Reply to Taylor Meeting at Wootton

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh good, the "it's only 12 minutes" people are here. Love it. Please, tell me more about the school bus system you have apparently never ridden. Your kid is not getting picked up last and dropped off at Crown. They are stop four of thirty-seven at 6:45am. But sure. Twelve minutes. Totally.

Now that we've handled that, let's talk about what's actually happening here because some of you are out here defending a process that wouldn't pass a middle school civics test.

MCPS added 16,000 housing units between 2019 and 2024. Enrollment dropped by 6,000 students. That is their own data. They are using declining enrollment to justify moving Wootton. By that exact same logic, Crown doesn't need Wootton's students either. The district built a school for a growth wave that never came, and now Wootton's community gets to pay for that miscalculation with their kids' commutes. Cool system.

And my personal favorite: the Wootton building is apparently SO dangerous, SO deteriorated, SO uninhabitable that students must be relocated immediately to a brand new facility. Great. Totally logical. So why is the very next sentence of the plan "and then we'll put other people's children in that same building as a holding school"? WHICH IS IT? Is it a condemned hazard or a perfectly serviceable facility? Because it cannot be both, and nobody in the pro-move crowd has ever once attempted to explain this contradiction.

Option H... the actual plan on the table, was introduced in December. The board votes March 26. Ninety days. Permanent decision. Thousands of families. A cluster that is over one-third Asian American with documented inadequate multilingual outreach. The community asked for an independent cost comparison of renovation versus relocation. They still don't have one. The community asked for more time. They were told to be grateful for a new building.

The argument that this is just entitled homeowners protecting property values might land better if the district had done a single thing transparently. They didn't. They rushed a process, buried a conflict of interest between needing a holding school and needing to justify Crown, and then acted surprised when thousands of people showed up furious.

You don't have to oppose the move to recognize this process was a dumpster fire. But apparently nuance is also on the renovation delay list.[/quote]

For the next time or iteration you post this, it might "land better" without the "sure", "cool", "totally" etc additions that weaken the whole tone of this and probably matches how you talk. Also, be aware that Wootton is certainly moving to Crown so all of this is sour grapes. But you knew that (another favorite line of people who talk like you). Wonder how long this revolving door of complaints will last. My guess is until it posts its first GPA or AP score list and everyone realizes everything is ok. Like totally.[/quote]

Appreciate the writing workshop from someone whose entire counter-argument was "it's happening, get over it." Bold contribution to the discourse.

And you're right, the casual language was imprecise. You know what else is imprecise? Calling a March 26 board vote a foregone conclusion the same week the state board of education received a formal complaint, the IG was asked to investigate, and multiple elected officials publicly called for a pause. But sure, totally settled. Nothing left to litigate here. Move along.

"Sour grapes" is a cute framing if you'd like to keep ignoring what was actually argued. The argument was never "Wootton deserves to stay in a crumbling building forever." It was that 90 days is an indefensible timeline for a permanent decision affecting thousands of families, that the independent cost analysis was requested and never produced, that multilingual outreach was documented as inadequate for a cluster over one-third Asian American, and that the district's own enrollment data directly contradicts its own justifications. None of that inconvenient reality dissolves because a vote is calendared.

The AP score prediction is genuinely my favorite part though. That's the move you make when you've run out of actual responses and need the conversation to stop. "Everyone will be fine eventually" is not a process defense. It's a concession that the process doesn't matter which, ironically, is the entire problem people are upset about.

But I'm sure you'll explain how I talk next.[/quote]

Was generally trying to help sweetie. You all are deeply wired for conflict. Wonder if the parkway people 55 years ago were thankful or resentful about their new school. Was probably much of the same. You had your distance mongers, your change mongers, your traffic mongers, your life isn't fair mongers. But it all worked out so, so swimmingly. Well, until now it's a complete disaster but you know what I mean - had a great run there.[/quote]

If the plan is strong, it should stand up to tough questions. Dismissing concerns instead of addressing them is usually a sign that something isn’t being fully answered (and you’re afraid the answers will show that the emperor has no clothes)

Go ahead and call the Wootton parents “sweetie” in front of a judge. Your condescending attitude isn’t going to fly at all. [/quote]

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