Weast’s Work Transformed Wheaton Schools, Parents Say

Wheaton schools benefited from reforms launched under Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, parent leaders said this week after Weast announced that he will step down at the end of the coming school year after 12 years on the job.

Weast's efforts to close the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian-American peers led him to divide the county into zones and refocus resources in low-income areas.

Wheaton was part of the "red zone," where schools had the highest numbers of racial minorities and students living in poverty. The "green zone" included wealthier parts of the county, where schools also had the highest achieving students.

"Dr. Weast was very focused on that red zone and that the students who are from those neighborhoods had an equal chance of success getting into college as students from any other area in the county," said George Gadbois, a delegate to the county council of PTAs and the father of a rising junior at where his wife Mary Anne is the interim PTSA president. "The attention to that was focused much more under Dr. Weast's tenure than had been under [former Superintendent] Paul Vance, and it was really a lot less business-as-usual for the schools."

Weast also supported making Wheaton High part of the Downcounty Consortium, where downcounty students can attend special programs at Montgomery Blair, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Northwood and Wheaton high schools.

Another consortium, the Middle School Magnet Consortium, opened schools in the downcounty to students from around the county who were interested in programs targeted at specific interests.

Before the opening of the consortium and facing high rates of students living in poverty, "Parkland was really in pretty rough shape all the way around," Breiner said. "As the parent of an eighth-grader [today], I'm thrilled to have my son there."

Test scores are on the rise and "the social culture in the school is completely different than what it used to be before the consortium came into being," she said.

Still, Tuesday's news of Weast's retirement gave her reason to pause.

"My initial reaction was the strides that had been made might not continue," she said.