Anonymous
Post 06/28/2015 22:16     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:I'm confused about this thread. I thought Bailey's was a magnet school for arts and sciences. We have a friend who's sending their kid there next year, and I remember getting a flyer in our Take Home Tuesday packet about magnet school applications, and Baileys was one of the schools listed. Is the Bailey's ES discussed in this thread a different school?


It's the same school. There is a magnet program, but it's also a school for those living in boundary. IMO the magnet program is overrated. It also has an immersion program. Way to much going on in a school with a large high need population.
Anonymous
Post 06/28/2015 22:00     Subject: Bailey's ES
I'm confused about this thread. I thought Bailey's was a magnet school for arts and sciences. We have a friend who's sending their kid there next year, and I remember getting a flyer in our Take Home Tuesday packet about magnet school applications, and Baileys was one of the schools listed. Is the Bailey's ES discussed in this thread a different school?
Anonymous
Post 06/28/2015 09:02     Subject: Re:Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I hope that MCPS is strictly looking at the design and build of Bailey's upper, and not all of the extenuating circumstances that went into its creation.

If I bought a fancy new condo in Montgomery County in Chevy Chase or Bethesda, I would not settle for a school on par with Bailey's upper. Not even close.


Can you clarify the "extenuating circumstances"? Thanks.


Fcps has done a lousy job of estimating number of students living in the apartments near Baileys crossroad in part because many of the families are doubled or even tripled up in these apartments and occupancy laws are not strictly enforced. so that has led to major overcrowding at Baileys and also Glen Forest. At the same time there just wasn't land for sale in the vicinity of failing to build a traditional one or two story school.

Anonymous
Post 06/28/2015 07:26     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!


The school was built to alleviate overcrowding at Bailey's. The site wasn't chosen because the kids were low income. The school is very nice inside, and looks a lot nicer than some of the regular schools I've been in. If the playground and gym issues are resolved, it will be a great facility. I find it funny that people are so snobby towards the concept because it happened to have been mplemented in a school with low income kids. This is similar to how school uniforms are viewed. In private schools uniforms are perfectly acceptable, but in public schools there is a huge stigma because they are usually associated with low income schools. I don't care what MoCo does because I don't live there, it's just interesting to see the biases based on where the idea is being pulled from.


I live nearby - and posted previously. If I am "snobby" for finding grave issues with a school with an expected student body of 1600 by 2017 and will probably rise further than that - well, then call me snobby.

The facilities are great until they have to put modular classrooms on the new outdoor facility due to further overcrowding, and then we are back to square one.

FCPS is just pissing in the wind with building this new building. It is not feasible to take over all office and tax-generating businesses in the area for schools and social services. Something else has to be done.





The overcrowding issue is a separate issue than the structure of the building. PP suggested the type of building was selected because it would house low income kids, and that a similar concept may not work will with a higher SES demographic. That's not the case. Done properly it can be a great option. As another PP pointed out, your numbers on Bailey's is for both upper and lower. Those numbers have nothing to do with the type of building.
Anonymous
Post 06/27/2015 21:45     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:Two-bedroom apartments back in Culmore go for about $1800/mo, by the time you factor in utilities and all the various additional fees they charge for this and that. (And boy is the housing stock bad.) Meanwhile the population makes minimum wage or less. You want to talk about SAHM's: Very few of the moms back in Culmore work in the formal-sector economy, because daycare is so expensive. (Lots more work in the informal sector, for example as babysitters for cash.) So no wonder they stack up two families to an apartment: otherwise they'd be out on the streets homeless, there's no other way to pay the rent. If the county started enforcing code on those apartments, they would be a ghost town, nobody would live in such junky apartments if they had to pay the full rent by themselves.

So why don't they just move to another part of the county where, in large part, the rents are a bit lower and the conditions are better? Two reasons. One, Culmore has excellent bus access. Two, they love Bailey's and feel that their kids are being well served there.


Because rent is a "bit" lower, not a "lot" lower, but in the other areas, they're not going to let 4 families in an apartment slide. (It isn't 2 families to an apartment, it is routinely 3+, sometimes as many as 13-15 people per apartment.) And because it is a majority of immigrant, non-English speakers from the same areas who feel comfortable with one another and the community they've built. Many of these people have an elementary education if they have an education at all, so while yes, they may feel they're being "well served" by Bailey's, but that's doesn't really correlate to whether they are or not when you are talking about parents whose only comparison is schools in Central America and who often don't even know the name of the school their kids attend. (And if you think I'm BSing, I'm not, I am a social worker for the county and this a real, ongoing problem in that community.)
Anonymous
Post 06/27/2015 21:34     Subject: Re:Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

There are plans to build a new gym adjacent to the school. Read the entire thread.


What do they currently do?



They have "exercise rooms". The windows have strong screens across them to keep thrown balls from breaking them.


It sounds more like a prison to me.
Anonymous
Post 06/26/2015 16:21     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!


The school was built to alleviate overcrowding at Bailey's. The site wasn't chosen because the kids were low income. The school is very nice inside, and looks a lot nicer than some of the regular schools I've been in. If the playground and gym issues are resolved, it will be a great facility. I find it funny that people are so snobby towards the concept because it happened to have been mplemented in a school with low income kids. This is similar to how school uniforms are viewed. In private schools uniforms are perfectly acceptable, but in public schools there is a huge stigma because they are usually associated with low income schools. I don't care what MoCo does because I don't live there, it's just interesting to see the biases based on where the idea is being pulled from.


I live nearby - and posted previously. If I am "snobby" for finding grave issues with a school with an expected student body of 1600 by 2017 and will probably rise further than that - well, then call me snobby.

The facilities are great until they have to put modular classrooms on the new outdoor facility due to further overcrowding, and then we are back to square one.

FCPS is just pissing in the wind with building this new building. It is not feasible to take over all office and tax-generating businesses in the area for schools and social services. Something else has to be done.


Just to be clear, the projections are that Bailey's and Bailey's Upper combined will have an enrollment of around 1500 students in 2017. You can call it one school, but it's two facilities. If they get to the point where Bailey's Upper is above-capacity, there are other schools in the Stuart pyramid, Beech Tree and Belvedere, projected to be under-capacity by 2017 and through 2019.

I'm not aware of plans to convert other tax-generating buildings into schools and social services buildings. The Bailey's Upper building had been sitting empty without tenants when FCPS bought it.
Anonymous
Post 06/26/2015 16:13     Subject: Re:Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:

There are plans to build a new gym adjacent to the school. Read the entire thread.


What do they currently do?



They have "exercise rooms". The windows have strong screens across them to keep thrown balls from breaking them.
Anonymous
Post 06/26/2015 16:10     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!


The school was built to alleviate overcrowding at Bailey's. The site wasn't chosen because the kids were low income. The school is very nice inside, and looks a lot nicer than some of the regular schools I've been in. If the playground and gym issues are resolved, it will be a great facility. I find it funny that people are so snobby towards the concept because it happened to have been mplemented in a school with low income kids. This is similar to how school uniforms are viewed. In private schools uniforms are perfectly acceptable, but in public schools there is a huge stigma because they are usually associated with low income schools. I don't care what MoCo does because I don't live there, it's just interesting to see the biases based on where the idea is being pulled from.


I live nearby - and posted previously. If I am "snobby" for finding grave issues with a school with an expected student body of 1600 by 2017 and will probably rise further than that - well, then call me snobby.

The facilities are great until they have to put modular classrooms on the new outdoor facility due to further overcrowding, and then we are back to square one.

FCPS is just pissing in the wind with building this new building. It is not feasible to take over all office and tax-generating businesses in the area for schools and social services. Something else has to be done.



Anonymous
Post 06/26/2015 06:38     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!


The school was built to alleviate overcrowding at Bailey's. The site wasn't chosen because the kids were low income. The school is very nice inside, and looks a lot nicer than some of the regular schools I've been in. If the playground and gym issues are resolved, it will be a great facility. I find it funny that people are so snobby towards the concept because it happened to have been mplemented in a school with low income kids. This is similar to how school uniforms are viewed. In private schools uniforms are perfectly acceptable, but in public schools there is a huge stigma because they are usually associated with low income schools. I don't care what MoCo does because I don't live there, it's just interesting to see the biases based on where the idea is being pulled from.
Anonymous
Post 06/25/2015 15:43     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!


It would be the same if an "urban style" school gets built in Arlington or Tysons. It's no secret that most of the students attending Bailey's now are from low-income households.
Anonymous
Post 06/25/2015 14:51     Subject: Bailey's ES
It seems to me like the school was built to accommodate the low income immigrants. In Montgomery County they want to build such schools for the very wealthy (because only they can afford the ultra expensive new homes) so the concept is marketed as urban and chic!
Anonymous
Post 06/25/2015 12:11     Subject: Re:Bailey's ES
More information about the addition/gym:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=9UXKW74B7DE1
Anonymous
Post 06/25/2015 11:50     Subject: Re:Bailey's ES

There are plans to build a new gym adjacent to the school. Read the entire thread.


What do they currently do?




Anonymous
Post 06/25/2015 08:23     Subject: Bailey's ES
Anonymous wrote:Montgomery County resident here. No gym or playground? That sounds awful!!!


There are plans to build a new gym adjacent to the school. Read the entire thread.