Frederick County residents ought to be very concerned with what is going on with our schools. Teachers are leaving because the salaries here are not competitive, and do not align with the workload. The state under Governor Hogan’s leadership is no help, withholding funds from communities all over the place. Sign the petition, please.
Schools are crowded. Crazy crowded. Certain people (for same, for shame) want to build houses willy-nilly while we pit communities against each other in a frankly disgusting way, because everyone is so desperate. No one wishes for their kids to attend schools under these conditions. Adding portable classrooms does not add toilets and gymnasiums and computer labs and libraries. Who is going to sashay into a neighborhood with a trailer park for an elementary school and spend $500,000 on a house? (Not this guy, tell ya that for sure.)
Butterfly Ridge Elementary is intended to relieve overcrowding at Hillcrest Elementary School, which in June was at 144 percent of its state-rated capacity. Waverley Elementary School, also in that area, was rated at 149 percent capacity.
Urbana Elementary School and Centerville Elementary are at 138 and 152 percent of state-rated capacity, respectively. (Frederick News Post, September 5, 2015)
Do we need to point out that homeschool is not a realistic option for that many people? For some we probably do…
The Board of Education is holding a public hearing on the FCPS master plan of capital projects at 7:30 today (that’s Wednesday evening, Sept. 9th, at 191 S. East St., Frederick). They will be working to decide the outcome here, and boy we do not envy them, not one little bit. Everyone should be getting treated better, especially in a matter that is so critical to nearly everyone involved, whether you have kids or you don’t. Schools are the cornerstones of our communities. They prepare our children for their path forward in life. They protect your real estate investments. (TLDR: there is a correlation between per pupil spending and property value). In low income neighborhoods schools feed kids and do what they can to provide opportunity. In communities of recent immigrants, they teach English as a Second Language (something we apparently as a county feel PATHOLOGICALLY PASSIONATE about; Local Yokel has written volumes on this, rivaling the length of the Oxford English Dictionary maybe).
The locals of your most devoted mommy blog are totally down with this very tired mommy crusader. Folks in the city government have given voice to the needs of the community in the western part of the city, and it is up to the people who have less representation down in the Urbana area to make their voices heard. Everyone deserves better. It is sad contemplating the outcome of this. No matter what, it ain’t gonna be pretty, but we particularly dislike the taste of what is going to inevitably look like class warfare, even if it is not.
frederick local yokel 
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