Initial boundary options for Crown/Damascus study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The boundaries are changing. Folks just need to accept that and get over it. Property values are not the focus or problem of the school district. Should the district maintain walkers, YES , but because it makes good sense in terms of resource usage (buses, people, finances). Will there be some splits articulations, YES, it’s inevitable given where schools are located and the amount of kids we’re talking about. Should they minimize the split articulations as much as possible(again for resource usage) and spread it around where makes sense, YES.

This whole “W school” thing is old and over emphasized. Frankly it would do the district a world of good to publicly toss it in the graveyard once and for all.

+1 It would be great if MCPS could even out the FARMs rate across all of the schools so we can stop with the "W" school nonsense.

I agree in theory, but how do you do this in a county where the wealth is largely concentrated in the western portion and the poverty is largely concentrated in the eastern portion and these portions are miles and miles and almost an hour apart? This is how they're trying to do their best at doing that. The only improvement I can see that would help is to create MORE high-achieving magnets in the poorer parts of the county, but when you already have strong schools in the western part, people opt out because too far is too far. I mean, just look at Churchill's Beyond the Bulldog 2025 Instagram: these kids don't need magnets to get into good colleges or to have a strong HS experience, and yes I realize a lot are full pay and don't have to do the donut-hole dance so that is also part of the reason why the colleges are so impressive (they can simply afford them).

yes, as a PP stated, having more poors in your school is not going to change your kid's outcome. But, it will help the lower income kid to have access to more resources, like more challenging courses. If you look at the lower performing schools, they don't have as many AP classes as higher performing schools do.

Agreed. Too bad the BOE was too weak to just do the full county boundary study. Given how many schools are involved and the fact we hired an outside firm it’s pretty ridiculous they didn’t.

But one thing that has been hammered for the Program Study is equitable distribution of programs, resources, and expectations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering, is that possible to keep all current clusters and initiate a selective admissions program to Crown HS, like Thomas Jefferson?

Second this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We moved from a QO-zoned neighborhood to a Wootton one when our kids started school (which may get shifted now) so I completely get all the anxiety.

I’m also a school integration researcher and wanted to share a few considerations:

1) School integration is one of the most effective ways of improving school quality. There’s tons of research showing integrated schools significantly reduce achievement gaps - students from underresourced communities perform better and crucially students from resourced communities perform just as well as they always have - their test scores do not decline at all.
2) Students from well resourced communities also see benefits - as adults they are more open to other people’s perspectives, better communicators, more tolerant of differences.
3) For those of you concerned about your kids’ future earnings, high performing kids from schools with higher FARM rates actually have a significantly better chance of getting into elite colleges than kids from a W school - if you move a student who is applying to an Ivy from a W school into QO/Gaithersburg etc., their odds of getting admitted increase - and again, evidence suggests that their academic performance will not go down because of that move.

For this boundary study to work and to help create an MCPS that doesn’t have such a massive bifurcation between its high and low performing schools, the district needs to build an affirmative case for why these moves matter and a coalition of supporters - something they absolutely have not done. But there is a case to be made that these moves can be good for all kids, including those who parents don’t have the resources to effectively advocate for their desired outcome.

Totally agree with you, PP. This is ultimately a PR problem, and then also somewhat of a logistics problem.

There are almost 3 years to prepare for this: the kids will be fine, and the kids who struggle with social anxiety or depend on deeply entrenched existing networks will have time to prepare (via waivers, or creating new supports, or seeing that over time many of their their friends will move with them and their communities will adapt). Will kids still struggle? Yes. And unfortunately there will always be kids who struggle and that's not really all on the boundaries.

There are YEARS here for the kids, parents, teachers, schools, and communities to work on creating new communities around split articulation. Split articularion is a regularly occurring thing and it can be contended with. Watch the kids themselves, who will know by Christmas where they are going to MS and HS; they are not going to be cry babies about it - they are going to start developing school pride and groups around this immediately. Will it mix some things up? Maybe But in the end, groups get mixed up at these ages. It's a normal, good thing.

The logistical piece is important: if a 13 year old with parents who work will be playing a sport at a school they can not walk to, the county needs to ensure buses are provided at appropriate times AND that programming exists around those times (looking at you, rabid high school coaches with weird practices). This can be contended with, and this needs to be focused on as a real solution as opposed to senseless whining.

I say this as someone who sent my kid to a school as "an other" and say my kid benefit from it. I also have a kid who switched schools in 9th and attended some magnets that saw mass-dispersion. These kids ARE resilient partly because they are, but these things kind of help to build resiliency in otherwise healthy kids.

Everybody relax and try to be productive rather than insufferable. And show your kids their schools are going to be great and they are going to do well and have a good experience and have friends.

Some split may be ok but MCPS should try its best to avoid new split articulations unless absolutely necessary. Stonebridge townhouses being split from Stonebridge single families are not acceptable. Same with Lakewood split with 5-10% kids split out which makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering, is that possible to keep all current clusters and initiate a selective admissions program to Crown HS, like Thomas Jefferson?

Second this.

Too controversial..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering, is that possible to keep all current clusters and initiate a selective admissions program to Crown HS, like Thomas Jefferson?

Second this.

Too controversial..

It’s really the best option. A good magnet program strengthens the crown high school. Why force people in Churchill and Wootton to leave and cause so much stress and disruption? Especially for Wootton, the parts get split in all options are really the relatively poorer ones in Wootton and many have been affected by federal Reduction in Force and lost jobs this year. Life has been hard for them and why add another burden? Let people who want to be at crown to attend crown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be what MCPS is trying to do. They hate that they have "good schools" because that means they have "bad schools."

This effort is about carving out boundaries for new properties (great), alleviating overcrowding (wonderful), but a heaping helping of "let's use this opportunity to change perceptions because we are out of ideas."

Or, let’s change boundaries because now is the opportune time to do so as we haven’t had a massive review and realignment of them in multiple decades and they were gerrymandered then.

It isnt a "massive review" because there are entire schools (Sherwood, Paint Branch, Springbrook) with capacity that are not included in either study. Right off the bat, MCPS is violating policy FAA by not considering all its capacity.

And it is far from an opportune time because of the loss of jobs and contracts by MoCo residents has created a great deal of uncertainty that make it both inopportune and a bad look politically to raise taxes to pay for "massive realignment."

Sure add new boundaries for the new schools but don't waste my tax dollars on a boondoggle because maybe/hopefully/Inshallah it will improve test scores.

It's not a boondoggle when we have hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in building these two new schools and they need to be filled. When you take the kids from the closest schools, then they need to get more kids into those schools and it impacts the next group of schools and so on. The wootton parents crying about their boundaries are stupid - some of them are CLOSER to Crown than Wootton, Crown has been programmed for year- the land decision was made well over 10 years ago so any current school parent should have known this was going to happen at some point.

Spare me the tears and fears and stop with the BS that we need to leave them be because it's a hard time with federal government cuts. You know who is ACTUALLY having a hard time? The kids at Wheaton and Kennedy whose parents are being deported from their immigration check-in appointments. Your kid who has tutors and travel sports and Kumon will be fine whether they're at Churchill, Wootton, or Crown.

Stop whining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering, is that possible to keep all current clusters and initiate a selective admissions program to Crown HS, like Thomas Jefferson?

Second this.

no, not gonna happen

[Anonymous]

Why aren't we moving kids to Sherwood? Using that capacity alleviates changes across the county. Seems irresponsible and it makes the Option 3 arbitrary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be what MCPS is trying to do. They hate that they have "good schools" because that means they have "bad schools."

This effort is about carving out boundaries for new properties (great), alleviating overcrowding (wonderful), but a heaping helping of "let's use this opportunity to change perceptions because we are out of ideas."

Or, let’s change boundaries because now is the opportune time to do so as we haven’t had a massive review and realignment of them in multiple decades and they were gerrymandered then.

It isnt a "massive review" because there are entire schools (Sherwood, Paint Branch, Springbrook) with capacity that are not included in either study. Right off the bat, MCPS is violating policy FAA by not considering all its capacity.

And it is far from an opportune time because of the loss of jobs and contracts by MoCo residents has created a great deal of uncertainty that make it both inopportune and a bad look politically to raise taxes to pay for "massive realignment."

Sure add new boundaries for the new schools but don't waste my tax dollars on a boondoggle because maybe/hopefully/Inshallah it will improve test scores.

That is incorrect. Boundary studies are always scoped to include specific schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The boundaries are changing. Folks just need to accept that and get over it. Property values are not the focus or problem of the school district. Should the district maintain walkers, YES , but because it makes good sense in terms of resource usage (buses, people, finances). Will there be some splits articulations, YES, it’s inevitable given where schools are located and the amount of kids we’re talking about. Should they minimize the split articulations as much as possible(again for resource usage) and spread it around where makes sense, YES.

This whole “W school” thing is old and over emphasized. Frankly it would do the district a world of good to publicly toss it in the graveyard once and for all.

+1 It would be great if MCPS could even out the FARMs rate across all of the schools so we can stop with the "W" school nonsense.

I agree in theory, but how do you do this in a county where the wealth is largely concentrated in the western portion and the poverty is largely concentrated in the eastern portion and these portions are miles and miles and almost an hour apart? This is how they're trying to do their best at doing that. The only improvement I can see that would help is to create MORE high-achieving magnets in the poorer parts of the county, but when you already have strong schools in the western part, people opt out because too far is too far. I mean, just look at Churchill's Beyond the Bulldog 2025 Instagram: these kids don't need magnets to get into good colleges or to have a strong HS experience, and yes I realize a lot are full pay and don't have to do the donut-hole dance so that is also part of the reason why the colleges are so impressive (they can simply afford them).

yes, as a PP stated, having more poors in your school is not going to change your kid's outcome. But, it will help the lower income kid to have access to more resources, like more challenging courses. If you look at the lower performing schools, they don't have as many AP classes as higher performing schools do.

Better solution is to give us "poors" (and not all the families in these schools are "poor" but if you want to think that go ahead), more AP's, clubs, sports to make it equal. Our numbers look bad as our kids aren't encouraged to take classes like Calc BC, and there are no classes after Calc BC, nor any science AP's. We have very little CS and engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be what MCPS is trying to do. They hate that they have "good schools" because that means they have "bad schools."

This effort is about carving out boundaries for new properties (great), alleviating overcrowding (wonderful), but a heaping helping of "let's use this opportunity to change perceptions because we are out of ideas."

Or, let’s change boundaries because now is the opportune time to do so as we haven’t had a massive review and realignment of them in multiple decades and they were gerrymandered then.

It isnt a "massive review" because there are entire schools (Sherwood, Paint Branch, Springbrook) with capacity that are not included in either study. Right off the bat, MCPS is violating policy FAA by not considering all its capacity.

And it is far from an opportune time because of the loss of jobs and contracts by MoCo residents has created a great deal of uncertainty that make it both inopportune and a bad look politically to raise taxes to pay for "massive realignment."

Sure add new boundaries for the new schools but don't waste my tax dollars on a boondoggle because maybe/hopefully/Inshallah it will improve test scores.

It's not a boondoggle when we have hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in building these two new schools and they need to be filled. When you take the kids from the closest schools, then they need to get more kids into those schools and it impacts the next group of schools and so on. The wootton parents crying about their boundaries are stupid - some of them are CLOSER to Crown than Wootton, Crown has been programmed for year- the land decision was made well over 10 years ago so any current school parent should have known this was going to happen at some point.

Spare me the tears and fears and stop with the BS that we need to leave them be because it's a hard time with federal government cuts. You know who is ACTUALLY having a hard time? The kids at Wheaton and Kennedy whose parents are being deported from their immigration check-in appointments. Your kid who has tutors and travel sports and Kumon will be fine whether they're at Churchill, Wootton, or Crown.

Stop whining.

Moving kids from Wootton to Crown will not help those kids who go to Wheaton and Kennedy, or their parents. These are two irrelevant things.

[Anonymous]

Can someone explain why activities or sports might be affected due to school change? I have been the one picking up and dropping off my kid at school and sports/activities because kid is at ES. Do kids at MS or HS go to activities/sports by themselves with biking/walking/taking bus? I am expecting that they still need parents to drive them around until they have their own transportation.

[Anonymous]

Crown HS is all new and unknown. Is it really that bad if kids are zoned to there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Crown HS is all new and unknown. Is it really that bad if kids are zoned to there?

No, it isn't bad. It will be a brand new building, with cream of the crop staff attracted to work there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The boundaries are changing. Folks just need to accept that and get over it. Property values are not the focus or problem of the school district. Should the district maintain walkers, YES , but because it makes good sense in terms of resource usage (buses, people, finances). Will there be some splits articulations, YES, it’s inevitable given where schools are located and the amount of kids we’re talking about. Should they minimize the split articulations as much as possible(again for resource usage) and spread it around where makes sense, YES.

This whole “W school” thing is old and over emphasized. Frankly it would do the district a world of good to publicly toss it in the graveyard once and for all.

+1 It would be great if MCPS could even out the FARMs rate across all of the schools so we can stop with the "W" school nonsense.

I agree in theory, but how do you do this in a county where the wealth is largely concentrated in the western portion and the poverty is largely concentrated in the eastern portion and these portions are miles and miles and almost an hour apart? This is how they're trying to do their best at doing that. The only improvement I can see that would help is to create MORE high-achieving magnets in the poorer parts of the county, but when you already have strong schools in the western part, people opt out because too far is too far. I mean, just look at Churchill's Beyond the Bulldog 2025 Instagram: these kids don't need magnets to get into good colleges or to have a strong HS experience, and yes I realize a lot are full pay and don't have to do the donut-hole dance so that is also part of the reason why the colleges are so impressive (they can simply afford them).

yes, as a PP stated, having more poors in your school is not going to change your kid's outcome. But, it will help the lower income kid to have access to more resources, like more challenging courses. If you look at the lower performing schools, they don't have as many AP classes as higher performing schools do.

Better solution is to give us "poors" (and not all the families in these schools are "poor" but if you want to think that go ahead), more AP's, clubs, sports to make it equal. Our numbers look bad as our kids aren't encouraged to take classes like Calc BC, and there are no classes after Calc BC, nor any science AP's. We have very little CS and engineering.

The reason why those schools don't get those additional classes is due to economies of scale. Not enough kids take those advanced classes to justify the increased costs associated with those additional classes.

Some of the higher performing schools have so many kids interested in certain advanced classes that they have to create additional periods for it.