Reply to MCPS Boundary Reassessment

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nothing in this County can be done that quickly.  This SMOB will be gone by the time any report would actually be produced.  But there is growing support in the County for a “County-side boundary study.”  How that would actually logistically be accomplished is anyone’s guess.  I find it really hard to believe any elected official wants to see such a thing go down, but the County Councilmembers seem to think the madness that would ensue would only fall on the BOE and not on themselves...[/quote]

It makes sense to better utilize the resources that exist presently and even reduce transportation costs in some cases all the while improving diversity when possible.[/quote]

[b]There are very few under-enrolled schools.[/b]  Some of the people advocating this are looking at 20-50 seats in elementary schools and saying boundaries should be changed to "use" those seats.  There is a reason that MCPS considers 80-100% utilization to be ideal.  It's very hard to do a boundary change that would add only 20-50 students.  Then you get the question of how stable are these numbers and how often are you going to be doing the boundary changes?  The more frequently you do boundary changes, the more problems you have with siblings being assigned to different schools.

There are a few boundary changes that would make sense to do - Westbrook/Somerset is one.  I don't know enough about further upcounty but maybe there are a few up in the Wootton area that make sense too.  But the idea that we can get to 100% utilization in every school with boundary changes is not reasonable or feasible.  Also, the last time the Board proposed re-drawing boundaries between Gaithersburg Elementary and under-enrolled Wootton elementary schools the Gaithersburg parents were very opposed and came to the BOE and County Council meetings in a chartered bus to say so.  [/quote]

There are more under-enrolled schools than you might think. If you look at the School Utilization Analysis chart from the Nov. 15th BOE meeting, there are 34 schools which are projected to have over 100 available seats each by 2024-25. See pp. 16-24:
[url]https://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B6NK2S4FB611/$file/181108%20Boundaries%20Facilities%20Hearing%20Follow-up%20Qs.pdf[/url][/quote]

And I'll highlight this exchange from earlier in the same document:

Question 18
Ms. Dixon and Ms. Ortman-Fouse requested a report regarding the schools that are under-enrolled and are situated close to over-enrolled schools, to see what can be done to assist with reducing the numbers at schools that are over capacity (particularly Olney, Cold Spring, and Rachel Carson elementary schools).

Response
Attachment C provides a list of schools by cluster that indicates the space deficit/availability for the current 2018–2019 school year and the 2024–2025 school year, the last year of the planning period. As noted in the Superintendent’s Recommended FY 2020 Capital Budget and Amendments to the FY 2019–2024 Capital Improvements Program, a new enrollment forecast methodology was implemented this year and for some schools, the enrollment forecasts differ from previous years. Given that a new methodology has been implemented, it is recommended to monitor the enrollment throughout the County for at least another year or two to study the enrollment trends before recommending any new boundary studies.
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