Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:50     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

I think it's completely wild that the consultant added 500 seats to Wheaton with no written documentation to justify it, and all the west county families are like "this is great!"

This is why we can't have nice things, people.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:50     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

It's very unfair to Whitman families.

More diversity should be added in Whitman. Leaving it untouched is a missed oppurtunity.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:50     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:Can some one share the regional magnet programs in Woodward region?


Art, Design, Performing Arts, Communication.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:50     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.


Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.


Exactly. I am completely fine with all the options for my kid and how it affects my family (we're not zoned for Wheaton), but as a taxpayer this is absolutely maddening. Such a blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility in a time of massive fiscal uncertainty. MCPS administrators are like children who think money grows on trees. Then they will come crying to taxpayers begging them to pay more while thousands are out of work and have possibly left the region entirely.


Or maybe lots of WHJ-zoned families will return to the public school, once the out of control overcrowding is finally fixed. Many in my neighborhood go to private schools in order to avoid over-crowded WJ. Now they will once again have reasonable access to their tax-funded local school.


So in this scenario WJ is at capacity and Wheaton wildly overcrowded. Nice!

And BCC and Whitman are untouched.


If they're untouched why are their utilization percentages changing?


So? What’s your point? They’re basically unchanged from their current demographics. These options try to minimize the overall impact to areas not affected by the new school. That’s the point. Also, MCPS clearly saw these well funded, well organized parents push back on material changes to their clusters and the Board caved. Are you surprised?


There is nothing wrong about that. What’s really wrong is trying to social engineer and impact more people than necessary.


PP and I agree. I’m questioning the posters who are miffed that Whitman or BCC aren’t “affected” as if that was the entire point of this study rather than focusing the impact on the area where the new school operates. It reads like sour grapes.


It reads like sour grapes to you because you think the school system is supposed to serve your community and not mine, and dgaf about the continued overcrowding in East county they are proposing


So where’s the well organized and funded push back from the DCC? What do you want? Forced busing and non contiguous clusters? Elimination of clusters entirely and countywide lottery? Instead of complaining, try suggesting something feasible recognizing that when you pull on one string, you affect many others. Oh, and maybe this isn’t the study to do that since the focus is on Woodward, not the DCC. Trying to solve all of the county’s issues at once isn’t always possible.


People who used the term "forced busing" in this context are POSs

Bye


Spare me your faux outrage. You don’t have anything constructive to add. Want a safe space to tell why the current options are horrible and you know better?
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:50     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:They will never make everyone happy but these options make the most sense. Also there is supposed to be a demographic cliff at some point, with fewer children being born resulting of course in fewer students in our schools.


Except on facility utilization and demographics, two of the four factors and these options are terrible on these


Might as well give up on trying to equalize demographics unless you want super long bus rides for poor kids.

Or change housing policy.


No, they could have done better instead of making everything worse. There is zero excuse, by the way, for 2 schools within a mile of each other to have such vastly different FARMS rates


Yes, a good obsrvation.

WJ and Woodward is less than mile and yet double the FARMS rate in Woodward compared to WJ.

A very poor job. Some time it's not possible to balance evrything, but that's not the case here.


It is, however, much better than getting bused to East county. WJ has enormous wealth living within the walk zone. Bethesda has gotten richer and richer..
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:48     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And despite assuming this extra capacity at Wheaton that doesn't yet exist, they still leave Wheaton overcrowded over that inflated number. Wow.


Yup and WJ is now at sub 80% capacity. Shows what they care about.


Exactly. I am completely fine with all the options for my kid and how it affects my family (we're not zoned for Wheaton), but as a taxpayer this is absolutely maddening. Such a blatant disregard for fiscal responsibility in a time of massive fiscal uncertainty. MCPS administrators are like children who think money grows on trees. Then they will come crying to taxpayers begging them to pay more while thousands are out of work and have possibly left the region entirely.


Or maybe lots of WHJ-zoned families will return to the public school, once the out of control overcrowding is finally fixed. Many in my neighborhood go to private schools in order to avoid over-crowded WJ. Now they will once again have reasonable access to their tax-funded local school.


So in this scenario WJ is at capacity and Wheaton wildly overcrowded. Nice!

And BCC and Whitman are untouched.


If they're untouched why are their utilization percentages changing?


So? What’s your point? They’re basically unchanged from their current demographics. These options try to minimize the overall impact to areas not affected by the new school. That’s the point. Also, MCPS clearly saw these well funded, well organized parents push back on material changes to their clusters and the Board caved. Are you surprised?


There is nothing wrong about that. What’s really wrong is trying to social engineer and impact more people than necessary.


PP and I agree. I’m questioning the posters who are miffed that Whitman or BCC aren’t “affected” as if that was the entire point of this study rather than focusing the impact on the area where the new school operates. It reads like sour grapes.


Because if you include a broader area in the study, it makes more sense to make more smaller changer than larger sledgehammer changes. if the “entire point” of the study was “where the new school operates” then why was it even in the study? I know heaven forbid Whitman became even slightly more diverse racially or socioeconomically, the horrors.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:48     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:Can some one share the regional magnet programs in Woodward region?


I remember it was region 3, so wanted to see what programs will be in each HS in this region.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:48     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Can some one share the regional magnet programs in Woodward region?
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:47     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

I think one message from this is that something needs to happen in the eastern part of the county to alleviate overcrowding. Eg more capacity.

Moving a ton of kids around seems to not work for a variety of reasons.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:45     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone been able to figure out some shorthand for understanding the goals of each option? I.e. are there some that minimize split articulation, some that balance building utilization more equally, etc?


That would have been a nice thing for the consultant to do instead of making everyone sift through the tables and maps
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:45     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:They will never make everyone happy but these options make the most sense. Also there is supposed to be a demographic cliff at some point, with fewer children being born resulting of course in fewer students in our schools.


Except on facility utilization and demographics, two of the four factors and these options are terrible on these


Might as well give up on trying to equalize demographics unless you want super long bus rides for poor kids.

Or change housing policy.


No, they could have done better instead of making everything worse. There is zero excuse, by the way, for 2 schools within a mile of each other to have such vastly different FARMS rates


Yes, a good obsrvation.

WJ and Woodward is less than mile and yet double the FARMS rate in Woodward compared to WJ.

A very poor job. Some time it's not possible to balance evrything, but that's not the case here.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:45     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Not clear whether the data sets include new programs or not. They did not address that on the webinar.


+1 or how and with what money they are adding 500 seats to Wheaton

They should not call this community engagement if they aren't actually hearing from the community. They should just send out the powerpoint with the script they are READING instead of wasting people's time.


I don't think they are adding 500 seats to Wheaton. They are just combining the existing Wheaton + Edison capacity and the projected Wheaton + Edison enrollment.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:44     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:They will never make everyone happy but these options make the most sense. Also there is supposed to be a demographic cliff at some point, with fewer children being born resulting of course in fewer students in our schools.


Except on facility utilization and demographics, two of the four factors and these options are terrible on these


Might as well give up on trying to equalize demographics unless you want super long bus rides for poor kids.

Or change housing policy.


And most poor kids and their families want to attend the local school. Just like the rich kids. Funny how that works.


If the suggestion is to increase the offerings and quality of schools in poorer neighborhoods support that. I don’t know HOW to do that, but it wouldn’t seem to be accomplished through busing.
Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:43     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Is there an assumption that regional magnets program will have same number of seats in each school? How that is incoroporated in these numbers for utilization etc.


Yeah. MCPS is assuming all regional magnets will operate at capacity so those numbers will balance out.

That won’t happen, though. Some schools will lose more students than they gain. And some schools will max their magnet enrollment and retain home school students if the magnets mean better classes for the whole school. That’s what happens with Blair now. DCC kids don’t get in through the lottery because all the Blair-zoned choose it and home-school students get priority in the lottery. So you’ll see schools where no one leaves and the magnets are full. You'll see other schools where no one comes, and home-school students leave for other magnets.


Yah, that's what I was thinking. These neat looking numbers will look vastly different depending on school.

For example, behavior of current WJ families will look way different depending on them being in WJ vs Woodward. Blair example is a good one.

Anonymous
Post 10/06/2025 12:42     Subject: Second round options for Woodward boundary study

Anonymous wrote:Not clear whether the data sets include new programs or not. They did not address that on the webinar.


+1 or how and with what money they are adding 500 seats to Wheaton

They should not call this community engagement if they aren't actually hearing from the community. They should just send out the powerpoint with the script they are READING instead of wasting people's time.