Woodward HS boundary study - BCC, Blair, Einstein, WJ, Kennedy, Northwood, Wheaton, Whitman impacts

[Anonymous]

If I lived in the east county I would be way more concerned for boundary reviews than the W’s. Oh no a street gets sent from Whitman to BCC or Churchill. Where one street can sink an already highly engineered east county school with a culture changing shift of density. Most of the preferable schools in SS have their SFH already maximized though real gerrymandering. Just about any shift will send them in the opposite direction. The wetdream people who want to be shifted from an Einstein to a BCC or Walter Johnson are delusional.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

Where specifically is this happening in MCPS?

Not sure The only instances of this that I'm aware of are kids who live in the Wootton boundary are more often than not closer to schools other than Wootton. Also, many families in West Kensington who live near Einsten are bussed to WJ which is much further from their home.

There are kids in the Wootton cluster who are bussed passed Frost MS, Julius West MS, and Hoover MS to go to Cabin John MS. Why?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:They do actually conduct boundary studies all the time, individually. Yes it will be a lot more complex with multiple high schools, but it happens elsewhere so why not here?

There are several capital projects in different clusters that will need boundary studies prior to completion to decide on their boundaries.

Each of these projects is experiencing delay after delay after delay. In some cases, they get downsized or shelved.

Trying to do a single, sprawling boundary study of all of MCPS implies coordinating all of completion of all of these projects. Now a single delay in any project would set back all of them.

The cost of contingency planning would be less damaging than the continued inefficiencies and inequities that result from piecemeal studies/boundary decisions.

We get it; you want busing.

That PP to whom you replied.

No, I do not want bussing. I would prefer that MCPS, as a county-wide enterprise (we're not in Jersey), fulfill the societal objective to provide for reasonably equivalent educational experiences/opportunities to the student population across that county. That goes for facilities just as it goes for programs. From the perspecitve of this publicly funded common good, that equivalence shouldn't be broken based on a zip code or side of a street.

MCPS can't make things equal, and there are reasonable arguments that equality in detail should not be the objective (therefore, "reasonably equivalent"). However, where things are seen as, or can be projected as, not reasonably equivalent, it should do something to rectify the situation.

For facilities, that can include something long-range, like construction (new or addition), but shouldn't leave current populations to the inequity when boundary changes could provide either interim or, perhaps in combination with construction, more effective long-term relief.

Are you under the mistaken belief that west county schools are in better condition than east county? If so I encourage you to your Poolesville and Wootton. And are you also under the mistaken impression that west county schools get more money for operations that east county? If so you need to look at budgets that show school is poorer neighborhoods receive millions of dollars more PER year than schools in wealthier neighborhoods. That's on top of federal money for programs like title 1.

Again, that PP.

I did not make a west vs. east distinction, nor did I state that Poolesville or Wootton did not have needs. Eastern MS may be worse, however, and, on a relative need basis, I think its exceeded Wootton's.

PHS is getting work, albeit not the everything that was afforded to, say, Potomac ES. But, then again, thr Poolesville demographic isn't exactly the Potomac demographic, is it?

One could say the same thing when comparing work underway at SSIMS to that afforded to TPMS. Demographics are a bit different there, too.

Anecdotes, to be sure. Are you suggesting, however, that facilities decisions amd outcomes have favored lower-income and high-density older-development areas of MCPS? There's a bridge I'm selling, and I'm looking for a buyer...

As for the justification of differential funding, federal or otherwise, under Title 1 and other programs, the responses from others, here, have addressed that. The relevant metric when comparing these expenditures within the system is not the relative money spent, but the relative quality of educational experiences/programmatic opportunities afforded to students. Are we to understand from you that the NEC elementaries have been funded highly enough to provide the foundations for students similarly able to those in the most affluent BCC areas such that the IB program at Springbrook would, similar to BCC, routinely afford High Level classes instead of Standard Level? I hope, for your sake (and possibly those of your clients, if you're in a related industry), that you don't use such cursory analysis, based only on the 40,000 foot view of income statement, balance sheet and cash flows, when determining if a stock is a buy or a sell.

"Are we to understand from you that the NEC elementaries have been funded highly enough to provide the foundations for students similarly able to those in the most affluent BCC areas?" What you're describing is equity which is an illiberal and Marxist concept. It's also a fool's errand because there's no amount of money that can make up for meh parenting. I believe in equality of opportunity not equality of outcomes.

Again, that PP.

What you are doing is drawing up something of a strawman while failing to recognize the nuance presented -- admittedly buried a bit and likely not obvious without more careful reading.

Equity is a concern, but in a broader and more neutral sense than that indicated by a Marxist boogeyman. Equality of outcomes is, indeed, a fool's errand when considered on an individual basis. It becomes less so on a meaningful basis across populations, unless one believes that there is inherent difference among those populations. Patenting engagement/style may be such a differentiator, but, if that difference is rooted in past discrimination, it's not too much of a reach to see the justification, even under a Hayek-rejecting, Block-ist Austrian School interpretation, for measures to level the playing field so as best to preserve individual autonomy in the aim of that intermediate outcome driving a realizable relative social optimun, even if politically-motivated modern interpretations of Rand might disagree. (Please feel free to rejoin this cursory take with some Jay-and-Silent-Bob-Strike-Back-esque "them apples" remark, but suggesting that money would not make, at the very least, differences on the margins has to be taken as disingenuous.)

The nuance was the set-up of comparing like students (as individuals or as a like, if smaller as a proportion of the relative general populations, cohort) when restricting the desired observation to those "similarly able to those in the most affluent BCC areas." If MCPS is supposed to be providing equality of opportunity, regardless of locale, how are these students equally served without the additional community supports that would tend to result in similar "community demand"-driven offerings like High Level IB courses (or similarly advanced foreign language, etc.)?

With both equity and Marxism, everyone does what they can and the government gives them what it believes they need.

"unless one believes that there is inherent difference among those populations" Of course there's a difference. It's called culture. Asian culture values education more than (almost?) any other and Asians do the best academically. Normal people see that correlation. Progressives pretend it's just a coincidence.

As for students being equally served, we would need to define what being equally served means. It sounds like you want an exact equal number of advanced classes taught in east county schools even though the culture in those areas doesn't prepare kids for those classes nearly as well as the culture in West county. To make up for that deficit, it sounds like you want to spend a small fortune in east county to try to counteract a culture that doesn't value education....speaking of fools errands. OTOH, I would define equal opportunity as having those classes available if there are kids who want to take them.

There's another strawman that you've thrown out, this time ignoring the more explicit explanation I'd provided. There doesn't have to be the same number of high-level classes. There should be equivalent access to those classes for students for whom those classes would be desired/would best meet their particular academic need, however, no matter one's zip code within the county. The county is the level in this state at which the responsibility for provision of primary and secondary education lies. Equal justice under the law then demands reasonable equivalence across the county. It's not like some other states where living one town over puts one in a different school district with different tax regimes/supporting budgets.

This is not to say that every student in the NEC (or other area typically considered underserved) would want or benefit from such availability. Nor is it to say that the proportion of such students in those areas match the proportion in an area similar to BCC. It is to say that MCPS should be taking steps to ensure that any such student's experiences/opportunities end up being reasonably equivalent, regardless of where they lay their head when they go to sleep.

Nor even is it to say that MCPS can or should construct over 100k individualized education plans to meet every student exactly where they are and maximize every student's individual abilities. That would be just another strawman to knock down. MCPS shouldn't be adopting or perpetuating a regime that tends to support different levels of enfranchisement, though, and should take most reasonable opportunities to move away from such. The boundary/capacity issue, here, could be one of those opportunities.

You forgot to mention economically liberal capitalism, along with equity and Marxism, as a regime where everyone does what they can and the government provides that which it believes they need. Such an political-economic approach merely adopts a very limited view of the needs of members in the society. It leaves plenty of holes and inefficiencies of its own. I'm not saying it isn't better than Marxism, but you keep coming back to that hyperbole seemingly by equating it any thrust towards equity (however inconsistently with progressives I may be defining that). I'd suggest that is a poor assumption.

I'll not take that particular race bait you've laid out, but are you really saying in response to my last post that there aren't racial groups that have experienced past discrimination that might have led to a difference which we should then be trying to remediate, to whatever degree, because...Atlas Shrugged?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I lived in the east county I would be way more concerned for boundary reviews than the W’s. Oh no a street gets sent from Whitman to BCC or Churchill. Where one street can sink an already highly engineered east county school with a culture changing shift of density. Most of the preferable schools in SS have their SFH already maximized though real gerrymandering. Just about any shift will send them in the opposite direction. The wetdream people who want to be shifted from an Einstein to a BCC or Walter Johnson are delusional.

Please cite specific examples.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Funny part is no matter the margins that get shuffled around, the few houses that get zoned out of desirable schools will go down in price and the few that get the bump-up will go up in price. Within a decade those houses will align with the proper SES buyers and you will still have desirable schools and silver spring schools. Nothing will change except a few people’s bank accounts.

Problem with desirable is people will pay up for it which will automatically exclude poor people. When it is the poor people the people are paying to avoid, it will automatically happen.

Even if you shipped all poorest of the poor out of the east county to W schools, prices in the shipping zones would shoot up and people in silver spring would be quickly priced out of their homes. Look at rosemary hills, used to be a very poor & black neighborhood which is why it got zoned to BCC for diversity. Now there are few AAs in the SFHs and otherwise modest ramblers are some of the most expensive homes in silver spring all in about a generation.

This is a perfect explanation of why we need to fix land use instead of school boundaries. All schools should have housing available to all income levels within their boundaries.

No thank you. We paid not to live near poor people. We certainly don't want the county moving poor people and all their problems over here.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Funny part is no matter the margins that get shuffled around, the few houses that get zoned out of desirable schools will go down in price and the few that get the bump-up will go up in price. Within a decade those houses will align with the proper SES buyers and you will still have desirable schools and silver spring schools. Nothing will change except a few people’s bank accounts.

Problem with desirable is people will pay up for it which will automatically exclude poor people. When it is the poor people the people are paying to avoid, it will automatically happen.

Even if you shipped all poorest of the poor out of the east county to W schools, prices in the shipping zones would shoot up and people in silver spring would be quickly priced out of their homes. Look at rosemary hills, used to be a very poor & black neighborhood which is why it got zoned to BCC for diversity. Now there are few AAs in the SFHs and otherwise modest ramblers are some of the most expensive homes in silver spring all in about a generation.

This is a perfect explanation of why we need to fix land use instead of school boundaries. All schools should have housing available to all income levels within their boundaries.

Well they do need to fix the boundaries number 1 because they are opening new high schools and expanding others. Number 2 because utilization is not currently optimized to match capacity. When they do that, they should not just cater to rich people's desire to maintain their property values, as they have in years past. They might still do this though because MCPS leaders have zero backbone.

Whenever a new school opens they'll need to draw new boundaries. But 95% of people in the county want those new boundaries to put their kids in schools as close to home as possible and keep utilization numbers reasonable. Diversity is a distant 4th (out of 4) for most people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Funny part is no matter the margins that get shuffled around, the few houses that get zoned out of desirable schools will go down in price and the few that get the bump-up will go up in price. Within a decade those houses will align with the proper SES buyers and you will still have desirable schools and silver spring schools. Nothing will change except a few people’s bank accounts.

Problem with desirable is people will pay up for it which will automatically exclude poor people. When it is the poor people the people are paying to avoid, it will automatically happen.

Even if you shipped all poorest of the poor out of the east county to W schools, prices in the shipping zones would shoot up and people in silver spring would be quickly priced out of their homes. Look at rosemary hills, used to be a very poor & black neighborhood which is why it got zoned to BCC for diversity. Now there are few AAs in the SFHs and otherwise modest ramblers are some of the most expensive homes in silver spring all in about a generation.

This is a perfect explanation of why we need to fix land use instead of school boundaries. All schools should have housing available to all income levels within their boundaries.

Easier (though not easy), much faster and considerably more effective (given the point about price changes) to spend the $ to make educational experiences/opportunities reasonably equivalent across schools than to try to homogenize the available housing across the catchments. Aside from large, mixed greenfield efforts (Reston, Columbia, etc., which need zoning of their own to accomplish), the latter only ends up being music to the ears of developers.

MCPS already spends millions of dollars more in low SES schools than it does in higher SES schools. And the results are meh. Until poor people start valuing education, no amount of money is going to help much.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny part is no matter the margins that get shuffled around, the few houses that get zoned out of desirable schools will go down in price and the few that get the bump-up will go up in price. Within a decade those houses will align with the proper SES buyers and you will still have desirable schools and silver spring schools. Nothing will change except a few people’s bank accounts.

Problem with desirable is people will pay up for it which will automatically exclude poor people. When it is the poor people the people are paying to avoid, it will automatically happen.

Even if you shipped all poorest of the poor out of the east county to W schools, prices in the shipping zones would shoot up and people in silver spring would be quickly priced out of their homes. Look at rosemary hills, used to be a very poor & black neighborhood which is why it got zoned to BCC for diversity. Now there are few AAs in the SFHs and otherwise modest ramblers are some of the most expensive homes in silver spring all in about a generation.

This is a perfect explanation of why we need to fix land use instead of school boundaries. All schools should have housing available to all income levels within their boundaries.

Hey, here's an idea: let's fix both! School boundaries in the near term, land use in the medium and long term (together with changes to school boundaries as land use changes).

So you want busing AND to ruin nice neighborhoods. No thank you.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

Seems like you are the only one here who is obsessed with skin color.

How so?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

An interesting assertion. My kids got bused to MCPS schools farther from home for elementary school, middle school, and high school, and I'm not mad at progressives.

They got bused to better schools didn't they?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

Where specifically is this happening in MCPS?

Clarksburg.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

Really? Everything you post is busing this, busing that, but it isn't about buses?

Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing or integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in an effort to diversify the racial make-up of schools

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I care about diversity because I don't think schools where 80% of kids qualify for FARMS is okay. Concentrated poverty is horrible, especially for the low-income kids. There are mountains of research to support this.

And, yet our kids who attend those schools do just fine there.

Same. There are challenges for sure, but the Title I schools get extra support and our class sizes are waaaay smaller than the high performing ones. If you value diversity, there are plenty of diverse schools to choose from! I don’t want my kid bussed to Whitman to make someone else feel better, JFC traffic is a nightmare. If you really want to increase SES diversity at schools it starts with housing policy.

I don't see a universe where anyone zoned for a Title 1 elementary gets bussed to Whitman. Are you seriously under the impression that anyone is considering this? Or are you just having arguments with an imaginary person in your head?

A few years ago a BOE member lamented that they didn't bus kids from Twinbrook to Ritchie Park ES and kids from Horizon Hill to Twinbrook ES. That's an insane idea but she wished out loud during a BOE meeting that they had chose that option even though absolutely NO ONE wanted that option.

Source?

MCPS BOE meeting videos in 2019. I believe it was Dixon who said this.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I care about diversity because I don't think schools where 80% of kids qualify for FARMS is okay. Concentrated poverty is horrible, especially for the low-income kids. There are mountains of research to support this.

And, yet our kids who attend those schools do just fine there.

Same. There are challenges for sure, but the Title I schools get extra support and our class sizes are waaaay smaller than the high performing ones. If you value diversity, there are plenty of diverse schools to choose from! I don’t want my kid bussed to Whitman to make someone else feel better, JFC traffic is a nightmare. If you really want to increase SES diversity at schools it starts with housing policy.

I don't see a universe where anyone zoned for a Title 1 elementary gets bussed to Whitman. Are you seriously under the impression that anyone is considering this? Or are you just having arguments with an imaginary person in your head?

A few years ago a BOE member lamented that they didn't bus kids from Twinbrook to Ritchie Park ES and kids from Horizon Hill to Twinbrook ES. That's an insane idea but she wished out loud during a BOE meeting that they had chose that option even though absolutely NO ONE wanted that option.

OK? You're talking about 1) someone who is no longer on the board, 2) saying something she thought about two schools within the same cluster. Zero relevance.

Of course it's relevant. She was talking about the boundary policy and why it needed to be changed. She said that if the new boundary policy had been in place when Rustin ES was zoned they could have done what I posted earlier. And yes, those ES are in the same cluster but they are mikes apart. It would have been insane to make that move. Everyone opposed it, especially the Hispanic community in Twinbrook that would have been most negatively affected.

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Anonymous wrote:According to the boundary analysis report, a little bit over a third of respondents rated balancing diversity as "not important". The remaining two thirds appear to have rated it as at least somewhat important and 10% rated it as extremely important. People do want to balance demographics which include income, race, ethnicity and language background. The data also show that the people who rated balancing diversity as most important were not from Takoma Park or even Silver Spring, but from Burtonsville, Fairland and Colesville.

Yes, but the only people who ever respond to those surveys all live in the segregated school boundaries. The people keep electing people to the board who prioritize diversity because that reflects the county's true priorities.

True. 54% of respondents were from Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase.

So, the survey only represents the feelings of people in wealthy areas whose kids attend the segregated schools.

Most of the 46% who DON'T live in Bethesda, Potomac, and Chevy Chase also don't want busing. Just one geographic area (Burtonsville) indicated that it might want busing but even they didn't feel too strongly about it.

There were no questions in the survey about MCPS providing bus service or about "busing" whatever TF you are pretending that means. Nearly two thirds of respondents felt that diversity is at least somewhat important. It's true that most respondents value proximity and stability more than diversity, but that doesn't mean they don't care about diversity at all. The BOE's policy and boundary studies since then have been consistent with these preferences by balancing these priorities. If diversity were the top priority, they would randomly assign each student in the County to a different school each year, and they have not done that nor would that be consistent with Policy FAA.

While there were no question about buses, how exactly do you think MCPS is going to drag kids to schools farther from home? They're going to use buses. And sure, no one in MoCo is going to say they don't care about diversity at all. They have to at least pretend they they value it. But "somewhat" isn't strong support is it? Meanwhile, everyone strongly supports proximity and stability which are directly at odds with diversity because of where people live. And no one wants to put their kid on a bus just to virtue signal.

MCPS already buses over 2/3 of students. If you want fewer kids put on the bus, you should start advocating for more crossing guards, more sidewalks, and more safe places for kids to cross.

It's almost like riding a bus to the school closest to home and riding a bus past several other schools to a school a lot farther from home just so white progressives can feel like white saviors are two different things.

And yet, for the kid on the bus, a bus ride is a bus ride. Whatever you are mad at, it's not buses.

No one is mad at buses. But families whose kids get bused to schools father from home are mad at progressives who are obsessed with skin color.

Since schools aren't built in the geographic center of each boundary, there will always be students who go to a school farther from home than another school is. In some very built-up parts of the county, there may even be one or two more schools closer. MCPS has to decide which kids get those longer bus rides, regardless of anyone's griping.

This will not change unless we tear down all the schools and rebuild them with exacting distances - which will last until housing patterns change again.

And, at some point its understandable, but for the far away families who will literally pass one school to go to another is silly.

Hmm. Maybe they should do a boundary study to look at alternative options.

As long as diversity is the top factor, a boundary study will only make things worse.