Reply to Taylor's Feb Rec for Crown Boundary Study

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]great thoughtful perspective today from Brow Station ES. Basically Brown Station and Northwest High School are getting screwed by option H. https://moderatelymoco.com/brown-station-community-raises-segregation-concerns-over-mcps-boundary-proposal/ Increased FARMs, getting cut off from special programs, bussing longer distances. MCPS is segregating black and brown kids to Germantown. [/quote]

The same way Darnestown got segregated to Northwest despite being so close to QO? And now Poolesville? Spare me.[/quote]

Yeah I feel for Brown Station but I think this is really more of an issue of real segregation in neighborhoods than of MCPS manufacturing school based segregation. Diamond and Darnestown are both closer to QO than Brown Station is, so it’s certainly a bit odd that Darnestown and Diamond have been districted to Northwest and Brown Station to QO.

And the Clemente thing isn’t about concentrating lower income students - in fact Clemente’s FARMS % is going slightly down now - but is rather because of the new regional programming, where Brown Station needs to attend a region 6 MS and not a region 5 one. 
[/quote]

I’ll give you Darnestown and, of course, housing segregation is at the root of so much of this. But Diamond and Brown Station are literally walking distance from each other and, even though Diamond is slightly closer distance-wise, drive times are nearly identical for at least some of the communities given how Diamond is tucked back in a neighborhood and Brown Station is on a main road. Half of Diamond is at Northwest now and the FARMS rate significantly decreases at QO and significantly increases at Northwest (and not solely due to the Brown Station move). I tend to agree with you that MCPS isn’t deliberately trying to concentrate poverty - I lean more toward thinking this is coming from their fixation on contiguous boundaries and what looks good on a map. But given the move is basically neutral on two of the FAA factors (proximity and utilization) and clear net negative on the other two (demographic balance and stability) this feels like dereliction of duty. [/quote]

+1000

Taylor has shown us time and again in this process that demographics is not a factor for him, but pretty maps are. Pretty maps is not one of the FAA factors but he is the Superintendent and BOE is to afraid to question him[/quote]

"Pretty maps" could be considered satisfying three of the four factors. Policy FAA has 4 different criteria for boundary studies.

1. Demographic characteristics of student population
2. Geography
3. Stability of school assignments over time
4. Facility Utilization

Geography and Stability of School Assignments (if kids are closer to their schools, it's probably more likely they'll stay in that boundary, instead of in an island) are satisfied by student blocks being close to their schools. Facility Utilization has a segment about "should be fiscally responsible to minimize capital and operating costs whenever possible), so closer bus rides also matches that.

Option 3 for the Crown / Damascus boundary study tried to emphasize Demographics and people HATED those maps. The problem is that the county residential areas have done a pretty good job of geographically sorting ourselves by income and wealth, so trying to make a nice, compact map ends up concentrating FARMS and EML to different schools.

P.S. As a legal matter (not moral or "ought to be"), all four of those factors are considered aspirational and not mandatory.[/quote]
You're really stretching the bounds of logic here in so many ways. He is changing the articulation of Brown Station, which goes against the stability factor. He is increasing the demographic disparity between QO and NW quite substantially, which goes against the demographic factor. He isn't helping geographic proximity much if at all. You're assuming this plan somehow saves money on buses, but it's not at all clear to me how that is supposed to happen. Of course, the policy offers the Superintendent great discretion and in that sense he is following the letter of it but clearly not the intent. In other words he deems a very marginal improvement in proximity and MAYBE bus costs is considered worth a quite substantial increase in the demographic disparity.[/quote]

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