Reply to Upcoming in-person boundary study & regional model "engagement session": how to engage?

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Reply to "Upcoming in-person boundary study & regional model "engagement session": how to engage?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Essie McGuire flat-out lied to the room about how the latest boundary maps were drawn. She said MCPS considered facility utilization, schools stability, geography, and demographics. Those are the key factors MCPS is supposed to consider in any boundary adjustment.

What she DIDN'T say is that MCPS instructed the consultants to use the regional dividing lines as the priority. The new maps keep students in the same region from K-12. Doing that meant eliminating some options from the first set of maps, such as sending kids from Kensington Parkwood tio Einstein instead of WJ. Since KP is in Region 3, the students all have to go to a Region 3 high school. They cut off the Northwood footprint just south of Odessa Shannon, so that Odessa Shannon students all stay in Region 3. Truncating the Northwood boundary makes it impossible to adjust the boundary for Blair significantly, so Blair will still be at or above capacity. Kennedy will also be at or above capacity, because they're getting a chunk of students who could otherwise be zoned for Northwood.

[b]Now they want to start an ES boundary study AFTER locking in the regions + the MS and HS changes. Only they've painted themselves into a corner and won't be able to do more than tinker with ES boundaries within the confines of each region.[/b]

Heaven help any region that get a big multi-unit housing development in the future. All the kids in the region will just have to deal with the crowding, since MCPS has decided this regional model is more important than anything else in the universe.

P.S. Tell the Board of Ed what you think of all of it. They say they're not hearing enough from the community.

Julie_Yang@mcpsmd.org
Graciela_Rivera-oven@mcpsmd.org
Karla_Silvestre@mcpsmd.org
Rita_M_Montoya@mcpsmd.org
Brenda_Wolff@mcpsmd.org
Laura_M_Stewart@mcpsmd.org
Natalie_Zimmerman@mcpsmd.org[/quote]
Thanks for your, and everyone's, reporting. Because there is no transparency in this "iterative" process, it's unfortunate that this is one of the ways we can get information about what is going on with the proposal. 
MCPS should have a town hall style format so that community who were unable to attend can get updated on what's going on.

If, for their proposal, regions would come before boundaries, MCPS needs to make sure FARMS is equitably balanced between regions. As it stands--as that parent at last night's session pointed out--[b]the whitest and wealthiest school clusters remain untouched. [/b][/quote]

Not untouched - they will also get hundreds of high performing students from lower income schools traveling to them.[/quote]

This. Plus the resources (limited as they are) in curriculum, materials, teacher PD, extra-curriculars that come with these programs. And a special allocation for in-bound students, on top of no transportation barrier.[/quote]

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