Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?
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Anonymous
| The big winner in this situation will be private schools. Parents who are unhappy with the new school boundaries, and are affluent enough to do so, will simply send their kids to private schools. Unfortunately not everyone can afford that. Some families will end up in a less desirable academic situation with no ability to buy their way out. Montgomery county will have one less top rated school. |
Anonymous
It’s so interesting cus they want to destroy it but they also love to publish it as a top rated school. Make it make sense. |
Anonymous
Yawn. |
Anonymous
That’s what the parents want. |
Anonymous
The parents don’t want sports or music? what? |
Anonymous
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Probably a random question, but does anyone know what percentage of Wootton students are in the walk zone (currently)? And how that compares to other schools?
I feel like it has to be pretty high, right? My sample pool is pretty limited, but I think almost all the Wootton families I know are walkers. Which makes sense, I guess - there's nothing around there but houses. I'm worried MCPS will shoot itself in the foot with Option H. The County Council has been beating the "more housing" drum, many schools are overcrowded, and I really question whether closing a school is the best idea in the long term. I also don't really see the actual cost savings amounting to so much that it's worth it -- MOE payments will be unchanged. Wootton isn't even on the CIP right now, so it's no additional money would be freed up. If Wootton is kept as a holding school, we're not going to save money on operations/maintenance. And we'd have to pay to bus all those current walkers to Crown. New buses will need to be purchased, new drivers hired, etc. I guess we'd save some on salaries for staff at Crown, if Wootton teachers are moved there? But really, that seems like a negligible cost in the grand scheme of things. And MCPS apparently has the funds to build a new central office building and campus, so the situation can't be that dire. Oh, and let's not forget the Gaithersburg area kids who would be effed over by losing the new school they've been promised. Overall, I just don't buy that Option H would benefit the County in any real way. I think it's short-sighted. A very cynical part of me wonders if it was put out there to shock the Wootton community into shutting up about rebuilding the school. Seems like the general ask now is if you will please just put some duct tape over the gas leaks and make sure the toilets flush, we will stop bugging you 😂 |
Anonymous
Mcps is going to need way more buses for all the schools. Have you noticed they aren’t being transparent with costs for all this. |
Anonymous
Huh? Anyone at the new school would be included, regardless of their previous school. |
Anonymous
This PP doesn’t care about the loss of a top school because s/he doesn’t live in Wootton. MCPS wants to lift and shift Wootton kids to Crown, then change the name of Crown to Wootton in order to continue to trade on its reputation as a top school. This is what the developers around Crown want too because they can sell their townhomes at top dollar to gullible buyers. Why do you think the land for Crown (prime real estate) was given to MCPS for free? Seems like the seeds for Option H were planted years ago, coupled with removing Wootton from the CIP and building neglect to encourage Wootton families to accept Crown. This would move the “Wootton” boundaries to where MCPS wanted them years ago through boundary studies but which Wootton parents strongly opposed. It would also cover up the risk of under enrollment at Crown and save $100M+ in renovation costs for the current Wootton building (which could be funneled into other pet projects). MCPS doesn’t see Option H as a loss of a top school. It’s a win for them on multiple fronts. |
Anonymous
This is pretty much some of the issues that I and some other families that have issues have. Besides the cynic in me that think it was pretty convenient that they released the news reports of declining enrollment around the same time they released Option H. But so many things about the options don't make sense. Supposedly Wootton is in such a state of disrepair that it's more cost effective to shut down. But then their proposal is to send other students from rundown schools to there while their schools are getting renovated. Then based on a previous thread, Damascus families aren't even clear what's being proposed for them. Will they be building while kids are onsite, get bussed to the Crown location, get bussed to the current Wootton location? If it gets bussed to either location, they'll be joining and contributing to rush hour traffic. Then people saying that Wootton is not in an ideal location, doesn't really understand/realize the infrastructure built around with it. It's basically at the center point of two of it's elementary feeder schools and right down the hill from the middle school. So a lot of the middle school activities are incorpoated with the high school. You have the walking path and bus routes go right by the high school, making it very accessible. If you look at it, Wootton is probably one of the high schools that has the highest density of houses within it's one mile walking radius in a suburban/neighborhood setting. So when people point out how Blair relocated, they don't account for how Blair was and is at a major busy intersection and was always mostly made up of commuters and bus riders. Take a look at page 42 of this document: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/publicinfo/boundary_analysis/interim-report/02d_proximity.pdf It says only 8.1 percent of Blair students are in the walk zone for Blair. If using the 2 mile walkshed it would be 31.22 percent. I don't think Wootton is listed in here but it's location in a neighborhood is similar to Churchill, where it's right in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. And look at Churchill, 34.05 percent of students are in the walkshed. And 45.84 percent are in the two mile walkshed. Magruder is a school that many say should be higher priority than Wootton and maybe it should. But people also criticize Wootton families for complaining more than Magruder families and should be appreciative of the option of the new school. But Magruder's location relative to the area it serves is similar to Blair's. Where it's not easily accessible by walking or public transit for the majority of the area it serves. So people that don't understand why residents near Wootton are resisting the proposed relocation, don't really understand the accessibility and how the high school is part of life and a central hub for the neighborhood. It looks like speakers in today's meeting will bring up good points. Where although there is declining enrollment, which MCPS is basing their current proposals are, there are a lot of developments going on. And you have to be skeptical about some of the forecasting that MCPS puts out. Because wasn't one of the things said, that there won't really be families with kids going to school living in Crown? And not many live in apartments and condos? Where there seems to be some families living in the Crown area complaining how the new high school was promised to them. And some of those other new developments are advertising how they're zoned for Wootton. So there are newer housing with families expecting their kids going to high schools in one of these two locations. |
Anonymous
The bolded is not a bd thing. It is sound fiscal management. |
Anonymous
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^ people missing the point of H.
Wootton would be renovated *eventually* to be a holding school. This school needs serious renovation and repairs. But, Wootton families are asking for immediate urgent fixes all while a brand new school will be open in two years a couple of miles away. Given the budget cuts, H addresses both issues: move the students from a school that is falling a part to a brand new school, giving MCPS the time to renovate Wootton over a several years. |
Anonymous
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"If you look at it, Wootton is probably one of the high schools that has the highest density of houses within it's one mile walking radius in a suburban/neighborhood setting. So when people point out how Blair relocated, they don't account for how Blair was and is at a major busy intersection and was always mostly made up of commuters and bus riders.
Take a look at page 42 of this document: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteasset...rt/02d_proximity.pdf It says only 8.1 percent of Blair students are in the walk zone for Blair. If using the 2 mile walkshed it would be 31.22 percent." Just on this point, I think PP is misinformed. The linked document appears to reference Blair's current location; the school was moved over 20 years ago. It's previous location was near DT Silver Spring and very walkable for many students. |
Anonymous
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The walkshed vs walkzone for Wootton is actually on page 530 of the file here:
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/publicinfo/boundary_analysis/interim-report/mcps_interimreport_full.pdf It shows 27.74 percent of the students are in the two mile walk zone for Wootton. And 25.54 percent are in the walkshed. So it's lower than I expected. But it does show that the majority of homes within it's two mile radius is walkable and accessible. Compared to something like Blair's current location, Damascus, Paint Branch, etc. By moving Wootton to Crown, it makes it walkable to only a subset of one of it's current ES feeders and who are bussed to that ES. |
Anonymous
Not the referenced pp. But when you put it this way, I'm sold! MCPS is completely unfair with some kids getting "top" schools and other kids getting, what, "bottom" schools? Step back and think of this in terms of morality and public policy rather than your own kid. If you were behind a veil of ignorance (you didn't know which school your own kid was in) would you intentionally design a system where there are "top" and "bottom" schools? The bolded bit is the best argument I've seen in favor of Option H! |