More apropo is to talk about how MCPS is tracking to the death spiral that is Los Angeles public schools. With a 20 year lag.

Same illegal immigrant esol issues
Same huge powerful, well funded public teachers union
Same huge county model for education
Same barbell of people with w-2 jobs subsidizing the rest of the county that has cash jobs or no jobs
Same dumbing down of tests and curriculum in order to “pass” poorly performing students 1-3 grade levels behind national standards
Same brain drain of high performing students, Esp one gifted and talented programs left each school and magnets shrunk.
Teacher strikes all the time as families with means left.
Teachers union eventually agreed to approve of Charter Schools in order to have any increase in funding from local taxpayers.
Went from top performing school district in the country 40 years to bottom 20 years ago where it has stayed.

Anonymous wrote:Most of the people pushing for smaller districts really just want protection from being redrawn into a less desirable cluster.

This. keep waving the carrot of more funding when we all know more money doesn't make a difference.

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Anonymous wrote:Is it time to break into smaller school districts in MoCo? This pandemic has me questioning how the school system is setup in the county. It’s gotten to big to manage. Is it time to break it up to smaller manageable school districts within the county? This is done in Texas, California etc.

LOL not this again. You know this can't happen right?

Why can’t this happen? Genuinely want understand.

Because smaller districts generally serves to exacerbate inequalities and racial/socio-economic segregation. The current trend is in the opposite direction.

The county is setup where this already occurs minus the magnet programs. I think you could have more equity when the districts are smaller and tailored to meet the needs of its student population versus generalizing everyone into large bucket categories.

It would be interesting as apart of the county boundary study for the consulting company to evaluate breaking apart MCPS into smaller districts and evaluate the benefits and weaknesses of this model compared to the current situation.

This is well-studied. The Milwaukee-area public schools are a good example of what happens if you do that.

What happened in Milwaukee?

Nothing happened in MKE.

Someone is conflating the City of Milwaukee public schools district with the town districts throughout Milwaukee county. Property tax rates per $100 of home value are indeed high in Milwaukee and Chicago.

Many many states do not do the asinine huge 500k-5 million+ population county thing for the school district level. That doesn’t serve anyone well and results in $$$$ billion mismanaged budgets and one size fits all curriculum fails. Too many students, too many admins, too many teachers, too many zip codes, too many cities/villages, too many square miles, to many dollars flying around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it time to break into smaller school districts in MoCo? This pandemic has me questioning how the school system is setup in the county. It’s gotten to big to manage. Is it time to break it up to smaller manageable school districts within the county? This is done in Texas, California etc.

Yes please. For everyone’s sake break it up into 3-5 regular sized districts.

We need a brighter moon, too. For everyone's sake, make the moon brighter!

Anonymous wrote:Is it time to break into smaller school districts in MoCo? This pandemic has me questioning how the school system is setup in the county. It’s gotten to big to manage. Is it time to break it up to smaller manageable school districts within the county? This is done in Texas, California etc.

Yes please. For everyone’s sake break it up into 3-5 regular sized districts.

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Anonymous wrote:Is it time to break into smaller school districts in MoCo? This pandemic has me questioning how the school system is setup in the county. It’s gotten to big to manage. Is it time to break it up to smaller manageable school districts within the county? This is done in Texas, California etc.

LOL not this again. You know this can't happen right?

Why can’t this happen? Genuinely want understand.

Because smaller districts generally serves to exacerbate inequalities and racial/socio-economic segregation. The current trend is in the opposite direction.

The county is setup where this already occurs minus the magnet programs. I think you could have more equity when the districts are smaller and tailored to meet the needs of its student population versus generalizing everyone into large bucket categories.

It would be interesting as apart of the county boundary study for the consulting company to evaluate breaking apart MCPS into smaller districts and evaluate the benefits and weaknesses of this model compared to the current situation.

This is well-studied. The Milwaukee-area public schools are a good example of what happens if you do that.

What happened in Milwaukee?

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Anonymous wrote:Most of the people pushing for smaller districts really just want protection from being redrawn into a less desirable cluster.

Let's say that's true.. and? I'm ok with balancing SES. My cluster has about 25% FARMs. But the pandemic has really shown that having such a large district is really unwieldy and doesn't serve anyone well, lower income or not.

There's an economy of scale with MCPS that makes it more efficient than a smaller district but this was never about that. This is about the people in wealthy areas shirking any responsibility for the less fortunate.

Honestly, I think a lot of the wealthy areas would be happy to pay more for the guarantee that their kids wouldn't have to interact with poor/brown kids.

But yes, that is what's behind this.

I'm the ^PP, and that's not my reasoning.

I agree there can be economies of scale with larger districts, and quite honestly, it's one of the reasons why we moved. The small district we were in did not have any magnet/gifted programs.

At minimum, upcounty should be separated from lower county. Both areas already have magnet programs.

I think at this point we need to balance the economies of scale with the behemoth that is MCPS. It's too unwieldy to make large changes efficiently.

Anonymous wrote:I mean, I'm happy to let folks spin their wheels in this direction. It will NEVER happen for lots of good reasons, including the need for an actual ballot initiative on the topic, not to mention the critical mass of folks who would oppose it living in the eastern part of the county.

But....if folks are expending their political efforts on splitting the school district rather than ridiculous court cases about magnet admissions, then have at it.

That's where I'm at, too.

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Anonymous wrote:Most of the people pushing for smaller districts really just want protection from being redrawn into a less desirable cluster.

Let's say that's true.. and? I'm ok with balancing SES. My cluster has about 25% FARMs. But the pandemic has really shown that having such a large district is really unwieldy and doesn't serve anyone well, lower income or not.

There's an economy of scale with MCPS that makes it more efficient than a smaller district but this was never about that. This is about the people in wealthy areas shirking any responsibility for the less fortunate.

Honestly, I think a lot of the wealthy areas would be happy to pay more for the guarantee that their kids wouldn't have to interact with poor/brown kids.

But yes, that is what's behind this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the people pushing for smaller districts really just want protection from being redrawn into a less desirable cluster.

Let's say that's true.. and? I'm ok with balancing SES. My cluster has about 25% FARMs. But the pandemic has really shown that having such a large district is really unwieldy and doesn't serve anyone well, lower income or not.

There's an economy of scale with MCPS that makes it more efficient than a smaller district but this was never about that. This is about the people in wealthy areas shirking any responsibility for the less fortunate.

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Anonymous wrote:Gotta get the poors their own district.

It's not about that. It's about how local needs are different. Poolesville has different weather patterns than Silver Spring. They probably need way more school closures than we do in the southern part of the county.

Most of the covid cases are also in the east side of the county. North county is green. They should be able to open at least hybrid, but they can't because we are one school district.

Yep get the poors with their wage-working Covid-carrying parents outta my school district

You can look at it that way, or you could look at it as a way for the poorer areas to be able to address their needs more easily. They would not have to wait in line to get the hvac fixed along with a whole lot of other schools.

Taxes go to the county. The county could provide more funds to the certain districts, much like Title 1 funding.

Our cluster has about 25% FARMS rate, with at least one Title 1 school, so it's not like we have no FARMs kids

You do know it doesn't really work that way in practice though, right? There's plenty of areas in the country where school districts are by city, so there are lots of examples to look at.

Most of those cities allocate property tax by the city. I'm stating that the budget would be provided at the county level.

Lower income areas could get more funding, again like Title 1 funding. Right now, the budget is for the entire school district which means that poorer areas still have to wait in line to get their needs met.

That's partially true, though most of those areas still use state-level funding to even out some of the inequalities.

And assuming funding is still some through the county (and state), it doesn't really address the example you provided of HVAC systems. Capital improvements would still be allocated differently in the budget, meaning you'd still have a problem of the loudest parents getting the most money.

? budget would include CIP. This would be for the entire budget. Separate districts can prioritize based on their own needs.

I keep reading on here how Silver Spring/TP parents on the loudest, so based on what you wrote, they'd get more funding. win/win.

How does the county decide when and where to build new high schools? Particularly if other schools in the county are underutilized?

Like we do now.. based on population size. If the schools are under utilized they would lose funding. It should follow the population size.

I'm originally from out west. School budget for each school district is determined by the state/county, and there can be multiple school districts in the county.

You can also have reciprocal agreements with the neighboring district when schools in one district get overcrowded.

This is not a novel idea. It can be done.

Serious question: can you point me to examples where schools have such reciprocal agreements? I don't really understand how that would work in practice. School districts over capacity presumably don't just pick a handful of students to bus over to a neighboring district, do they?

I'm from the Midwest. Open enrollment is pretty common in rural school districts. My high school got a lot of students choosing to enroll there from other towns, which had much smaller schools. But it was always the students/families asking to move to a different school, and the receiving school could always say no. I'm not aware of any cases where the schools themselves could send students to neighboring districts, unless they merged districts (which was pretty common in rural areas).

Anonymous wrote:I mean, I'm happy to let folks spin their wheels in this direction. It will NEVER happen for lots of good reasons, including the need for an actual ballot initiative on the topic, not to mention the critical mass of folks who would oppose it living in the eastern part of the county.

But....if folks are expending their political efforts on splitting the school district rather than ridiculous court cases about magnet admissions, then have at it.

+1

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Anonymous wrote:Gotta get the poors their own district.

It's not about that. It's about how local needs are different. Poolesville has different weather patterns than Silver Spring. They probably need way more school closures than we do in the southern part of the county.

Most of the covid cases are also in the east side of the county. North county is green. They should be able to open at least hybrid, but they can't because we are one school district.

Yep get the poors with their wage-working Covid-carrying parents outta my school district

You can look at it that way, or you could look at it as a way for the poorer areas to be able to address their needs more easily. They would not have to wait in line to get the hvac fixed along with a whole lot of other schools.

Taxes go to the county. The county could provide more funds to the certain districts, much like Title 1 funding.

Our cluster has about 25% FARMS rate, with at least one Title 1 school, so it's not like we have no FARMs kids

You do know it doesn't really work that way in practice though, right? There's plenty of areas in the country where school districts are by city, so there are lots of examples to look at.

Most of those cities allocate property tax by the city. I'm stating that the budget would be provided at the county level.

Lower income areas could get more funding, again like Title 1 funding. Right now, the budget is for the entire school district which means that poorer areas still have to wait in line to get their needs met.

That's partially true, though most of those areas still use state-level funding to even out some of the inequalities.

And assuming funding is still some through the county (and state), it doesn't really address the example you provided of HVAC systems. Capital improvements would still be allocated differently in the budget, meaning you'd still have a problem of the loudest parents getting the most money.

? budget would include CIP. This would be for the entire budget. Separate districts can prioritize based on their own needs.

I keep reading on here how Silver Spring/TP parents on the loudest, so based on what you wrote, they'd get more funding. win/win.

How does the county decide when and where to build new high schools? Particularly if other schools in the county are underutilized?

Like we do now.. based on population size. If the schools are under utilized they would lose funding. It should follow the population size.

I'm originally from out west. School budget for each school district is determined by the state/county, and there can be multiple school districts in the county.

You can also have reciprocal agreements with the neighboring district when schools in one district get overcrowded.

This is not a novel idea. It can be done.

I don’t know if you’ve figure this out yet but MOCO isn’t filled with big thinkers. Every solution has a problem in this county, and a separate tax.

Figured

So true, it’s scary.

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Anonymous wrote:Gotta get the poors their own district.

It's not about that. It's about how local needs are different. Poolesville has different weather patterns than Silver Spring. They probably need way more school closures than we do in the southern part of the county.

Most of the covid cases are also in the east side of the county. North county is green. They should be able to open at least hybrid, but they can't because we are one school district.

Yep get the poors with their wage-working Covid-carrying parents outta my school district

You can look at it that way, or you could look at it as a way for the poorer areas to be able to address their needs more easily. They would not have to wait in line to get the hvac fixed along with a whole lot of other schools.

Taxes go to the county. The county could provide more funds to the certain districts, much like Title 1 funding.

Our cluster has about 25% FARMS rate, with at least one Title 1 school, so it's not like we have no FARMs kids

You do know it doesn't really work that way in practice though, right? There's plenty of areas in the country where school districts are by city, so there are lots of examples to look at.

Most of those cities allocate property tax by the city. I'm stating that the budget would be provided at the county level.

Lower income areas could get more funding, again like Title 1 funding. Right now, the budget is for the entire school district which means that poorer areas still have to wait in line to get their needs met.

That's partially true, though most of those areas still use state-level funding to even out some of the inequalities.

And assuming funding is still some through the county (and state), it doesn't really address the example you provided of HVAC systems. Capital improvements would still be allocated differently in the budget, meaning you'd still have a problem of the loudest parents getting the most money.

? budget would include CIP. This would be for the entire budget. Separate districts can prioritize based on their own needs.

I keep reading on here how Silver Spring/TP parents on the loudest, so based on what you wrote, they'd get more funding. win/win.

How does the county decide when and where to build new high schools? Particularly if other schools in the county are underutilized?

Like we do now.. based on population size. If the schools are under utilized they would lose funding. It should follow the population size.

I'm originally from out west. School budget for each school district is determined by the state/county, and there can be multiple school districts in the county.

You can also have reciprocal agreements with the neighboring district when schools in one district get overcrowded.

This is not a novel idea. It can be done.

I don’t know if you’ve figure this out yet but MOCO isn’t filled with big thinkers. Every solution has a problem in this county, and a separate tax.

Figured

Anonymous wrote:Most of the people pushing for smaller districts really just want protection from being redrawn into a less desirable cluster.

Let's say that's true.. and? I'm ok with balancing SES. My cluster has about 25% FARMs. But the pandemic has really shown that having such a large district is really unwieldy and doesn't serve anyone well, lower income or not.