Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am laughing out loud at these threats from rich people that they’re going to storm out of the county. A majority of us would actually benefit from that. They are opportunity hoarders who have been jealously guarding all the prime locations, schools, jobs. The middle and upper middle class would really be happy to take your places.

Keep laughing, it's the middle and Upper middle along with the wealthy who will be moving out and taking their tax dollars. The recent population boom has been in immigrants who don't pay state taxes or county taxes or property taxes but yet are using a disproportionate amount of resources.

The population boom is not not in middle class or upper middle class workers. It is due to the sanctuary status of the county. This is a fact, repeated over and over again in media publications. Changing demographics from the rich to the poor.

Hope your still laughing in a couple years when the tax dollars dry up.

Yes, that's why the schools in Bethesda are so overcrowded.

Also, immigrants pay taxes too. That is a well-known fact.

DP. Immigrants do pay taxes, and the PP was wrong to suggest otherwise. But you should also acknowledge that the average immigrant is going to have a lower income and own/rent a less valuable property -- which lead to lower income and property taxes respectively -- than the average M/UMC professional. So to the extent the M/UMC professional decides to leave the County and is replaced by an immigrant, the overall tax base with decrease. So either the level of services provided by the county will have to be reduced or the tax rates on those remaining in the county will have to increase.

I honestly want to know. How do undocumented immigrants pay taxes? And don't say "sales taxes", that is a cop out. Tourists from other countries pay sakes taxes when they visit. Everyone pays sales tax. I mean real crippling taxes like those of us with social security numbers who aren't paid cash under the table are forced to pay......like income tax, property tax, county, state, social security and federal taxes. How are they able to pay these taxes that provide the services they need like government housing, ESOL, EBT Medicaid, and FREE schools (the topic of this thread) This is an honest question. Do not say sales tax...please explain the process of how they contribute to these other taxes. I'm truly listening

Anonymous wrote:

DP. Immigrants do pay taxes, and the PP was wrong to suggest otherwise. But you should also acknowledge that the average immigrant is going to have a lower income and own/rent a less valuable property -- which lead to lower income and property taxes respectively -- than the average M/UMC professional. So to the extent the M/UMC professional decides to leave the County and is replaced by an immigrant, the overall tax base with decrease. So either the level of services provided by the county will have to be reduced or the tax rates on those remaining in the county will have to increase.

?

Lots of immigrants are middle-class/wealthy professionals. Lots of middle-class/wealthy professionals are immigrants.

Boiled down, the thinking seems to be: if MCPS tries to move kids in the Whitman cluster to schools with more poor, brown kids, then their parents are going to leave Montgomery County for [somewhere], and that would be bad for Montgomery County, so we shouldn't do that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am laughing out loud at these threats from rich people that they’re going to storm out of the county. A majority of us would actually benefit from that. They are opportunity hoarders who have been jealously guarding all the prime locations, schools, jobs. The middle and upper middle class would really be happy to take your places.

Keep laughing, it's the middle and Upper middle along with the wealthy who will be moving out and taking their tax dollars. The recent population boom has been in immigrants who don't pay state taxes or county taxes or property taxes but yet are using a disproportionate amount of resources.

The population boom is not not in middle class or upper middle class workers. It is due to the sanctuary status of the county. This is a fact, repeated over and over again in media publications. Changing demographics from the rich to the poor.

Hope your still laughing in a couple years when the tax dollars dry up.

Yes, that's why the schools in Bethesda are so overcrowded.

Also, immigrants pay taxes too. That is a well-known fact.

DP. Immigrants do pay taxes, and the PP was wrong to suggest otherwise. But you should also acknowledge that the average immigrant is going to have a lower income and own/rent a less valuable property -- which lead to lower income and property taxes respectively -- than the average M/UMC professional. So to the extent the M/UMC professional decides to leave the County and is replaced by an immigrant, the overall tax base with decrease. So either the level of services provided by the county will have to be reduced or the tax rates on those remaining in the county will have to increase.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

How much is "far more" funding? Please quantify.

Please also explain your assumption that low-income parents are uninvolved parents.

That's not remotely what I said and you know it, which is why you conveniently only quoted from part of discussion. You said that teachers at wealthier schools have to spend 10X the amount of time catering to needy parents. I responded, as you can see above, that parental involvement is a good thing -- meaning the parental involvement that you derided in weather schools is, at least to a point, a good thing. That has nothing to do with whether low-income parents are involved or not.

As for quantifying the different levels of resources, here is a link that has (midway down) a real world example of resource differences between 3 ~600 student elementary schools with low, middle, and high FARMS/ESOL rates. I've tried to cut and paste the chart, but I don't know if it will come through. https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/budget-101/index.html

This also says there is a 21% difference in funding between high and low FARMS elementary schools. https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OLO/Resources/Files/2015_Reports/OLOReport2015-15ResourcesAndStaffingAmongMCPSSchools.pdf

Are you seriously claiming that Title I/Focus schools do not have smaller classes that can only happen with greater resources?



School A
600 students
6% FARMS
37 ESOL students
School B

615 students
50% FARMS
113 ESOL students
School C

609 students
82% FARMS
317 ESOL students
School A has a very low percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price meals—or FARMS. They also have very few ESOL students.
School B has a higher needs student population and School C would be among our most impacted elementary schools. Let’s look at their allocations.

Allocating to an Elementary School

SCHOOL A
Low FARMS
(600, 6%, 37)
SCHOOL B
Focus
(615, 50%, 113)
SCHOOL C
Title I
(609, 82%, 317)
Kindergarten 4 6 6
Classroom Teacher 1-5 21.6 24 24
Nonteaching 4 4 4.5
AMPE (Art, Music, PE) 3 3.9 3.9
Clerical 2.5 2.5 2.5
Focus/AI 0 2.7 5.8
ESOL .7 2 7.2
Ed Assistant 3.75 6 5.1775
Total 39.55 51.1 59.0775
As the chart demonstrates, schools with more needs receive additional staff to serve students. Since students who live in poverty generally come to school needing more help with reading, Schools B and C are provided Academic Intervention (AI) teachers to improve literacy and academic outcomes. School C also receives significantly more ESOL staff since it serves a greater number of English language learners.

View Your School's Staffing Levels

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am laughing out loud at these threats from rich people that they’re going to storm out of the county. A majority of us would actually benefit from that. They are opportunity hoarders who have been jealously guarding all the prime locations, schools, jobs. The middle and upper middle class would really be happy to take your places.

Keep laughing, it's the middle and Upper middle along with the wealthy who will be moving out and taking their tax dollars. The recent population boom has been in immigrants who don't pay state taxes or county taxes or property taxes but yet are using a disproportionate amount of resources.

The population boom is not not in middle class or upper middle class workers. It is due to the sanctuary status of the county. This is a fact, repeated over and over again in media publications. Changing demographics from the rich to the poor.

Hope your still laughing in a couple years when the tax dollars dry up.

Yes, that's why the schools in Bethesda are so overcrowded.

Also, immigrants pay taxes too. That is a well-known fact.

Anonymous wrote:I am laughing out loud at these threats from rich people that they’re going to storm out of the county. A majority of us would actually benefit from that. They are opportunity hoarders who have been jealously guarding all the prime locations, schools, jobs. The middle and upper middle class would really be happy to take your places.

Keep laughing, it's the middle and Upper middle along with the wealthy who will be moving out and taking their tax dollars. The recent population boom has been in immigrants who don't pay state taxes or county taxes or property taxes but yet are using a disproportionate amount of resources.

The population boom is not not in middle class or upper middle class workers. It is due to the sanctuary status of the county. This is a fact, repeated over and over again in media publications. Changing demographics from the rich to the poor.

Hope your still laughing in a couple years when the tax dollars dry up.

Anonymous wrote:I think this consultant engagement is a waste of school payer funds. Its a fools errand to try to construct some brittle unworkable plan to sprinkle wealthy white and asian kids around URM students.

Good news! That's not what they're doing! What they are doing:

Hiring a consultant to review school boundaries in light of revised Policy FAA, Educational Facilities Planning, gather information and data regarding current school boundaries, benchmark with comparable school systems, and collect community input on the opportunities and challenges related to boundary setting using multiple methods and venues, including but not limited to Capital Improvements Program hearings in fall 2019.

What's more, DCUM has been yelling for years that MCPS ought to reduce overcrowding by rezoning.

https://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B894FY5336CA/$file/20190108%20Rev%20Boundary%20Assessment%20Study-FAA.pdf

I think this consultant engagement is a waste of school payer funds. Its a fools errand to try to construct some brittle unworkable plan to sprinkle wealthy white and asian kids around URM students.

MoCo always seems to be five steps behind. Its too late to look at racial modeling school assignments as the path toward shrinking achievement gap. Too many legal hurdles and the reality is that the number of wealthy whites sending kids to MCPS has been steadily dropping for the past decade while the number of poor minorities has been steadily growing. The performance in the vaulted W schools and Blair magnet is predominantly Asian students not white students. White students aren't failing but they aren't doing as well as people think. Alas MCPS seems intent on driving Asians out. They are only 20% of the school population but represent a shockingly high % of the highest scoring students. Lose them and the Ws tank and Blair stops winning awards.

It would make more sense for MCPS to engage a consultant on how to raise the performance of hispanic students -the fastest growing and lowest performing group. It would make sense for MCPS to figure out how to retain the Asian students and meet their higher performance needs.

From a capacity planning standpoint, it would make sense for MCPS to outsource planning projections or have someone external explain to them why their internal planning department keeps getting enrollment forecasting so wrong.

Hiring a consultant to think up some way to side step laws prohibiting race as a school assignment factor because MCPS wants to use race as a school assignment factor is just stupid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

How much is "far more" funding? Please quantify.

Please also explain your assumption that low-income parents are uninvolved parents.

DP.. let's be real here.... even MCPS states their biggest goal is to close the achievement gap.

Where has MCPS stated this, and how does this answer the questions above?

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/annualreport/

The Annual Report to the Community for the 2013-2014 school year tells the story of MCPS—the factors that are driving change in our district; the strategies we are using to close the achievement gap and prepare our students for success in the 21st century; and the operational and student performance data we use to monitor our progress.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/departments/budget/fy2017/Budget-FastFacts-June.pdf

The Board of Education’s Approved Fiscal Year 2017 Operating Budget includes $139 million in new resources to strengthen the foundation for future student success, reduce class sizes, and take bold action to reduce the achievement gap...

Allocating additional Focus teachers to impacted schools to provide targeted support, especially in content areas such as literacy and mathematics in order to address achievement gaps

By calling out closing the achievement gap, they are stating that this is one of their goals.

You are purposefully being obtuse, or you are just dumb. Closing the achieving gap means spending time, effort, and money on the lowest performers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

How much is "far more" funding? Please quantify.

Please also explain your assumption that low-income parents are uninvolved parents.

DP.. let's be real here.... even MCPS states their biggest goal is to close the achievement gap.

Where has MCPS stated this, and how does this answer the questions above?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

How much is "far more" funding? Please quantify.

Please also explain your assumption that low-income parents are uninvolved parents.

DP.. let's be real here.... even MCPS states their biggest goal is to close the achievement gap.

Anonymous wrote:

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

How much is "far more" funding? Please quantify.

Please also explain your assumption that low-income parents are uninvolved parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If lots of rich families in Bethesda made the nutty decision to pick up and move from expensive housing in MCPS (which is not perfect) to expensive housing in FCPS (which is not perfect) -- then the housing in close-in Bethesda would become more affordable to the rest of us. Yay!

And then the county would raise your taxes or cut schools funding because revenue has gone down.

Elrich has already proposed $25mil cut to MCPS, and no, Elrich can't tell MCPS to make those cuts to central office.

-dp

With fewer whiney privileged kids the mcps budget would be more than adequate.

Really? I seriously doubt it's only the whiney privileged kids who are getting more resources than the rest of us.

It is the opposite. Per student, Title I/Focus schools get significantly more in resources. That's why the class sizes are much lower in those schools than in schools in wealthier areas.

Not really - the problem is teachers need to spend 10X time per student at the privileged schools because the parents are so needy.

In what way does your post refute anything I said? Even if you are correct that teachers need to spend a lot of time outside of class catering to needy parents in wealthier schools (a dubious proposition and one that ignores that parental involvement -- to a point of course -- is a positive thing), that doesn't at all negate the fact that less wealthy schools receive far more funding per student and are therefore able to provide smaller class size among other things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If lots of rich families in Bethesda made the nutty decision to pick up and move from expensive housing in MCPS (which is not perfect) to expensive housing in FCPS (which is not perfect) -- then the housing in close-in Bethesda would become more affordable to the rest of us. Yay!

And then the county would raise your taxes or cut schools funding because revenue has gone down.

Elrich has already proposed $25mil cut to MCPS, and no, Elrich can't tell MCPS to make those cuts to central office.

-dp

With fewer whiney privileged kids the mcps budget would be more than adequate.

Really? I seriously doubt it's only the whiney privileged kids who are getting more resources than the rest of us.

It is the opposite. Per student, Title I/Focus schools get significantly more in resources. That's why the class sizes are much lower in those schools than in schools in wealthier areas.

Not really - the problem is teachers need to spend 10X time per student at the privileged schools because the parents are so needy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
If lots of rich families in Bethesda made the nutty decision to pick up and move from expensive housing in MCPS (which is not perfect) to expensive housing in FCPS (which is not perfect) -- then the housing in close-in Bethesda would become more affordable to the rest of us. Yay!

And then the county would raise your taxes or cut schools funding because revenue has gone down.

Elrich has already proposed $25mil cut to MCPS, and no, Elrich can't tell MCPS to make those cuts to central office.

-dp

With fewer whiney privileged kids the mcps budget would be more than adequate.

Really? I seriously doubt it's only the whiney privileged kids who are getting more resources than the rest of us.

It is the opposite. Per student, Title I/Focus schools get significantly more in resources. That's why the class sizes are much lower in those schools than in schools in wealthier areas.