Reply to Kaya Leaving; John Davis in as interim

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Reply to "Kaya Leaving; John Davis in as interim"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that the problem with the boundary review process that Abigail Smith presided over was that it was far too susceptible to objections that were based on individual rather than collective interest. The idea that people's personal real estate choices must be validated by the education system was outrageous to me then and it remains outrageous now. When you buy a particular house, you assume certain things, but they are not guarantees. That a particular school will ALWAYS be tied to a particular address is a ridiculous assumption, and the idea that that is a "right" is even more ridiculous.

The system we have now sets up enclaves of success that motivated students hope to get into, while leaving an educational quality desert surrounding them. If posters want to sit there and pretend that their objections to things like boundary revisions that redistrict people from Deal to Hardy or the construction of homeless shelters in boundary for a high performing elementary are NOT motivated by person reasons, frankly, I don't believe you.[/quote]

You send your children to a low-performing school and work tirelessly to solve problems within the school thst are impossible for the school to solve, right?[/quote]

That's exactly the opposite of the PP's point, which is that this is not an individual problem; it's a group, collective-action problem.  Something like choice sets (especially in Capitol Hill) could likely result in equalizing the situation without prejudicing the "enclaves".  Breaking down the enclaves is the only way to get to an acceptable MS option on the Hill as well.  Would I want to send my child to Eliot-Hine as is?  No.  Would I try out a Ward 6 unified middle school, feeding from Tyler, Miner, Maury, Payne, Brent, Van Ness, etc, where the administration had made a committment to appropriate academic offerings? Almost certainly I would consider it.  [/quote]

NP.  The difficulty though is in identifying what's truly in the best interest of the "collective" versus what's just benefiting a different group of individuals.

For example, you can paint certain residents of Capitol Hill as bad by claiming they are only interested in preserving their individual local school quality against the greater needs of the collective.  Or alternatively, you can paint the people whose kids are not currently at that school as individuals who are trying to undermine the successful school the collective neighborhood has created.

Or as another example, when people discuss the process of redistricting from Deal to Hardy, which side represents the "selfish individuals"?: Is it the individuals fighting to keep a spot at Deal despite to negative impact of overcrowding on everyone, or is it the individuals trying to push other families out of Deal to make it less overcrowded for their own kids?  I can understand and appreciate both sides of that fight, but neither has a clear claim on the moral high ground.[/quote]

Original PP here.

I think that the Deal example illustrates perfectly how personally people take this. I don't think it's appropriate. No one is looking at Family X and saying, "Let's kick Family X to the curb so that it's less crowded for Family Y." Rationally, one would look at the physical capacities of schools and adjust the boundaries in order to make sure that no school is over-enrolled. It's not personal!

I am sympathetic to everyone trying to find solid education options for their kids, but I'm also sympathetic to the macro issue at play, which is that many individuals are not willing to invest in the collective, wherever or however that's defined. [/quote]

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