By Adam Pagnucco.
MCPS has begun releasing option maps for new high school and middle school boundaries in accordance with its ongoing boundary study. And some of these maps will produce a level of insanity for which the solar system’s supply of pharmaceuticals will be inadequate to treat!
First, some context. MCPS is conducting a massive study of high school and middle school boundaries due to three capital projects: the reopening of Charles W. Woodward High School in North Bethesda, the opening of a new Crown High School in Gaithersburg and the expansion of Damascus High School. Together, the affected high schools and middle schools account for roughly three-quarters of the county.
This was always going to be a heavy lift. A much more limited proposal set off a firestorm during the 2020 school board elections and this one will result in actual shifts. Among other things, the study drew concerns from the county PTA, a planning board member weighed in to declare “Reverse Bussing is Horrible,” an online survey for the study may have been vulnerable to gaming and MCPS had to shift community engagement from a subcontractor to in-house staff. And this was just in the first few months of the study.
Now MCPS has begun to release options for new maps starting with the Woodward High School vicinity. There are four options, each one emphasizing one of the district’s priority factors in boundary studies: demographic characteristics of student population, geographic proximity of communities to schools, stability of school assignments over time and facility utilization in the 80-100% range.
Most of these options produce similar maps, with the caveat that they all differ from existing service areas because they contain a new high school (Woodward in North Bethesda). The outlier is Option 3, which emphasizes creating a diverse student body in each school above all other priorities. To accomplish that, MCPS had to create numerous islands, tentacles and other assorted shapes that would have made Elbridge Gerry proud.
Here is what the Option 3 Woodward maps for high schools looks like.
Let’s go through this by school.
Walt Whitman HS in Bethesda (light blue) includes a distant island in the Rosemary Hills neighborhood of inner Silver Spring.
Bethesda Chevy Chase HS in Bethesda (yellow) includes an island in southeastern Wheaton.
Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring (pink) includes an island containing much of Chevy Chase.
Northwood HS in Silver Spring (gray) wraps around from the edge of Glenmont to the Prince George’s border and then to the Seminary neighborhood in Silver Spring.
Albert Einstein HS in Kensington (blue) includes most of Kensington, including areas now assigned to Walter Johnson HS.
Walter Johnson HS in Bethesda (light green) includes two islands in Wheaton.
Wheaton HS (red) reaches down to the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station in North Bethesda.
Charles Woodward HS in North Bethesda (white), the new school, includes an island in Aspen Hill.
John F. Kennedy HS in Glenmont (dark green) includes an island in North Bethesda and two more tiny islands in Aspen Hill.
The Option 3 middle school maps are not much better.
Many parents who see these maps are going to go absolutely bonkers. Even setting aside some of the more unsavory racial objections, the bus route consequences are staggering. Why would MCPS want to deal with it?
The truth is that they don’t. Option 3 will generate hysteria but little else. It’s politically impossible to pass anything like it, and we haven’t yet seen what it would look like in the Crown and Damascus areas. (We will soon!) These maps will be used as a nightmare alternative to push public opinion in the direction of less radical (but still substantially different) options. It seems to me to be a form of community negotiation, albeit one with quite a bit of pulled hair and raised voices. (Get out your ear plugs, people!)
I do wonder how much it cost MCPS to have these impossible maps prepared. But in the meantime, if MCPS keeps releasing them, I’ll keep printing them!