Reply to s/o Whatever happened to the redistricting/equity wars?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]In any event, back to the topic, the report included a number of inconvenient facts about specific communities that both had the largest disparities and also have long been given exceptional treatment. These are the obvious neighborhoods of Garrett Park, Kensington and Takoma Park. The result is that after the report was released, the BOE announced that they will not be taking up any of the recommendations and decided to make it disappear.[/quote]

I'm confused about the inclusion of Takoma Park on this list. TPES/PBES/TPMS are all walkable for large swathes of the community. Blair is the nearest HS, including for kids at the far reach of Takoma Park that couldn't necessarily walk to the ES or MS. What part of the Takoma Park school assignment do you find "exceptional treatment?" [/quote]
The report compared demographics of ES boundaries against adjacent ES boundaries. It found large disparities for TPES and PBES because both schools have a significant number of non-FARMS white students while bordering boundaries had significantly fewer. The outcome is a recommendation to affect a boundary change to facilitate better balancing of diversity between TPES/PBES and neighboring schools. [/quote]

Please provide a citation from either the interim or final boundary analysis report to support your claims. I do not see where it says what you say above about Takoma Park schools. In fact, in the interim report, on page 225, there is a section on this topic which specifically names several different schools, none of which are in Takoma Park:

"Which Schools Are Most Socio-economically Dissimilar from their Nearest Schools?

Aside from Sligo Creek ES, the other elementary schools with the highest socioeconomic dissimilarity to their three nearest schools include Laytonsville ES (Damascus Cluster), Forest Knolls ES (Downcounty Consortium), Kemp Mill ES (Downcounty Consortium), and Strawberry Knoll ES (Gaithersburg cluster). Of these top five most dissimilar schools, three are a part of the Downcounty Consortium.

The most socio-economically dissimilar middle schools in the district from their nearest three schools are Neelsville MS (Clarksburg cluster), Kingsview MS (Northwest HS), Farquhar MS (Sherwood HS / Northeast Consortium), Hallie Wells MS (Clarksbug and Damascus HS), and Rosa M. Parks MS (Sherwood HS/Northeast Consortium).

The most socio-economically dissimilar high schools from their three nearest high schools are Sherwood HS, Poolesville HS, Damascus HS, Whitman HS, and Gaithersburg HS."

[url]https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/departments/publicinfo/Boundary_Analysis/interim-report/02c_Diversity.pdf[/url][/quote]
Within the DCC, you can clearly see Takoma Park ES has extremely different demographics from other adjacent ESs.

And across Cluster Boundaries, you can clearly see both Garrett Park and Kensington, who have significantly different demographics from the adjacent ES in the DCC.

But we don’t need the report to tell us what is obvious. Kensington goes mostly to BCC and Garrett Park goes to WJ to the west instead of going to more racially and socio-economically diverse schools to the east. And Takoma Park is the most white and affluent area within the DCC/Blair.

The report outcome is supposed to be used to reduce these discrepancies among adjacent boundaries.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/dP9xhZC/F66-E2-C0-B-B129-4-C0-B-B71-F-DF5497-F36-AAA.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.ibb.co/ZLGgvnF/3-B562737-8260-488-F-8-D88-86083-A47-B8-C4.jpg[/img][/quote]

The first image shows Sligo Creek and Joann Leleck in the darker orange and red. Sligo Creek's numbers are skewed by the French Immersion program.
TPES/PBES is in yellow, the same as neighboring ESS.

No, Kensington does not "mostly" go to BCC.

Garrett Park is likely going to be reassigned to Woodward when it opens.[/quote]

+1 The chart does not show what PP is claiming that it shows. The outlier in the Blair cluster isn't TPES/PBES, it is Sligo Creek. Both TPES/PBES is more like Highland View and ESS than it is like Sligo Creek ES, demographically. I have no particular attachment to Takoma Park, but I do have attachment to people using data responsibly, and PP is making claims that are not held up by the data. [/quote]

DP. And Sligo Creek and Highland View are really part of the Northwood cluster.[/quote]

Sligo Creek has split articulation, but the broader point stands. If you look around the schools in the neighborhood, TPES/PBES is slightly more affluent than its neighbors (and a lot more affluent than schools like NHE/OVES) but that's a feature of the housing stock in the neighborhood, not the kind of racial gerrymandering that the original PP was claiming. TPES/PBES/TPMS/Blair all have pretty reasonable attendance zones, and the original claim was that Takoma Park enjoys some sort of outrageous advantage in its school zone and that just doesn't seem to hold up. [/quote]

Agreed.[/quote]

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