Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

Agree. It is sending kids farther away to school without meaningfully changing demographics.

It's not meaningful to you

Do you think it’s meaningful to the families who are being moved out of walk zones and used as diversity tokens/pawns?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

Bethesda Elementary has 100 kids per grade with about 20 FARMS kids per grade. Wood Acres has about 100 kids per grade and about 8 FARMS kids per grade. If you are only sending 9th and 10th graders in 2027 to the new HS, that’s 40 FARMS kids heading to Whitman from BCC, but 16 FARMS kids heading away from Whitman and to BCC. You think out of the over 2000 kids who attend Whitman the extra 24 kids are going to make a significant difference from a demographic standpoint? These schools have that many kids enroll/unroll on a regular basis.

It's significantly fewer high needs kids for BCC to serve. Is it huge? No, but it will benefit BCC to my have a lower needs student body. Just a few weeks ago people were talking about a FARMS rate tipping point of 20% in the literature. While I don't think 20% is necessarily the only number that matters, this change would put BCC just below that number.

But then you introduce the very unpredictable number of kids coming from the other four region 1 schools into BCC or Whitman for programs, and then you may end up with a different number of FARMS kids. What I’m saying is that these numbers are so small that they are NOT significant or reliable, especially when you throw in the programs wild card, for which they have insufficient data to form assumptions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

Agree. It is sending kids farther away to school without meaningfully changing demographics.

It's not meaningful to you

Anonymous wrote:But Wood Acres wasn't impacted in prior rounds. What was there to push back against?

Agree. It is sending kids farther away to school without meaningfully changing demographics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else notice that none of the three new options send SSIMS students to Sligo? In all three, current SSIMS students go to either Eastern or TPMS. Begs the question of the size they are going to make eastern (presumably huge, which is terrible) and also puts in question the future of ms magnets. The only way they will have enough room to accommodate all those kids at eastern and TPMS is if they do away with the magnets. What a disaster this plan is. Why would they spend all that money to renovate Sligo if it won’t be taking on more kids? What will happen to language immersion if they close SSIMS? Did they come up with this entire plan —after— releasing the first two rounds of options? Taylor is ruining east county with this half baked idiotic plan.

SSIMS will split between Eastern, and then TPMS instead of Sligo?

It's too bad that Taylor can't take the considered advice of experienced staff before he announces his sweeping changes. It would keep his impulsiveness in better check if he developed that habit. There is a lot of whipsaw going on with major changes being announced every time there is a new version of the boundaries. PP said it correctly: it's a carnival show.

What are you talking about? All three of the new options contemplate adding hundreds of students to Sligo once SSIMS closes. See, e.g., option F (where Sligo’s student body goes from 699 in 2025 to 1065 in 2031).

But none of the areas being proposed to add to Sligo are from SSIMS.

Does that matter? If they're being assigned more kids than they can currently fit then they need an expansion, regardless of where those kids come from.

Yes, it matters if your home school is currently SSIMS - where are your students going to go to MS now?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else notice that none of the three new options send SSIMS students to Sligo? In all three, current SSIMS students go to either Eastern or TPMS. Begs the question of the size they are going to make eastern (presumably huge, which is terrible) and also puts in question the future of ms magnets. The only way they will have enough room to accommodate all those kids at eastern and TPMS is if they do away with the magnets. What a disaster this plan is. Why would they spend all that money to renovate Sligo if it won’t be taking on more kids? What will happen to language immersion if they close SSIMS? Did they come up with this entire plan —after— releasing the first two rounds of options? Taylor is ruining east county with this half baked idiotic plan.

SSIMS will split between Eastern, and then TPMS instead of Sligo?

It's too bad that Taylor can't take the considered advice of experienced staff before he announces his sweeping changes. It would keep his impulsiveness in better check if he developed that habit. There is a lot of whipsaw going on with major changes being announced every time there is a new version of the boundaries. PP said it correctly: it's a carnival show.

What are you talking about? All three of the new options contemplate adding hundreds of students to Sligo once SSIMS closes. See, e.g., option F (where Sligo’s student body goes from 699 in 2025 to 1065 in 2031).

But none of the areas being proposed to add to Sligo are from SSIMS.

Does that matter? If they're being assigned more kids than they can currently fit then they need an expansion, regardless of where those kids come from.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

Bethesda Elementary has 100 kids per grade with about 20 FARMS kids per grade. Wood Acres has about 100 kids per grade and about 8 FARMS kids per grade. If you are only sending 9th and 10th graders in 2027 to the new HS, that’s 40 FARMS kids heading to Whitman from BCC, but 16 FARMS kids heading away from Whitman and to BCC. You think out of the over 2000 kids who attend Whitman the extra 24 kids are going to make a significant difference from a demographic standpoint? These schools have that many kids enroll/unroll on a regular basis.

It's significantly fewer high needs kids for BCC to serve. Is it huge? No, but it will benefit BCC to my have a lower needs student body. Just a few weeks ago people were talking about a FARMS rate tipping point of 20% in the literature. While I don't think 20% is necessarily the only number that matters, this change would put BCC just below that number.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else notice that none of the three new options send SSIMS students to Sligo? In all three, current SSIMS students go to either Eastern or TPMS. Begs the question of the size they are going to make eastern (presumably huge, which is terrible) and also puts in question the future of ms magnets. The only way they will have enough room to accommodate all those kids at eastern and TPMS is if they do away with the magnets. What a disaster this plan is. Why would they spend all that money to renovate Sligo if it won’t be taking on more kids? What will happen to language immersion if they close SSIMS? Did they come up with this entire plan —after— releasing the first two rounds of options? Taylor is ruining east county with this half baked idiotic plan.

SSIMS will split between Eastern, and then TPMS instead of Sligo?

It's too bad that Taylor can't take the considered advice of experienced staff before he announces his sweeping changes. It would keep his impulsiveness in better check if he developed that habit. There is a lot of whipsaw going on with major changes being announced every time there is a new version of the boundaries. PP said it correctly: it's a carnival show.

What are you talking about? All three of the new options contemplate adding hundreds of students to Sligo once SSIMS closes. See, e.g., option F (where Sligo’s student body goes from 699 in 2025 to 1065 in 2031).

But none of the areas being proposed to add to Sligo are from SSIMS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

Bethesda Elementary has 100 kids per grade with about 20 FARMS kids per grade. Wood Acres has about 100 kids per grade and about 8 FARMS kids per grade. If you are only sending 9th and 10th graders in 2027 to the new HS, that’s 40 FARMS kids heading to Whitman from BCC, but 16 FARMS kids heading away from Whitman and to BCC. You think out of the over 2000 kids who attend Whitman the extra 24 kids are going to make a significant difference from a demographic standpoint? These schools have that many kids enroll/unroll on a regular basis.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

They have to consider those things in filling seats at Woodward and Northwood. This switch doesn’t appear to be related?

Re-read the scope of the boundary study approved by the BOE

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

They have to consider those things in filling seats at Woodward and Northwood. This switch doesn’t appear to be related?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

The Superintendent and the BOE are required to consider demographics, which is currently the biggest predictor of student achievement. Doesn't that bother you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Woodacres boundary includes kids that are in the walk zone for Whitman and can easily walk to school which will be lost in Option F. As noted above, there seems to be no real reason for making this change and I can't see how flipping Woodacres and Bethesda ES benefits either community.

Demographics and facility utilization are two reasons. It does reduce proximity somewhat but it is literally impossible to send every neighborhood to the closest high school, and many neighborhoods experience this now and will continue to do so.

Geographic proximity should always be the number 1 consideration because of the impact on families and students. People move to specific neighborhoods for neighborhood schools because they identify with that community of people. Trying to reshuffle in an attempt to change demographics doesn’t work. This flip changes proximity a lot. There are major roads (Mass Ave, River Road, Wisconsin Ave) dividing these schools. Removing walkability in high school is crazy.

It is literally impossible to send every neighborhood to the closest high school, and many neighborhoods experience this now and will continue to do so. You may think demographics doesn't matter, but the Superindentent and the BOE are required to consider it.

You're not thinking about it from the perspective of the school. They don't get any significant funding at the high school level to address academic needs associated with poverty. If more kids need interventions because they come from low income families that can't hire tutors or help with homework, the school gets no extra resources to provide these interventions. More experienced teachers seek out low poverty schools because their jobs are hard enough and low poverty schools are less challenging to work in. Just because you say demographics don't matter, they absolutely do.

Anonymous wrote:You have to recognize that sending Wood Acres to BCC is not insane in the way that sending Farmland to Kennedy was. That was insane and pointless.

That was definitely insane and pointless but this is just pointless. Why irritate and inconvenience extra people, run more buses and increase cost, with nearly zero gain other than to silence east county people who want to stick it to the west county schools? The point of the boundary study was to fill Woodward and fix overcrowding. This swap has nothing to do with either of those things.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Still doesn’t make sense. They say they are renovating Sligo to make space for displaced SSIMS students but no SSIMS students are going to Sligo?

They probably originally were thinking that, but then realized that when they moved all the current Sligo kids back to Sligo (half of us got sent to SSIMS in the original options) plus added Arcola, there wasn't really room to add in any more elementary schools.

I mean, if the part of Forest Knolls closest to Sligo would prefer split articulation to Sligo while the rest of their ES goes to Eastern, then they should definitely advocate for that and I think it would work fine. But it doesn't make sense to cram too many kids into Sligo just because they originally said they would and then realized that wasn't what worked best.

It also doesn't make sense to change Arcola's walkers to Odessa Shannon to be bus riders to Sligo.

Arcola has a surprisingly small walk zone because they hazard bus kids from the Montgomery Housing Partnership apartment - it's at least 3 yellow buses worth of kids going from Blueridge/Elkin to Arcola, and hazard bus at least 2 buses from the Warwick/University Towers. The walkers are from the SFH/townhouse neighborhoods right around the school. But yes, for those kids that are north of University and south of Arcola, they are now zoned for Sligo MS, which is not walkable, while Odessa Shannon is.