Washington County’s newest public school, Rockland Woods Elementary School, will be open to all kids that live in the county. It doesn’t matter where they live. If they live in the county, they can attend the school.
This is not good news to some.
From Hagerstown’s one and only crap newspaper, The Herald-Mail:
Metra Reid, who lives with her husband and two children in the Westfields housing development, said during Tuesday’s public meeting that open enrollment at the school will be a disservice to her children. When her family moved to the development three years ago, she said they were promised that the school would offer a high quality of education.”It’s not fair to penalize those of us who live in the development by just sending in whoever,” Reid said. “We had such high expectations for the school.”
She said children from families in other parts of the county do not value education as much as families in her neighborhood.
“When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said. “It’s not fair to just let anyone just ship in whoever. Think about it before you let everyone and anybody go to that school.”
Reid said her daughter attends a private preschool in Hagerstown and will attend Rockland Woods in its second year. Her son would enroll in the school’s third year, she said.
Reid said her daughter is able to count into the hundreds and is learning to write. She said students from other areas of Washington County would not be at the same level when they enter kindergarten.
“It’s not fair to put her in the classroom with 20 other children who won’t know their alphabet,” she said.
I’ve got to say that her daughter sounds like a big dork. She’s not even five and she’s counting into the hundreds? Who makes their kid count that high? I’m not saying it’s comparable to water boarding or making them listen to Jimmy Buffet music, but can’t she think of some other way to torture her kids?
Better yet, can’t she come up with some other way of feeling good about herself without living vicariously through her children? Just because she forces her kids to learn how to count or learn their alphabet before they should doesn’t make them any smarter.
Kids should be allowed to be kids. The alphabet and counting to a thousand will wait.
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Making one’s kids listen to Jimmy Buffet? Really, Rick; that’s child abuse! Kids actaully ARE expected to know the alphabet by Kindergarten……..ty “no child left behind”, so this woman does not have to worry about other kids not knowing the alphabet. I’ll bet plenty of the kids from poorer neighborhoods can count, too, and also master plenty of other acedemic things appropriate for their age group. Maybe she’ll send her daughter to a private school. It didn’t sound like the school board in Washington County was taking her crap too seriously.
When I was a kid, we didn’t learn the alphabet until Kindergarten. I can still remember the chart that ran across the top of the wall showing each letter. I just don’t see the point of teaching kids stuff early. That doesn’t make them smarter. It just means they learned stuff earlier. Where does it end? Will Metra Reid’s kid seems like a retard when someone else’s kid up the street learns the periodic table of the elements? Where does the madness end?
My son learned his alphabet and how to count up to, like, 30 in preschool. He’s no better off than the kids in his Kindergarten class who waited to learn that stuff until this year. In fact, he’s been recommended for Pre-First, which is a sort of transitional program, because his teachers don’t feel he’s ready for first grade.
But aside from the pressure on the kids to value education before they’re old enough to understand that concept, I like this quote:
“When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said.
I think it just reminds me a little too much of the “We don’t want them Negroes livin’ in our neighborhood” mentality of the 1950s (well, and beyond, really).
Rachel , you are right about it smacking too much like “We don’t want them Negroes living in our neighborhood” mentality. I’m hesitant to even use the word since the last time I did it was edited to look like something else and then I was labeled a racist. I’m fairly confident in this case that NOBODY will be editing my words.
There is a reason Hagerstown (and the surrounding area) has a reputation for being racist.
I think parents like this Metra Reid are more concerned with having things about their children they feel they can brag about then they are in fostering their child’s intellectual abilities. Frankly, I would be more concerned with a child at that age developing a good imagination then knowing which letter comes after “T”.
My kids can count to infinity and kick your ass at sports. They reverse engineered Dr. Pepper when they were 4 by taste alone. They only sleep 28.7 minutes a night and speak in iambic pentameter.
Lol, Ryan! Are your kids hypercative? My oldest daughter is, and was even on meds for it. She is also the only gifted and talented child in her school and did better on the IQ test they gave her than any other student has, so far, in the history of the school. But……she, her siblings, and I were homeless after I got sick and couldn’t work, so she didn’t even live in a house, let alone a house in a snooty neighborhood. Despite what that snooty development whore (can I call metra reid that on this forum?) says, my daughter cared about her education no matter what was going on. Being hyperactive did not stop her, either. I think the snooty development whore should worry about competition from children who are not spoiled rotton and who know how to study and work for something. Perhaps that’s the real reason she does not want a more cosmopolitan atmosphere at the school……competition from competant children!
Siriunsun, Ryan doesn’t have any kids. He’s Canadian.
He doesn’t have to….his comment still reminds me of my oldest child…………and my point about this goofy woman still stands.
Just because my kids aren’t corporeal doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
I heard that, in Canada, kids eat maple donuts for dinner and wear pants on their head. Also, I heard something about universal healthcare.
Ryan, can your kids teach me to speak in Iambic Pentameter? It would really help me break into the formal poetry niche…
And Rick, I used the word on purpose, to show that some of us (who don’t moderate the forums at that newspaper place) understand the concept of “context.”
Did this woman honestly believe ONLY the children who live in Westfields would attend that school? What a wonderful waste of space and county resources…The school board has created defined boundaries around the school and those children living within those boundaries will attend Rockland Woods. “When you buy a home in a neighborhood, you want people like yourselves,” Reid said. “It’s not fair to just let anyone just ship in whoever.”… But if she would take a moment and drive the perimeter of her childrens’ school’s boundary, she will find that there are more non-neighborhood type people than there are neighborhood type people. The whole socioeconomic spectrum is covered within the school’s current boundaries…that spectrum doesn’t change because enrollment has opened up countywide. Public school is “public” school. Might I suggest that Ms. Reid look into one of the many private schools in the area where it seems she and her children will be more comfortable.