Reply to Show me the law that says school boards cannot change boundaries.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We need to a better job of focusing on economic development and housing policy to combat SES-based segregation.  You can do some modest level of redistricting and bussing to improve balance at schools wherever reasonable/feasible, but unless you address the underlying root issue you're just going to have to contort these strategies farther and farther over time to achieve some semblance of balance or equity, and we're already basically at the point where the costs begin to outweigh the benefits in many cases.

This is a long-term issue, and instead we're debating over which band-aids are the right ones to apply. That's not to say you can't have both long-term AND short-term strategies, but overall the policy focus for addressing these challenges seems terribly myopic and neglecting the changes we'd need to make for sustainable solutions.[/quote]

Face it, most of the really needy kids are a result of our lack of border control.  There were lots that came in when Obama ordered DACA.  Those were unaccompanied.  Do you really think Fairfax should be providing condos for them?[/quote]

PP... I am open to "facing that" if someone can show me some stats to support the assertion... but my instinct is that disparity amongst schools based on SES segregation is a far, far larger issue than whatever volume of kids have been / are entering the country (and settling in Fairfax County, VA). Furthermore the geographic segregation has been going on for decades, and while it's not like we need to strive to attain some strawman notion of perfectly even distribution, there's certainly some common sense things we can be doing such as policy to direct new AH developments proximal to areas with >median income (rather than locating new AH in areas that would exacerbate already-concentrated povery / low-income), etc.
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DP, but it would help if you could articulate the problem you are trying to solve and then explain how your solution addresses that problem.

How would putting AH developments in the middle of Great Falls or Fairfax Station help anyone?  Would tearing down the slum-like garden apartments in Culmore sufficiently improve the lives of those uprooted to justify the significant cost?

It’s hard to avoid concluding that you may really just be looking for government action intended to subsidize middle-income homeowners who live near lower SES families at the expense of those who have invested in other, more expensive areas.  What you call “common sense” likely is tantamount to “theft” in the eyes of others, at least not accompanied by a compelling rationale for doing what you’re proposing.[/quote]

What about when wealthier neighborhoods get moved out of poorer schools? Aren't we giving those people value? Aren't the people left behind getting robbed? It works both ways. In Fairfax recently this is the only way it has worked.

No one is entitled to a particular school. Close proximity and capacity numbers should dominate the decisions, but after that there should be some attempt at avoiding making any particular school a pariah (by say, concentrating poverty).

And affordable housing can be put in areas that would feed the wealthier schools. It wouldn't be in the heart of Great Falls, but it would be in Tysons where Langley could pull some students to bring its F/R rate up from 1.5%. Woodson's rate has remained pretty low all these years despite the fact that it sits on a main thoroughfare where you think they might build more affordable housing to take advantage of potential bus routes.[/quote]

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