Anonymous wrote:The problem with MCPS is the absolute lack of local control. It is way too big and all decisions are made by a school board made up of politicians who have no idea what goes on in the individual schools. I moved to MCPS from an area with local control of the schools and left MCPS to go to another area with local control. Nothing is perfect but the school board members in my district live in my town and their kids are either in or have gone through our schools. One downside is higher taxes. I sold my house in Montgomery County for $850 and bought a house here for $400 yet my property taxes went up by 40% (basically the same size house). I don't know what the answer is. Chicago Public Schools implemented local school councils. Maybe MCPS needs that for each cluster as well.

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You can find it funny if you want, but at least in the DCPS classrooms in the JKLMM's, they don't have 27 kindergarteners and one teacher in a classroom. You're kidding yourself if you think we have it better. Now, is there a vast imbalance in the schools from NW to NE in DC? Yes. Of course there is. But there's a vast imbalance in the schools in Potomac versus Eastern Moco too. This rule isn't preventing that. All it's doing is making sure the classrooms in the "popular" schools are overcrowded. Way to go.

"Popular" schools? Most students in MCPS do not go to schools in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, or Potomac. They are not the popular schools; they are the schools in places where you can't live unless you're affluent.

Use whatever term you want. You know what I mean -- the schools where they fill the classes right up to the cap limit. Some schools that doesn't happen because they don't have the same population.

This does not happen only in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Potomac.

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Anonymous wrote:

You can find it funny if you want, but at least in the DCPS classrooms in the JKLMM's, they don't have 27 kindergarteners and one teacher in a classroom. You're kidding yourself if you think we have it better. Now, is there a vast imbalance in the schools from NW to NE in DC? Yes. Of course there is. But there's a vast imbalance in the schools in Potomac versus Eastern Moco too. This rule isn't preventing that. All it's doing is making sure the classrooms in the "popular" schools are overcrowded. Way to go.

"Popular" schools? Most students in MCPS do not go to schools in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, or Potomac. They are not the popular schools; they are the schools in places where you can't live unless you're affluent.

Use whatever term you want. You know what I mean -- the schools where they fill the classes right up to the cap limit. Some schools that doesn't happen because they don't have the same population.

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Anonymous wrote:Agree with others that holding up DCPS as a model is crazy.

Yes, Janney, Deal and Wilson have become good schools in the last 20 years but at what cost to the rest of the system. The disparity between the haves and have nots is growing. Look at the scores sometime. And that is BEFORE Parc Testing. And the difference between the resources at any given Ward 7 or 8 school compared to Ward 1 schools is shocking. Not long ago we took a few students from a Ward 8 school to a Ward 1 school for an event - on the way back they were discussing how nice the school was and one young man said, "I want live with the white people." I wanted to cry.

"At what cost to the rest of the system"? Answer that question, please. You're pointing out the inequality, but it's not like JKLMM have made the other schools worse. They've just gotten better. If anything, those schools getting better has attracted more high-income people to DC and increased the tax base -- benefiting all schools.
Seriously, crabs in a bucket.

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone thing people in Bethesda/Potomac might start to de-camp to Fairfax County? FCPS seems to have less drama in the overall funding.

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The schools in Bethesda have the same class size caps as every other school in MCPS.

But in practice MCPS explicitly maintains significantly smaller class sizes in Title I / Focus schools. That's the whole point of this post. I don't agree with the OP's suggestion of "buying" additional teachers via parent donations ala the Upper NW DCPS model. But I do think it's reasonable to question why it's considered OK to stuff 26 K students into a classroom in Bethesda but not elsewhere in the county. I'm all for closing the achievement gap. But there should be some baseline equity in the educational experiences provided to kids. That's precisely why parents shouldn't be allowed to fundraise for extra teachers; but equity shouldn't mean sabotaging the earliest years of elementary school for kids who live in wealthier zip codes with ridiculously large classes that have zero support.

Fine. The schools in Bethesda have the same class size caps as every other school in MCPS, except for K-3 class size caps in Title 1 and Focus schools.

Bethesda does not have a monopoly on large kindergarten classes in MCPS.

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02159.pdf
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02227.pdf
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02703.pdf
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02511.pdf
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02207.pdf

Anonymous wrote:Agree with others that holding up DCPS as a model is crazy.

Yes, Janney, Deal and Wilson have become good schools in the last 20 years but at what cost to the rest of the system. The disparity between the haves and have nots is growing. Look at the scores sometime. And that is BEFORE Parc Testing. And the difference between the resources at any given Ward 7 or 8 school compared to Ward 1 schools is shocking. Not long ago we took a few students from a Ward 8 school to a Ward 1 school for an event - on the way back they were discussing how nice the school was and one young man said, "I want live with the white people." I wanted to cry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You can find it funny if you want, but at least in the DCPS classrooms in the JKLMM's, they don't have 27 kindergarteners and one teacher in a classroom. You're kidding yourself if you think we have it better. Now, is there a vast imbalance in the schools from NW to NE in DC? Yes. Of course there is. But there's a vast imbalance in the schools in Potomac versus Eastern Moco too. This rule isn't preventing that. All it's doing is making sure the classrooms in the "popular" schools are overcrowded. Way to go.

"Popular" schools? Most students in MCPS do not go to schools in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, or Potomac. They are not the popular schools; they are the schools in places where you can't live unless you're affluent.

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Sure, they have choices. Everyone has choices. We can all choose to homeschool. But now let's get back to reality and admit that the choices presented SUCK. And you're refusing to allow an alternative that would not suck.

Why would sending your child to a Title 1 or focus school SUCK?

Anonymous wrote:

You can find it funny if you want, but at least in the DCPS classrooms in the JKLMM's, they don't have 27 kindergarteners and one teacher in a classroom. You're kidding yourself if you think we have it better. Now, is there a vast imbalance in the schools from NW to NE in DC? Yes. Of course there is. But there's a vast imbalance in the schools in Potomac versus Eastern Moco too. This rule isn't preventing that. All it's doing is making sure the classrooms in the "popular" schools are overcrowded. Way to go.

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+1 Like OP, I live in Bethesda. I don't have quite the same level of concern about class size, and I am sympathetic to the principle of not allowing wealthier school clusters to buy more staff. But it does annoy me that, at least on DCUM, people love to rally around knocking the Bethesda schools down a peg. The kids are generally high-performing, so apparently they don't deserve any relief from some of the largest classrooms in the county. Bethesda is comparatively rich, so everyone seems to think it is OK that its schools are horribly overcrowded ("If you don't like it, move."). Or, Bethesda schools shouldn't be limited to people who live there, so let's bus more kids in or allow unmanaged development of high-density residences so more kids can benefit. I actually support more workforce housing in Bethesda, but it makes me bonkers that there's no money coming in to address the fact that Bethesda has some of the most overcrowded schools anywhere. Nobody thinks Bethesda needs any public resources, and yet the main things that are needed (expanded facilities, more staff) are the things that people in Bethesda are prohibited from contributing directly themselves.

The schools in Bethesda have the same class size caps as every other school in MCPS.

But in practice MCPS explicitly maintains significantly smaller class sizes in Title I / Focus schools. That's the whole point of this post. I don't agree with the OP's suggestion of "buying" additional teachers via parent donations ala the Upper NW DCPS model. But I do think it's reasonable to question why it's considered OK to stuff 26 K students into a classroom in Bethesda but not elsewhere in the county. I'm all for closing the achievement gap. But there should be some baseline equity in the educational experiences provided to kids. That's precisely why parents shouldn't be allowed to fundraise for extra teachers; but equity shouldn't mean sabotaging the earliest years of elementary school for kids who live in wealthier zip codes with ridiculously large classes that have zero support.

Anonymous wrote:

Sure, they have choices. Everyone has choices. We can all choose to homeschool. But now let's get back to reality and admit that the choices presented SUCK. And you're refusing to allow an alternative that would not suck.

Anonymous wrote:"Here's another alternative, that people are ready and willing to do: give the parents at a school some autonomy to help their school. Shocking! Unconstitutional! But DCPS does it, so, I guess it isn't so shocking or unconstitutional."

They have the autonomy to volunteer currently and it seems like many schools have ample volunteers in wealthy areas. Now if you happen to be at a school where the principal does not allow that in a classroom, that's an issue to take up with the principal since it's not a county-wide rule.

Also i find it pretty funny that people are pointing to DC schools as an example of "things working just fine".