Anonymous wrote:MCPS staff and parents saying that we are all just trying to sneak into a cluster but not "paying for it" as if this were a private school. It's school board members expressing open disdain that we would feel compelled to argue for what we felt was the best choice for our kids.

Where do they say and express this?

What really bugs me isn't so much the change in the COSA policy -- I get the overcrowding thing. It's the nastiness that is revealed -- MCPS staff and parents saying that we are all just trying to sneak into a cluster but not "paying for it" as if this were a private school. It's school board members expressing open disdain that we would feel compelled to argue for what we felt was the best choice for our kids.

I don't know why I'm surprised but I really am.

Post Re:current and potential immersion parents - watch out sneaky tactic to kick you out of bcc
Board Policy JEE, Student Transfers (Tentative Action)

The Board tentatively approved changes to Policy JEE, Student Transfers, and will now seek input from the public throughout the summer. The policy explains the limited circumstances under which students may be granted a transfer, referred to as a Change of School Assignment (COSA), to attend a school other than their home school or the school assigned in accordance with their Individualized Education Program (IEP). One of the proposed changes is that students who attend a middle school under a COSA would not automatically be placed in the high school to which that middle school articulates. Public comment will be solicited throughout the summer and the comments will be considered by the Board’s Policy Committee this fall before the full Board takes final action. Written comments can be sent to the Office of the Superintendent of Schools, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20850 or to the Board of Education at boe@mcpsmd.org. More information about the policy will be available on the MCPS website by June 21, 2013.

See the proposed changes in the policy
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/boe/meetings/agenda/2013/061313/09.3%20Tentative%20Action%20Policy%20JEE.pdf

Any feedback from the meeting?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is all so confusing! When I was a kid, you just went to the school that was nearby and your friends from kindergarten were in your graduating class senior year. It's sad knowing my kids probably won't have that. MCPS feels a little like the death star to me. But that's just me.

You too can accomplish this by just staying where you are. There are many choices in this system, but if you want it to be simple you can just stay where you are and go to your home school for elementary, middle, and high. I agree that choices tend to make people crazy, but choice is a good thing.

I posted the comment you responded to:
Unfortunately, this is not true. Our home elementary school is very unpopular and parents try to get into magnets for K, and typically end up moving in the first year or two out of disappointment with the school. The middle school also faces serious challenges, and families with the means to do so tend to find ways to avoid it (magnets, move, private). So even if we stuck it out, the likelihood of any of our neighbors or my kids' friends still being there by the time my kid graduates is just about zero. The child sitting next to him at graduation won't be one of the kids he's friends with now. That there are options to jump all over the county for special programs is a double-edged sword. Opportunities are great, but it really makes it hard to strengthen an already struggling local school.

Point taken. Though I'm not sure what we expect the county to do about it. His is a very densely populated area. When I was a kid everyone went to school all the way through together too, but the entire school district only had about 4000 kids. MoCo has 180,000 and growing.

Agreed - MCPS is huge. Hence my perception that MCPS has a lot in common with the death star (which is also a bit scary and very very big).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is all so confusing! When I was a kid, you just went to the school that was nearby and your friends from kindergarten were in your graduating class senior year. It's sad knowing my kids probably won't have that. MCPS feels a little like the death star to me. But that's just me.

You too can accomplish this by just staying where you are. There are many choices in this system, but if you want it to be simple you can just stay where you are and go to your home school for elementary, middle, and high. I agree that choices tend to make people crazy, but choice is a good thing.

I posted the comment you responded to:
Unfortunately, this is not true. Our home elementary school is very unpopular and parents try to get into magnets for K, and typically end up moving in the first year or two out of disappointment with the school. The middle school also faces serious challenges, and families with the means to do so tend to find ways to avoid it (magnets, move, private). So even if we stuck it out, the likelihood of any of our neighbors or my kids' friends still being there by the time my kid graduates is just about zero. The child sitting next to him at graduation won't be one of the kids he's friends with now. That there are options to jump all over the county for special programs is a double-edged sword. Opportunities are great, but it really makes it hard to strengthen an already struggling local school.

Point taken. Though I'm not sure what we expect the county to do about it. His is a very densely populated area. When I was a kid everyone went to school all the way through together too, but the entire school district only had about 4000 kids. MoCo has 180,000 and growing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is all so confusing! When I was a kid, you just went to the school that was nearby and your friends from kindergarten were in your graduating class senior year. It's sad knowing my kids probably won't have that. MCPS feels a little like the death star to me. But that's just me.

You too can accomplish this by just staying where you are. There are many choices in this system, but if you want it to be simple you can just stay where you are and go to your home school for elementary, middle, and high. I agree that choices tend to make people crazy, but choice is a good thing.

I posted the comment you responded to:
Unfortunately, this is not true. Our home elementary school is very unpopular and parents try to get into magnets for K, and typically end up moving in the first year or two out of disappointment with the school. The middle school also faces serious challenges, and families with the means to do so tend to find ways to avoid it (magnets, move, private). So even if we stuck it out, the likelihood of any of our neighbors or my kids' friends still being there by the time my kid graduates is just about zero. The child sitting next to him at graduation won't be one of the kids he's friends with now. That there are options to jump all over the county for special programs is a double-edged sword. Opportunities are great, but it really makes it hard to strengthen an already struggling local school.

Speaks volumes about B-CC, maybe, since RCF Spanish immersion is a well known back door to B-CC. Never heard much enthusiasm for Westland.

Unless you are speaking in moco's special code about demographics.

Westland parent: I know many families with children who have or are about to move onto middle school. Not one of them have moved to SSIMS even though SSIMS is the home school for all of them and a very short walking distance for some.

That speaks volumes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I for one would support changing the COSA policy to tighten it across the board in any school that is over crowded. And, no, removing immersion alone won't solve the problem - but if I can take care of a chunk of a problem in one fell swoop, of course I am going to take it. 20-25 kids per year is 80-100 total. That will go a long way toward reducing over-crowding.

I have a (non-immersion) freshman at BCC in Spanish IV, and guess what? It's a mixed class of immersion/regular kids. There is no special immersion Spanish IV. In fact, even at Westland in grades 6&7 there are only 2 classes that are immersion, a special Spanish class and world studies. Their education is not that unique. You had a special program for a while, and that is what it is, but it's over at 7th grade.

I am sorry that it doesn't work to keep your kids here. And yes it will be an adjustment for your families, but it doesn't work.

And why should my kids, who live here, have to attend a grossly overcrowded school to accomodate kids who don't live here?

What about the 4 - 5 kids that I know of who go to Westland and don't live in MoCo at all? Or the ones at BCC who come from DC and pay tuition?! Shouldn't MoCo kids have priority over them?

Ummmm....If you read the first part of my post, it says "I for one would support changing the COSA policy to tighten it across the board in any school that is over crowded." So, sure, get rid of almost all COSAs to ANY school that is overcrowded.

The only high school that has worse overcrowding than B-CC is Clarksburg and they have a large enough campus to accommodate additions. B-CC is very limited in that regard. Limiting COSAs and disallowing DC students from coming in and paying tuition is the only responsible short term management of this problem. The fact that your child will be disappointed is unfortunate, but he/she is not the only grain of sand on the MCPS beach.

Anonymous wrote:This is all so confusing! When I was a kid, you just went to the school that was nearby and your friends from kindergarten were in your graduating class senior year. It's sad knowing my kids probably won't have that. MCPS feels a little like the death star to me. But that's just me.

You too can accomplish this by just staying where you are. There are many choices in this system, but if you want it to be simple you can just stay where you are and go to your home school for elementary, middle, and high. I agree that choices tend to make people crazy, but choice is a good thing.

Anonymous wrote:Argument: RCF immersion kids don't have to stay together.
Counter-argument: Yes they do! Kids in Damascus will be disadvantaged.

The counter-argument is a straw man: a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, given that the opponent was not talking about kids in Damascus -- IF there are no kids in Damascus in RCF immersion.

Plus, anyway, why are you chopping logic? All I did was wonder whether there are kids from Damascus in RCF immersion, which seems to me a reasonable question, given the distance.

Ah see now this is straw man... You say I responded to why "immersion kids don't have to stay together "with "Damascus kids will be disadvantaged "when no such exchange took place.

In fact, a poster said they don't care about whether their kid goes to Westland because SSIMS is their home school. My response was those in Damascus or almost anywhere else in the county have to care because they don't have immersion at their homeschool.

You replaced the original argument that preceded my post with a fake "straw man" argument that never happened.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also don't have a dog in this fight, but I wonder: if a lot of parents in BCC feel the immersion kids overcrowd their high school, is there any movement afoot to have the immersion program transferred to a different cluster? I ask this in good faith and not to rock the boat. It seems to me that at least some of the BCC families benefit immensely from having such convenient geographic access to this program and they would probably fight to keep it (and maybe that's a bad assumption, I honestly don't know). And if they get this benefit, it seems a little harsh to turn around and kick the out of boundary families out as they approach their final years of school rather than treating them as if BCC is their home cluster, given how they've been part of it for so long.

I wonder the same. I'm the one with the K student in immersion and really I don't care where he goes - I'd just like it to continue at a place where he can stay with his friends in an immersion program through HS. THAT would be ideal. BCC or not.

Westland parent here. I agree. I would have been just as happy to send my kid to SSIMS if the program were disbanded. But you can't pick and choose -- either the program is there or it isn't.

Anonymous wrote:I for one would support changing the COSA policy to tighten it across the board in any school that is over crowded. And, no, removing immersion alone won't solve the problem - but if I can take care of a chunk of a problem in one fell swoop, of course I am going to take it. 20-25 kids per year is 80-100 total. That will go a long way toward reducing over-crowding.

I have a (non-immersion) freshman at BCC in Spanish IV, and guess what? It's a mixed class of immersion/regular kids. There is no special immersion Spanish IV. In fact, even at Westland in grades 6&7 there are only 2 classes that are immersion, a special Spanish class and world studies. Their education is not that unique. You had a special program for a while, and that is what it is, but it's over at 7th grade.

I am sorry that it doesn't work to keep your kids here. And yes it will be an adjustment for your families, but it doesn't work.

And why should my kids, who live here, have to attend a grossly overcrowded school to accomodate kids who don't live here?

What about the 4 - 5 kids that I know of who go to Westland and don't live in MoCo at all? Or the ones at BCC who come from DC and pay tuition?! Shouldn't MoCo kids have priority over them?