Reply to BOE/MCPS is a mess

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

The part that you left out is that, in every corner of the county, people said they overwhelmingly supported sending kids to their nearest school and that diversity wasn't that important to them.[/quote]

You don't understand how surveys work do you?

You also don't care to concern yourself with the reality that currently, many students do not attend the school closest to them, the boundaries do not make sense even if you ignore diversity, and it is possible to improve utilization of existing space AND reduce segregation. The problem is, you think reducing segregation is inherently bad, which is why you keep prattling on about a wildly unrepresentative survey while completely ignoring decades of research showing why segregation in education is bad. But, nevermind all that, 90% of the people who filled out this online thing want to go to the school closest to them. Guess that's settled then.[/quote]
I do.  And I underatnad that if we look at the breakdown of each individual are of the county, proximity was overwhelmingly supported.  Conversely, diversity was marked as not that important.

And I would have supported a countywide boundary study if the boundary policy hadn't been altered to prioritize diversity.  [b]Under the current diversity-priorotozed policy, kids cannot be moved to a closer school if it make the school less divers[/b]. Because of where people live, almost every move will be farther which is busing.[/quote]

That is absolutely false. Nowhere in the policy does it say that.
[/quote]
I wish you were right.  Unfortunately, during the largest boundary student to date under the new policy (Clarksburg), Sup. Smith said he couldn't choose one of the options most people preferred because it didn't advance the diversity factor enough. And that was in one of the most diverse areas of the county. Just imagine what they'll do I'm places like Bethesda, Damascus, and Silver Spring. [/quote]

First of all, you are moving the goalposts. What you said above in bold above isn't the same thing as what you just said. Second, you conveniently omitted that Smith also said he couldn't choose other options because they didn't advance the proximity factor or they didn't advance the utilization factor. Which is how the process works.[/quote]
Right.  He didn't choose the worst busing option.  He chose the second worst busing option.[/quote]

Well then MCPS isn't all that interested in "busing."[/quote]
Of course they are.  [b]Didn't you watch any of the BOE meetings?[/b]  They said that increasing diversity was the most important thing they could do for the students.  Busing is the only way to make that happen.[/quote]

Yes, in fact it's because I've watched the BOE meetings that I know there is no "busing plan." And because I've read the all the recent boundary study reports and superintendent recommendations I know that diversity is just one of the four factors being considered.[/quote]
If you were looking for something called a busing plan, you wouldn't find it. But "increasing diversity" is a dog whistle for busing and that's all they talked about when they altered the boundary policy to elevate diversity and then ordered the boundary analysis.  I mean, how else would the BOE make schools more diverse WITHOUT busing?[/quote]

I will try to say this as clearly as I can, for the benefit of others who may actually be interested. If a student does not live within the walk zone of any school, then they will ride a bus. This is the case for tens of thousands of students. Many of these students' neighborhoods without a closeby school are comparably distant from two or three schools to which they could reasonably ride a bus. When determining which of these non-walkable but also not-far schools a neighborhood should attend, MCPS looks at demographic characteristics so that the adjacent schools can have similarly diverse student bodies, when possible.[/quote]
Thank you for finally agreeing that MCPS will race-balance schools with busing.  Now what are we going to do about it?  Because 90% of the people in the county value their closest school and don't value diversity very much. The BOE got it exactly wrong when they prioritized diversity in the boundary policy.[/quote]

Actually only about a third of respondents to the wildly unrepresentative survey actually went so far as to say diversity was "unimportant" to them. There are your Steve Austin supporters. Guess what, Steve Austin lost. Most people do want diversity.

Thanks for admitting what you mean by "busin". To you, "busing" doesn't refer to busing kids across the county, it doesn't mean busing kids particularly far, it just means changing school boundaries to reduce segregation, and you REALLY hate the idea of reducing segregation.[/quote]

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