If the addition of a new BBC middle school results in changes to boundaries for Westland, will that have an impact on Pyle as well? Will some of the Pyle kids now go to Westland?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have been told that 8th graders will stay at Westland. Apparently that is how other openings of new middle schools were handled in the county.

PP, can I ask who told you this? My daughter is finishing 2nd at RHPS this year, so she will be finishing 7th the spring before the new middle school opens. I have been wondering how they will handle this - NCC 6th, Westland 7th, new middle school 8th? I'm not fond of that scenario.

I heard it from a MCPS administrator.

I did too.

Thanks, 16:30!

15:58, just FYI, "downcounty" is a term of MCPS art that refers to the Blair/Northwood/Einstein/Kennedy/Wheaton clusters. When discussing schools, it's not a synonym for "close-in" or the opposite of "upcounty."

Anonymous wrote:

I have been told that 8th graders will stay at Westland. Apparently that is how other openings of new middle schools were handled in the county.

PP, can I ask who told you this? My daughter is finishing 2nd at RHPS this year, so she will be finishing 7th the spring before the new middle school opens. I have been wondering how they will handle this - NCC 6th, Westland 7th, new middle school 8th? I'm not fond of that scenario.

I heard it from a MCPS administrator.

PP - I am so glad my kids will end up going to school with yours or kids like yours. This whole BCC middle school hysteria has made me all the more glad we bought on the East side of Connecticut. Our kids are likely going to be zoned to the new middle school, and I hope that it isn't 100% white, rich, and privileged. We would have bought in the Whitman cluster or gone private if that was our goal. We want our kids to go to a school with diversity but an involved parent community who prioritize their kids' education even if they aren't at the very top of the income scale. I think that's what the East side Middle School is going to be.

And it's all a bit funny, isn't it, that the east side of a downcounty school with CC, Bethesda, and Silver Spring kids is the "wrong" side of town. Only in this city . . .

PP above is correct. The hysterics about the new middle school being a substantially poorer school are just ridiculous and smack of a really nasty strain of classism, at a minimum.

Half of RCF is immersion and those kids are by no means poor. The other half is about 40 kids per grade, and of those a higher proportion are lower income than in other schools, but really, you are talking about maybe 15 kids per grade, out of a class of probably 200 kids. How those 15 kids could possibly have a negative effect on other kids is beyond me. And the fact that they won't get "private tutors" etc. as a PP stated just blows my mind.

Just for the record, many of us who are not in the 1% manage to get our kids music lessons and tutors if they need them.

Really, sometimes MoCo is just disgusting.

PP here, sorry did not mean to include KP but simply the parts of Kensington that feed into the BCC elementaries such as NCC.

The poster who is asserting that the new middle school will have a dramatically different socioeconomic profile than Westland doesn't know what s/he is talking about. The socio-economics of the BCC feeders east of Wisconson and/or Conn Ave are not dramatically different than west of Conn Ave, with the (possibly important) exception of Rock Creek Forest, and even that isn't a large low-income population. (Note that I'm talking only about the BCC feeder schools; I recognize that there is an east-west dividing line, particularly further outside the city.)

A middle school comprised of kids from KP, NCC, CCES, and RCF will not be a predominantly poor or non-white middle school. But this is one of the scare tactics that opponents of a new school and in particular the opponents of the RCH site have trotted out to try to paper over their NIMBYism. I won't argue that Westland will be whiter and richer, and I agree that is a downside although I'm not sure how any articulation pattern that isn't explicitly a desegregation program could change that. Still, the demographics will be overwhelmingly white and very upper middle class (at least by national standards) for the new school as well. Just look at the stats for the feeder schools themselves via the MCPS school-at-a-glance pages.

Anonymous wrote:

I have been told that 8th graders will stay at Westland. Apparently that is how other openings of new middle schools were handled in the county.

PP, can I ask who told you this? My daughter is finishing 2nd at RHPS this year, so she will be finishing 7th the spring before the new middle school opens. I have been wondering how they will handle this - NCC 6th, Westland 7th, new middle school 8th? I'm not fond of that scenario.

For what it's worth I wouldn't lose sleep over any scenario that depends on the school opening on schedule.

Anonymous wrote:
Plus Westland has the Middle Years Programme - a precurser to BCC's IB program. The new school will not.

How do you know this?

I have been told that 8th graders will stay at Westland. Apparently that is how other openings of new middle schools were handled in the county.

PP, can I ask who told you this? My daughter is finishing 2nd at RHPS this year, so she will be finishing 7th the spring before the new middle school opens. I have been wondering how they will handle this - NCC 6th, Westland 7th, new middle school 8th? I'm not fond of that scenario.

"If they build it in RCH then I would guess (and it's only a guess) that at least those kids east of Wisconsin would go there."

Kids east of Wisconsin except the East Bethesda neighborhood, which has successfully lobbied to get its kids aligned with communities west of Wisconsin when it comes to school assignments (particularly elementary school assignments). It's a safe bet those kids would matriculate with their elem friends to Westland and not the new school.

MCPS sets school boundaries (i.e., school assignments) based on walkability above all else. They pay lip service to a commitment to socio-economic and racial diversity in all schools, but since this cluster is hugely divided on both counts (mainly along Connecticut Ave rather than Wisconsin), any school on the eastern side of the cluster will have a much higher minority population (i.e., ESOL burden) and a much less wealth (i.e., kids who can't afford tutors, outside music lessons, less financial contributions to school activities, etc).

Plus Westland has the Middle Years Programme - a precurser to BCC's IB program. The new school will not.

Both middle schools will be 6-8 when the new school opens.

I have been told that 8th graders will stay at Westland. Apparently that is how other openings of new middle schools were handled in the county.

1. No one knows. If they build it in RCH then I would guess (and it's only a guess) that at least those kids east of Wisconsin would go there, but I don't know how the numbers work.

2. It is 6-8 for all of MoCo (except right now there are two 3-6 elementary schools but one reason they want to build the new MS is to move those grade 6 classes to MS)

3. I don't know what they've done in the past or what they will do. My guess is they would make everyone move at once, but there might be some grandfathering for kids in 8.

Maybe I am missing something but I don't think the new MS should really affect your househunt (unless perhaps you were planning to move to RCH and really wanted a park there).

We are moving to MC and prefer CC to Bethesda. It's not likely that we will find something we like in the Whitman cluster, though we are trying. I have been following the whole debate and news regarding the BCC new middle school but obviuosly this discussion has been going on for a long time and there are still some things I don't understand.

1. Will all BCC kids east of Wisconsin be zoned for the new middle school? What about CC west of Wisconsin like Somerset and Kenwood? Will the site iteslf affect who is zoned for it?
2. What years are considered middle school? Is it 6-8, or does it vary by district?
3. When the new school starts (2017?) what happens to the kids who have already started at Westland but are now assigned to the new one? Do they have to move?

Thank you.