Reply to Show me the law that says school boards cannot change boundaries.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I don't resent Langley, but was responding to the suggestion that, due to geography alone, Langley will always be a school that serves next to no lower-income kids. That's just BS, and I pointed out how changing a few of the boundaries could add some diversity to Langley and result in net shorter transportation times for the affected students. The main thing FCPS needs to do with Langley right now is make use of the empty seats, which are an affront to the taxpayers who paid for the school's renovation and reasonably could expect FCPS to take advantage of that.

I'm starting to think that you are either deliberately obtuse, or just have a knee-jerk, negative reaction to anything that could be perceived as increasing diversity at the county's segregated schools. It doesn't seem to matter to you that the primary drivers of the types of changes being discussed here are making efficient use of existing capacity and reducing the amount of time that kids spend on buses. As long as they could also be viewed as promoting greater diversity or SES balance, you're going to object.[/quote]

No.  My own kids' school is diverse and I like that.  I just don't think you can artificially create a diverse school.  And, from my own experience in teaching in a school that was bused for this purpose, I know that there is a down-side.  For most of my teaching career, I taught in a school in another system where the kids ranged in race and socio-economic background, and I liked that.  But, the kids also lived in the same community.  And, FWIW, I think AAP centers in Fairfax County are not at all helpful, and are unnecessary.  I very much think they contribute to this whole thing.

I do not think that rearranging schools just for the sake of socio-economic diversity would be helpful.  And, under your plan, that is the only purpose for switching Langley boundaries around.

To me, community is extremely important in schools.  With Fairfax's traffic and commutes, proximity is even more important to create a community in a school.  When you skip over one neighborhood to send another to a school in order to achieve diversity, it is artificial and takes away the community support.

As I said before, I don't think the Langley situation is ideal.  But, rearranging the boundaries and picking and choosing the students just to achieve diversity is artificial.  From looking at the boundary map, it appears that the neighborhoods are contiguous--and that makes sense.  I do see some glitches--especially those neighborhoods on the other side of Route 7 that are close to Herndon High.  I do think Forestville should go there in the future, but right now, it would help neither Herndon or Langley.  Herndon has Aldrin and Armstrong which are better located for Herndon than South Lakes.

Wait until the new school is built.
[/quote]

To say "I just don't think you can artificially create a diverse school" overlooks the obvious.  The current boundaries reflect a whole series of historical judgments that are no less artificial than what might result if the current boundaries were changed in certain respects.  Sometimes those judgments reinforced the lack of diversity at a school, as in Langley's case, and in other cases those judgments promoted diversity at a school.

In addition, it's circular to suggest that community is extremely important in schools, and should be a priority to maintain, without acknowledging that sense of community may exist primarily because of the existing school assignments.  Great Falls is never so much of the same community as McLean as when there's some talk of redistricting kids out of a high school in McLean (i.e., Langley) to another school like Herndon.  Then they are a single community.

I don't think anyone should be moved out of Langley - only into Langley to fill the empty seats - before the new school is built.  So we may be in broader agreement than you realize.  But when that new school is built, FCPS would be remiss not to look at the existing boundaries throughout much of northern and western Fairfax and consider whether it's possible to accomplish several objectives (efficient use of existing seats, reducing transportation times, and balancing demographics) at the same time.  It should not shy away from considering demographics as a relevant consideration merely because someone might complain that any such effort is artificial, especially when doing so could reduce the time and distance students have to travel to get to their assigned schools. [/quote]

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