Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, one benefit would be that at least some low-income kids would have access to the crazy 6-digit amounts that rich schools’ PTAs raise every year for “enrichment.” Lower and middle income schools are busy cutting Box Tops to get a few hundred dollars while the rich schools are pulling in obscene amounts to be used for new technology, books, field trips, after-school activities. This is not a case of loving your children more or valuing education more. Normal people just can’t cut $1000 checks for the PTA.

Exactly. It’s simply about spreading the wealth—in a mandatory or forced but “charitable” way.

Our rich school donates upwards of 20K a year to Title 1 schools. So it's happening on some levels. But that 20K will pale compared to the costs of what MCPS is spending on the boundary survey and the chaos that will ensue when they make the recommendations.

Chaos! CHAOS, I TELL YOU!!!!!!!

Which recommendations are they going to make?

It seems appropriate here to remind people that public schools are a public good and that taxes are not user fees. If you want the user fee model, that's what private schools are for.

Anonymous wrote:It's been going on for 40 years. How old does it have to be for you to stop considering it an "experiment"?

Also, did you not know about this when you moved there?

Anonymous wrote:People, don't kid yourselves, this is already happening. At Rosemary Hills Elementary School,Young K-2 kids in Chevy Chase are bussed out of their neighborhood miles away out to Silver Spring in snow effort to improve the demographics of the school which is surrounded by Section 8 housing.

Then the section 8 kids are busted to Chevy Chase Elementary 3-5. Now MCPS took away our 6th grade and enlarged our gifted and talented program which imports even more kids from other neighborhoods. Our neighborhood school has been decimated. It is 70% kids who don't live in the area.

The parents are fed up and the neighborhood parents who run the Chevy Chase Foundation aren't even doing a social fundraiser this year. Because of course, the parents are burned out, constantly being asked for money by the school and are starting to yank their kids for private like most of the neighborhood. Most neighborhood CHCH families can afford private. 75% of the neighborhood is private precisely because of RHPS.

The RHPS split has been a 30 year horrible experiment and it is coming to a school near you. They will expand it. The county loves it, takes pride in it and absolutely will bus your kids. Whitman and WJ WC clusters, your bubble time is up!

Also see the catchment middle school Silver Creek. Rock Creek Forest is no where near but is busted in for diversity. Guess where most of the trouble in the school comes from. Bet you already know. "Elite" Chevy Chase families have been the Guinea pigs for years. Now the rest of county will get a taste of this mess.

Anonymous wrote:There is a significant faction pushing for MCPS to even our FARMs rates as much as possible among MCPS schools. What “as much as possible” means and whether the BOE will do it over the objections of low income communities remains to be seen. Some of this came out of the RM5/Bayard Rustin boundary study where Twinbrook was left with a much higher FARMs rate than the other schools in the cluster. But the Twinbrook community was not supportive of a change to “integrate” with the other elementary schools in the cluster. Gaithersburg also relatively recently came out strongly in favor of an addition to Gaithersburg ES rather than “integrate” with Wootton elementary schools. So it certainly remains to be seen how it will play out. But balancing FARMs rate is a primary goal of some people involved in this process.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids graduated from W cluster, my youngest last year. I always thought MCPS was great and I didn't notice any recent changes. What is making families now reevaluate MCPS? Sincere question - I must have missed something, or it must've happened after my kids were out. Thanks.

People are (over-)reacting to the upcoming systemwide boundary analysis.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/publicinfo/boundary-analysis/

Would you prefer parents under-react? I’d rather have over active community members anytime.

I would prefer that parents react to the consultant's actual report and any subsequent decisions MCPS may make.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Bethesda and Silver Spring crowd is too focused on protecting or destroying the top W schools. The people who would be moving fast would be people from the poorer Ws and people from the schools in the mid range schools being moved into a lower school. Heck there would be panic even at a very low ranking school like Einstein if a few neighborhoods were sent up to Kennedy.

Boundary changes that reach far into any of the schools below to pull out wealthier kids and send them further away to poor school will result in lots of people moving away fast.

Clarksburg to Seneca Valley
Blair to Einstein or Wheaton
Blair, Northwood, Einstein or Wheaton to Kennedy
Quince Orchard to Northwest
Northwest to Seneca Valley
Sherwood to anywhere in the DCC
Wootton/RM to Gaithersburg or Rockville
Walter Johnson to Einstein or anywhere in the DCC

It's literally 2 miles from Northwest High School to Seneca Valley High School. You can bike there in 10 minutes.

Anonymous wrote:The Bethesda and Silver Spring crowd is too focused on protecting or destroying the top W schools. The people who would be moving fast would be people from the poorer Ws and people from the schools in the mid range schools being moved into a lower school. Heck there would be panic even at a very low ranking school like Einstein if a few neighborhoods were sent up to Kennedy.

Boundary changes that reach far into any of the schools below to pull out wealthier kids and send them further away to poor school will result in lots of people moving away fast.

Clarksburg to Seneca Valley
Blair to Einstein or Wheaton
Blair, Northwood, Einstein or Wheaton to Kennedy
Quince Orchard to Northwest
Northwest to Seneca Valley
Sherwood to anywhere in the DCC
Wootton/RM to Gaithersburg or Rockville
Walter Johnson to Einstein or anywhere in the DCC

There are studies that show that low income kids do better in schools with lower FARMS rate. If you can show me a study that shows that a high performing student does worse in a poor school, then you have an argument. Otherwise, you're just fear mongering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is all so exhausting. I’m already living in the horrific dystopia you are imagining — a school with 50+% FARMS — and it’s FINE. Actually better than fine. My child is thriving.

You think that your child is thriving because half of your child's peers can't pass basic grade level tests. Its EASY to think you are doing great when the competition is so low and the bar set even lower. Do you play sports with people over 95 years old? I bet you're a real athlete and just thriving at that sport.

DP... wow, you're an a$$.

If a student is taking all APs/honors, getting straight As and at the same time have great after school activities that the student enjoys, and a great social group, isn't that person "thriving"? I bet such a student is happier and has a pretty good chance of getting into a great university compared to a student at wealthy school who is miserable trying to keep up with the high pressure cooker environment, and who has to self medicate to cope with not just peer pressure but parental pressure.

-signed a parent in the RM cluster

So what if they are taking AP classes as the quality of these classes can vary. Post back id your kid passes with 5s!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is all so exhausting. I’m already living in the horrific dystopia you are imagining — a school with 50+% FARMS — and it’s FINE. Actually better than fine. My child is thriving.

You think that your child is thriving because half of your child's peers can't pass basic grade level tests. Its EASY to think you are doing great when the competition is so low and the bar set even lower. Do you play sports with people over 95 years old? I bet you're a real athlete and just thriving at that sport.

DP... wow, you're an a$$.

If a student is taking all APs/honors, getting straight As and at the same time have great after school activities that the student enjoys, and a great social group, isn't that person "thriving"? I bet such a student is happier and has a pretty good chance of getting into a great university compared to a student at wealthy school who is miserable trying to keep up with the high pressure cooker environment, and who has to self medicate to cope with not just peer pressure but parental pressure.

-signed a parent in the RM cluster

Anonymous wrote:

This is all so exhausting. I’m already living in the horrific dystopia you are imagining — a school with 50+% FARMS — and it’s FINE. Actually better than fine. My child is thriving.

You think that your child is thriving because half of your child's peers can't pass basic grade level tests. Its EASY to think you are doing great when the competition is so low and the bar set even lower. Do you play sports with people over 95 years old? I bet you're a real athlete and just thriving at that sport.

Anonymous wrote:One of the RM cluster parents here.

What I’m about to say is going to be Un-PC. Many people will get upset and I’ll be flamed to high-heavens. This is not something one can say out loud.

Disruptions in the classroom - do we all know who is causing the disruptions in the classroom? The disruptions that take teacher away from educating our kids? The disruptions that can ruin a day for our kids? The ADHD kids or kids with other emotional issues. Usually white kids from good families.

Negative social stuff - do we know who causes the negative social stuff for my kids? The ADHD kids with their impulsivity tend to say mean, hurtful things to my kids. Other groups causing a negative social environment around my kids - mean, popular white kids. You know the type. My kids are more negatively influenced socially and academically by those groups of people than they are by the riff raff.

If you are so concerned about your kids not being disrupted in the classroom or by negative social influences, you’d better start a campaign to remove ADHD/emotionally troubled white kids from your kid’s school too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In a way, you are right. It won't take true bussing across county to break up communities. At most, 20 min ride.

Folks, this complete lack of consideration for your children and property ia completely characteristic of the entitled worthless social justice warriors. What they want to do is legal. Once they frame the argument in terms of segregation and how property lines were drawn in the 1950s (who cares?), battle is over. Any objection like "personal responsibility" and "social order" break against a finely honed victimhood complex displayed by every one of those activists.

Running candidates who share your views and voting for them is one approach; moving is another.

That sounds a lot like the arguments people used to oppose school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s.

Families who value education are interested in history, right?