Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

I can see not wanting to join snobby folks at WJ. But you lose credibility with the traffic argument. One can walk from Woodward to WJ in less than 10 minutes. Additional drive is 2 minutes max. You should try it.

I drive this exact route every day as my commute is along Old Georgetown. Sure it can be just a few minutes in the middle of the day but at 7:30 am it's 10 minutes (it's a 22-25 minute walk according to Google maps). Whatever extra time it takes is just an additional item I mentioned and not really the main point. While my kids are not FARMS students, we are Latina and we would likely be considered lower middle class. The families in our cluster would stick out like a sore thumb at WJ. HS is not all about academics. While I don't speak for all VM families, socially and emotionally, I do not believe WJ would be a positive experience for my kids. The traffic piece was just an aside and not my main argument.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

I can see not wanting to join snobby folks at WJ. But you lose credibility with the traffic argument. One can walk from Woodward to WJ in less than 10 minutes. Additional drive is 2 minutes max. You should try it.

Honestly, WJ isn't very snobby.

Of course they are not. VM posters are being irrational (I am referring to real VM posters, not the ones pretending to be just to boost their property value). They are currently zoned for Wheaton that is ranked around 100th in MD (among 220 schools). With the current proposal they will be moving to a school that will end up being around 50th place. That is a nice improvement. But with what is proposed here, they will end up in the school that will be ranked around 15-20th place (new WJ), while Woodward will probably end up around 25-30th place. So everybody benefits academically (LM, Farmland, VM, WW) except new WJ that is hoping to get closer to 10th place (that is probably their ceiling no matter the amount of social engineering). And yet, they are complaining about 5 min extra traffic (at most) and some bogus reasons about not liking WJ crowd.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

I can see not wanting to join snobby folks at WJ. But you lose credibility with the traffic argument. One can walk from Woodward to WJ in less than 10 minutes. Additional drive is 2 minutes max. You should try it.

Honestly, WJ isn't very snobby.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s literally a Luxmanor Realtor who started the change.org petition. She is scared about her commissions going down. What a loser

Just the opposite. She will have plenty of business soon.

As a neighborhood, Luxmanor area is much more appealing than anything WJ has to offer. Property values will be just fine even with weaker HS if it comes to that.

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

I can see not wanting to join snobby folks at WJ. But you lose credibility with the traffic argument. One can walk from Woodward to WJ in less than 10 minutes. Additional drive is 2 minutes max. You should try it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

This honestly shouldn't be about what parents want. It should be about what is best for the kids. The realities are:
- MCPS does not allocate extra resources to high schools based on the number of FARMS students (despite being allocated state funding for this purpose)
- Mountains of research show that concentrated poverty is really bad for kids
- just like wealthy kids there are many bright kids from families with low incomes and many kids that are struggling, but due to the challenges associated with poverty a much larger share of kids from low income families struggle academically
- spreading out kids with more needs across high schools means more resources to support the struggling kids

And how would it be in the best interest of the KIDS in our cluster to drive directly past Woodward just to sit in extra traffic every day to get to WJ? If you're worried about equalizing FARMS rates, you should be concerned about schools like Kennedy. 35% is not high farms. Get a grip.

Um, you need to get a grip. It's a 15 minute drive to either school from VM. And I already explained the benefits. You sound like a Nice White Parent who knows they can insulate their kid from the harms of concentrated poverty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

This honestly shouldn't be about what parents want. It should be about what is best for the kids. The realities are:
- MCPS does not allocate extra resources to high schools based on the number of FARMS students (despite being allocated state funding for this purpose)
- Mountains of research show that concentrated poverty is really bad for kids
- just like wealthy kids there are many bright kids from families with low incomes and many kids that are struggling, but due to the challenges associated with poverty a much larger share of kids from low income families struggle academically
- spreading out kids with more needs across high schools means more resources to support the struggling kids

And how would it be in the best interest of the KIDS in our cluster to drive directly past Woodward just to sit in extra traffic every day to get to WJ? If you're worried about equalizing FARMS rates, you should be concerned about schools like Kennedy. 35% is not high farms. Get a grip.

Anonymous wrote:It’s literally a Luxmanor Realtor who started the change.org petition. She is scared about her commissions going down. What a loser

Just the opposite. She will have plenty of business soon.

Anonymous wrote:VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

This honestly shouldn't be about what parents want. It should be about what is best for the kids. The realities are:
- MCPS does not allocate extra resources to high schools based on the number of FARMS students (despite being allocated state funding for this purpose)
- Mountains of research show that concentrated poverty is really bad for kids
- just like wealthy kids there are many bright kids from families with low incomes and many kids that are struggling, but due to the challenges associated with poverty a much larger share of kids from low income families struggle academically
- spreading out kids with more needs across high schools means more resources to support the struggling kids

Why would a Woodward be a step up from Wheaton with a now higher utilization (going to be over capacity based on all the construction happening now) and an arts magnet?

VM family and we have no interest in joining the snobby rich folks at WJ. We are pleased with the prospect of Woodward, which I assume will be a step up academically and otherwise from Wheaton. And accounting for traffic on Old Georgetown, WJ is also an additional ~10 minute drive from our house than Woodward. Stop trying to use my family (and our ES cluster) as a pawn in your social engineering project.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35% is not high FARMs.

And 13% is too low FARMs for any HS located in North Bethesda. It can only be achieved by social engineering of segregation [b]masquerading as sound school boundary decisions.[b]

Not masquerading very well

Anonymous wrote:35% is not high FARMs.

And 13% is too low FARMs for any HS located in North Bethesda. It can only be achieved by social engineering of segregation masquerading as sound school boundary decisions.

35% is not high FARMs.

WJ parent here. I'm fine with either option.