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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is such a strange thread ... It reminds me of watching cable news ... just a bunch of shouting heads and aphorisms and little spoon-size bits of actual news.

I've lived all over MoCo ... Damascus, Silver Spring, Potomac and Chevy Chase ... and been happy living here, and I'm a moderate/liberal Dem who works for a Fortune 500 company.

I'll admit I'm not steeped in local politics, and appreciate the bits of argument about actual issues, whether its public transportation, tax rates, affordable housing or other topics ... but the hyperbolic &quot;it's all going to hell&quot; rhetoric just sounds like bar stool philosophy. [/quote]
I used to be right there with you but when the MCPS BOE started talking changing policies and ordering studies that hinted at busing, I started paying attention to the BOE, the CC, and the CE and am mortified by some of their priorities.  Our proximity to DC and NoVA means that no matter how bad our politicians are, MoCo will probably always be a decent place to live.  But quality of life and our ranking among other DC metro counties continues to fall.[/quote]

MCPS has been busing for [u]decades[/u]. Maybe you didn't notice?[/quote] 
They've done a little around the edges.  But in 2018/19 there was a big push for countywide busing.  Thankfully the 2021 BOE doesn't seem as interested.  But we'll keep an eye on them.[/quote]
 &quot;especially&quot; means pushing for county wide busing? That's not how I read it, but ok.[/quote]
Thankfully that's not how the 2021 BOE read it either.  But to deny than the 2018/19 BOE was gunning for busing is disingenuous.  Pro-busers would actually say &quot;We don't want busing.  We just want schools to be better balanced demographically and if kids have to attend schools farther from home, that's OK.&quot;  This is a BOE member Dixon paraphrase BTW.[/quote]
&quot;further away&quot; &lt;&gt; &quot;countywide busing&quot;. It may, however, mean adjacent clusters.

We have that now, pre-the word &quot;especially&quot;. Look at the Churchill and Wootton cluster maps.

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04602map.pdf

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04234map.pdf[/quote]
Do you know what countywide means?[/quote]
And so you agree that "countywide" busing is happening now?  Some of those kids in Churchill cluster are being "bused" to Churchill rather than the closest school.[/quote]
OK so you don't know what it means.  You seem to have it confused with cross-county busing.  No worries.  I'll educate you.  Countywide means throughout the country.  Busing kids to adjacent clusters will, more often than not, mean busing kids to schools farther from home.  Back in 2018 the BOE altered the boundary policy to promote the demographics/diversity factor above the other three factors and also allowed MCPS to rezone kids to schools in adjacent clusters.  The pro-busers who pushed for these changes wanted to see them done COUNTYWIDE, not just in a few corners of the county.

And you pro-busers can keep trying to sell existing busing but no one is buying.  Busing is a specific thing, 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.  Actually, I take that back.  There are a few cases of busing where MCPS is sending neighborhoods to schools in an effort to diversify the racial make-up of schools like the Rio island in the Wootton map you linked.  As for the Churchill map, it's a circle.  Seems like a very good, rational boundary.

All of that aside, the boundary analysis clearly shows that people don't want their kids bused anywhere.  They are very happy in their current schools.  And if they do have to be moved because of overcrowding, they want to be moved to schools closer to home, not farther.  They also said that diversity isn't very important to them.  And that makes sense.  Most people aren't obsessed with race-balancing as much as white progressives and white progressives make up a tiny minority of MCPS parents.[/quote]

You are correct, from what a strict definition of what busing means.  MCPS does not do that.

But take a look at the Gaithersburg HS cluster map and tell me that's not designed in the "spirit of busing"

The intentionally want those kids up near Damascus to be bussed down to Gaithersburg in order to increase the diversity of the school.  That cluster map makes no sense.  Those kdis spend 45-60 minutes on a bus each way, when there are much closer high schools.

It may not technically be "bussing" because the school system uses a cluster system to assign high schools.  But its certainly gerrymandering of the cluster boundaries which results in kids being bussed to farther away high schools to meeting certain program goals.

Call it what it is:  bussing[/quote]

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