nearest school. And we can see that here:

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/RidgeviewMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/CabinJohnMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/FrostMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/GaithersburgMS.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I feel like a pawn in this Board of Education race. I am a Latina woman and my kids are in mcps. The implication that white and Asian children are the desired races with the desired higher test scores stings.

Here it is right on MCPS's site:

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/evidence-of-learning-framework/equity-accountability-model.aspx

Their 5 focus groups are:

1. Poor blacks
2. Poor latinos
3. Poor whites/asians
4. All blacks
5. All latinos

So in their own model, they assume latinos and blacks, even those who are well-off, need special focus and help solely because of their race. Latinos are the largest ethnic group among MCPS students (outnumbering whites too), but MCPS has decided that they still need special help. That's how racially-focused MCPS is. It's right on their site.

I was incensed when I finally starting digging and found stuff like that.

Why does this upset you so much? Yes, MCPS tracks the performance of racial/ethnic and economic groups that have traditionally not been able to fully access the curriculum for a variety of reasons. Yes, it is helpful to be able to compare non-FARMS Black kids to FARMS Black kids, in order to try to understand how hundreds of years of institutional racism impact school performance, and how poverty exacerbates those issues.

It's just....data. Some of it is federally mandated, and some of it MCPS has decided is worth disaggregating. Why do you hate data so much?

How about data on all groups. They don't seem to care about collecting data for non-FARMS whites and Asians.

Also they lump Asians and whites together.

Why not just track each ethnic group separately, if their goal is to track data?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So why is it that economic diversity seems to be the primary factor ("especially") that the current BOE is pushing? It has also disregarded proximity at countless BOE meetings where hundreds of parents spoke about the importance of attending neighborhood schools.

No, it doesn't, and no, it hasn't.

I'd like PP to come and tell us exactly which BoE decision disregarded the parents' feedback. Yes, people said neighborhood schools were important to them, to which MCPS said "Great, because they are important to us as well."

It's just that folks don't believe MCPS, but there's no facts behind that lack of belief, just feelings.

At least at some of those BoE meetings, where hundreds of parents spoke about the importance of attending neighborhood schools, they were testifying to OPPOSE options that would have reassigned them to schools THAT WERE CLOSER. Kinda makes you wonder what "neighborhood schools" means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
How about data on all groups. They don't seem to care about collecting data for non-FARMS whites and Asians.

Also they lump Asians and whites together.

Why not just track each ethnic group separately, if their goal is to track data?

They do collect and track each race/ethnicity separately. They're required to do so by federal law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you happen to know if that 30% includes kids go to private schools, magnets or gifted and talented? I would imagine a good chunk of that 30% is private schools but I don’t know.

No, they explicitly said these are public school kids who are not in immersion programs, magnets, or being bused to a more distant school for special needs.

These are regular kids, attending their regular school, but there is another school that is closer to their home. Usually that happens because a new school has opened, or expanded, and without a comprehensive boundary analysis, you end up with boundaries that look like this: http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/RosemontES.pdf

That one is actually not too too bad. There are worse. MS boundaries are the worst. I think wxy analysis found that some 37% of MS students don't go to the nearest school. And we can see that here:

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/RidgeviewMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/CabinJohnMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/FrostMS.pdf

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/GaithersburgMS.pdf

Right? Forest Oak MS isn't even in its own attendance area.

http://gis.mcpsmd.org/ServiceAreaMaps/ForestOakMS.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Ryan Miner is Stephen Austin’s Sean Hannity. Don’t believe me? Take a look at his podcasts. Miner throws verbal bouquets at his fair-haired boy, commiserates with Austin about the “unfair” and “mean” things people have said about him, and never asks the basic questions any decent interviewer would ask a candidate. He lets Austin skate by on vague references about being “a finance guy” who worked for “a couple of hedge funds.” He gives Austin a pass on details about how he will work his financial wizardry. Miner might just as well take a salary as Austin’s PR guy. At least that would be more intellectually honest.

And he needs an editor, too.

[Anonymous]

Austin was an astronaut. He now works for the OSI. His boss is named Oscar Goldman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Austin was an astronaut. He now works for the OSI. His boss is named Oscar Goldman.

We can rebuild him. We have the technology.