Reply to Taylor's Feb Rec for Crown Boundary Study

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Reply to "Taylor's Feb Rec for Crown Boundary Study"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wootton needs to stop the drama.  Wootton families said the building is unsafe.  MCPS listened and gave them a new building.  Be grateful.[/quote]

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?[/quote]

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown. [/quote]

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.[/quote]

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant.  Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is.  If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no."  MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy.  It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades.  I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.  [/quote]

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.[/quote]

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system. [/quote]

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure[/quote]

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.[/quote]

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there.  Cause - Effect.  Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments.  The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you.  They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.[/quote]

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.[/quote]

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.[/quote]

Yup.

October: Options A-D are released.
Later in October: CIP is released, enrollment drop is released, Taylor floats idea of using Crown as a holding school, given enrollment drop and CIP needs.

(as an aside, this is where I saw a bunch of Wootton people jumping on the idea of Crown as a holding school on Nextdoor, complaining about the condition of the school, because they think this will lead to Wootton getting renovations even though it's not on the CIP.)

November: Board of Education votes to expand the scope of the boundary study to include the option of Crown as a holding school

December: E-H are released. H is a surprise, move of Wootton to Crown.

(People are mad)

February: Superintendent formally recommends H, still lays out option D as an option (Crown / Wootton as high schools) but does not recommend it given the cost.

(People are still mad. We are here.)

Late March: BoE will vote; we generally assume they'll vote for H given the budget and enrollment constraints and lack of an alternative plan.

(Lawsuit? People will still be mad.)

Then we get to do this all again in 2 years when they do elementary and middle school boundary studies and this will involve actual closures.[/quote]

Incorrect. Relocating an existing school to Crown was officially considered by MCPS in November 2024 - a year plus before Option H was released. [/quote]

Coincidentally, Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 and MCPS broke ground for Crown in July 2024.

Things that make you go hmmmm. [/quote]

MCPS commissioned the boundary study to see if transplanting Wootton to Crown was feasible (i.e. justify the decision). This is why companies and governments hire consultants - to justify their decisions to the Board or to the voters.[/quote]

So the consultants who came up with 8 options, none of which moved Wootton, were somehow designed to justify it?

If they knew they wanted to move or even close Wootton, why wouldn’t they just ask the BOE the amend the scope to do that? Moving schools and closing schools are well within MCPS’s power and the process for doing so isn’t drastically different than the one they were using for the boundary study. And sure, closing Wootton would make a bunch of people pretty mad, but notably, people are mad anyway! So what would they get by hiding their goal? [/quote]

Because the political blowback would be epic and far more severe than it is right now.  Waiting until the last minute was intentional. [/quote]

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