Second round options for Woodward boundary study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not an expert in all of this, and it sure would have helped if instead of reading from a script that laid out the information, the consultants and MCPS staff laid out the reasons, they why behind the information, but:

-BCC and Whitman probably "not touched" as much because of the walk zones. Not because of perceived equity issues/favoritism toward a specific ethnicity or socioeconomic class

-lower capacity numbers at WJ and Einstein because there are a million new buildings in the pipeline, and they don't want both of those schools to be severly overcrowded again in just a few years

Did these justifications anc considerations be shared in any of the webminars and in-person meetings last week? MCPS doesn’t share their webminar slides nor recording.

When things are opaque like this it means they are making decisions based on politics, not data

[Anonymous]

Option B is the Best. Res Ipsa Loquitur. B = Best

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option B is the Best. Res Ipsa Loquitur. B = Best

The best for whom? Not for taxpayers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

Very good question, when according to the CIP, BCC has fewer than 100 open seats, and is projected to be at capacity soon:

https://gis.mcpsmd.org/cipmasterpdfs/MP26_Chapter4BCC.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

Very good question, when according to the CIP, BCC has fewer than 100 open seats, and is projected to be at capacity soon:

https://gis.mcpsmd.org/cipmasterpdfs/MP26_Chapter4BCC.pdf

So did they do the analysis of housing pipeline only for WJ/Woodward? That's also kind of weird and sounds suspiciously like they didn't actually do any analysis at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

Very good question, when according to the CIP, BCC has fewer than 100 open seats, and is projected to be at capacity soon:

https://gis.mcpsmd.org/cipmasterpdfs/MP26_Chapter4BCC.pdf

So did they do the analysis of housing pipeline only for WJ/Woodward? That's also kind of weird and sounds suspiciously like they didn't actually do any analysis at all.

In theory the housing pipeline is part of the CIP projections every year. But they haven't been very good at forecasting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

Very good question, when according to the CIP, BCC has fewer than 100 open seats, and is projected to be at capacity soon:

https://gis.mcpsmd.org/cipmasterpdfs/MP26_Chapter4BCC.pdf

So did they do the analysis of housing pipeline only for WJ/Woodward? That's also kind of weird and sounds suspiciously like they didn't actually do any analysis at all.

In theory the housing pipeline is part of the CIP projections every year. But they haven't been very good at forecasting.

I don't see that anywhere in the CIP. I only see vague narratives at the beginning of each chapter about how much housing is allowed by master plans and in some cases they use the word "pipeline". No idea how much is in approved projects by cluster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

By "Bethesda" do you mean "North Bethesda"? Or where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also if there is so much housing going up in Bethesda why are they putting regional programs in BCC that will draw more kids there? Gmafb, they are doing this because it is more comfortable for the BCC families to not change their boundaries.

By "Bethesda" do you mean "North Bethesda"? Or where?

I'm referring to multiple apartment buildings going up in downtown Bethesda

[Anonymous]

Or you could all learn about the process instead of speculating. The Planning Board staff give information about what is coming to MCPS about all the clusters, not just particular ones. Don't start unfounded rumors, or keep them going. They determine the numbers based on what is being built, single family homes, garden style apartments, high rises, etc. You can agree or disagree with their numbers, but the numbers they use are the same throughout the county

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or you could all learn about the process instead of speculating. The Planning Board staff give information about what is coming to MCPS about all the clusters, not just particular ones. Don't start unfounded rumors, or keep them going. They determine the numbers based on what is being built, single family homes, garden style apartments, high rises, etc. You can agree or disagree with their numbers, but the numbers they use are the same throughout the county

I'm literally looking at the MCPS CIP document. I do not see any tables comparing "the pipeline" in different clusters. Several posters have referred to the housing pipeline to justify leaving WJ and Woodward 20% under capacity while leaving multiple DCC schools over capacity, but I have yet to find any data that actually compares this pipeline in all the clusters. They just cite the one number listed for WJ as though that's the only place where housing is being built. If this analysis has been done, I have not seen it nor is it easy to find. Feel free to share it. If you can't, then you are the one spreading misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Because CO wants to please our superintendent. The boundary study doesn’t touch a bit of BCC, and the best criteria-based programs are given to BCC (except the SMCS in Blair as they know that move will infuriate parents from Ws).

Isn’t the company doing the studies out of state and has no clue about the distances or needs.

There's an outside company doing the boundary studies, but the program analysis is entirely run by MCPS central office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious the kids who don’t have enough math to graduate… how did they wind up being so advanced? What were your elementary/middle schools? My kids are zoned for Einstein and have done highest level offered at Elementary and Middle School (Sligo) so come in two years ahead. Einstein has AP Calc AB and BC and AP Stats as well as IB math. How many MCPS kids really need more? What percentage even take MVC?

Ib math is good but not equal to ap. Some of the feeder schools allow algebra in 6th. So, it goes, algebra, geometry, algebra2, precal, calc bc, multivariable calc, then linear algebra or stats is or something else. Einstein slows down kids pushing ab, then bc but a few just do bc. More would do mvc if offered. Right now parents have to drive to Wheaton or students go to MC with driving themselves or parents. We have some classes with ten or less students so it doesn’t make sense not to offer it.

This math progression seems insanely accelerated. I went to a W school and graduated in the early 2000s. I did algebra in 8th grade and geometry in 9th. That track was the accelerated track at the time. If you did algebra in 9th grade you were on level. If you did algebra in 7th grade you were super gifted. I’d estimate that there were maybe 10-20 kids in the last category per grade in high school. In 9th grade taking geometry I was probably one of about 60-70% with ~30-40% in algebra in 9th grade.

Those who did geometry in 9th typically did AP calculus in 12th grade and lots like myself did AP statistics as a second math class. Those who did geometry in 8th grade (those 10-20 kids) were in my BC Calculus class as 11th graders and took MVC as 12th graders.

When did algebra in 6th become the norm?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

Thanks. This is compelling. What is a good fix in your mind? It seems to me that an easy solution would be to place ht regional IB program at Einstein.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious the kids who don’t have enough math to graduate… how did they wind up being so advanced? What were your elementary/middle schools? My kids are zoned for Einstein and have done highest level offered at Elementary and Middle School (Sligo) so come in two years ahead. Einstein has AP Calc AB and BC and AP Stats as well as IB math. How many MCPS kids really need more? What percentage even take MVC?

Ib math is good but not equal to ap. Some of the feeder schools allow algebra in 6th. So, it goes, algebra, geometry, algebra2, precal, calc bc, multivariable calc, then linear algebra or stats is or something else. Einstein slows down kids pushing ab, then bc but a few just do bc. More would do mvc if offered. Right now parents have to drive to Wheaton or students go to MC with driving themselves or parents. We have some classes with ten or less students so it doesn’t make sense not to offer it.

This math progression seems insanely accelerated. I went to a W school and graduated in the early 2000s. I did algebra in 8th grade and geometry in 9th. That track was the accelerated track at the time. If you did algebra in 9th grade you were on level. If you did algebra in 7th grade you were super gifted. I’d estimate that there were maybe 10-20 kids in the last category per grade in high school. In 9th grade taking geometry I was probably one of about 60-70% with ~30-40% in algebra in 9th grade.

Those who did geometry in 9th typically did AP calculus in 12th grade and lots like myself did AP statistics as a second math class. Those who did geometry in 8th grade (those 10-20 kids) were in my BC Calculus class as 11th graders and took MVC as 12th graders.

When did algebra in 6th become the norm?

This is the Einstein MVC poster. I am not sure what to make of the rest of posts about Einstein due to them.