high need. Through it, Montgomery County Public SchoolsBut schools participating in the program are no longer collecting applications for free and reduced meals, a metric that the Montgomery schools district has traditionally relied on to measure poverty at schools and dole out Title I money.
Last school year, about 75 percent of Viers Mill students received free or reduced. Some of them moved up much faster than we anticipated.”change on a year-to-year basis, Pugh said, “this year, we couldn’t predict what happened actually.”Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md., went from 72 percent to 66 percent. At Oak View Elementary School in Silver Spring, the number dropped from about 74 percent to 65 percent.
“This loss brings about several significant implications for our school, staff, and most importantly, our students,” Kimber wrote in his letter. “Our numbers haven’t just changed overnight,” said Danielle Ring, a parent of a fifth-grader at Strathmore Elementary School. “They are pretty consistent over what they’ve been for the past few years.” She added that the method the school system uses appears to cut out families who are undocumented, since it relies on public benefits.