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Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.

Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.

Exactly. I am completely fine with all the options for my kid and how it affects my family (we're not zoned for Wheaton), but as a taxpayer this is absolutely maddening. Such a blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility in a time of massive fiscal uncertainty. MCPS administrators are like children who think money grows on trees. Then they will come crying to taxpayers begging them to pay more while thousands are out of work and have possibly left the region entirely.

Or maybe lots of WHJ-zoned families will return to the public school, once the out of control overcrowding is finally fixed. Many in my neighborhood go to private schools in order to avoid over-crowded WJ. Now they will once again have reasonable access to their tax-funded local school.

So in this scenario WJ is at capacity and Wheaton wildly overcrowded. Nice!

And BCC and Whitman are untouched.

If they're untouched why are their utilization percentages changing?

Because in the boundary scenario is making room for the programming changes - if whitman, bcc, einstein, northwood and blair are linked together from east to west in one program area, more kids from Einstein will come to BCC, presumably, especially if they axe Einstein's IB program (which is stupid, IMO, but seems like a done deal to equalize the number of chances by region that a kid has to go to an IB program).

Einstein can continue to have a local IB program. But given that people complain there are not enough AP science classes there, it’s not clear to me that the Einstein community would want this.

Can someone explain what each of these four revised options are weighting? That was clearer with the first round but not with this round.

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Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.

Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.

Exactly. I am completely fine with all the options for my kid and how it affects my family (we're not zoned for Wheaton), but as a taxpayer this is absolutely maddening. Such a blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility in a time of massive fiscal uncertainty. MCPS administrators are like children who think money grows on trees. Then they will come crying to taxpayers begging them to pay more while thousands are out of work and have possibly left the region entirely.

Or maybe lots of WHJ-zoned families will return to the public school, once the out of control overcrowding is finally fixed. Many in my neighborhood go to private schools in order to avoid over-crowded WJ. Now they will once again have reasonable access to their tax-funded local school.

So in this scenario WJ is at capacity and Wheaton wildly overcrowded. Nice!

And BCC and Whitman are untouched.

If they're untouched why are their utilization percentages changing?

Because in the boundary scenario is making room for the programming changes - if whitman, bcc, einstein, northwood and blair are linked together from east to west in one program area, more kids from Einstein will come to BCC, presumably, especially if they axe Einstein's IB program (which is stupid, IMO, but seems like a done deal to equalize the number of chances by region that a kid has to go to an IB program).

How many slots will they open at each school? Not enough.

Traffic from Einstein/Blair to BCC/Whitman will be horrible.

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Anonymous wrote:It's very unfair to Whitman families.

More diversity should be added in Whitman. Leaving it untouched is a missed oppurtunity.

But do non-white, lower income folks even want to go to Whitman?

The problem with Whitman is that it is so far west that there is no reasonable way to integrate it. The neighborhood is largely white both at Whitman and in WJ and BCC. The only way to integrate Whitman is to give it a magnet program and let kids voluntarily transfer into it. Or give Whitman kids access to other magnet programs that they might like to transfer into.

Oh, wait, that's what this whole programming & boundary thing are trying to do. Some Whitman kids might now opt for BCC's IB, or even be able to get into Blair Math/Science (which it seems will still exist, just perhaps not with the same level of genius student that one gets county-wide), either of which would leave more room for kids from Einstein or Northwood to opt into Whitman's "leadership academy".

It's very clear that the program bounds bind east and west county in bands that vary by distance from DC (i.e. first band around DC, second band around DC etc.) and that by offering magnet programs open to all within each band, they are hoping that there will be some voluntary integration. How realistic that is, depends on transportation -- will there be any transportation between schools? Families without the resources to give kids cars at the high school level, or drive kids to and from school are not really going to be able to opt into these programs.

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Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.

Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.

Exactly. I am completely fine with all the options for my kid and how it affects my family (we're not zoned for Wheaton), but as a taxpayer this is absolutely maddening. Such a blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility in a time of massive fiscal uncertainty. MCPS administrators are like children who think money grows on trees. Then they will come crying to taxpayers begging them to pay more while thousands are out of work and have possibly left the region entirely.

Or maybe lots of WHJ-zoned families will return to the public school, once the out of control overcrowding is finally fixed. Many in my neighborhood go to private schools in order to avoid over-crowded WJ. Now they will once again have reasonable access to their tax-funded local school.

So in this scenario WJ is at capacity and Wheaton wildly overcrowded. Nice!

And BCC and Whitman are untouched.

If they're untouched why are their utilization percentages changing?

Because in the boundary scenario is making room for the programming changes - if whitman, bcc, einstein, northwood and blair are linked together from east to west in one program area, more kids from Einstein will come to BCC, presumably, especially if they axe Einstein's IB program (which is stupid, IMO, but seems like a done deal to equalize the number of chances by region that a kid has to go to an IB program).

Did anyone go tonight? Learn anything new?

Anonymous wrote:These options are so much better than the first set a few months ago! No option exists that will make every single person happy, but at least here you're bussing people one school away instead of across the county, if taking them out of their neighborhood school at all

Better for whom? The Flora Singer parents are pretty unhappy that the initial 4 options had them mostly continuing to Sligo/Einstein and now not a single option has that.

If the buildings weren’t all in various states of disrepair and the principals were given free rein to do whatever they want, parents wouldn’t be as upset about secondary building changes.

These options are so much better than the first set a few months ago! No option exists that will make every single person happy, but at least here you're bussing people one school away instead of across the county, if taking them out of their neighborhood school at all

Anonymous wrote:Kensington Parkwood is listed as split articulation. Is that only for the non-contiguous “islands” that will likely be rezoned to their nearby elementary school when they address the elementary schools?

Are there other ES’s listed as split articulation that are likely not to be once the islands are rezoned?

Yes, the main part of K-P is zoned to WJ and the Tuckerman "island" is zoned to Woodward in all four new options.

Here is the recording of the first MCPS presentation on the new options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzE6GdZrLpI&t=997s

It is a very high level discussion, and contains no "Why?" nor response to questions

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Anonymous wrote:Can some one share the regional magnet programs in Woodward region?

Art, Design, Performing Arts, Communication.

So with 30% FARMS + these programs ---> Very little numbers left for higher level STEM classes. Woodward may not offer good STEM courses.

WJ with 15% FARMS rate should be able to offer good STEM courses despite school size going down.

Every school will offer STEM but Woodward will also be able to go to Wheaton for Engineering. Impressive program.

Total number of kids intested in courses will dictate what courses get offered. WJ is likely to have MV but Woodward won't have that.

Disagree re MV. Farmland and Luxmanor have much higher percentages of Asian students than do KP, GP, and Ashburton. In MCPS, a very disproportionate 45% of the students taking the BC Calculus exam are Asian. I think it’s possible MCPS considered this as they have this data.

Anonymous wrote:Students attend Edison for part of the day from multiple school including Wheaton. I believe that they’re counted at the school where they attend classes that aren’t at Edison such as their English and Math classes. No one attends Edison all day.

Thanks for sharing. How does this relate to the capacity at Wheaton and the disconnect between:
1. Previous multiple assertions that Wheaton HS is overcrowded
2. The current assertion that actually Wheaton has 500 extra seats at Edison and therefore it's all good?

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Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.

Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.

This makes sense there’s so much MFH development proposed in the current boundary near the mall for example. Need to leave capacity there vs filling it up.

Wouldn't it be nice if they documented how much housing is in the pipeline within each boundary? They could do that, but since I doubt they actually did that analysis my guess is this isn't the reason. Vague vibes that "there's so much MFH development" in a particular boundary is not a good enough reason to leave some schools overcrowded and others significantly under capacity.

Or just go look at the MCPS Capital Improvement Program and you’ll see the authorized number of new developments tied to each cluster. I did this in two minutes. WJ has 11,340 units approved but unbuilt and only 440 units are single family homes.

You're referring to a 400 page document. No, most people can't find this info if they don't know it's there and where it is. Certainly not in 2 minutes. Care to share?

There’s a pdf of each cluster. Try making an effort instead of being force-fed info and then complaining that you can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum of looking up what you want.

You sound really angry - are you okay?

Your previous post implied it is easy to identify the housing in the pipeline for each cluster. But it would take at least an hour or 2 to compile the info for each cluster and compare them. The consultants should have done this and presented it.

Btw I added up 35,000 housing units in land use plans in the DCC.

DCC is a lot of schools which doesn't really tell you anything but way to Math.

Okay? Are you saying I should also take "2 minutes" to go through all the master plans and figure out how many are in which boundaries and how they compare to other school clusters? Shall I make you a table? Because this information is not disaggregated by high school in the DCC in the 400 page CIP that I'm supposed to be intimately familiar with and be able to pull out statistics from in 2 minutes.

Might I once again suggest this is something the consultants paid to do the boundary study should have done? The notion that if parents can't find information that isn't in a 400 page document, that's their own fault for not caring enough about their children, would be hilarious if we didn't know it's entitled wealthy White people (who "don't see race") saying that about Black and Latino families

Blah blah blah "I want something so why didn't somebody else do the work for me".... typical. If you care look it up go for it you have the source material, even if you figure it out, so what? Since the outcome isn't riding on anything from you nor does anybody really care about your conclusions you have plenty time to figure work them out with no rush. When it's over you'll send your kids where the system tells you it will take them and that school will have the number of kids in it that show up on day one.

If you don't want to discuss whether it's appropriate to have some schools overcrowded and others at 80% capacity, then don't post about it. But if you say that it's because of all the "MFH" development in one area and that must be why the PAID consultants chose that, then I as a taxpayer would expect they would have done the work to justify that and to be transparent about how they came to their conclusions. If you just want to vent about how horrible it is that some of us don't want one part of the boundary study area to hoard empty seats, then yell at me some more why don't you, it won't shut me up.

Kensington Parkwood is listed as split articulation. Is that only for the non-contiguous “islands” that will likely be rezoned to their nearby elementary school when they address the elementary schools?

Are there other ES’s listed as split articulation that are likely not to be once the islands are rezoned?