Reply to Taylor Meeting at Wootton

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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][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]

there you go being reasonable and sensible. DCUM is not the place for reason! teach reasoning to your kids, not adults arguing on an anonymous platform [/quote]

But my property values!  Didn’t MCPS consider the cost of my kitchen renovations and how I have no ROI now.  That lack of consideration much have violated COMAR somehow [/quote]
I am the tiny townhome PP. i thought i was paying for a W but now it will be crown. have some mercy please.[/quote]

Crown will also be a wealthy school and those crown homes are worth far more than yours.  Why overpay for a crummy townhome?  What is small?  4000 square feet?  Just move and you can still have your kids at a W school.  [/quote]

The single family homes in Crown sell for over $1.6million and some of the town houses sell for close to that. Crown is generally an affluent neighborhood.[/quote]

+1.  Crown *will* be a W school (though DCUM will need to come up with a name to replace "W").  It will be current Wootton plus some additional more expensive homes plus some additional less expensive homes.  Yes, the FARMs rate will go up a bit, but not that much.  And that doesn't actually matter for what you're looking for.  Technically, the school's average SAT score may go down (irrelevant), but the whole current Wootton population will be there, so it will have just as many APs, just as many serious students.  The reality of any school is that for most classes (and pretty much all after sophomore year) the strong students are generally separated academically from the weaker students by virtue of class choice.

I feel for current-walkers who will now be bus riders.  But otherwise, this is a really positive outcome for the community as a whole.[/quote]

[b]You fundamentally don't understand what a W school is. It's not a positive outcome for anyone who sought out Wootton for it's culture and academic rigor. That will be gone now. You can't sustain it when the community is not on board. The tests results will reflect that, which you've already acknowledged and dismissed as "irrelevant".

People with means who don't like the result will leave, and now there's a new forcing function for high achievers to leave MCPS. For Taylor and some here, that is a positive outcome for the community as a whole.[/quote][/b]

I can always tell when an Asian parent is posting. Give it a rest. Wootton was actually great even before it rose to 36% Asian. I know that’s so hard for you to believe. 
[/quote]

Glad this has been brought up. I have wondered… the talk of Wootton’s legacy. It was a thriving, academically successful school before it became heavily Asian. So what’s the argument then when it remains successful with less Asians? The Asian Excellence of it all seems like a reach to make a relocation seem like it’s disproportionately affecting a group. And give me a break on the language nonsense. [b]With the plethora of translation tools out there on browsers and such, lack of language access is a lame argument. [/b]

Seems gross to use Asians as pawn to fight the relocation. [/quote]

Plus, with the wechat blowing up like crazy over the past few months, they DEFINITELY understood and need no translation. [/quote]

The law requires translations.  I guess you ignore laws you don’t like.  [/quote]

The surveys and announcements did you out in all of the languages MCPS has deemed common enough to require translation, FWIW. [/quote]

Just to add to this, a lawsuit on the basis of access would need to demonstrate that MCPS did not follow its normal translation procedures. I know the surveys went out in the six or whatever languages because I went back and looked at my inbox the first time this discussion of language access came up. [/quote]

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