Reply to Your experience with a 40% FARMS rate Middle School

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I'm also a HoCo parent, and I live in a neighborhood close to yours, with a high-performing elementary school and a 40% FARMS middle school.  We debated whether to buy a house in this neighborhood because of our concerns about the middle school but were ultimately persuaded to do so primarily because parents who actually had kids in the MS spoke so highly of it.  Several years later, our older son is a student at that MS and both he and we are happy with it.  Our main concern was that there would be a lot of disruption in the classrooms (our son is not in G/T), but, in general, there tend to be only one or two disruptive kids per class and those kids are not necessarily low income.  The MS has excellent, experienced teachers and administrators, who know how to deal with a diverse student body.  I don't think bullying is tolerated at this school, and the student body in general is, I think, no meaner than at schools with lots of wealthy kids.

In terms of the things that are not great, there are probably more apathetic students who don't do homework and don't participate in class than you would find in a high-SES school.  My impression is that there is some friction between the low-SES and higher-SES kids, which principally takes the form of name-calling.  There are more fights than I think you would find at a high-SES school, although the fights are almost entirely between lower-income students, and I have never heard of a student from my son's old elementary school being involved in a fight.  Even in non-G/T classes, low-SES and higher-SES students tend to self-segregate, and I suspect your son would continue to socialize pretty much exclusively with the kids from his neighborhood.

If your neighborhood does get redistricted, which I think is actually pretty unlikely, I would suggest that you talk to parents at the new middle school to get their opinions and consider giving the new school a try.  We were prepared to put our son in private school if need be, but we've been pleasantly surprised.  My advice might be different if the proposal was only to redistrict a few kids rather than a couple hundred, or if we were talking about a high school redistricting.   Good luck![/quote]

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