Reply to Taylor Meeting at Wootton

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Taylor Meeting at Wootton"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Wootten community finds itself defending certain actions and attitudes that to much of the county appear indefensible. Sometimes we are unsure just how to frame our response in terms of reason. We are not arguing against the Gaithersburg community as persons, but for the preservation of the neighborhood school and the geographic integrity of our communities, which are the only sure safeguards of our academic and neighborhood heritage. [/quote]

That last sentence negates your argument. You want a bubble around your community to preserve the heritage. Again displaying the underlying classist attitudes coming from Wootton pkwy.[/quote]

And Silver Spring and Damascus and Olney and go ahead and name all the communities in Montgomery County that are exactly the same.

Public school policy and governance are not based on the feelings of one supreme leader.  They are based on laws, policies and procedures.  If you don't understand that then MCPS really failed you in your education.  [/quote]

The nature of public school means no boundaries are forever and nothing is guaranteed. You want certainties then go private. [/quote]

Duh. That's why there are laws and policies in place for how to make these changes. You want a king? Go live at the White House.  [/quote]

Process has been followed. Sorry you don't like the outcome.[/quote]

Not even close.  Sorry you can’t read.  [/quote]

DP- I've read this whole thread and there are a lot of assertions of improper process and violations of COMAR, etc.  But not one person has identified a single process step that is required that has not been met, or a COMAR language that has been violated.[/quote]

COMAR is probably not the place to find an issue; it defers a lot to the local school board. They'd have to assert that there was a breach in MCPS not following its own policies.

That said, there's two different arguments at play: whether the process followed the legal requirements vs. whether the process was done in a way that felt like a good, transparent process.

Even as a Pro-H person, the process has felt immensely chaotic. We looked over the initial 4 options, which were wildly different, because they were emphasizing different parts of the Policy FAA criteria. After freaking out about some of the options (option 3 was sheer lunacy), options A-D were presented which looked mostly fine in October.

Then the superintendent threw a bomb into the whole process by suggesting Crown as a holding school. Then Option H was included among the other options of Crown being a holding school, making Wootton the holding school and moving Wootton to Crown in December.

So, we started this process in July and the entire premise was upended more than half way through. Never mind that concurrently, they're also pushing through the biggest changes to the criteria programs in generations at the same time and arguing that the regional programs and boundary study are interlinked.

The process has generally been bad at setting expectations and getting community buy-in. We still have a lot of unanswered questions about the criteria program, but the Wootton issue is sucking so much oxygen that it's getting left behind.

For the Wootton move, I don't think a delay would make a huge difference; there's been plenty of vocal feedback and I'm not sure what new information can be surfaced with holding more hearings. The situation is the situation, MCPS has the data that they have, and the decision needs to be made soon so that the school is ready to open on-time.

I think the end result given the situation as it stands makes the most sense. Enrollment is declining, Wootton's current building is in bad shape, Wootton is close to the Crown building and its school boundaries are adjacent to the new building. It sucks that it's come to this point, because they neglected the Wootton building enough that it's in such poor shape and they stuck to poor projections that showed a new high school was needed. It's not great, but MCPS needs to think county and system wide.[/quote]

Personally, it was Dr. Taylor's rationale - that he wanted to fill Crown right away since it's a new building. He could have considered temporary holding school for Magruder, and that would have more community and stakeholder buy-in. But right now, I think only City of Gaithersburg likes the reco. Everyone else is in opposition.

Not a good look for Supt or BOE. Poor governance.[/quote]

It would be much better to reduce transitions.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics