Takoma Park residents, where do your kids go to HS?

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11/11/2023 23:40

Subject: Takoma Park residents, where do your kids go to HS?

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Anonymous wrote:We live in the city and are exploring neighborhoods in Maryland to move to with our Elementary age kids. Takoma Park is very high on my list.

One issue I can't get past though, is how far away Montgomery Blair is. It's outside the beltway! Is that where most high schoolers go to school? Does it get annoying to have to drive so far every day, for activities, etc? I was hoping to live somewhere where the local schools are really a part of the community, but I'm afraid it will feel disconnected in TP. What has your experience been?

Thanks so much! I'd also love any other points of view on TP, but this is the issue weighing most on my mind.

Blair was originally in Takoma Park but was relocated to downtown SS in the 1930s and to its current location in 1998. The reason it is where it is now is because that's where the county could get sufficient land to build a new HS. The bus ride isn't that bad, at least compared to the other magnet kids who come from much further away.

It's really too bad, given the population boom since 1998, that MCPS wasn't able to keep a high school in DTSS in addition to the new Blair location. We need another downcounty high school.

This is absolutely true. I think the Board needs to demonstrate some problem solving skills here. Be creative! Be solution oriented!

They could use the former Adventist elementary school, which is only a few miles from Blair, to siphon some kids off for part of the day. For example, CAP kids have their classes in half-day blocks. Are magnet kids the same? If you took half the CAP kids and half the magnet kids out for a half day, that's 400 kids out of the school at a time.

Or you don't focus on the CAP and magnet kids, and run some other program half day. With an hour lunch, you can transport the kids back (and then the new group to the campus) during lunch.

Or you don't link it to Blair at all, and set up an entire small HS serving a specific community and they can share extracurriculars with the big high school.

The point would be to get the number of kids on campus a little closer to 2000 and alleviate some of the burden on the infrastructure.

Blair's CAP program is moving to the newly built Woodward High School once Woodward completes its run as a holding school in the near future. I don't care what "study" about this that is now being launched - the early discussions about reopening Woodward included the "benefit" of easing overcrowding at Blair by taking some of Blair's students. How do they do that? By taking a specific, exact number of students - the CAP program -- out of Blair and placing it at Woodward. Don't believe me? Watch. Just what DCC needs - to lose an academic program to west county.

That will never happen. I heard they would add a vocational magnet @Woodward to attract lower-SES students to improve diversity.

That's brilliant! They could draw lower-income students with vocational aspirations from the DCC relieving overcrowding while improving west county diversity!

Oh yes, let's spend taxpayer money to send low income students to segregated programs in rich areas. So smart!

Well, one alternative would have been to spend money to actually addresss the needs of the DCC within the DCC. Too bad they failed to step up to the plate on that. Even if they were to turn towards doing so, they'd now need to find ways out of the DCC overcrowding during the 10 years it would take, so...large vocational magnet at Woodward, shifted boundaries or including the Ws in a re-jiggered DCC. Take your pick.