Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

It will increase FARMS rate. 15% FARMS is perfect for property values.

Fify

Yes, it may increase or at least not decrease property values. I am ont coencerned about it to be honest, but I like 15% FARMS dratimcally more than 35%. Glad that we did not go for Tilden area when buying.

You like it because you benefit financially from keeping poor and Black and Latino kids away from your kids.

Your kids (if you have any that will attend WJ) will be completely fine either way.

I don't care about black, brown, yellow or white etc. I simply prefer 15% FARMS way more than 35% FARMS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

It will increase FARMS rate. 15% FARMS is perfect for property values.

Fify

Yes, it may increase or at least not decrease property values. I am ont coencerned about it to be honest, but I like 15% FARMS dratimcally more than 35%. Glad that we did not go for Tilden area when buying.

You like it because you benefit financially from keeping poor and Black and Latino kids away from your kids.

Your kids (if you have any that will attend WJ) will be completely fine either way.

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent's recommendation for Woodward/WJ was odd and not in alignment with the board's clearly stated goals.

The WJ cluster is currently made up of Tilden MS (Farmland ES, Luxmanor ES and Garrett Park ES) and North Bethesda MS (Ashburton ES, Wyngate ES and Kensington Parkwood ES). He recommends adding two more elementary schools - Wheaton Woods and Viers Mill. Both of these schools have substantially higher poverty with 95% FARMS rates. Rather than put one at each high school to better balance the FARMS rate, the recommendation puts Garrett Park (splitting off from Tilden) and puts both WW and VM at Woodward. Small "islands" of GP and KP also go to Woodward. All of this means that Woodward is close to 40% FARMS and WJ is 13%. WJ would also be at 77% utilitzation and Woodward at 91% - also odd because of all the multi-family development going up in the new Woodward cluster. WJ might have some development but not nearly as much. So in addition to Woodward having much higher poverty than WJ it is also likely to be overcrowded almost immediately.

It is completely contrary to what the BOE has been trying to achieve and goes directly against their Policy FAA. Was there a data error? It is politically motivated? Do powerful people live in the Towns of Kensington and Garrett Park? Lots of people are struggling to make sense of this one!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

It will increase FARMS rate. 15% FARMS is perfect for property values.

Fify

Yes, it may increase or at least not decrease property values. I am ont coencerned about it to be honest, but I like 15% FARMS dratimcally more than 35%. Glad that we did not go for Tilden area when buying.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

It will increase FARMS rate. 15% FARMS is perfect for property values.

Fify

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

It will increase FARMS rate. 15% FARMS is perfect for property values.

Anonymous wrote:Three years ago, Viers Mill had universal free lunch for one year. That is why they have greater than 95% for "now or in the past" FARMs. Literally every kid (including the PEP classes for 3yos, meaning some current K) who was there in the 2023-24 school year is counted in the percentage.

I've been a VM parent for 10 years. Nobody I've heard from here wants to go to WJ. For many reasons. VM families have been happy mostly with Wheaton/DCC, and most people seem reasonably okay with Woodward.

The VM community is super tight and protective. Maybe it feels like WJ is racist/classist/whatever, but mostly I think it's that those feeder schools operate in completely different worlds.

Anonymous wrote:We are not in the catchment area being discussed, but it does seem odd that there is a fairly simple way to have more even FARMs rates between the two schools, and Taylor went with the one that creates a bigger discrepancy. If there is a way to even it out, it should be done.

Anonymous wrote:Curious why those in the new WJ cluster don't want WW or VM?

Anonymous wrote:Three years ago, Viers Mill had universal free lunch for one year. That is why they have greater than 95% for "now or in the past" FARMs. Literally every kid (including the PEP classes for 3yos, meaning some current K) who was there in the 2023-24 school year is counted in the percentage.

I've been a VM parent for 10 years. Nobody I've heard from here wants to go to WJ. For many reasons. VM families have been happy mostly with Wheaton/DCC, and most people seem reasonably okay with Woodward.

The VM community is super tight and protective. Maybe it feels like WJ is racist/classist/whatever, but mostly I think it's that those feeder schools operate in completely different worlds.

Anonymous wrote:Yea, Farmland's position on this invalid. BOE will see through it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a high proportion of students experiencing financial constraint (as might be represented by ever-FARMS) is more impactful to the learning environment in one respect than having a high proportion of students in rather well off situations in the other. Lower percentages of high need are more important than higher percentages of great wealth. It doesn't matter as much that WJ isn't as uniformly wealthy as Whitman or Churchill. It matters more that Woodward will have a substantially greater challenge to manage.

That is, unless the system differentially resources schools enough to effectively meet the needs on an equivalent basis (i.e., such that any individual student, with whichever levels of individual/family resource and academic ability, might expect a similar experience for themselves -- not the school population as a whole -- whether they might attend one school or another).

There Woodward folks don’t see the Wheaton and Kennedy families saying the same thing about them. Maybe Woodward should take on some more FARMS to improve Wheaton and Kennedy. That would be equitable.

Possibly. But shifting along the margins between next door catchments offers only marginal progress towards equity. And bussing to achieve parity not only is detrimental to community building, but is rather expensive in addition to being disfavored by most, rich or not, who would lose time, flexibility and elements of the school experience when bussed far from home.

Or, again, MCPS could really move funding around as suggested (considerably more than Taylor's proposed operating budget) to make it such that one didn't really care, from an academic perspective, where one lived, because the opportunities everywhere would be reasonably similar.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a high proportion of students experiencing financial constraint (as might be represented by ever-FARMS) is more impactful to the learning environment in one respect than having a high proportion of students in rather well off situations in the other. Lower percentages of high need are more important than higher percentages of great wealth. It doesn't matter as much that WJ isn't as uniformly wealthy as Whitman or Churchill. It matters more that Woodward will have a substantially greater challenge to manage.

That is, unless the system differentially resources schools enough to effectively meet the needs on an equivalent basis (i.e., such that any individual student, with whichever levels of individual/family resource and academic ability, might expect a similar experience for themselves -- not the school population as a whole -- whether they might attend one school or another).

There Woodward folks don’t see the Wheaton and Kennedy families saying the same thing about them. Maybe Woodward should take on some more FARMS to improve Wheaton and Kennedy. That would be equitable.