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Anonymous wrote:It's interested that for the boundary study they heard parents say they want to go to schools close to them (except Town of Kensington which loves bussing) and they said welp I guess we just stop paying attention to demographics or utilization. But with the program analysis they have zero intention of listening to any feedback whatsoever.

The boundary study is being done by consultants who are probably normal people who think "This is a big change, we should gather and take seriously feedback from the community." The program analysis is being done by MCPS, who... well, you know.

To add upon, the consultant company has GIS expertise and staff with past experience with boundary change for large school districts. Although I'm not impressed with their first round options at all as those contain numerous number miscalculations (not sure about this round, I haven't got time to check), they seem to be serious at collecting and analyzing feedbacks.

For the regional model analysis, there is only one person essentially working on it: Niki Porter. She assembled a team of community steak-holders that she absolutely doesn't give a sh*t to, and biased her interpretation of statistics of data (hiding, mis-interpretation, using wrong proxy data, etc.) just for the sole purpose to push an agenda that our superintendent loves. This is called dictatorship.

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Anonymous wrote:East Silver Spring was untouched in the previous options but these options have 1 that sends the kids to SSIMS, but still to Blair; and another that keeps them at TPMS but then sends them to Northwood. Both split articulations when we weren’t previously. So, these options are wackier for our neighborhood.

Yes. To drive past one high school to get to the one we’d be zoned for under option b is ridiculous.

You do realize this is what pretty much everyone zoned to Sligo Creek has to do? Many live much closer to Blair than to Northwood.

Yeah, of course it seems weird when you look at your individual address and aren't zoned for the closest HS, but it makes sense in the context of the whole county and how the HS's and population are distribution. Then Northwood is getting a new building with larger capacity, and Blair is over-capacity, so of course some students are going to move from Blair to Northwood, and also from Einstein to Northwood.

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Anonymous wrote:East Silver Spring was untouched in the previous options but these options have 1 that sends the kids to SSIMS, but still to Blair; and another that keeps them at TPMS but then sends them to Northwood. Both split articulations when we weren’t previously. So, these options are wackier for our neighborhood.

Yes. To drive past one high school to get to the one we’d be zoned for under option b is ridiculous.

You do realize this is what pretty much everyone zoned to Sligo Creek has to do? Many live much closer to Blair than to Northwood.

Anonymous wrote:It's interested that for the boundary study they heard parents say they want to go to schools close to them (except Town of Kensington which loves bussing) and they said welp I guess we just stop paying attention to demographics or utilization. But with the program analysis they have zero intention of listening to any feedback whatsoever.

The boundary study is being done by consultants who are probably normal people who think "This is a big change, we should gather and take seriously feedback from the community." The program analysis is being done by MCPS, who... well, you know.

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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.

WJ/Woodward , both have 12-14% Asian. Not significant enough to make any difference.

BC Cal will be there in all schools, but high proverty schools without STEM proragms are not going to have higher level courses than that.

Will BC calc be in person? We will leave public if it's not.

Yes, it is in person. No high school has virtual calc.

Does every school have BC calc now? Which schools do not have it? MCPS has said they will use virtual when there aren't enough kids to do in person.

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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.

WJ/Woodward , both have 12-14% Asian. Not significant enough to make any difference.

BC Cal will be there in all schools, but high proverty schools without STEM proragms are not going to have higher level courses than that.

Will BC calc be in person? We will leave public if it's not.

Yes, it is in person. No high school has virtual calc.

It's interested that for the boundary study they heard parents say they want to go to schools close to them (except Town of Kensington which loves bussing) and they said welp I guess we just stop paying attention to demographics or utilization. But with the program analysis they have zero intention of listening to any feedback whatsoever.

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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.

WJ/Woodward , both have 12-14% Asian. Not significant enough to make any difference.

BC Cal will be there in all schools, but high proverty schools without STEM proragms are not going to have higher level courses than that.

Will BC calc be in person? We will leave public if it's not.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

WJ/Woodward , both have 12-14% Asian. Not significant enough to make any difference.

BC Cal will be there in all schools, but high proverty schools without STEM proragms are not going to have higher level courses than that.

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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.

Do you speak for all Flora Singer parents? I know kids would be sad about getting split from some of their friends after ES, but that was always a risk because GA Ave is a convenient dividing line. We live on the east side so geographically Northwood is closer. I think option B is nuts because we'd be zoned for SS International when we can walk to Sligo. Heck houses literally across the street from Sligo would be zoned for SSI. That makes zero sense and I plan to submit feedback. But overall I don't think the options are crazy.

Anonymous wrote:East Silver Spring was untouched in the previous options but these options have 1 that sends the kids to SSIMS, but still to Blair; and another that keeps them at TPMS but then sends them to Northwood. Both split articulations when we weren’t previously. So, these options are wackier for our neighborhood.

Yes. To drive past one high school to get to the one we’d be zoned for under option b is ridiculous.

East Silver Spring was untouched in the previous options but these options have 1 that sends the kids to SSIMS, but still to Blair; and another that keeps them at TPMS but then sends them to Northwood. Both split articulations when we weren’t previously. So, these options are wackier for our neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Principals have a lot of say which is why Einstein lacks ap classes.

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

These options are trying to gave varying degrees of utilizing all of the 4 items in the FAA policy in a balanced way in each option, rather than showing only one item in the FAA policy in each option

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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

I’m jumping in here, I had looked at this in the first round feedback phase and submitted some feedback how I thought it was very shortsighted to have schools where there was a lot of planned MFH or even SFH development be near capacity and conversely but to a lesser extent shortsighted to worry about currently overcrowded schools but which have very little planned development.

Anyway here is the link someone mentioned earlier: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/planning/cipmaster

The clusters with highest development planned are (in no order)
BCC
Clarksburg
DCC
Gaithersburg
WJ
Watkins Mill
Wootton
Whitman
RM (long term)
SV, NW, Poolesville (long term MARC rails community plan)

Whereas clusters like Churchill, QO and Damascus have little development planned.

So given this, ensuring WJ/BCC/Gaithersburg don’t remain overcrowded is important and not sweating the overcrowding at QO and Churchill which may be temporary and not likely to increase were my biggest takeaways. The former seemed especially wise.