Reply to PG is changing start and dismissal times with less than 6 months notice

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Reply to "PG is changing start and dismissal times with less than 6 months notice"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What PGCPS needs to do (and no one wants to talk about) is eliminate the specialty programs at elementary school level.  That eliminates a ton of bussing and the county would have more than enough drivers.  
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As someone who works at one of these specialty programs, I 100% agree. These programs tend to perform higher academically that the regular public schools and its free! The least the parents can do is provide transportation. [/quote]

Correct. Its INSANE to me that kids who attend their boundary school dont get transportation but "specialty program" kids do. It is "in the name of equity" but I would be really interested to see how many FARMS kids actually attend the specialty programs and furthermore, how many kids who are walkers are FARMS.

Removing the waivers means PGCPS would only provide transportation to 50% of the student population and I wonder what percentage of it is specialty program kids and how much impact they have on the routes/times/distance.

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You can compare the FARMS rates on the Great Schools and the MD Report Card.   There is a huge disparity.  
The FARMS rate of elementary schools with no specialty programs is [b]double [/b]the schools that are specialty programs with no comprehensive kids.
FARMS Rate:
PGCPS Elementary as a whole: 63.5%
Specialty Program only schools: 35%
Non-Specialty Program Elementary Schools - 70%
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Wowwww thats some BS. [/quote]

I'm a teacher at a specialty elementary school. If we required parents to transport their kids to school, our already low FARMS rate would plummet.

As it is, low income parents have a tendency to prefer neighborhood schools, just because of the difficulty of picking kids up from aftercare or after school activities, and a distrust of schools that are a further distance away.  I mean, higher income parents also prefer neighborhood schools for the same reasons, but they generally are more willing to tolerate the difficulties of a far away school as a tradeoff for a program they like.

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There are a variety of reasons that lower income families do not participate in specialty programs.  Some of it is a cycle.  Specialty programs do not have a lot of students with non-English speaking parents so they don't direct resources to ESL or spanish speaking liasons.  Because they do not have these supports in place, these families might not feel as supported as they do in the neighborhood schools.  
Also, navigating a lottery system is hard enough for parents whose primary language is English and who might have advanced degrees.
They whole lottery system is an example of economic segregation that no one wants to talk about. [/quote]

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