Anonymous wrote:Three years ago, Viers Mill had universal free lunch for one year. That is why they have greater than 95% for "now or in the past" FARMs. Literally every kid (including the PEP classes for 3yos, meaning some current K) who was there in the 2023-24 school year is counted in the percentage.

I've been a VM parent for 10 years. Nobody I've heard from here wants to go to WJ. For many reasons. VM families have been happy mostly with Wheaton/DCC, and most people seem reasonably okay with Woodward.

The VM community is super tight and protective. Maybe it feels like WJ is racist/classist/whatever, but mostly I think it's that those feeder schools operate in completely different worlds.

Anonymous wrote:Yea, Farmland's position on this invalid. BOE will see through it.

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Anonymous wrote:Having a high proportion of students experiencing financial constraint (as might be represented by ever-FARMS) is more impactful to the learning environment in one respect than having a high proportion of students in rather well off situations in the other. Lower percentages of high need are more important than higher percentages of great wealth. It doesn't matter as much that WJ isn't as uniformly wealthy as Whitman or Churchill. It matters more that Woodward will have a substantially greater challenge to manage.

That is, unless the system differentially resources schools enough to effectively meet the needs on an equivalent basis (i.e., such that any individual student, with whichever levels of individual/family resource and academic ability, might expect a similar experience for themselves -- not the school population as a whole -- whether they might attend one school or another).

There Woodward folks don’t see the Wheaton and Kennedy families saying the same thing about them. Maybe Woodward should take on some more FARMS to improve Wheaton and Kennedy. That would be equitable.

Possibly. But shifting along the margins between next door catchments offers only marginal progress towards equity. And bussing to achieve parity not only is detrimental to community building, but is rather expensive in addition to being disfavored by most, rich or not, who would lose time, flexibility and elements of the school experience when bussed far from home.

Or, again, MCPS could really move funding around as suggested (considerably more than Taylor's proposed operating budget) to make it such that one didn't really care, from an academic perspective, where one lived, because the opportunities everywhere would be reasonably similar.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a high proportion of students experiencing financial constraint (as might be represented by ever-FARMS) is more impactful to the learning environment in one respect than having a high proportion of students in rather well off situations in the other. Lower percentages of high need are more important than higher percentages of great wealth. It doesn't matter as much that WJ isn't as uniformly wealthy as Whitman or Churchill. It matters more that Woodward will have a substantially greater challenge to manage.

That is, unless the system differentially resources schools enough to effectively meet the needs on an equivalent basis (i.e., such that any individual student, with whichever levels of individual/family resource and academic ability, might expect a similar experience for themselves -- not the school population as a whole -- whether they might attend one school or another).

There Woodward folks don’t see the Wheaton and Kennedy families saying the same thing about them. Maybe Woodward should take on some more FARMS to improve Wheaton and Kennedy. That would be equitable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having a high proportion of students experiencing financial constraint (as might be represented by ever-FARMS) is more impactful to the learning environment in one respect than having a high proportion of students in rather well off situations in the other. Lower percentages of high need are more important than higher percentages of great wealth. It doesn't matter as much that WJ isn't as uniformly wealthy as Whitman or Churchill. It matters more that Woodward will have a substantially greater challenge to manage.

That is, unless the system differentially resources schools enough to effectively meet the needs on an equivalent basis (i.e., such that any individual student, with whichever levels of individual/family resource and academic ability, might expect a similar experience for themselves -- not the school population as a whole -- whether they might attend one school or another).

35% FARMS is very low. Woodward makes it seem like this is the worst in the county. 35% will be one of the wealthiest.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm super confused by the whole debate as I haven't been tracking it very well.
One thing I saw on a listserve is that the proposal being pushed on the change petition would put WJ at over 90% capacity. That seems dumb when we've waited about 15 years for the new high school that was supposed to relieve the massive over-congestion -- it will just be oversubscribed again in a couple of years and then we'll wait another 20 for a fix to that?

My general feelings about HS are that --

they should be between 80-90% capacity;

the kids should not have to drive far to get there since the classes already start go-awful early and ideally there should be public bus lines to help them get there;

the specialized magnet idea is really dumb (my hometown went to a model where all the schools were specialty-focus charter-type schools and they are basically all just bad -- bad arts focus, bad tech focus, bad journalism focus, bad law/justice focus, etc. etc.) -- these gimmicks almost never add to the education plus most 13 year olds aren't in a position to be picking a focus area anyway.

It’s not dumb if TWENTY-FOUR extra busses of kids are choosing to go to RMIB. Or all the kids going to the Wheaton and Blair magnets.

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Anonymous wrote:We’re a VM family was clear in the original options that our neighborhood was a bargaining chip for MCPS, especially in the options that split the school in half along beach drive. We are happy that Taylor’s rev keeps VM together.

We support any elementary school that wants to avoid split articulation for HS. We don’t support well-off parents deciding and proposing which less well-off families get booted out of their school.

The irony of this whole argument is that I grew up a FARMS kid and now I’m teaching your children, but now my kids aren’t good enough to be in a school with yours?

This feels a lot like the podcast Nice White Parents.

I am not aware of any option that had VM with split articulation. That is a complete non-issue. Taylor's recommendation does introduce split articulations for other schools but I guess that is OK for you.

There were several options with split articulation for VM. One version had Holiday Park going to North Bethesda MS and Randolph Hills going somewhere else. Another split us between Tilden and somewhere else.

+1. Farmland will ask to go to WJ next.

Anonymous wrote:You, I suspect are neither. Most posts here pretending to be VM or WW are actually from the same poster who is trying to cash in on projected property value increase for homes in the new WJ zone.