Reply to Do the recommendations re: BCC boundary study come out today?

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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]As a Chevy Chase parent I would want my children to attend the less crowded school WITH the Silver Spring kids they have been paired with since Kindergarten.   I would also like them to be with the NCC kids they attended K-2 and are currently on sports teams right now, but would give that up for a less crowded school.

I currently have a child at Westland and the overcrowding is ridiculous.  Really no child can express their voice or learn much in a class with 35 other kids, especially with this dumbed down curriculum.

Middle school is not like elementary school, there is much less parental involvement in the school.  The distance is not that big of a deal, it's a pain on school event nights during rush hour but that is just a handful of times a year.

If I was a Rock Creek Forest parent, I would want to continue to go to Westland.  I wouldn't want my kids crammed into a new middle school just because it was closer.

We are talking about maybe a 10-20 minute difference in bus rides.  The morning bus picks up so early it misses rush hour, and the afternoon just catches a piece of the beginning of high traffic time.

What is unfair is to bus the CCES and NCC kids back and forth in the BCC cluster and then continue to place them in overcrowded schools when the opportunity exists to split the populations in a fair socio-economic manner. [/quote]

This is astonishing!  The sole reason that RCF supported #6 is for the FARMS populations overwhelming support of it.  They would be most impacted and they view things differently i.e. I would rather have a crowded school than to not ever be able to visit the school.  So you are addressing the wrong people in this forum and are disconnected to the population who is advocating for this.[/quote]

Hello? It's not all about RCF. There are other schools involved here, too. They're concerns should just get flushed because RCF doesn't agree with them.[/quote]

Exactly, other schools concerns should be considered!

* The Triad didn't want to get split up - Check
* The Triad wanted to go to the closest school - Check
*The Triad thought it fine to have demographic difference similar to option #1 which option #7 fulfills - Check
* The Triad wants the school to less crowed - Sorry Triad you can't have it all![/quote]

Uh, hold the phone.

The eastern triad &quot;thought it fine to have demographic difference similar to option #1 which option #7 fulfills&quot; UNCHECK that one, pal.  Option 7 is no way similar to Option 1, and we don't have to debate what you consider &quot;similar&quot; to mean.  To quote a PP from several pages ago, &quot;Option 7 still maxes out the capacity of the new school while creating a more affluent, less diverse school with excess capacity. That inequity would be bad enough, but it exacerbates the inequitable educational facilities that we start with. The new school is built on hilly land that is less than half the size of Westland. The new school has less physical plant (in all fairness, not a catastrophe), and less outside facilities, than Westland. Never mind the lack of fairness, how is this new school supposed to accommodate any future growth? Under the worst case scenario, Westland can build on its site.&quot;

That PP asked, &quot;why is it that the new, less equitable school goes to the community with more diversity and three times the FARMS rate of the larger, more affluent school?&quot;  If that question doesn't concern you, fine.  You can't escape the reality that, according to the Superintendent's recommendation, Option 7 condems the new school to over-crowding while Westland will operate at 82-83% of capacity.

Finally, is this a discussion about form, or is it a discussion about substance?  Are you saying that because the eastern triad recieved three decisions you consider wins, we should do something stupid to avoid giving the eastern triad a fourth win? What if the fourth issue were human sacrifice; would you say that we have to start killing people because the eastern triad already had three wins?
[/quote]

Look similar to me....  As for your form or substance comment, I wasn't the one who stated that the whole process is derailed because of one school RCF who only got a half of a concession they advocated for when the Triad wants it all.  Thank you Jack Smith!

Bethesda-Chevy Chase MS #2 Westland MS
	MS#2	Westland
	                    Option 1	Option 7	Option 1	Option 7
African-American	16.7	             17.5	  10.4	   8
Asian                       	&lt;5	             &lt;5	     7	            7.7
Hispanic	               14.9	             17.5	  15.2	   12.2
White	               58.6             	55.4	   63.1	67.7
Two or More Races	6.5	                 6	      &lt;5	&lt;5
 	 	 	 	 
FARMS	               9.7	                15.4	    11.3	 5.1
ESOL	                        &lt;5	                  5.5	    6.5	5.3
	[/quote]

You really are amazing.  You keep bringing the discussion back to demographics so we get mired in a debate over which numbers are significant.  Yet, you avoid the other chart, Utilization, which actually is the focus of the concerns raised by PPs.

Within five years of opening, under option 1, the new school (with a capacity of 935 students) will be at 83% of capacity, and Westland (with a capacity of 1,079 students) will be at 96% of capacity.  Under option 7, the new school will be at 99% of capacity, and Westland will be at 82% of capacity.  The Lyttonsville and Chevy Chase Lake Sector Plans anticipate growth in enrollment at the new school, and the Downtown Bethesda Plan (if it happens) anticipates growth in enrollment at Westland.

Notwithstanding the enrollment numbers at Westland, Option 1 allows for growth at both schools, and option 7 does not.  Westland’s land footprint is twice the size of the new school’s.  So, even though, under option 1, it starts with an enrollment at 96% of capacity, Westland has enough flat space to accommodate new students with additional facilities and still have a larger set of fields and other outside facilities than the new school.  The new school is being built into the slopes of the old park in order to preserve the little remaining flat space for fields and parking, which is significantly less than Westland’s.  Under option 7, at 99% of capacity, where will addition facilities be built at the new school to accommodate the influx of students, on the trackbaseballsoccer-overlay field?  On the space between the retaining walls?  It’s nice that Westland will be at 82% of capacity under option 7, but how will that solve the new school’s capacity issue?

Although PPs have pointed out that, under option 7, the new school will have three times the FARMS rate as Westland, and that Westland will have significantly lower minority population and a significantly higher white population than the new school, that has not been the core of the opposition discussion.  From a facility/capacity standpoint, the Superintendent’s recommendation for option 7 just makes no sense. 
[/quote]

See you are getting all bent out of shape because of your pet issue here, utilization and RCF is spazzing out over their issue which is proximity/transportation.  I dont' think the capacity is trivial, yes ma'am its a concern and so is the transportation issue.  Unfortunately, hard decisions were made and your issue didn't make the cut.  I understand your frustration but part of growing up is that you don't get everything you want.  No one would be 100% happy here on the eastern part of the cluster where we have to face most of the burden.  So based on everything laid out in front of the superintendent he made a compromise.  I personally have to get ready for the long commute to Westland but I'm very happy that RCF neighborhood parents will not face the same hardship.

See how that works?[/quote]

So enlightened.  I wish I had your broad view of things.

This is not about growing up or getting everything you want, and while this kind of disrespectful riposte has crept into our current social exchanges, it really is just a facade covering up the fact that there’s a real issue you don’t want to address.  Under your analysis, you view the elements of the mix as interchangeable, but there are some issues that have a greater impact than others.

The capacity issue, affecting several communities, has been laid out.  [b]The desire to reduce transportation for one community [/b]also has been laid out.  If you don’t see the difference, our back-and-forth is not going to change things.  Hopefully, there will be others in the decision-making process that are will to engage in a thoughtful exchange.  That doesn’t mean my view will prevail, but at least we will take comfort in the fact that both sides tried to understand the substance of this matter.

[/quote]

I'm confused - aren't the other neighborhoods zoned for the new middle school also getting the benefit of reduced transportation in addition to RCF?  Yes, I understand these schools are bussed in the primary years, but don't act like RCF is the only school that benefits from a decision based on proximity.  [/quote]

Exactly!  Every single school in the cluster is benefitting from reduced transportation.  All of them.  There was an option to have Somerset bussed as well as Bethesda.   So it's not a one school issue it impacts every school.[/quote]

No, but the impact on one school is being elevated over the impacts on other schools. I would gladly trade going to school close to home for a school that's not over-crowded from day one.  If RCF wants to stay local, then let those of us in NCC go to Westland.  If you want to bring Somerset up to the new school for balance or to round out the numbers, that's fine with me.[/quote]

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