Reply to The most desirable elementary/ms/hs boundary neighborhoods and schools for motivated kids?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "The most desirable elementary/ms/hs boundary neighborhoods and schools for motivated kids?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]If your children to do not have any learning disabilities or special needs, then just look for a neighborhood you like on the west side. The example you mentioned is perfectly fine. If one of your children does have an LD, then ask around because the quality of accommodations differ from school to school depending on the principal and the special needs team. In that regard, Bethesda Elementary has an excellent reputation.

Elementary schools in MoCo are bursting at the seams due to demographic changes in the population, and thus boundary changes have recently occurred or will certainly occur, so make sure to buy smack in the middle of a school district, not at the boundary, unless the other schools over the boundary line are equally good. 
A lot of elementary schools have students in portables, a lot of schools are scheduled to be renovated (I have heard that students at Wood Acres will have to be moved elsewhere for 18 months while construction is going on). All this should not deter you from choosing these schools since I do not think it will affect the level of teaching, but just be mindful that MoCo is in complete upheaval at the elementary school level! And of course, I expect this upheaval to continue onto MS and HS, as this larger group of students moves up the school chain.

One thing to keep in mind - the reputation of MoCo schools dates from before the explosive population growth. MCPS is struggling to adjust to this, financially and logistically. Not that money is a problem per se, since MoCo and MD are wealthy, but rather that they are playing catch-up with the student population (they have to deal with older elementary school buildings for which no second stories were intended, thus driving up the cost of renovations, they have to buy land from the County for additional ES, etc). I suspect that larger class sizes will have an impact on the standardized test scores and also on the quality of the teaching in the classroom, and that for some years in the future, MoCo will not have that stellar academic reputation.

Just FYI.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics