January 17, 2020 | by Deirdre Byrne

Parents Raise Concerns at MCPS Boundary Study Meeting

More than 250 people attended Montgomery County Public Schools’ boundary analysis meeting at Northwest High School in Germantown on Tuesday.

The project, led by contractors from WXY Architecture, is currently in its initial phase, which consists of gathering public opinion. MCPS officials say the analysis is intended to examine the school system’s current boundaries and gain an understanding of how the boundaries can be refined to prevent overcrowding.

In June, WXY Architecture will submit a report about the boundary analysis study to the Board of Education. During the meeting, attendees were receptive to MCPS and WXY officials, but at times things got heated.

Many parents are skeptical about the data MCPS is collecting and fear the possibility of their children switching schools. However, MCPS officials insist that the result of the study is meant for analysis, not to make recommendations about the current school boundaries.

More than half of the people attending the meeting were from the southwest and northwest parts of Montgomery County near Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac, Poolesville, Germantown, Dickerson, and Boyds.

At the end of the meeting, attendees were polled and only 5% of people said that they learned a great deal about the current challenges MCPS faces. 58% of attendees said they were still skeptical about the boundary analysis.

There’s one more boundary analysis meeting coming up on Jan. 23 at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.

Once the project enters its second phase, WXY Architecture will start testing ideas and metrics.

Tweet Recap of Northwest Boundary Study Meeting

Here’s a play-by-play of the Northeest High School Boundary Analysis Study meeting in tweet form.

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Deirdre Byrne

About Deirdre Byrne

Deirdre Byrne is a social media coordinator for Montgomery Community Media. She can be reached at dbyrne@mymcmedia.org or on twitter at @DeirdreByrneMCM.
View all posts by Deirdre Byrne

Comments

One Response to “Parents Raise Concerns at MCPS Boundary Study Meeting”

  1. Avatar
    On January 18, 2020 at 12:12 pm responded with... #

    Good job doing fair reporting on the issue. Thanks for showing the concerns of the parents along with the statements from mcps staff and wxy, without any additional inferences.
    A number of folks entered survey options the way they did probably not because they don’t think boundary review should be fine, but because they do not trust this BOE to execute it transparently. If there was a survey option that asked about trust in BOE and MCPS with a rating system in next meeting you will be able to link the survey answers more clearly. Also suggest that if you want actionable data then instead of vague terms like occasionally, specific time periods like 10 years or 5 years should be provided in survey questions that ask about boundary analysis review.. e eryone has a different defi ution of occasionally , also we were not provided a definitions of what mcps/wxy considered as occasionally. Hope someone at mcps reads these comments, and does not get deleted!

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