Anonymous wrote:Not an expert in all of this, and it sure would have helped if instead of reading from a script that laid out the information, the consultants and MCPS staff laid out the reasons, they why behind the information, but:

-BCC and Whitman probably "not touched" as much because of the walk zones. Not because of perceived equity issues/favoritism toward a specific ethnicity or socioeconomic class

-lower capacity numbers at WJ and Einstein because there are a million new buildings in the pipeline, and they don't want both of those schools to be severly overcrowded again in just a few years

Anonymous wrote:Not an expert in all of this, and it sure would have helped if instead of reading from a script that laid out the information, the consultants and MCPS staff laid out the reasons, they why behind the information, but:

-BCC and Whitman probably "not touched" as much because of the walk zones. Not because of perceived equity issues/favoritism toward a specific ethnicity or socioeconomic class

-lower capacity numbers at WJ and Einstein because there are a million new buildings in the pipeline, and they don't want both of those schools to be severly overcrowded again in just a few years

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

MCPS has made clear these two things are inextricably connected so I don't know how you discuss one without the other

It would be helpful for people to be more explicit with HOW the combination is impacting them. There seem to be a lot of people from DCC who are commenting on boundary threads about how the end of the regional programs will hurt them. Presumably this means they don't want to attend their home school, but it is unclear if the boundaries changed so that their home school is now even worse.

No, you are misrepresenting their posts. You have a narrative you want to push and will push it no matter what we say.

well then explain.

This has been explained over and over. The DCC helps match kids with a school that is a good fit for them. For example, people with an artsy kid who like Einstein the way it is and want to send their kids there are frustrated because it will lose a lots of arts kids (in the performing arts in particular) and get weaker in the arts.

It would be helpful for people to be more explicit with HOW the combination is impacting them. There seem to be a lot of people from DCC who are commenting on boundary threads about how the end of the regional programs will hurt them

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

MCPS has made clear these two things are inextricably connected so I don't know how you discuss one without the other

It would be helpful for people to be more explicit with HOW the combination is impacting them. There seem to be a lot of people from DCC who are commenting on boundary threads about how the end of the regional programs will hurt them. Presumably this means they don't want to attend their home school, but it is unclear if the boundaries changed so that their home school is now even worse.

No, you are misrepresenting their posts. You have a narrative you want to push and will push it no matter what we say.

well then explain.

This has been explained over and over. The DCC helps match kids with a school that is a good fit for them. For example, people with an artsy kid who like Einstein the way it is and want to send their kids there are frustrated because it will lose a lots of arts kids (in the performing arts in particular) and get weaker in the arts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

MCPS has made clear these two things are inextricably connected so I don't know how you discuss one without the other

It would be helpful for people to be more explicit with HOW the combination is impacting them. There seem to be a lot of people from DCC who are commenting on boundary threads about how the end of the regional programs will hurt them. Presumably this means they don't want to attend their home school, but it is unclear if the boundaries changed so that their home school is now even worse.

No, you are misrepresenting their posts. You have a narrative you want to push and will push it no matter what we say.

well then explain.

This has been explained over and over. The DCC helps match kids with a school that is a good fit for them. For example, people with an artsy kid who like Einstein the way it is and want to send their kids there are frustrated because it will lose a lots of arts kids (in the performing arts in particular) and get weaker in the arts.

Right now you have to pick between arts and academics. With the new plan both will decline. Einstein has some strong arts kids but not like the other schools as the classes are already limited. Kids take the same classes year after year as there is no place to advance. If you want strong arts you have to pay privately which is expensive.

Not true. My child had no prior art experience when entering Einstein—just what he learned from his 8th grade art teacher. After spending four years in Einstein’s Art Magnet Program, he was offered nearly full scholarships to RISD, MICA, and SCAD. If it weren’t for Einstein, we could never have afforded to send him to those schools. I will always be thankful for Einstein.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Because CO wants to please our superintendent. The boundary study doesn’t touch a bit of BCC, and the best criteria-based programs are given to BCC (except the SMCS in Blair as they know that move will infuriate parents from Ws).

Isn’t the company doing the studies out of state and has no clue about the distances or needs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

MCPS has made clear these two things are inextricably connected so I don't know how you discuss one without the other

It would be helpful for people to be more explicit with HOW the combination is impacting them. There seem to be a lot of people from DCC who are commenting on boundary threads about how the end of the regional programs will hurt them. Presumably this means they don't want to attend their home school, but it is unclear if the boundaries changed so that their home school is now even worse.

No, you are misrepresenting their posts. You have a narrative you want to push and will push it no matter what we say.

well then explain.

This has been explained over and over. The DCC helps match kids with a school that is a good fit for them. For example, people with an artsy kid who like Einstein the way it is and want to send their kids there are frustrated because it will lose a lots of arts kids (in the performing arts in particular) and get weaker in the arts.

Right now you have to pick between arts and academics. With the new plan both will decline. Einstein has some strong arts kids but not like the other schools as the classes are already limited. Kids take the same classes year after year as there is no place to advance. If you want strong arts you have to pay privately which is expensive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Because CO wants to please our superintendent. The boundary study doesn’t touch a bit of BCC, and the best criteria-based programs are given to BCC (except the SMCS in Blair as they know that move will infuriate parents from Ws).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor

I’m not sure who’s conducting the analysis for these studies, but this really doesn’t make sense to me. Why does BCC get a humanities program when Northwood already has a Law Academy, Environmental Academy, Music and Dance Academy, and a Humanities and Media Academy—all related to the humanities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give that to Northwood?


Why would Einstein have an education program when there’s so little interest that the school was considering cutting it? The Visual and Performing Arts Academy at Einstein houses the majority of its students—why not make that one unified program and give Einstein IB as well? If someone actually took the time to analyze this base off student interest , there wouldn’t be so much panic but instead we got some lazy, last minute slop.

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious the kids who don’t have enough math to graduate… how did they wind up being so advanced? What were your elementary/middle schools? My kids are zoned for Einstein and have done highest level offered at Elementary and Middle School (Sligo) so come in two years ahead. Einstein has AP Calc AB and BC and AP Stats as well as IB math. How many MCPS kids really need more? What percentage even take MVC?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please try to keep this thread about the second round options. There are other threads about the regional program plan.

The second round options impact families who are being switched schools. The second round reduces student numbers, which is good but reduces staffing which leads to cuts in courses. Some schools only have the bare minimum.

Is size of Eisntein different in the first round vs the second round?

Yes

The concern with the combination of the boundary study and the program analysis is that based on the proposals, Einstein will have fewer students, which is good in that it relieves overcrowding, but has the additional effect of taking teachers and other staff away from the school because staff are allocated based on enrollment.

This concerns people because Einstein currently does not offer a wide variety of coursework, especially in STEM, so fewer teachers would make this worse. There are kids that can't actually fulfill their graduation requirements at Einstein because they came in advanced in math and there aren't enough math classes. In addition, the proposed boundaries increase Einstein's FARMS rate somewhat, which is not necessarily a bad thing by itself but in combination with lower enrollment may decrease the percentage of high resourced students that come to the school prepared for advanced STEM classes.

In addition, the current DCC system brings in kids from throughout the DCC schools that are interested in the arts to participate in Einstein's VAPA program. However, without the DCC, there may be less interest in VAPA from the local population, and that might also lead to reduced offerings at Einstein. MCPS has proposed keeping a visual arts magnet and an interest based education program at Einstein, but the visual arts magnet will become less prestigious since it will be regional and countywide. Einstein does currently have an education program (education as in courses on becoming an educator), but there was limited interest in that and they were actually proposing eliminating it.

On top of all this, they are proposing putting an IB magnet and a humanities magnet at BCC. Einstein currently has an IB program, but it is very small. With the regional IB at BCC, this has a very real risk of drawing too many IB kids away from Einstein to sustain Einstein's local program.

In the meantime, BCC will not just keep but expand its existing IB program, add a criteria based humanities program, and keep its other local programming like its own education program and its engineering program neither of which will be impacted by any of these changes since their boundaries aren't changing and they don't rely on out of boundary students to sustain their existing programming.
repor