Superintendent's Recommendation for Richard Montgomery ES #5 Boundaries

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s true that most RP families want 7%. Rather, that is about the Fallsgrove community wanting to stay at RP and not add a few minutes to their commutes.

Adding few minutes is not a very strong counter point for net effect here. If you don't add few minutes then RP is reducing from 20% to 7% FARMs. I do see their point here, but I am trying to see it from all angles here.

Try 50 more angles. Thats as many angles as created by all the busing routes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Were there any viable options that sent RP5 to CG or Beall though?

That suggestion was shot down by few RP5 parents present in working session. They all wanted to go to RM#5 if their school changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Were there any viable options that sent RP5 to CG or Beall though?

That suggestion was shot down by few RP5 parents present in working session. They all wanted to go to RM#5 if their school changes.

I doubt that is accurate. I live in RP5 and haven't heard from 1 person that they want to go to RM ES 5 due to distance. Everything I have heard is that parents either want to stay at Ritchie Park or get rezoned to a closer school like Lakewood that is actually the closest school to the neighborhood. (Not that it will ever happen)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s true that most RP families want 7%. Rather, that is about the Fallsgrove community wanting to stay at RP and not add a few minutes to their commutes.

Adding few minutes is not a very strong counter point for net effect here. If you don't add few minutes then RP is reducing from 20% to 7% FARMs. I do see their point here, but I am trying to see it from all angles here.

Yes, but you have to consider the incremental increase in conjunction with the fact that they were already travelling a much longer distance than other zones based on being lobbied by Weast to zone out of Wootton based on a RM/Wootton capacity rationale that proved completely incorrect on all counts. Instead, they've had a decade and a half of longer distance just to attend overcrowded schools (often with portables) at the ES, MS and HS levels, while basically the entire Wootton cluster attends under-enrolled neighborhood schools with no commute.

As it stands now, Fallsgrove under-enrolls MCPS versus its original build-out for the same reasons that exist in the north half of King Farm (which is also under-utilized). FARMS-eligible families with kids aren't going to snatch up all those MPDU and apartment units in Fallsgrove just to be bussed 4 miles to RM#5, so moving RP5 out of RP is likely to worsen MCPS FARMS diversity/integration over time because you take a significant pocket of affordable housing and zone it in a way where it will be filled with singles/retirees instead of MCPS families. This just perpetuates the segregation that already exists between the clusters, where Wootton and Churchill essentially eliminate FARMS students because there's nowhere in those clusters for them to reside and there's no land to develop for new multi-family housing.

If you really want to address the FARMS issue in a serious way, do it as part of a larger multi-cluster redistricting project where there are no sacred cows. You could easily redraw boundaries between Churchill, Wootton, RM, QO and GB in a way that would create more balanced diversity and better geographic cohesion than exists today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Were there any viable options that sent RP5 to CG or Beall though?

That suggestion was shot down by few RP5 parents present in working session. They all wanted to go to RM#5 if their school changes.

I doubt that is accurate. I live in RP5 and haven't heard from 1 person that they want to go to RM ES 5 due to distance. Everything I have heard is that parents either want to stay at Ritchie Park or get rezoned to a closer school like Lakewood that is actually the closest school to the neighborhood. (Not that it will ever happen)

RP5 parent comment was about moving to Beall/CG vs moving to RM#5.

Rezoning it to Wootton was not part of agenda in that discussion. Anyway, different folks can have different opinion. I was only talking about what some RP5 parents said in working session.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

RP was pulled into this cluster from Wootton to help RM terrible FARMS rates. We have been rezoned twice since then to keep adding FARMS. So now our reward is the neighborhoods now get pulled and yanked the most, to make sure we have FARMS similar to downtown Rockville or in even one option, the absolute highest in the cluster now?? Sorry. Not apologizing for the 7% FARMS. That is higher than any other local school around us.

I know that a lot of people believe this, but the media reports at the time say otherwise: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1987/06/05/busing-ruling-saddens-ritchie-park-parents/cc3b67e6-b596-4247-ba3d-b4c076d37de8/?utm_term=.4678027d0651

Ritchie Park went to Richard Montgomery because Richard Montgomery enrollments were down and projected to drop further, while Wootton was over capacity.

Also, this happened in 1987. To repeat, 1987. What were you doing in 1987? In June 1987, I had just finished my sophomore year of college. And my youngest child started middle school this year, so if you have a child in elementary school, you're probably younger than I am.

The point is that RP is not near the typical parts of the RM cluster, especially the FARMS areas. The single family no-FARMS school was added to the RM cluster. They were way off the perimeter and parts are actually Potomac residents. They could have moved Fallsmeade or Maryvale which were closer to RM but they chose RP. It was an attempt to balance. Fine. But now the continued reazoning of our school (this will be the 4th time since we moved to RM) and now this new attempt to move those close/walkable to RP out to Twinbrook and keep a complete walkable area of RP2 not going to RM5 just to increase FARMS over 40% is terrible. It is not community friendly, it is not environmentally friendly, and it feels like a calculated agenda to prove something. Like RP needs to apologize for having surrounding neighborhoods that do not have FARMS and continue this blotchy zoning.

Superintendent's Recommendation #3 ( November 13, 2017) puts RP at 24%. In that option , RP doesn't have a rich zone like RP5, but a poor zone like RP2. Right now both zones attend RP. Parts of RP2 is walk able to the new school and parts of RP2 is not walk able to the new school.

Why all of RP is not getting behind this option? I know that some of you want 7% FARMs and want to look similar to other schools near by, but we are in RM cluster with a much higher average FARMs rate than clusters like Churchill.

The entire RP2 is walkable. The entire area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Were there any viable options that sent RP5 to CG or Beall though?

That suggestion was shot down by few RP5 parents present in working session. They all wanted to go to RM#5 if their school changes.

I doubt that is accurate. I live in RP5 and haven't heard from 1 person that they want to go to RM ES 5 due to distance. Everything I have heard is that parents either want to stay at Ritchie Park or get rezoned to a closer school like Lakewood that is actually the closest school to the neighborhood. (Not that it will ever happen)

RP5 parent comment was about moving to Beall/CG vs moving to RM#5.

Rezoning it to Wootton was not part of agenda in that discussion. Anyway, different folks can have different opinion. I was only talking about what some RP5 parents said in working session.

IIRC, moving to Beall/CG was not included amongst the 8 options studied. As such, I don't believe residents in RP5 have ever been asked to form a view either way as it compares to moving to RM#5. Speaking as a Fallsgrove resident, I think it would be preferred to RM#5 given geographic considerations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m at RP and I fully support any of the options that go beyond 7%. I believe most of us do. I think the only option most people oppose is the 40% option.

Seems like there should be some option in between I agree..

Why wasn't this all mentioned months ago with the first 8 options

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m at RP and I fully support any of the options that go beyond 7%. I believe most of us do. I think the only option most people oppose is the 40% option.

Seems like there should be some option in between I agree..

Why wasn't this all mentioned months ago with the first 8 options

Because the boundary committee focused on geographic proximity, with walkers being required to go to their walkable school. With that assumption, There isn't much that can be done.

[Anonymous]

My favorite thing is the time line:

for one entire year, we all got together and poured through options. Then the superintendent makes a recommendation based on new conditions, invalidating all the work that everybody did for a year. Then a miscalculation is found, invalidating the superintendent's recommendation. The board pulls 3 options together out of their rear ends, and the superintendent barf's up 2 more options to prioritize a factor based on board resolution.

Why did we even waste our time? This cake has been prebaked. Somebody needs to slap the BOE members in the face.

[Anonymous]

what does everyone think the board is ultimately pick? i’d say boe alt 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m at RP and I fully support any of the options that go beyond 7%. I believe most of us do. I think the only option most people oppose is the 40% option.

Seems like there should be some option in between I agree..

Why wasn't this all mentioned months ago with the first 8 options

Because the boundary committee focused on geographic proximity, with walkers being required to go to their walkable school. With that assumption, There isn't much that can be done.

Not exactly true - 11 criteria were considered in addition to maximizing walkers, including "promote a diverse student body." There is no valid reason that 12 months should have been thrown in the trash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what does everyone think the board is ultimately pick? i’d say boe alt 3

Sine each community’s concerns are addressed with BOE Option 2, they will choose 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m at RP and I fully support any of the options that go beyond 7%. I believe most of us do. I think the only option most people oppose is the 40% option.

Seems like there should be some option in between I agree..

Why wasn't this all mentioned months ago with the first 8 options

Because the boundary committee focused on geographic proximity, with walkers being required to go to their walkable school. With that assumption, There isn't much that can be done.

Not exactly true - 11 criteria were considered in addition to maximizing walkers, including "promote a diverse student body." There is no valid reason that 12 months should have been thrown in the trash.

I'd add... FARMS rate data was included in all 8 options originally proposed. What changed is that MCPS screwed up their own data, and now realize at the last minute that it was slightly off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue here is not that people are opposed to a particular FARMS rate; it's that they are opposed to having students unnecessarily bussed a long distance for the sole purpose of trying to engineer comparable FARMS-eligibility rates between the five schools. The new options put an undue burden on residents in RP5 - if you want kids to endure a long bus ride to go to an HGC program, that's one thing, but they shouldn't have to do that to go to a local school.

How long?

I can walk to RP in 10 minutes
Bus to Twinbrook would take 20min in the morning minimum (14 minutes ETA at 10pm with no traffic) and that is after picking up all the kids. So first stop would be about 30-35min on the bus.

Also, how would the busses even work in these areas being projected all over. Those tiny areas of TB? Would they fill a whole bus or would there be more stops along the way. How will this affect timing of kids getting home from tier 2 schools. What about neighborhoods that share busses and are getting split. Do we need more busses? What are the projected times of the furthest sections? Nothing has been looked at thoroughly.