Reply to Baltimore Sun article about Howard County rezoning

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]
[b]
You, and some other posters on here, are very dismissive of the potential (and sizable) loss of house values due to the redistricting.[/b] 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.

[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.

[/quote]

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

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