Baltimore Sun article about Howard County rezoning

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's not quite true.

County funding and resources and curriculum standards for schools is uniform across the board. What made River Hill more desirable than Wilde Lake was market forces driven by the people themselves. The county didn't set up River Hill / Clarksville to become a high end district, it naturally evolved that way. The same for the Columbia districts themselves. So the county didn't make River Hill a prestigious high school any more it made Wilde Lake a less than desirable school (actually, Wilde Lake is perfectly fine). It was the individual actions of homeowners and people's own decisions that led to River Hill being River Hill today. What the county is doing is interfering with the individual decisions and market forces by abruptly distorting it.

If we want to accept your theory, we could also argue that there's a strong case to be made that the county acted in bad faith to the River Hill homeowners. A government does not exist in isolation of the people, it's supposed to represent the people but clearly the county is not representing the affected families and homeowners either.

There is NOTHING about land use that "naturally evolves."

As for bad faith - maybe the property owners of River Hill believed that they would never be rezoned. Maybe that was even officially the Howard County government position at one time, I don't know. But circumstances are subject to change. Rezoning, by itself, does not constitute bad faith. Not when it rezones people who don't own property, not when it rezones people who believe that their properties will gain value, and not when it rezones people who believe that their properties will lose value.

You don't have a right to socioeconomically-segregated public schools. You just don't.

You know, poor kids don't have a right to go to school with richer kids. They just don't.

I'm only saying this to show that the issue of trying to change school demographics is a complicated one because you can't argue for it from a "rights" perspective either way.

All kids - rich and poor - have a right to equal opportunity. And you don't have equal opportunity in segregated schools.

Kids self segregate in non-segregated schools anyway and the test scores remain the same. Rich kids aren't hanging out with the poor kids. This has nothing to do with color and everything to do with money.

So true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just can't with the posters who think believe that

1. the purpose of school boundaries is to maintain the property values of affluent property owners.
2. the purpose of school boundary changes is to punish "the professional classes" by making their kids go to the same public schools poor people's kids go to.

Talk about entitlement and victimhood.

You, and some other posters on here, are very dismissive of the potential (and sizable) loss of house values due to the redistricting. People bought in River Hill district to specifically be in River Hill. Those houses were zoned for River Hill since day one (as far as I can tell). Those houses are geographically closer to River Hill than the other high schools. It is not the same as a national recession affecting everyone across the board, but a deliberate change in government policy that substantially affects your economic well-being. A good equivalent would be a government deciding, out of nowhere, to build a major interstate right alongside your house without any compensation.

The particular irony that you probably also ignore is River Hill has a very high percentage of immigrant (first or second generation) families who have worked their asses off to follow the American dream to have a nice house in a top school district. It's a goal that these families dedicated themselves to. And with a single stroke of the pen a great deal of what people worked very hard for - whether their goals and dreams for their children, or the value of their house, which is going to be their most valuable asset, is wiped away. The house value differential between the two districts is generally around 100-150k, which is a lot of money, especially for people who started with nothing and worked hard to get where they are today.

The areas being rezoned from River Hill to the other high school also isn't the richer part of the River Hill district, but the more moderate income (relatively speaking) part of the district closer to Columbia, populated by people who are more likely to have stretched themselves to get into the River Hill district. So what's going on is definitely theft. But I'm guessing you're probably a young person who is clueless about how much effort and energy and discipline it takes to become even moderately financially successful and to be able to buy just a townhouse in the River Hill district. You think it's something people can take in stride and it's no big deal. That's not how it works for most people.

I suspect there will be political blood at some point. The board or the county council will find out to their political cost if they persist in rezoning people out of River Hill. People move to Howard for the schools and when you mess up the school assignments, memories are long and knives are sharp.

No, I can understand that people are upset.

But the Howard County Board of Education is not there to maintain your property values. Particularly when your current property values are a product of previous Howard County Board of Education decisions. The Board of Education giveth, the Board of Education taketh away.

That's not quite true.

County funding and resources and curriculum standards for schools is uniform across the board. What made River Hill more desirable than Wilde Lake was market forces driven by the people themselves. The county didn't set up River Hill / Clarksville to become a high end district, it naturally evolved that way. The same for the Columbia districts themselves. So the county didn't make River Hill a prestigious high school any more it made Wilde Lake a less than desirable school (actually, Wilde Lake is perfectly fine). It was the individual actions of homeowners and people's own decisions that led to River Hill being River Hill today. What the county is doing is interfering with the individual decisions and market forces by abruptly distorting it.

If we want to accept your theory, we could also argue that there's a strong case to be made that the county acted in bad faith to the River Hill homeowners. A government does not exist in isolation of the people, it's supposed to represent the people but clearly the county is not representing the affected families and homeowners either.

Where is the low income housing that is zoned for River Hill and the other western schools? RH didn’t naturally evolve to its current standing. It evolved due to lack of low income housing, no public transportation and wealthy involved parents. Compare the PTA funds raised in the eastern vs western parts of the county.

I’ve lived in the county for a long time. Don’t act like RH did not benefit from favorable housing policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about Howard but it is 100% true that kids segregate in diverse schools with Montgomery County. The PBES/TP/Blair cluster is terrible in this regard. The white families seem to only be willing to live there if they keep a guarantee of being away from the rest of the student body.

Rezoning has nothing to do with building an integrated diverse community. Rezoning is an attempt to balance financial equity and keep areas with lower performing schools from falling further behind. School administrators like it because it helps slow down schools falling into the bottom level rankings of 4 and below which people avoid like the plague and become an eyesore of why your school is failing. Move enough rich kids in and that 4 school becomes a 5. Administrators can pat themselves on the back for raising the performance of their school even though the poor kids are failing at the same rate as before.

Like it or not, people choose their housing based on the scores of the schools. If you can keep the scores up, you can stabilize property values. What is happening to rezoning is a decision that what the wealthy areas have to lose is less than what the poor areas would lose if they continue to go down.

Maybe in your kids' schools. Not in my kids schools.

Also, look what you just did with that "people choose their housing based on the scores of the schools" thing. Please expand your definition of "people" beyond affluent people who own their homes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about Howard but it is 100% true that kids segregate in diverse schools with Montgomery County. The PBES/TP/Blair cluster is terrible in this regard. The white families seem to only be willing to live there if they keep a guarantee of being away from the rest of the student body.

Rezoning has nothing to do with building an integrated diverse community. Rezoning is an attempt to balance financial equity and keep areas with lower performing schools from falling further behind. School administrators like it because it helps slow down schools falling into the bottom level rankings of 4 and below which people avoid like the plague and become an eyesore of why your school is failing. Move enough rich kids in and that 4 school becomes a 5. Administrators can pat themselves on the back for raising the performance of their school even though the poor kids are failing at the same rate as before.

Like it or not, people choose their housing based on the scores of the schools. If you can keep the scores up, you can stabilize property values. What is happening to rezoning is a decision that what the wealthy areas have to lose is less than what the poor areas would lose if they continue to go down.

The trouble is, many of the wealthy will take the loss and move or go private. eventually you will run out of White and Asian kids to bus in. That's what's happening in the DCC in MCPS - they desperately want "diversity" but there aren't enough Whites and Asians to spread around to the 5 schools. So, test scores continue to decline and Kennedy has a 3/10 ranking, Wheaton HS 4/10, Northwood HS 4/10 Einstein 5/10 and Blair 6/10. You will notice that this is in the same order as the number of Whites and Asians.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:xc
The trouble is, many of the wealthy will take the loss and move or go private. eventually you will run out of White and Asian kids to bus in. That's what's happening in the DCC in MCPS - they desperately want "diversity" but there aren't enough Whites and Asians to spread around to the 5 schools. So, test scores continue to decline and Kennedy has a 3/10 ranking, Wheaton HS 4/10, Northwood HS 4/10 Einstein 5/10 and Blair 6/10. You will notice that this is in the same order as the number of Whites and Asians.

No, that's not what's happening in the DCC.

Also, I don't think that the Board of Education should make policy decisions based on the threat of wealthy people to take their ball and go home, so there, ha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Because if socioeconomic equity is a focus, the BOE will need to do some wrangling to ensure the FARMs concentration isn't too high in HS13. That's going to impact all the HS in central and eastern Howard county.

I think that is a real concern. As I read the projections, it looks more like all of the current higher poverty high schools , plus HS 13, will remain high poverty, and Glen Elg, RH, MR, and others will continue with viritually no lower income students unless some bold changes are made. As others have said, it is all about development and the location of moderate to low income housing. Why not make some moves now?

Looking at the Superintendent's proposal, I think I see areas where they are trying to avoid moving families twice. For instance, Rockburn Township gets moved to Long Reach, wheras areas of Elkridge, which have previously been under discussion as being moved to Long Reach do not. Not only this does move promote diversity at Long Reach, but it allows the Rockburn students to settle in at Long Reach for the long term. Elkridge families stay where they are, for now, but in two years they will likely have to make the long treck down Route 1 to HS 13.

Would you like to be the family that gets rezoned twice in five years? Cause that's going to happen to some people.

Why not wait two more years? The previous BOE voted to delay redistricting to 2023 for a reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Because if socioeconomic equity is a focus, the BOE will need to do some wrangling to ensure the FARMs concentration isn't too high in HS13. That's going to impact all the HS in central and eastern Howard county.

I think that is a real concern. As I read the projections, it looks more like all of the current higher poverty high schools , plus HS 13, will remain high poverty, and Glen Elg, RH, MR, and others will continue with viritually no lower income students unless some bold changes are made. As others have said, it is all about development and the location of moderate to low income housing. Why not make some moves now?

Looking at the Superintendent's proposal, I think I see areas where they are trying to avoid moving families twice. For instance, Rockburn Township gets moved to Long Reach, wheras areas of Elkridge, which have previously been under discussion as being moved to Long Reach do not. Not only this does move promote diversity at Long Reach, but it allows the Rockburn students to settle in at Long Reach for the long term. Elkridge families stay where they are, for now, but in two years they will likely have to make the long treck down Route 1 to HS 13.

Would you like to be the family that gets rezoned twice in five years? Cause that's going to happen to some people.

Why not wait two more years? The previous BOE voted to delay redistricting to 2023 for a reason.

Maybe, maybe not. My family has been considered for rezoing for more years than I can count. I can tell you that looking back, I wish they would have just moved us instead of forcing us to go through this process over and over again.

In addition, at least for high school, it is highly unlikely that any student is going to get moved more than once. Next year's 9th graders will be seniors when HS13 opens, They aren't getting moved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just can't with the posters who think believe that

1. the purpose of school boundaries is to maintain the property values of affluent property owners.
2. the purpose of school boundary changes is to punish "the professional classes" by making their kids go to the same public schools poor people's kids go to.

Talk about entitlement and victimhood.

You, and some other posters on here, are very dismissive of the potential (and sizable) loss of house values due to the redistricting. People bought in River Hill district to specifically be in River Hill. Those houses were zoned for River Hill since day one (as far as I can tell). Those houses are geographically closer to River Hill than the other high schools. It is not the same as a national recession affecting everyone across the board, but a deliberate change in government policy that substantially affects your economic well-being. A good equivalent would be a government deciding, out of nowhere, to build a major interstate right alongside your house without any compensation.

The particular irony that you probably also ignore is River Hill has a very high percentage of immigrant (first or second generation) families who have worked their asses off to follow the American dream to have a nice house in a top school district. It's a goal that these families dedicated themselves to. And with a single stroke of the pen a great deal of what people worked very hard for - whether their goals and dreams for their children, or the value of their house, which is going to be their most valuable asset, is wiped away. The house value differential between the two districts is generally around 100-150k, which is a lot of money, especially for people who started with nothing and worked hard to get where they are today.

The areas being rezoned from River Hill to the other high school also isn't the richer part of the River Hill district, but the more moderate income (relatively speaking) part of the district closer to Columbia, populated by people who are more likely to have stretched themselves to get into the River Hill district. So what's going on is definitely theft. But I'm guessing you're probably a young person who is clueless about how much effort and energy and discipline it takes to become even moderately financially successful and to be able to buy just a townhouse in the River Hill district. You think it's something people can take in stride and it's no big deal. That's not how it works for most people.

I suspect there will be political blood at some point. The board or the county council will find out to their political cost if they persist in rezoning people out of River Hill. People move to Howard for the schools and when you mess up the school assignments, memories are long and knives are sharp.

No, I can understand that people are upset.

But the Howard County Board of Education is not there to maintain your property values. Particularly when your current property values are a product of previous Howard County Board of Education decisions. The Board of Education giveth, the Board of Education taketh away.

That's not quite true.

County funding and resources and curriculum standards for schools is uniform across the board. What made River Hill more desirable than Wilde Lake was market forces driven by the people themselves. The county didn't set up River Hill / Clarksville to become a high end district, it naturally evolved that way. The same for the Columbia districts themselves. So the county didn't make River Hill a prestigious high school any more it made Wilde Lake a less than desirable school (actually, Wilde Lake is perfectly fine). It was the individual actions of homeowners and people's own decisions that led to River Hill being River Hill today. What the county is doing is interfering with the individual decisions and market forces by abruptly distorting it.

If we want to accept your theory, we could also argue that there's a strong case to be made that the county acted in bad faith to the River Hill homeowners. A government does not exist in isolation of the people, it's supposed to represent the people but clearly the county is not representing the affected families and homeowners either.

Where is the low income housing that is zoned for River Hill and the other western schools? RH didn’t naturally evolve to its current standing. It evolved due to lack of low income housing, no public transportation and wealthy involved parents. Compare the PTA funds raised in the eastern vs western parts of the county.

I’ve lived in the county for a long time. Don’t act like RH did not benefit from favorable housing policies.

But that is the county's fault for not doing mixed housing. That should not be the home owner's fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But that is the county's fault for not doing mixed housing. That should not be the home owner's fault.

Regardless of whose responsibility it was, the property owner benefited. It's "social engineering" just as much as the rezoning proposal.

[Anonymous]

From the article: "In Leslie’s view, the more affluent families would bring new resources and support to the school. “They aren’t working two and three jobs. They have stay-at-home parents,” she said. That means they can volunteer more and provide more cash to fund everything from sports activities to after-school programs."

You may agree and wholeheartedly support that, but that doesn't mean everyone feels the same way. There are probably more people who disagree with that view than agree, and of course many of those people won't ever tell you that. That's why HCPS rezones every few years, because some people with means who got rezoned to a lower performing school leave while the new boundaries turn off potential families that might've considered a move to that area. And then the whole thing repeats because people wanting to provide their kids with the best opportunities flock to the most affordable houses in a good pyramid, which again gets redistricted a few years later. DCC and NEC as a whole are doing worse than when they were separate pyramids, because guess what, some people with means left while inbound people avoided houses zoned for the DCC and NEC.

This is a small group of people on the BOE making decisions that directly affect plans and home equities of millions. One of those people on the BOE is a student member, who has no long-term vested interest because he/she goes off to college and likely plants roots elsewhere. It's not the student member's fault, the BOE just uses that member like a puppet and uses (BOE will say encourages/supports) him/her to make the most controversial proposals because people likely aren't going to attack a child's argument. Ones that do get horribly maligned. These types of decisions should go on referendums. When you social engineer, the people with means move away or avoid the area. This doesn't help the FARMS class you're trying to help, because the schools still languish. This hurts the middle class because you've stripped their home equity. Nobody wins. Except the politicians who use this progressive achievement as a springboard to bigger and better things, leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the article: "In Leslie’s view, the more affluent families would bring new resources and support to the school. “They aren’t working two and three jobs. They have stay-at-home parents,” she said. That means they can volunteer more and provide more cash to fund everything from sports activities to after-school programs."

You may agree and wholeheartedly support that, but that doesn't mean everyone feels the same way. There are probably more people who disagree with that view than agree, and of course many of those people won't ever tell you that. That's why HCPS rezones every few years, because some people with means who got rezoned to a lower performing school leave while the new boundaries turn off potential families that might've considered a move to that area. And then the whole thing repeats because people wanting to provide their kids with the best opportunities flock to the most affordable houses in a good pyramid, which again gets redistricted a few years later. DCC and NEC as a whole are doing worse than when they were separate pyramids, because guess what, some people with means left while inbound people avoided houses zoned for the DCC and NEC.

This is a small group of people on the BOE making decisions that directly affect plans and home equities of millions. One of those people on the BOE is a student member, who has no long-term vested interest because he/she goes off to college and likely plants roots elsewhere. It's not the student member's fault, the BOE just uses that member like a puppet and uses (BOE will say encourages/supports) him/her to make the most controversial proposals because people likely aren't going to attack a child's argument. Ones that do get horribly maligned. These types of decisions should go on referendums. When you social engineer, the people with means move away or avoid the area. This doesn't help the FARMS class you're trying to help, because the schools still languish. This hurts the middle class because you've stripped their home equity. Nobody wins. Except the politicians who use this progressive achievement as a springboard to bigger and better things, leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces.

If we left decisions like these up to referendums, schools would still be segregated. The county planned poorly by not building low income housing in the wear nor public transportation. The BOE is dealing with the hand they got. You can’t have concentrated pockets of poverty. I said it earlier- look at the funding of the PTA and activities at the wealthy western schools compared to the eastern schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the article: "In Leslie’s view, the more affluent families would bring new resources and support to the school. “They aren’t working two and three jobs. They have stay-at-home parents,” she said. That means they can volunteer more and provide more cash to fund everything from sports activities to after-school programs."

You may agree and wholeheartedly support that, but that doesn't mean everyone feels the same way. There are probably more people who disagree with that view than agree, and of course many of those people won't ever tell you that. That's why HCPS rezones every few years, because some people with means who got rezoned to a lower performing school leave while the new boundaries turn off potential families that might've considered a move to that area. And then the whole thing repeats because people wanting to provide their kids with the best opportunities flock to the most affordable houses in a good pyramid, which again gets redistricted a few years later. DCC and NEC as a whole are doing worse than when they were separate pyramids, because guess what, some people with means left while inbound people avoided houses zoned for the DCC and NEC.

This is a small group of people on the BOE making decisions that directly affect plans and home equities of millions. One of those people on the BOE is a student member, who has no long-term vested interest because he/she goes off to college and likely plants roots elsewhere. It's not the student member's fault, the BOE just uses that member like a puppet and uses (BOE will say encourages/supports) him/her to make the most controversial proposals because people likely aren't going to attack a child's argument. Ones that do get horribly maligned. These types of decisions should go on referendums. When you social engineer, the people with means move away or avoid the area. This doesn't help the FARMS class you're trying to help, because the schools still languish. This hurts the middle class because you've stripped their home equity. Nobody wins. Except the politicians who use this progressive achievement as a springboard to bigger and better things, leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces.

That's why HCPSS rezones every few years? My goodness, the willingness of affluent people to spend a lot of money and resources to avoid having their children attend schools with children from low-income families! A person might even logically infer that schools with lots of kids with low-income families aren't schools where a lot of learning happens. What is HCPSS doing to reduce the number of schools where a large proportion of students are from low-income families? Maybe they should consider rezoning...

That "student member is a puppet" argument is a bad look on you, by the way.

[Anonymous]

I’d have a lot more respect for RH parents if they just admitted they don’t want their kids to go to school with black kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d have a lot more respect for RH parents if they just admitted they don’t want their kids to go to school with black kids.

No you wouldn't

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d have a lot more respect for RH parents if they just admitted they don’t want their kids to go to school with black kids.

No you wouldn't

At least they would be honest about their racism.