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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Don't be fooled - these regional programs are just MCPS/BOE way of decreasing the furor around the boundary studies. When Blake opened, MCPS created the NEC so that they wouldn't have to make hard boundary lines. Same with the reopening of Northwood, which created the DCC. Instead of making tough boundary decisions that no one every likes, it was easier to just create the consortia - parents feel they have a choice and much of the heat is taken off MCPS/BOE.

Skip ahead to 2025. There are two new high schools opening (Crown and Woodward). Boundary studies are done and people are up in arms about the proposals. MCPS is going back to the old playbook and making countywide regions (essentially consortia) so the boundary lines are soft and not hard - thereby lessening the complaints about the boundaries.

News flash though - the consortia overall have been failures. While many parents and students have been happy about being given some choice, the consortia have destroyed the community feel of the high schools. Transportation costs have skyrocketed. Many of the signature programs are not that special - maybe a few extra sections or courses offered due to increased interest from students with similar interests consolidating at a school.

Maybe the new regional model will be more successful, but more than likely it will only result in increased transportation costs, less community feel of schools, challenges with participation in extracurriculars and lots of issues with implementation. Hopefully I am wrong though.[/quote]

And the magnets and RMIB are collateral damage in all of this.[/quote]

Couldn't care less about this particular change.  They serve a vanishingly small number of [b]students who will already be successful wherever they go and who will inevitably have access to high-level classes ( = instant cohort)[/b] anyway.  And besides, most of these (including the SMCS thst everyone knows is the only thing on the planet that actually matters /s) are going to be carved out and kept in some form. There are a lot of other programs that are instead going to be genuinely jeopardized or dissolved.  Even if they are brought back at some other location, it will take years to make it work.  What I feel for are the huge number of students caught in the middle whose educations will just be a litany of aftereffects and patch jobs.[/quote]

But, actually, the kids at the magnets are at the magnets because they don't have peers at the home school. Or if they do have peers, it is a very small number and not enough to offer the kind of high level teaching that occurs in the magnet.  Yes, in high school they may have access to some AP and/or IB, but for the kids who would have gone to the magnet, it's really not enough.  Maybe those kids will have to dual enroll instead, and if that is the case then those kids won't end up back at the homeschool.

If you really believe that the peer pool exists for a county-wide magnet at each school, a better plan would have been to start one in each region and see how many kids opted into the curriculum regionally if they weren't accepted at the central magnet.  Then over time you would build the confidence in the regional magnets and you could phase out the central magnet.  The problem is that the Poolesville experience illustrates that there are other problems besides the number of peers. As I understand it, that program has had trouble finding qualified teachers. [/quote]

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