Reply to MoCo is diverse, for sure, but MCPS schools are not

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "MoCo is diverse, for sure, but MCPS schools are not"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Well, until we decide that schools should be filled lottery-style from the entire county, and people desire neighborhood schools, schools will be populated by the people who live in a community...which can be very homogenous sometimes.  House prices in the western part of the county are high because of the schools, and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.  Disrupting that connection is a big thing to tackle, but many things are being tried:

*Developers have to set aside a certain percentage of affordable units in new construction.
  --there are still not enough affordable units to meet demand in wealthier areas
*There's been some effort to redistrict or institute busing to increase diversity
  --many schools on the western side of the county are very overcrowded, but perhaps more can be done between RM and Wootton?
*Magnet MS and HS programs are nearly exclusively set up in schools on the eastern side of the county to encourage high-performing kids to attend schools that are otherwise lower performing
  --many students on the western side opt out because of long commutes
*Title I schools get additional funding to lower class sizes and address other educational needs

What else?[/quote]

It's a good list, and one additional major advantage for MCPS is that the school district is Montgomery County. But it's not enough. Housing policy is school policy (http://tcf.org/assets/downloads/tcf-Schwartz.pdf), which means that housing policy needs to change, to allow developers to build at higher densities in wealthy areas that are currently zoned to keep out the non-wealthy, which means that transportation policy needs to change, because all of those new people need to get places, and if they all have to drive everywhere it will be a disaster, and it means that school construction funding policy needs to change, because the new schools aren't getting built fast enough...

And then of course the people in wealthy areas that are currently zoned to keep out the non-wealthy like it that way, and will fight any change. See, for example, the Town of Chevy Chase and the Purple Line.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics