The REAL issue with the proposals to shift boundaries & how MCPS can fix it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

When you're also advocating against dense zoning in your area, and against accessory apartments for "traffic" and "parking" reasons, you're preventing those of us who cannot afford your mortgages to "choose" your schools. Not exactly a free choice.

There are plenty of excellent schools (currently) in MCPS that can be accessed for less than W prices. These are the exact neighborhoods that the countywide rezoning is targeting. These neighborhoods have accessory apartments, high density housing, and accessible points of entry for people with lower salaries. Think RM, QO, NW, certain parts of Wootton High Schools. A nurse and a policeman can afford a townhouse in any of them.

They don't really have accessory apartments, because there are very few (legal) accessory apartments in the county. And they don't have much high-density housing either, unless you're thinking of attached houses as high density?

Also, as you may know, DCUM looks down its nose at Wootton, let alone Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard, let alone Northwest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not at all. You presuppose that the boundaries themselves are a distorting factor, when the actual distorting factor is income inequality. So long as high performing schools are seen as a valuable amenity, the money will filer in and push lower SES individuals out no matter where the boundaries are. Tinkering around the edges only transfers equity from the families who are taken out of the district to those who are moved in. However, during the next sales cycle the newly "promoted" house commands the same price premium that the desirable district brings and lower SES brackets are priced out in the same way as before. Thus, what you do is get a temporary gain in SES diversity (to the extent that wealthier families don't immediately bolt), financially punish some families, give some families a windfall, and then have to do it all over again in ten years once you realize that fighting the natural progression of the market just doesn't work. The only way to break this cycle is to make all the schools high performing; but, given that the fact that the best and only statistically valid predictor of a child's educational outcome is their parents' educational attainment, you cannot "fix" the schools by moving boundaries, but rather you have to lift up the community as a whole, increase income across the board, and assist lower income families with childcare and other programs of the like. This is, of course, hard, so it won't be done. What will be done is that some feckless politicians will tinker around the edges, pat themselves on the back for increasing a useless metric like diversity (while ignoring the only metric the matters - performance), and ignore the income disparities that are the actual root of the problem.

It is a fact that the boundaries are a distorting factor. Otherwise you wouldn't have people supposedly paying hundreds of thousands more for a house zoned for a "good" school vs another house in the next block zoned for a "bad" school.

As Mason said to Dixon, "we have to draw the line somewhere" - but in all seriousness the point appears to be lost on you. Until we have equal performing schools people with means will invariably choose the higher performing school (as a whole - not to be read as every single person). The boundary itself doesn't make the school desirable but if the school is more desirable than others (for whatever reason - it's really irrelevant why), and attendance is based upon location, the market will do its thing, prices will rise in those areas and lower SES people will be pushed out no matter how many times you change up the boundary. Ignore the actual problem in favor of superficial "fixes" such as moving boundaries for "diversity" and you're just Sisyphus pushing his rock.

Exactly - MCPS can draw the line wherever it wants, including somewhere that's intended to reduce the segregation that people who have big bucks are willing to pay big bucks for.

You can demagogue all you want, but people pay the big bucks for performance not segregation. It may feel good to stick it to some of those rich people, but it doesn't solve anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We, as in society. Things will only sell for what people are willing to pay. If people, as a whole, are willing to pay more for certain things (like a say a house in Bethesda over the same house in Silver Spring), it is because those people value that thing more. The market is just a mirror of our collective preferences. Rail against it all you want, but absent going full Stalin, there's not much you can do about it.

People as a whole don't buy real estate. Individual people buy real estate. Are there people who have a lot of money who are willing to pay a lot to live in Bethesda? Evidently so, and presumably for multiple reasons, only one of which is the schools.

Will school boundary adjustments, by themselves, fix the underlying problem of economic residential segregation in Montgomery County? Nope. But it's worthwhile just the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

When you're also advocating against dense zoning in your area, and against accessory apartments for "traffic" and "parking" reasons, you're preventing those of us who cannot afford your mortgages to "choose" your schools. Not exactly a free choice.

There are plenty of excellent schools (currently) in MCPS that can be accessed for less than W prices. These are the exact neighborhoods that the countywide rezoning is targeting. These neighborhoods have accessory apartments, high density housing, and accessible points of entry for people with lower salaries. Think RM, QO, NW, certain parts of Wootton High Schools. A nurse and a policeman can afford a townhouse in any of them.

They don't really have accessory apartments, because there are very few (legal) accessory apartments in the county. And they don't have much high-density housing either, unless you're thinking of attached houses as high density?

Also, as you may know, DCUM looks down its nose at Wootton, let alone Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard, let alone Northwest.

Nonetheless, these + WJ are the communities most in danger of the redistricting shredder. Look where MCPS is holding its meetings on the topic. Hint: not in Whitman. It is in those and similar schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Exactly - MCPS can draw the line wherever it wants, including somewhere that's intended to reduce the segregation that people who have big bucks are willing to pay big bucks for.

You can demagogue all you want, but people pay the big bucks for performance not segregation. It may feel good to stick it to some of those rich people, but it doesn't solve anything.

"Performance" (as it's defined here) and segregation are collinear variables. You can't separate them.

[Anonymous]

They don't really have accessory apartments, because there are very few (legal) accessory apartments in the county. And they don't have much high-density housing either, unless you're thinking of attached houses as high density?

Also, as you may know, DCUM looks down its nose at Wootton, let alone Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard, let alone Northwest.

Odd considering Wootton was #1 of all MCPS schools on the MD report card and RM has the best IB program in the county. QO and NW both rank at a GS8 which is better than anything outside Churchill and Whitman in the south and east.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

When you're also advocating against dense zoning in your area, and against accessory apartments for "traffic" and "parking" reasons, you're preventing those of us who cannot afford your mortgages to "choose" your schools. Not exactly a free choice.

There are plenty of excellent schools (currently) in MCPS that can be accessed for less than W prices. These are the exact neighborhoods that the countywide rezoning is targeting. These neighborhoods have accessory apartments, high density housing, and accessible points of entry for people with lower salaries. Think RM, QO, NW, certain parts of Wootton High Schools. A nurse and a policeman can afford a townhouse in any of them.

They don't really have accessory apartments, because there are very few (legal) accessory apartments in the county. And they don't have much high-density housing either, unless you're thinking of attached houses as high density?

Also, as you may know, DCUM looks down its nose at Wootton, let alone Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard, let alone Northwest.

Nonetheless, these + WJ are the communities most in danger of the redistricting shredder. Look where MCPS is holding its meetings on the topic. Hint: not in Whitman. It is in those and similar schools.

The WHAT?

Also, do you include Kennedy HS on your list of similar schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They don't really have accessory apartments, because there are very few (legal) accessory apartments in the county. And they don't have much high-density housing either, unless you're thinking of attached houses as high density?

Also, as you may know, DCUM looks down its nose at Wootton, let alone Richard Montgomery and Quince Orchard, let alone Northwest.

Odd considering Wootton was #1 of all MCPS schools on the MD report card and RM has the best IB program in the county. QO and NW both rank at a GS8 which is better than anything outside Churchill and Whitman in the south and east.

Nobody ever said that DCUM is rational - as these threads full of Chicken Littles posting "YOU WILL NEVER GET OUR CHILDREN!!!!!" amply demonstrate.

[Anonymous]

The redistricting shredder. The intent is to shred boundaries, communities, property values, and potentially kids' educations.

While I am not a part of MCPS meetings, I anticipate that Kennedy HS was included as a potential beneficiary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The redistricting shredder. The intent is to shred boundaries, communities, property values, and potentially kids' educations.

While I am not a part of MCPS meetings, I anticipate that Kennedy HS was included as a potential beneficiary.

You don't say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The redistricting shredder. The intent is to shred boundaries, communities, property values, and potentially kids' educations.

While I am not a part of MCPS meetings, I anticipate that Kennedy HS was included as a potential beneficiary.

You don't say.

Class wars tend to do that. Nothing new here, really. Proletariats of all countries unite and all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the DCC is largely upper middle class. Why don’t those kids go to public schools? Why can’t MCPS fix that without bussing in other kids from same demographic? Makes no sense. There is a lack of confidence in the schools.

Your just wrong you don’t get focus and title 1 schools when you’re “largely upper middle class”. By DC standards, very few DCC parents are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the DCC is largely upper middle class. Why don’t those kids go to public schools? Why can’t MCPS fix that without bussing in other kids from same demographic? Makes no sense. There is a lack of confidence in the schools.

Your just wrong you don’t get focus and title 1 schools when you’re “largely upper middle class”. By DC standards, very few DCC parents are.

Plenty of families in DCC are UMC and go private or Catholic. Perhaps the schools wouldn’t be focus or Title I if everyone who lived in the DCC would attend. That’s a distorting factor. Regardless, why won’t those DCC families go to the neighborhood schools? And if MCPS can’t fix that, why would any other parents bus kids their kids in? They’ll go Catholic or private too. Need to address whatever is going on at those schools to regain the confidence of neighborhood families first.

[Anonymous]

According to US Census, Silver Spring has only 11% poverty. Median income is somewhere around $72,000. Why are many all the kids in the public schools? Why such a high concentration of poverty in the public schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to US Census, Silver Spring has only 11% poverty. Median income is somewhere around $72,000. Why are many all the kids in the public schools? Why such a high concentration of poverty in the public schools?

* why aren’t more kids in the public schools?

This is a middle class community with pockets of poverty. MCPS needs to make the schools more desirable to the middle class.