Reply to Powerful Letter to the Arlington County School Board about Diversity

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Reply to "Powerful Letter to the Arlington County School Board about Diversity"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My biggest problem with this letter is that "free and reduced lunch" percentage is constantly used as a shorthand / substitute for racial diversity.  Free and reduced lunch and racial diversity aren't the same.  Yorktown High school might only have 14% FARL, but the minority population is 35%, just to give one example.  Doing this makes these schools look less diverse than they really are.[/quote]

If we're talking about a diversity of experiences, considering economic diversity makes sense. Not that race is immaterial, but the child of a doctor and a lawyer who were born in the US is going to have a difference perspective on a lot of things than the child of a day laborer and a housekeeper, even if both kids are nonwhite. [/quote]

This is exactly correct.

But more to the point, my understanding is that the school board felt that, by law, they could not use race as a factor in their deliberations. (Not that it matters; they clearly didn't use F/RL as a factor either.)[/quote]

The SB didn't need to use race as a factor, this is a cop out on their part. There are neighborhoods that are going to be on a bus to any of the three high schools. They could have been more strategic about which high school those neighborhoods could have been rezoned to, and that is not lawsuit worthy.  Some neighborhoods should not have been on the table from the beginning, given the historic reasons that they were placed in certain boundaries, again, not lawsuit worthy. Finally, they had an option, even at the end, that took into account all of the criteria and that was not unreasonable or even close to "forced busing" but that would have resulted in a marginally more fair outcome. And they didn't chose that one either. School Board, we heard you loud and clear. Honey Badger don't give a sh**.

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