Please sign this petition to continue countywide magnets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

The petition isn't saying not to add regional programs, it's saying to leave Poolesville, Blair, and RMIB as countywide. You can want to add regional programs and still sign the petition, unless you also think that those programs must be converted to regional.

Is it countywide right now?

RMIB is countywide now. Blair and Poolesville each cover a region of the county for SMCS.

Poolesville’s Global Ecology program is countywide.

Yes, but it isn't mentioned at all in the petition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

+1 more!
Between my 3 kids we’ve done almost all the selective magnets (MS Humanities & MSCS, HS SMCS, Global, RMIB). Travel was 30-50 minutes and limited some involvement in after school activities and sports. Also, some friends lived almost an hour drive away. I would have much preferred having access to the rigorous classes much closer to home.

In the draft program assignments, each region will now have criteria based IB and SMCS cohorts. Yay! More seats!! That’s what people have been asking for for years. And instead of your super smart mathy kid being one of 100 kids with identical resumes competing for college entrance from the same school, they’ll be one of 50 at their regional program (33+17) and have a better opportunity to stand out on their merits.

I think this switch to a regional model will benefit ALL advanced students county-wide. The main losers here are parents who want bragging rights to have their kid in a limited access program.

Why are you letting them pit students against students, instead of demanding that all studenta get access to appropriate classes?

On the one side, Magnet families want more magnets added

On the other side, we have people who want to kill the magnet?
Why? Because you think your kid will benefit from the cachet of attending the same school as a higher achieving student?

The college-admissions gamesters all say that the magnet program makes students at other schools get better class rank and college admissions outcomes? He will you feel when those magent students come to your "region" and "steal" you admissions seats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It worked very well when we kept the CESs, but added ELC and made parents feel like their kids were getting the CES experience at their home schools. Why don’t we add a few extra cohorted math and science classes to each region, tell parents that’s the magnet experience, but still keep the existing STEM magnets so the truly gifted kids can still take these tiny, super specialized advanced classes? Everyone will be happy.

Because someone people cant handle the cognitive dissonance of seeing a room full of Asian and European immigrantsl children undermining their pseudoscintific theories that all children are clones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

+1 more!
Between my 3 kids we’ve done almost all the selective magnets (MS Humanities & MSCS, HS SMCS, Global, RMIB). Travel was 30-50 minutes and limited some involvement in after school activities and sports. Also, some friends lived almost an hour drive away. I would have much preferred having access to the rigorous classes much closer to home.

In the draft program assignments, each region will now have criteria based IB and SMCS cohorts. Yay! More seats!! That’s what people have been asking for for years. And instead of your super smart mathy kid being one of 100 kids with identical resumes competing for college entrance from the same school, they’ll be one of 50 at their regional program (33+17) and have a better opportunity to stand out on their merits.

I think this switch to a regional model will benefit ALL advanced students county-wide. The main losers here are parents who want bragging rights to have their kid in a limited access program.

Why are you letting them pit students against students, instead of demanding that all studenta get access to appropriate classes?

On the one side, Magnet families want more magnets added

On the other side, we have people who want to kill the magnet?
Why? Because you think your kid will benefit from the cachet of attending the same school as a higher achieving student?

The college-admissions gamesters all say that the magnet program makes students at other schools get better class rank and college admissions outcomes? He will you feel when those magent students come to your "region" and "steal" you admissions seats?

There is zero evidence for this. I've been in the magnet world for a decade, and I have never seen the SMCS booster group advocate for more magnets, or organize a Change.org petition for more magnets. The only thing that got them to engage in advocacy is the idea that their child might lose access to Super Duper Advanced Science that they are just going to need to retake in college anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

The petition isn't saying not to add regional programs, it's saying to leave Poolesville, Blair, and RMIB as countywide. You can want to add regional programs and still sign the petition, unless you also think that those programs must be converted to regional.

Yeah because two-tiered systems always work so well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

+1 more!
Between my 3 kids we’ve done almost all the selective magnets (MS Humanities & MSCS, HS SMCS, Global, RMIB). Travel was 30-50 minutes and limited some involvement in after school activities and sports. Also, some friends lived almost an hour drive away. I would have much preferred having access to the rigorous classes much closer to home.

In the draft program assignments, each region will now have criteria based IB and SMCS cohorts. Yay! More seats!! That’s what people have been asking for for years. And instead of your super smart mathy kid being one of 100 kids with identical resumes competing for college entrance from the same school, they’ll be one of 50 at their regional program (33+17) and have a better opportunity to stand out on their merits.

I think this switch to a regional model will benefit ALL advanced students county-wide. The main losers here are parents who want bragging rights to have their kid in a limited access program.

The rigorous classes will not exist. MCPS refuses to commit to scaling the SMACS program, because they know they can't.
Look at the existing program mix. Not all "STEM" is the same. AOIT is not Biomedical Engineer is not SMACS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

+1. So tired of the gate-keeping, close-minded, incredibly snobbish and ignorant mindset of people who benefitted from something and think they know best.

[Anonymous]

The simple fact that they are trying to scale a magnet from 2 schools to 6 in one huge jump, instead of sustainably growing one school at a time, clearly shows that they haven't thought through the change at all, are are just doing a paperwork exercise that will completely fail in the field

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

I trust the SMCS teachers to know how big the delta is between very good STEM cohorting and exceptional STEM cohorting.

When we were in a race to develop the atomic bomb first or put a man on the moon first, we needed lots of very smart people to work together and a handful of geniuses to get us across the finish line. It seems like it would be beneficial to cater our educational system to both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

+1. So tired of the gate-keeping, close-minded, incredibly snobbish and ignorant mindset of people who benefitted from something and think they know best.

Because they know the best from their past experience. They know this new regional model is going to fail because of the huge jump. Expanding the current magnet is a good intention. That's why Poolsville magnet was called. But it was successful from many years of investment and Blair magnet teacher helped tremendously in guiding through the entire process. Now they are not even called for any inputs up till this point. It will not end up with 6 regional programs with a small cut-back and more benefit to all. It will be a total mess and a hugely bloated budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

I trust the SMCS teachers to know how big the delta is between very good STEM cohorting and exceptional STEM cohorting.

When we were in a race to develop the atomic bomb first or put a man on the moon first, we needed lots of very smart people to work together and a handful of geniuses to get us across the finish line. It seems like it would be beneficial to cater our educational system to both.

Why limit it to Montgomery County then? Why not one magnet for the best and the brightest across the state of Maryland?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

I trust the SMCS teachers to know how big the delta is between very good STEM cohorting and exceptional STEM cohorting.

When we were in a race to develop the atomic bomb first or put a man on the moon first, we needed lots of very smart people to work together and a handful of geniuses to get us across the finish line. It seems like it would be beneficial to cater our educational system to both.

LOL. How many high schoolers contributed to the atomic bomb? Perhaps more importantly, how much quicker would we have advanced as a country if we had not been gatekeeping science jobs all those years? Providing a high quality education to every kid in the county, regardless of whether they passed a certain test or got help with a certain essay in 8th grade, is far more important to the future of our nation than maintaining a bubble of privilege for the favored few.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

I trust the SMCS teachers to know how big the delta is between very good STEM cohorting and exceptional STEM cohorting.

When we were in a race to develop the atomic bomb first or put a man on the moon first, we needed lots of very smart people to work together and a handful of geniuses to get us across the finish line. It seems like it would be beneficial to cater our educational system to both.

Then do you know SMACS teachers are completely blocked out from giving any inputs up till this point? While last time they were involved from the very beginning when expanding to Poolsville.

When NASA beat USSR in sending the first man to the Moon, they had a budget of 6% of the federal budget. Now they have less than 0.5% of the total federal budget, and you ask them to beat the Chinese? No way this round. It's the same thing for MCPS. No money to support the change, but just shouting out "we need change".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will not sign, and my kids have both been in a magnet. One graduated in 2025, and the other is in HS.

It's been a good experience for them, but there's far too much talent in the county to limit the participation to a few hundred students per grade level per year.

This. Regional magnet programs are a good idea.

+1 The "I got mine" posters are out in force, including hijacking parent chat groups at TPMS.

No. More opportunity is good and if we have to "dilute" classes that only 10 kids per year take in MCPS, so be it.

Those classes that only 10 kids take won’t be diluted; they’ll be eliminated because those 10 kids will be distributed among many schools, none of which will have the talent pool to field enough students for these classes. That’s how these STEM programs will be diluted. We’ll have many good programs and no exceptional ones.

If the very good programs provide access to 3x the number of students, as long as the delta between exceptional and very good isn't too large, then that is a win from the perspective of maximizing educational benefit across the county.

I trust the SMCS teachers to know how big the delta is between very good STEM cohorting and exceptional STEM cohorting.

When we were in a race to develop the atomic bomb first or put a man on the moon first, we needed lots of very smart people to work together and a handful of geniuses to get us across the finish line. It seems like it would be beneficial to cater our educational system to both.

LOL. How many high schoolers contributed to the atomic bomb? Perhaps more importantly, how much quicker would we have advanced as a country if we had not been gatekeeping science jobs all those years? Providing a high quality education to every kid in the county, regardless of whether they passed a certain test or got help with a certain essay in 8th grade, is far more important to the future of our nation than maintaining a bubble of privilege for the favored few.

But we could have these good STEM programs for all of the advanced students in each region and keep the exceptional STEM programs for the very, very advanced students. Why not augment what we already offer to give opportunity to more students without taking away opportunity we already offer?