Reply to Residents appeal MCPS boundary changes, challenge legality of diversity focus

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Did you read the appeal? Not about Seneca valley.[/quote]

I've read the appeal, and what a mess it is. These are the arguments:

1. "BoE exceeded its authority under Policy FAA in reassigning boundaries for middle schools"

The claim is that BoE was not allowed to make changes to Rocky Hill/Neelsville for demography because neither school was over/under capacity or had a capital project.

2. "The boundary plan adopted by BOE is illegal, in that it was based on an illegally adopted Policy FAA"

The claim is that it's illegal because there were only 11 days between the proposal to change a sentence in the demography factor from "Options should strive to promote the creation of a diverse student body in each of the affected schools" to "Options should especially strive to create a diverse student body in each of the affected schools, in alignment with Board Policy ACD, Quality Integrated Education".

3. "The recommendation adopted was arbitrary, contrary to sound educational policy, and discriminatory, in that it was based solely or primarily on FARMS rates disparities as a proxy for racial balancing, and no policy, measure, nor scientific-based criteria for guiding the determination of adverse FARMS rates between or across schools has been established"

(To support the proxy claim, they cite data showing that county-wide, 87% of FARMS students are black or Hispanic, but that's a failure of statistical logic. To support the claim that FARMS rates are a proxy for "racial balancing," they would have need to cite data showing that a high percentage of black or Hispanic students receive FARMS.)

4. "Utilizing FARMS as a proxy for race effectively renders the middle school boundary changes unconstitutional"

The claim is that students were reassigned based on their race, which is unconstitutional racial discrimination. (Not sure how this claim applies to the black and Hispanic students who were reassigned to Neelsville.)

5. "Violation of the Open Meetings Act invalidates the boundary process"

The claim here is that the BoE may have violated the Open Meetings Act, based on something one board member said in a text message (Since the state board of education does not decide about violations of the Open Meetings Act, I don't know why they put that in.)

https://www.scribd.com/document/441610459/Appeal-of-UpCounty-Boundary-Change

I suppose they paid a lawyer to put this appeal together? I hope they didn't pay the lawyer very much.

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