Just IN!!!! Youtube video of Boundary Analysis Discussion / Board of Education Jan. 9, 2020

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched most of it earlier today when it was live. Smondrowski came out how she's in favor of neighborhood schools more or less.

Silvestre asked a good question of Smith about why they added the "especially" bit to the FAA policy regarding diversity. Smith gave a long-winded answer which didn't really answer the question, and Silvestre didn't follow up on it.

O'Neill was getting mad at the supposed misinformation on Facebook groups, and almost seemed like she was calling for censorship.

Docca didn't say anything of value, but no surprise there.

Overall, no big revelations in my opinion. But the board didn't really acknowledge how so many people are up in arms about this, whether justified or not, and figure out how to address that. I'm not even sure _how_ they should address it, but bottom line is people on all sides are concerned, and they don't seem to be doing a very good job to allay those concerns.

but it turns out that's just a dog whistle for segregation since only 30% of kids are local to their assigned school

That's inaccurate.

37% of elementary school students
45% of middle school students
38% of high school students

are not assigned to their CLOSEST school (this excludes students who do not attend their base school, including magnet and choice programs).

Maybe we should start asking people who say they support "local schools" or "neighborhood schools" how they define those terms.

My kid went to Westbrook, and will go to BCC. Every single kid who is in Westbrook's zone is "closer" by a couple tenths of a mile to Whitman than BCC, and they'll all go to BCC.

This is a completely meaningless statistic, subject to misrepresentation by (i) people wishing to deceive and (ii) idiots.

+1,000,000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched most of it earlier today when it was live. Smondrowski came out how she's in favor of neighborhood schools more or less.

Silvestre asked a good question of Smith about why they added the "especially" bit to the FAA policy regarding diversity. Smith gave a long-winded answer which didn't really answer the question, and Silvestre didn't follow up on it.

O'Neill was getting mad at the supposed misinformation on Facebook groups, and almost seemed like she was calling for censorship.

Docca didn't say anything of value, but no surprise there.

Overall, no big revelations in my opinion. But the board didn't really acknowledge how so many people are up in arms about this, whether justified or not, and figure out how to address that. I'm not even sure _how_ they should address it, but bottom line is people on all sides are concerned, and they don't seem to be doing a very good job to allay those concerns.

but it turns out that's just a dog whistle for segregation since only 30% of kids are local to their assigned school

That's completely false.

Sorry only 37% of kids are local.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't matter. They will never change the socioeconomic makeup of the W schools...as much as they would like. It's just to difficult with the geography. They claim that adjustments would be made with adjacent schools, which will accomplish nothing. Thy only way they will make any impact to diversity in these schools is to create islands and bus across the county...and the board has already said this will not happen. So we (W school people) have nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I watched most of it earlier today when it was live. Smondrowski came out how she's in favor of neighborhood schools more or less.

Silvestre asked a good question of Smith about why they added the "especially" bit to the FAA policy regarding diversity. Smith gave a long-winded answer which didn't really answer the question, and Silvestre didn't follow up on it.

O'Neill was getting mad at the supposed misinformation on Facebook groups, and almost seemed like she was calling for censorship.

Docca didn't say anything of value, but no surprise there.

Overall, no big revelations in my opinion. But the board didn't really acknowledge how so many people are up in arms about this, whether justified or not, and figure out how to address that. I'm not even sure _how_ they should address it, but bottom line is people on all sides are concerned, and they don't seem to be doing a very good job to allay those concerns.

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda Beat article about the discussion at the board meeting, here: https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/schools/montgomery-county-school-board-receives-boundary-analysis-update/

About 58% of attendees have kids currently enrolled in MCPS

So, almost half of the folks going to these meetings aren't even parents of currently enrolled children? I wonder how many are people who don't have school aged kids and are just worried about their home values.

Or they could be people with younger children who are interested in the future of MCPS schools.

This. Our preschool forwarded an email to parents about it. Families with young kids probably have more stake in this than most high schoolers. It would be at least a couple years before any changes were actually made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched most of it earlier today when it was live. Smondrowski came out how she's in favor of neighborhood schools more or less.

Silvestre asked a good question of Smith about why they added the "especially" bit to the FAA policy regarding diversity. Smith gave a long-winded answer which didn't really answer the question, and Silvestre didn't follow up on it.

O'Neill was getting mad at the supposed misinformation on Facebook groups, and almost seemed like she was calling for censorship.

Docca didn't say anything of value, but no surprise there.

Overall, no big revelations in my opinion. But the board didn't really acknowledge how so many people are up in arms about this, whether justified or not, and figure out how to address that. I'm not even sure _how_ they should address it, but bottom line is people on all sides are concerned, and they don't seem to be doing a very good job to allay those concerns.

but it turns out that's just a dog whistle for segregation since only 30% of kids are local to their assigned school

That's completely false.

Sorry only 37% of kids are local.

That . . . wasn't the problem with your statistic. So, per the earlier discussion, are you a credulous fool or someone looking to inflame public opinion with faulty stats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

Jill Ortman Fouse the person who started all this was heard on record multiple times that this wording puts more weight on diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

Jill Ortman Fouse the person who started all this was heard on record multiple times that this wording puts more weight on diversity.

How did she vote on the boundary analysis in January 2019 - for or against?

How did she vote on the upcounty boundary study last fall?

[Anonymous]

"Strive" is a stronger word than "try".

"Especially" means of greater priority, value, importance, etc.

Let's not pretend that we don't know the meanings of common words. Let's not pretend that they changed the wording because the wording of a policy doesn't matter.

Lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Strive" is a stronger word than "try".

"Especially" means of greater priority, value, importance, etc.

Let's not pretend that we don't know the meanings of common words. Let's not pretend that they changed the wording because the wording of a policy doesn't matter.

Lol.

We all know what "especially" means. The disagreement is about whether the "especially", added to a sentence within the demographic factor, means that the demographic factor is more important than the other 3 factors. MCPS says it doesn't. Evidently you disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

Jill Ortman Fouse the person who started all this was heard on record multiple times that this wording puts more weight on diversity.

How did she vote on the boundary analysis in January 2019 - for or against?

How did she vote on the upcounty boundary study last fall?

She was a board member from 2014-2018.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

Jill Ortman Fouse the person who started all this was heard on record multiple times that this wording puts more weight on diversity.

How did she vote on the boundary analysis in January 2019 - for or against?

How did she vote on the upcounty boundary study last fall?

She was a board member from 2014-2018.

IOW, she's not on the BoE anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Strive" is a stronger word than "try".

"Especially" means of greater priority, value, importance, etc.

Let's not pretend that we don't know the meanings of common words. Let's not pretend that they changed the wording because the wording of a policy doesn't matter.

Lol.

We all know what "especially" means. The disagreement is about whether the "especially", added to a sentence within the demographic factor, means that the demographic factor is more important than the other 3 factors. MCPS says it doesn't. Evidently you disagree.

Where does it say that mcps wont weigh it more? The ANALYSIS will provide data that looks at all factors in an equal lens. They will provide options that prioritize different factors...like they did with the Clarksburg study. The way the board will vote on the other hand is driven by the data AND the FAA policy which we all know will ESPECIALLY strive for a diverse student body. The policy weighs it more. Full stop. Watch the video.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m glad Silvestre asked that question, although I’m not sure we have a better answer for it. I have no problem at all with diversity being included as one of the criteria, but when you include language like that, you’re leaving it open to interpretation what you mean. So instead of each of the four factors having equal weight, diversity supposedly has higher weight, but how much more? With housing segregation being what it is, what happens when you have a scenario that pits diversity vs. walkability?

"strive to", which is what it was before, is also open to interpretation, of course.

Who, associated with BoE or MCPS, has said that the demographics factor has greater weight?

Jill Ortman Fouse the person who started all this was heard on record multiple times that this wording puts more weight on diversity.

How did she vote on the boundary analysis in January 2019 - for or against?

How did she vote on the upcounty boundary study last fall?

She was a board member from 2014-2018.

IOW, she's not on the BoE anymore.

Correct but she was the main driver of the policy which she voted for last year and heavily encouraged her fellow board members to vote for it as well.