This is great and probably correct. One major flaw: it addresses Farms, not other indicators.

And it doesn't address the core of the issue, which is the disappearance of Westland as an option for half the BCC Cluster and higher Farms rates on the east side with a dramatic decrease on the western side. That creates the perception of an imbalance which in turn will be extremely hard to deny.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. My best guess is that the pre-k classes are skewing the stats (I think there are 2 pre-k classes which would have higher FARMS ratios and 2 pre-k classes for kids with autism-- but I have no idea what the FARMS ratios would be for those kids in comparison to the rest of the school).

This is correct. The pre-K classes at RHPS are limited by income -- in other words you have to be below a certain income level to qualify for access to these pre-k classes. As a parent in the school, I often walk by the bulletin boards outside these preK classrooms and have been stunned to see from pictures of students on the board, that all (or almost all) of these students are students of color. In this day and age of integration, I think it's a little unhealthy whenever schools or classrooms are full of students that are all one color (all white or all kids of color). But, that said, I understand the county rationale that limited funding for preK should be spent on lower income kids, who are much more likely to be kids of color.

At one of the last community meetings at RHPS the speaker (a man from MCPS planning department, Bruce somebody, I think) said (in response to parent concerns about the highly skewed FARMS rates across the cluster which would result from the BE withdrawal from the RHPS pairing) that these income-qualified preKs @ RHPS skew the FARMS rate at RHPS, which were 19% school-wide, but only 12% on a K-2 level.

I don't know a lot about the preK programs, but I don't think the autism program is income-limited. And, I don't think that the kids in the income-limited preKs necessarily go on to K-2 at RHPS.

12% is still higher than the FARMS rates at any of the upper feeder schools. But, when you consider that many families in the RHPS district opt to skip RHPS and wait to enter their kids at 3rd grade in one of the upper schools (thus, presumably, adding more wealthy and predominantly white kids to the denominator), one can see how the FARMS rate could drop from 12% to 8.9 or even 5.6% at the upper schools. Plus, BE upper grades currently draws from a set of kids that don't go to RHPS, thus adding numbers to the denominator there and likely diluting the FARMS rate in the upper grades across these three schools.

No, I will not translate, there are lots of great dictionaries out there.

Anonymous wrote:It all depends of what your perception of upper middle class is, of what your perception of receiving FARMS or ESOL students is.
It also depends on whether you are over simplifying a perceived erroneous fact based on impressions alone, in which case the whole thought process is flawed and the argument does not make any sense.

It is good that you have learned some big words. Now try to put them together into a coherent sentence!

It all depends of what your perception of upper middle class is, of what your perception of receiving FARMS or ESOL students is.
It also depends on whether you are over simplifying a perceived erroneous fact based on impressions alone, in which case the whole thought process is flawed and the argument does not make any sense.

Another happy RHPS parent here. Pre-K is only available according to need (Head Start) so I think that makes total sense.

I had the same question since my kid's class seems to be overwhelmingly upper middle class. Something didn't quite add up.

P.S. so bottom line is that using the FARMs ratios for CCES and NCC are probably more reflective of FARMs ratios for k-2 at RHPS than whatever is reported for the entire school.

Interesting. My best guess is that the pre-k classes are skewing the stats (I think there are 2 pre-k classes which would have higher FARMS ratios and 2 pre-k classes for kids with autism-- but I have no idea what the FARMS ratios would be for those kids in comparison to the rest of the school).

I am an RHPS parent who follows (and occasionally contributes to) the discussions on this school and the related issues (redistricting, new middle school, etc) on this board. My children have had a great experience at RHPS, fwiw. But there has always been one thing that I didn't quite understand - these boards always talk about the higher percentage of FARMs (free lunch/lower income) families at Rosemary Hills - the MCPS website info says that it is 19 percent for the current year. But the numbers for the two schools that RHPS feeds into (CCES and NCC) are substantially lower: 5.6% for NCC and 8.9% for CCES. Plus a smaller subset of RHPS kids go to BE, which also has a lower proportion of FARMs kids (6.7%). How can that be? Shouldn't the demographics of the population at the feeder school be pretty similar to the demographics at the schools it feeds into?

Please don't flame me, I'm not passing judgment on anyone irrespective of income, and I think my children are getting a great education at RHPS. I just don't see it as quite as diverse as the stats seem to indicate - the vast majority of my children's classmates seem very much upper middle class, or maybe even the 1% crowd. Yet if the overall stats are right at least 1 in 5 should be qualifying for a free lunch.