B-CC/WJ capacity cluster meeting

[Anonymous]

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PP here, and absolutely. But isn't Whitman similarly full to the brim? Perhaps make room at BCC by shifting kids to WJ?

Not sure what can be done here, but it illustrates that the planning can't just address the issues now, but needs to deal with things that are coming 5, 10, and 15 years down the road.

Walter Johnson is so over capacity that MCPS decided to reopen Woodward as a high school.

Seriously. PP above, have you been following along at all?

Sorry, I meant Woodward, not Walter Johnson.

It's been very clear in the CIP that Woodward is for Walter Johnson and the Downcounty Consortium. So no, that's not how you'd make room at BCC.

It could be. That’s the whole point of doing a study and asking the community for feedback.

Which study are you referring to?

[Anonymous]

They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

I suggest you look at a map before proposing your solution. Have you any idea where Northwood is in relation to the RHPS area? Or where Kensington is in relation to Einstein? You are proposing very long bus rides for a lot of kids. But I guess that's okay since it isn't your kid, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

I suggest you look at a map before proposing your solution. Have you any idea where Northwood is in relation to the RHPS area? Or where Kensington is in relation to Einstein? You are proposing very long bus rides for a lot of kids. But I guess that's okay since it isn't your kid, right?

No kid in Kensington would have that long of a bus ride to Einstein. And Northwood isn’t impossible either for RHES. Someone will have to sacrifice for the greater good, this options fixes BCC, WJ and helps two struggling schools who need more BCC type students. Win win win win.

They are talking about busing some students to lower schools and this goes a long way towards that while undoing some very old gerrymandering. Sounds pretty good to these ears

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

I suggest you look at a map before proposing your solution. Have you any idea where Northwood is in relation to the RHPS area? Or where Kensington is in relation to Einstein? You are proposing very long bus rides for a lot of kids. But I guess that's okay since it isn't your kid, right?

No kid in Kensington would have that long of a bus ride to Einstein. And Northwood isn’t impossible either for RHES. Someone will have to sacrifice for the greater good, this options fixes BCC, WJ and helps two struggling schools who need more BCC type students. Win win win win.

They are talking about busing some students to lower schools and this goes a long way towards that while undoing some very old gerrymandering. Sounds pretty good to these ears

...and I think it should be YOU, not ME!

[Anonymous]

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Personally, my biggest concern is overcrowding. I have been a high school teacher at a very diverse school with many challenges. All of these challenges are made more difficult by overcrowding and the accompanying class sizes. Returning the Silver Lake elementary schools to neighborhood schools has the dual outcome of giving those neighborhoods local community schools and allowing at least one of them to be moved into the new Woodward district to reduce the size of BCC.

What is Silver Lake?

Sorry- Silver Creek. Silver Lake is a place near my hometown and I always revert to that in my head.

But BCC just got an addition and it's not in urgent need of downsizing. And no one is going to impose a split articulation on Silver Creek - the boundary study was heavily contested and bumping one of the elementaries out of BCC would create a new furor without solving any real problem.

Look, I've had kids at Rosemary Hills and while I liked the school, I'd prefer a single K-5 pattern for simplicity's sake. And I'm not totally sold that the desegregation purpose of Rosemary Hills exists in quite the same way that it did in the 1970s when this arrangement was established. But MCPS has huge capacity & equity issues to address and for the most part the BCC zone is in pretty good shape on both counts. The study of BCC/WJ elementaries actually reinforces the issues raised in the Woodward planning process, which is that WJ and its feeder elementaries are wildly overcrowded. MCPS needs to focus on solving those problems, rather than satisfying some Chevy Chase moms who resent that their kiddos have to go to kindergarten near brown people in Silver Spring.

I don’t disagree with you that WJ is in worse shape than BCC in terms of overcrowding. That’s why most of the new feeder pattern for it will come from WJ and the DCC. All the clusters in lower MoCo are overcrowded. However, you have significant new development in downtown Bethesda and Westbard that is going to impact both BCC and Whitman in the next decade. Since there is no plan to build West of Wisconsin Ave, the logical solution is to shift each district West and create more space in a new (or probably two new) high schools in the East in the next decade. Woodward is just the first one.

You also undermine your own rebuttal by returning to the jab “satisfying some Chevy Chase moms who resent that their kiddos have to go to Kindergarten near brown people in Silver Spring.” The whole point was to show you that there are reasonable arguments on the side of decoupling that have nothing to do with segregation. There really isn’t that much segregation going on at this point and there are very valid reasons to make a change. You can disagree with how to weight the balance of those reasons, but don’t continue to argue as if the only reason anyone disagrees with you is that they are a raging racist hell-bent on segregation.

Yes, this. Hopefully, the board is looking to the future, not just taking a reactive approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

I suggest you look at a map before proposing your solution. Have you any idea where Northwood is in relation to the RHPS area? Or where Kensington is in relation to Einstein? You are proposing very long bus rides for a lot of kids. But I guess that's okay since it isn't your kid, right?

No kid in Kensington would have that long of a bus ride to Einstein. And Northwood isn’t impossible either for RHES. Someone will have to sacrifice for the greater good, this options fixes BCC, WJ and helps two struggling schools who need more BCC type students. Win win win win.

They are talking about busing some students to lower schools and this goes a long way towards that while undoing some very old gerrymandering. Sounds pretty good to these ears

...and I think it should be YOU, not ME!

Absolutely, and I am a campaign donor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

This is what they should do but I don’t think silver spring would react well to see the few areas not in Bethesda or Chevy Chase get pushed out of the BCC cluster. Last time they actually were going to close RHES in the early 80s the federal Gov stepped in and threatened to withhold school funding. There are bigger things at play here.

[Anonymous]

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Personally, my biggest concern is overcrowding. I have been a high school teacher at a very diverse school with many challenges. All of these challenges are made more difficult by overcrowding and the accompanying class sizes. Returning the Silver Lake elementary schools to neighborhood schools has the dual outcome of giving those neighborhoods local community schools and allowing at least one of them to be moved into the new Woodward district to reduce the size of BCC.

What is Silver Lake?

Sorry- Silver Creek. Silver Lake is a place near my hometown and I always revert to that in my head.

But BCC just got an addition and it's not in urgent need of downsizing. And no one is going to impose a split articulation on Silver Creek - the boundary study was heavily contested and bumping one of the elementaries out of BCC would create a new furor without solving any real problem.

Look, I've had kids at Rosemary Hills and while I liked the school, I'd prefer a single K-5 pattern for simplicity's sake. And I'm not totally sold that the desegregation purpose of Rosemary Hills exists in quite the same way that it did in the 1970s when this arrangement was established. But MCPS has huge capacity & equity issues to address and for the most part the BCC zone is in pretty good shape on both counts. The study of BCC/WJ elementaries actually reinforces the issues raised in the Woodward planning process, which is that WJ and its feeder elementaries are wildly overcrowded. MCPS needs to focus on solving those problems, rather than satisfying some Chevy Chase moms who resent that their kiddos have to go to kindergarten near brown people in Silver Spring.

I don’t disagree with you that WJ is in worse shape than BCC in terms of overcrowding. That’s why most of the new feeder pattern for it will come from WJ and the DCC. All the clusters in lower MoCo are overcrowded. However, you have significant new development in downtown Bethesda and Westbard that is going to impact both BCC and Whitman in the next decade. Since there is no plan to build West of Wisconsin Ave, the logical solution is to shift each district West and create more space in a new (or probably two new) high schools in the East in the next decade. Woodward is just the first one.

You also undermine your own rebuttal by returning to the jab “satisfying some Chevy Chase moms who resent that their kiddos have to go to Kindergarten near brown people in Silver Spring.” The whole point was to show you that there are reasonable arguments on the side of decoupling that have nothing to do with segregation. There really isn’t that much segregation going on at this point and there are very valid reasons to make a change. You can disagree with how to weight the balance of those reasons, but don’t continue to argue as if the only reason anyone disagrees with you is that they are a raging racist hell-bent on segregation.

Yes, this. Hopefully, the board is looking to the future, not just taking a reactive approach.

They are looking to the future. All these studies project enrollment out to 2024 or beyond. There's an argument about whether the anticipated increases are realistic estimates or not; I don't know. But you seem to be overlooking that they are trying to solve real-time problems first and foremost, especially overcrowding in WJ, its feeders, as well as other HS (see the Woodward study).

And fwiw as I said I don't have anything against proposals to decouple NCC & CCES from RHES. My point is that it doesn't actually solve anything other than to take a few buses off the road. Maybe that's worth it. But you have to also recognize that it doesn't help, and almost surely has a negative impact on, overall equity among SES/race/ethnicity within BCC to do that. You'd wind up with 2 less well-off, much more ethnically diverse elementaries feeding into BCC (RHES & RCF) and all the rest would be overwhelming wealthy and white. That, plus the fact that you were already suggesting to bump one of the Silver Creek feeders out of BCC, isn't a net positive from the perspective of MCPS (or for that matter, most of us who live here.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

Um. Einstein is already very overcrowded. They cannot add more neighborhoods *to* Einstein, they need to move neighborhoods *from* Einstein.

Northwood's addition is being built to relieve the serious overcrowding within the DCC, namely at Northwood itself and Blair, which is 10 blocks down the street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They should send all of Kensington to Einstein. And all of Rosemary hills to Northwood.

That would help BCC crowding, WJ crowding and add middle class families to those two lower performing clusters

and make BCC and WJ even less diverse.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t know much about the new plans for Woodward, but it seems like you could easily fill up a new cluster by siphoning off the excess from the already overcrowded Whitman, BCC, WJ, and possibly Einstein and Richard Montgomery clusters. If you shifted one ES east in each cluster, you could then redistribute the other ES boundaries. It doesn’t seem practical to keep stuffing more kids into the existing elementary schools just to overcrowd the MS and HS.

What a good thing that MCPS is doing a boundary analysis to assess the feasibility of ideas just like this one!

But, it seems like they aren’t really doing this. If you keep looking at adding additions to existing ES buildings and also won’t consider returning the BCC elementary schools to neighborhood K-5 buildings, you are not really focusing on getting each kid into a right-sized, non-overcrowded school with a reasonable commute all the way through HS.

Decoupling BCC elementaries does not address capacity at all - you are merely moving kids around. It’s like re-areanging deck chairs on the Titanic. The longest commutes are between Chevy Chase East of wisc and RHPS. Also kids from RHPS get home late because the school starts later - around 9:30. Some buses have a 20 minute commute time from first pick up to school door. Others are as long as 40 minutes, but these are the buses which have many stops. Lobby to change that rather than use it as your Trojan Horse to re-segregate. Your family can’t spend 20 minutes in the service of integration? Mine was happy to. I was happy as a child when the cluster desegregated. I had many friends of all backgrounds and that experience served me well in college and career.

It helps because each school could reach its capacity. You’d have to shift boundaries to add more kid inbounds for each school. Right now half the RHPS kids go to NCC and half to CCES; both are under enrolled. You could have all 3 schools at full enrollment (and shift boundaries to add more kids inbounds for each school).

[Anonymous]

I don't see why they're even talking about since both BCC and WJ will off-load significant numbers to Woodward in just a few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see why they're even talking about since both BCC and WJ will off-load significant numbers to Woodward in just a few years.

No, not BCC...DCC and WJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see why they're even talking about since both BCC and WJ will off-load significant numbers to Woodward in just a few years.

No, not BCC...DCC and WJ.

There seem to be some people on DCUM who believe that if they just say often enough that Woodward is for BCC and WJ, that will make it true.