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Montgomery County Board of Education Wants Your Opinion: The Board Seeks Public Comment on Tentative Policy Affecting Student Transfers and the Immersion Program Lottery

December 22, 2016

The Montgomery County Board of Education is seeking your comments on tentative changes to Policy JEE, Student Transfers.  This policy outlines when students may be granted a transfer to attend a school other than their home or assigned school.

Among the revisions to the policy is an update to the lottery system for enrollment in language immersion programs. The revisions would establish a weighted lottery for immersion programs that would include such factors as:

(a) students who have an older sibling currently enrolled in a language immersion program and will continue to be enrolled in the year the younger sibling seeks to enroll;

(b) socio-economic status and poverty; and,

(c) other factors as identified by the superintendent of schools, such as, in specific circumstances, a catchment area.

The revised lottery would apply to students seeking to enroll in these programs for the 2018-2019 school year. This change would not impact families with students enrolled in the immersion program during the 2017-2018 school year.  Any family who has a child enrolled in a language immersion program, in any grade, during the 2017-2018 school year will be able to enroll all younger siblings of that child in the same language immersion program, as long as there will be at least one older sibling enrolled the same year as the younger sibling.

[View the Revisions to Policy JEE]

[Provide Comment on Policy JEE]

The Board of Education tentatively approved the aforementioned changes at its meeting on December 13, 2016.

[Watch the Board of Education Meeting]

These revisions to the immersion program lottery are part of a comprehensive review of Special, Choice, and Signature Programs in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).  This review, commissioned by the Board in January 2015, and conducted by Metis Associates, resulted in a report entitled MCPS Study of Choice and Special Academic Programs (known as the Choice Study). The options were discussed by the Board Policy Management Committee and benefited from extensive community feedback solicited as part of the study.

[Read the Choice Study]

Policy JEE is available for public comment until Friday, February 3, 2017. 

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