Reply to Considering moving to PG County from LI

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are looking for best public schools, then go for montgomery county. Diversity in schools, as well as in the community, go for montgomery county. I live in PG county and the public schools are fine for my elementary school aged child. He isn't a genius but he isn't below his grade level either, and I'm happy with that. There is zero diversity, being that the school is 93 percent black. We went from montgomery county to pg county and not only was I uncomfortable, but my child was too. We are black by the way. [/quote]

This really depends by school though. There are many schools in MoCo that are not diverse at all, just as there are some in PG that are diverse - my DD's K class at a PG school is almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic. It depends on the neighborhood and that breakdown reflects our street pretty well.

Issues with the PG schools:  
- overcrowding in some of the schools, there are schools that have about as many classes in trailers/portables as in the brick and mortar building
- lack of resources at non-Title 1 schools - DD's kinder class has 30 kids, no aide; the teacher is good, but DD gets very little attention because she is quiet and could already read and do math
- a really competitive lottery system for the desired specialty programs (which do have good reputations) like Montessori, French Immersion, TAG centers; we have lost out on the lottery 6 years running for our eldest so she remains in private, we'll likely move the one in K to private if she gets unlucky in the TAG lottery for 2nd
- poor facilities at some schools; this varies a lot as there are some beautiful new schools, but many of the older schools are in bad shape and are pretty depressing facilities 
- TAG centers based on lottery and entrance standards for lottery are comparatively very low
- drug/gang problems at some of the middle schools and high schools (again, varies a lot by school)
- culture of nepotism within the system administration that has led to some pretty messy incompetence at the HR and admin levels - Maxwell seems to really be trying to fix this though
- a historically dysfunctional and incompetent school board; the student rep on the board called them out in her departing speech and a couple of very young men and women have run for school board due to this, some successfully
- lots of teaching to the test at many schools because the scores have been very poor and that has been prioritized (again, this varies by school)

We know many families in PG schools. Some love their schools, some are unhappy, some are working really hard to make changes in their neighborhood schools and are committed to sticking through the rough spots. I think there is more optimism about the new superintendent/CEO than there has been in the past.

I think much depends on your expectations and which school you are zoned to. If you're moving the lottery is pretty much not an option for you unless your child is not school aged yet, so you'd really want to look at the specific school zoned to your target neighborhood. We've been ok with K for DD. Her school is safe and the building is nice. Her teacher is good. She likes going to school. The lack of communication from the school is frustrating. The report card system with no comments and the P/T conferences that last less than 5 minutes have also been disappointing. As a teacher, I get it, but as a parent, it's not great. But then again, our eldest has been in private throughout and so we have that as our frame of reference. I try to keep that in mind because I don't think we'd feel our neighborhood school was kind of disappointing if it wasn't being compared to a private school. We supplement heavily with hands-on stuff like trips to museum, music, art, and science experiments because those things just aren't happening regularly at our neighborhood school. Again, focus is on reading and math proficiency and specials and field trips are just really infrequent. All that being said, I don't think PG schools are as bad as the non-PG county boards on this site make them sound. And I think things might be improving with Maxwell.

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