What is so horrible about PG County? (Hyattsville, Capitol Heights: apartments, home)

[itlchick]

Okay ~ I believe PG does have it's nice areas.

But...I had a friend who worked at the health department. Her stories were horrifyingly-bad. I worked at a similar place in a neighboring county and it just wasn't as bad. PG is pretty rough.

[cool rob]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

Hispanic students-generally lower scores.
White students-generally close to where one would demographically expect.

I've been in PG for 26 years and no matter the racial makeup the county has generally lagged behind Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel.
Before anyone mentions Roosevelt please remember, and I posted this earlier, Roosevelt, Flowers and Oxon Hill all cherry pick the best students for their magnet programs with Roosevelt getting the press.

In those 26 years there have been nine Superintendents or Acting Superintendents, all who came in and changed programs to put on their own imprint. One former Superintendent is in federal prison on corruption charges which occurred while in PG. The current School Board has been in office only 2 years, having replaced an appointed Board which replaced a Board which was disbanded by the MD Legislature. The current Acting Super is the only applicant for the current vacancy. I've seen programs start, show results and then get thrown out by the new guy. Time after time after time.

two points that you make, which I would like to follow up on:

if you have ten white students in a school, and one of them, gets straight A's, then 10 percent of the schools white population gets straight A's.

Now flip that for black or brown students, as they greatly outnumber the white students.

So now you have a black/latino student who gets straight A's, but he is the only on eout of 100, so now only 1 % of that population gets straight A's, see where I'm going with that?

Secondly:

And maybe I am reading this wrong, but there is no way you don't see the correlation between a failing school system and the "musical chairs" of the school board and superintendents?

Lastly:
(I know I said two points, but oh well!)

You did the exact same thing I just poked fun about in an ealrier post (the I heard it from a trusted source phenomenom). I will copy it below:

"Charles and Calvert both are finding that many of the property crimes, thefts, etc. that are happening are being perpetrated by people with PG addresses-if fact the Calvert County Sheriff's Department calls Rte. 4 the "thieve's highway". That's been going on for quite awhile. The malls in Charles County are profiling there,my kids from school usually have a new St. Charles Mall story every Monday"


If any of this were true (which I argue is false, as I imagine no county could legally track these stats), I must ask the question, how is that Charles and Calvert get a pass for crime committed by Prince George's County residents, yet Prince George's doesn't get one from the crimes of DC resdients?

[NJ2MDdude]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

Hispanic students-generally lower scores.
White students-generally close to where one would demographically expect.

I've been in PG for 26 years and no matter the racial makeup the county has generally lagged behind Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel.
Before anyone mentions Roosevelt please remember, and I posted this earlier, Roosevelt, Flowers and Oxon Hill all cherry pick the best students for their magnet programs with Roosevelt getting the press.

In those 26 years there have been nine Superintendents or Acting Superintendents, all who came in and changed programs to put on their own imprint. One former Superintendent is in federal prison on corruption charges which occurred while in PG. The current School Board has been in office only 2 years, having replaced an appointed Board which replaced a Board which was disbanded by the MD Legislature. The current Acting Super is the only applicant for the current vacancy. I've seen programs start, show results and then get thrown out by the new guy. Time after time after time.

Montgomery, Howard and AA Counties all have large bases of “wealthy” residents who can afford to subsidize better K-12 public school systems for their County residents. By contrast, PG remains a working class County comprised of ordinary people, with a substantial number of urban poor from DC and illegal aliens who generally live paycheck to paycheck and probably consider a HS diploma a major achievement.

[Crewotter]

I posted it in another thread, but thought it was relevant in this one as well.

Once you get outside the beltway, PG county (crime-wise) isn't too much worse than MoCo.

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by cool rob

two points that you make, which I would like to follow up on:

if you have ten white students in a school, and one of them, gets straight A's, then 10 percent of the schools white population gets straight A's.

Now flip that for black or brown students, as they greatly outnumber the white students.

So now you have a black/latino student who gets straight A's, but he is the only on eout of 100, so now only 1 % of that population gets straight A's, see where I'm going with that?

Secondly:

And maybe I am reading this wrong, but there is no way you don't see the correlation between a failing school system and the "musical chairs" of the school board and superintendents?

Lastly:
(I know I said two points, but oh well!)

You did the exact same thing I just poked fun about in an ealrier post (the I heard it from a trusted source phenomenom). I will copy it below:

"Charles and Calvert both are finding that many of the property crimes, thefts, etc. that are happening are being perpetrated by people with PG addresses-if fact the Calvert County Sheriff's Department calls Rte. 4 the "thieve's highway". That's been going on for quite awhile. The malls in Charles County are profiling there,my kids from school usually have a new St. Charles Mall story every Monday"


If any of this were true (which I argue is false, as I imagine no county could legally track these stats), I must ask the question, how is that Charles and Calvert get a pass for crime committed by Prince George's County residents, yet Prince George's doesn't get one from the crimes of DC resdients?

In order:
You're correct that one or two flukey scores from a small population can impact your overall numbers, especially under NCLB. The actual number of students doesn't matter because the % is what reported when the data is disaggregated.

Churn at the top has had a major impact on the school system since the early 90's when John Murphy was Superintendent (wasn't a big fan but at least he stuck around for more than a couple years).

All MD jurisdictions track the residence of people arrested, that's one way they determine where to set up sobriety check points, to use one example. In Calvert the Sheriff makes it a point to note the residence status of cases each year when reporting to the County Commissioners. Also, in a small county, things like high speed chases on the only major highway tend to be front page news, as do the bank robberies, and burglaries. The murders locally tend to be domestic in nature, or at least the perpetrator and victim know each other. A recent one stemmed from a fight between a couple of guys that knew each other, another was husband/wife murder-suicide.

I can't really answer your question, you'd have to ask the editors at the Post and the news directors at the local radio and TV stations.

[tercel95]

Cool Rob, contrary to what you might think my sole purpose of frequenting this forum is not to hate on PG county. I get on this forum to try and give people that don't know much about the state some advice on what area might be a good fit for them...

If someone says I am a single male looking for an inexpensive place to live with a good commute to DC than I would probably point them towards PG.

If someone says I am a single mother with 3 kids looking for a nice place with good schools I would probably point them elsewhere...

Its not just PG either I don't recommend for people to live in areas like Silver Spring, Takoma Park, or Aspen Hill unless they really know what they are getting themselves into...

[dkf747]

Originally Posted by cool rob

I must ask the question, how is that Charles and Calvert get a pass for crime committed by Prince George's County residents, yet Prince George's doesn't get one from the crimes of DC resdients?

You're seemingly doing the same thing they did. You seem to be saying that all of the crimes is really criminals from DC coming over and committing crimes. is that really what you think? There are plenty of PG residents that commit crimes. There are plenty of DC residents committing crimes. It's not surprising that they both commit crimes on both sides of the border as if there were no border at all. PG has a crime problem that they need to do a better job solving. They have an even bigger school problem that they need to solve. Who cares where PG ranks compared to its neighbors? I don't. I only care that they do a good job teaching my kids. There's no excuse for the lousy job the county government and police are doing to fix thesr things. Focus on solving them and the image problem will eventually change for the better.

[bowian]

In respnose to several posts, IMO, it's not only DC residents who commit crimes in PG, but DC residents who move to PG b/c they are priced out of DC, become PG residents and commit crimes.
If you were to remove that phenomenon from the border areas of PG, crime would not be as high. Also, from what I have seen living here, a lot of indigent DC residents often will come into PG for shopping (in particular, I've seen many a DC license plate in the parking lot at Walmart in Clinton), medical care (Southern Maryland Hospital and PG Hospital in particular) and entertainment. Yes, there is an environment in several parts of PG that promote criminal activity. PG is more unique in terms of demographics, proximity to DC and educational paradoxes than the surrounding counties. IMO, it's difficult to compare them all on a equal footing.
As for affluence, my guess is that many if not most affluent PG minorities and whites send their children to private school. Schools in affluent areas may house children from those areas as well as less affluent areas. And it would be nice, wouldn't it, if all children in PG an opportunity to attend the well-regarded Montessori, French Immersion, TAG, Performing and Creative Arts, Science and Technology and AP-focused schools? But too few are able to take advantage of those opportunities, and it's unfair. The education system here needs to improve and stabilize, asap.
And yes, it seems that some posters here are on a mission to diss PG to anyone that comes to this board looking for advice. Not every neighborhood has high crime, obviously. It's not a wasteland. Life is too short to be so negative and have such a vested interest in turning people away from PG. Okay, so you hated PG and now you're out. Isn't it time to get over it?

[cool rob]

Originally Posted by tercel95

Cool Rob, contrary to what you might think my sole purpose of frequenting this forum is not to hate on PG county. I get on this forum to try and give people that don't know much about the state some advice on what area might be a good fit for them...

If someone says I am a single male looking for an inexpensive place to live with a good commute to DC than I would probably point them towards PG.

If someone says I am a single mother with 3 kids looking for a nice place with good schools I would probably point them elsewhere...

Its not just PG either I don't recommend for people to live in areas like Silver Spring, Takoma Park, or Aspen Hill unless they really know what they are getting themselves into...

Well now, see this is where we disagree, as I would point them towards Prince George's County (without downing Silver Spring at the same time), being as I currently reside here with my family, so I am looking at this from the inside looking out, not the other way around.

I am a firm believer that commuties such as mine, need hardworking professionals (blue and white collar) to invest in the county, attend PTA meetings, voice their opinions, participate in civic associations, etc in order to enact some change.

Now if someone asked about Aspen Hill, and all I knew about Aspen Hill was something negative I heard somebody say at the barber shop, why comment? I am not discounting what your parents went through in Lanham, but fortunate for me and my family, we have never been a victim of violent crime, and even if I had been one, I understand that trends of criminal behavior, has less to do with your zip code or address and more to do with other factors that plague ALL communties such as :

poverty
addiction
mental illness
education (or lack of)
unemployment
lack of access to good health care
depression
hopelessness
triablism
greed
etc.

[Skapov]

Originally Posted by dkf747

I left PG only because of the schools. There's a lot of crime in PG, but not where I lived. However, I refused to send my kids to a school that was really bad. Fix the schools and I may move back.

EXACTLY, I can stomach the lack of good retail and long commute to jobs centers, even the bad hospitals and higher-crime statistics, but I CAN'T risk my children's education and this is exactly why I moved from Upper Marlboro to Fairfax County. If the schools ever get fixed and become competitive, then perhaps I'd move back.