Reply to Taylor's Feb Rec for Crown Boundary Study

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That testimony makes a great point. Why rush to close Wootton and move its kids to Crown?  Is it to avoid the embarrassment of using it as a holding school for Magritte kids?  Don’t want those kids using the shiny new building?  Seems like the Magruder families want Crown and the Wootton families don’t. If it’s a question of money, wouldn’t it make sense to do this - unless MCPS has no intention of renovating Magruder in the next 5-10 years. And if it does, then there is money to remediate Wootton where it is AND move Magruder kids to Crown for a few years. Everybody wins. [/quote]

No, everyone does not win.

If you are from the Magruder community, I empathize with your frustration, and I am fine with you advocating for your own community and fighting to get what you want.  But please, for the love of G-d, let's have these Rockville folks (the city council, Wootton et. al) STOP acting like they are being gracious by saying that, "In addition to Wootton and Magruder students being held at Crown, we'll allow local kids (FRES and Rosemont Island 8) to attend the holding school too XD XD XD".  I hope you all realize how ridiculous that statement is.  So my children from the Fields Road cluster should start off for two years as a teeny tiny minority at "Magruder @ Crown", then two years later as the same teeny tiny minority at "Wootton @ Crown" and have no home school of their own?  It's a completely ridiculous suggestion.  You need to level and accept that when you fly signs stating "CROWN = HOLDING SCHOOL" you are NOT being equitable; you are advoacting AGAINST the interests of the local population for whom Crown was designed and by whom impact taxes were paid.  Again, if that is what you want to do for your community.  By all means, go ahead.  But don't act as though this does not affect others. I believe most of us from FRES and Crown would prefer to stay at QO and/or GHS than to become a tiny minority for years on end in an indefinite holding school.

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Magruder PP and I’m going to be completely candid with you.

You are right. I understand that if Magruder is at Crown, the immediate families around Crown will not get their permanent school that they so desire.

However, no plan is perfect. And truthfully, in any type of plan, someone will feel like they “lost.” So if we must have a loser and a “winner,” I think we need to prioritize existing communities. There is no Crown community or school yet. No one is taking away your school because it doesn’t exist yet. Magruder exists, though people seem to forget that. Prioritize communities that have been waiting before Crown broke ground. Prioritize schools like Magruder that have high FARM rates.

In the end, your community may very well get your permanent school with Wootton. It may still be option H in the long run.

Remove all personal stakes. Pretend you don’t have kids in the system at all and you are some random person from another state, what is most fair? Can any objective person say prioritizing Magruder is not the most objectively fair option?

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Thanks for taking the time to try to think this through, but your argument is flawed because these ARE existing communities - not simply a new one built exclusively from new construction.

We have existing communities to which we pertain.  Fields Road and Diamond Island #2 have been at QO for many, many years. Downtown Crown and the area around Belward Farm have also been at Gaithersburg High School for many years.  For these areas, Option G gives them NO opportunity to remain with their current school community, nor to join a new one (which Modified Option H does).  They are simply forced to be a pariah at another school, or to join a new school community as an island (Options E and F), which is in clear violation of FAA.

To go back to your thought experiment of what someone from an entirely different state would say, I think the real answer would be that there should be no place in the county where existing communities are forced to be in a high school to which they are only visitors and hence have no home community of their own.  It's simply unacceptable and unparalleled across the entire county.

To that effect, if you are serious that you only want this school for YOU and not Wootton, I would suggest you reach across the aisle and try to make alliances beyond the Wootton cluster.  If Crown needs to be used for two years to get a specific school through, that is one thing - if and only if my kids can stay in a REAL community and not as pariahs at a holding school.  This is what happened with Northwood @ Woodword, and Woodward was okay with this because there was an end date in sight and because its would-be students could continue to be part of their current communities until then (WJ and Wheaton primarily).  What you are asking of Fields Road, Diamond Island #2 and, Rosemont Island #8 is simply unacceptable: no child should have no school community of their own to which to pertain for 4 years. [/quote]

Not PP but Wootton cluster is the only reason why Magruder is getting any attention to begin with. [/quote]

And yet, paradoxically, it's also the reason why others in the county take them less seriously.[/quote]

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