Saturday, February 27, 2016

Council staff dead wrong on MCPS student generation rates for Westbard

What's more credible - promises,
or this hard data chart that could
be titled, "Oops!"?
The analysis by Montgomery County Council staff which concludes that there's oodles of space to handle hundreds of new students in the Whitman cluster is hard to believe. As one parent memorably asked, "Will the children in the future be smaller?" Unless MCPS "shrunk the kids," the actual data proves that we can't trust anything MCPS, the County Council staff, or the Planning Board have said about the number of kids who will be generated by the supersize Westbard plan currently on the table.

Contrary to Council staff's bizarre dismissal and petulant belittling of the Whitman cluster PTSA's analysis, the hard data in fact supports the PTSA - not the Council staff.

Just examine the above table (click to enlarge). Year after year, just as Wood Acres PTA President Jason Sartori testified, MCPS has utterly failed to predict the correct number of incoming students. "Over the last 14 years, our cluster’s six-year projections — the ones used for capacity planning purposes — have been off by an average of nearly 14%," Sartori told the Council on February 2. "That’s more than 800 students!"

The only instance where MCPS "got it right" was only the result, ironically, of MCPS "getting it wrong" over a decade ago. Enrollment fell below projections at Wood Acres Elementary in the 2015-2016 school year, because many parents decided they didn't want their kids to go to the holding school while an addition was added to the building. That addition, currently under construction, was only needed because MCPS severely under-forecast enrollment when the current Wood Acres building was constructed. Only a few years after the new Wood Acres opened, there were 6 trailers outside to handle the "unexpected" overflow.

And let's not forget the recent, shocking revelation by a Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School parent that a full half of the students there live in multifamily housing. You sure won't get that information from the Planning Board or the Council staff! Then consider that Westbard Avenue apartment and condo buildings generate two to five times the number of students that a building elsewhere in southwest Montgomery County.

Ask the kid who's taking gym class in a hallway at Pyle Middle School if there's plenty of room.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a link to the PTSA analysis and data?

Or the BCC parent data?

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Robert is on point with this one. Unless they change their plan and build higher end housing at Westbard, all of those kids will flood the public schools.

Anonymous said...

The dog-whistle is blowing very loudly this morning.

Anonymous said...

5:56AM - sheesh. what? you don't need to see a notarized statement from the boy taking a gym class in the hall?
I thought your job was to ask for backup for everything. Sorry you're working weekends.

Anonymous said...

Huh?

Anonymous said...

Dyer forgot to sign in. The Shill is never this incoherent.

Anonymous said...

Snarky 6:12am, the planned million dollar EYA townhomes should be very luxurious on Westbard Ave. Higher end will be covered!

Anonymous said...

5:56 AM is the one always wanting links and substantiation for everything. Just surprised they didn't want proof of kid having gym class in hallway too.

Since 11 of the 12 commenters (per someone's earlier post) who post here are only here during work, and I don't work, then I am #12 and the rest of you must be working.

Get those cobwebs out of your heads and get crackin

Anonymous said...

Westbard plan= Further overcrowding of schools and roads.

Why not get the infrastructure in place first?

Andrea Li said...

Makes sense to see data to support an argument.

Anonymous said...

Do we need the revenue these new properties will provide to pay for the infrastructure?

Anonymous said...

"And let's not forget the recent, shocking revelation by a Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School parent that a full half of the students there live in multifamily housing."

There is a 0.0% chance that's anywhere near accurate - anyone with eyes and an iota of common sense knows that.

Anonymous said...

I don't need to be a BCC parent to know there's not enough multifamily housing in the cluster for that claim to be even remotely close to true. It's called "common sense;" you should try it out sometime. Just because you supposedly heard a random woman claim something at a public meeting doesn't make it fact.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry when Christie's and Hogan's man Trump deports all these children we will not have a school crowding issue anymore. These low energy politicians in MoCo won't know what hit them.

Anonymous said...

Agreed.

Anonymous said...

Most of what he deletes would never have made it past a moderator, if this site had one. It would never have shown up to begin with.

You can have the finest point made, then end it with a vulgarity, and moderators toss the entire thing.

Anonymous said...

That would be true for many of these posts. Except a few oddball deletes or those that go against his opinion.