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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]While the full scope of this "Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice" is to be determined, one can guess at its mandate and tools, which will most likely include school redistricting. The ultimate failure of programs like these is guaranteed is a suburb like MoCo, because people can and will move if things get bad enough. This is *not* Manhattan, where a move of even a few miles has huge implications on commute time, quality of life, etc. [b]There is a whole state across the river with the same exact commute times and amenities as MoCo.
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Parents of all races and classes care about one thing above all else—the success of their children. It is literally programmed into their DNA. Therefore, they will make rational economic decisions overwhelmingly based on that factor. People have invested billions of dollars in MoCo neighborhoods based on the quality of the school to which they are zoned (including African-American and Hispanic parents.) There are other factors behind real estate valuation, but this is the dominant factor in a suburb like MoCo. This isn't about race, it's about the simple reality that school quality is driven by the education and income of the parents. Schools can certainly absorb some percentage of kids from poorer / less educated homes, but eventually, a tipping point is reached.

However well intentioned a "social justice" program is, parents of all political stripes will react economically, even if they don't admit it to themselves. A full-blown bussing / "equity"-based redistricting would have a swift and devastating impact on the tax base, creating a self-reinforcing death spiral for the already reeling MCPS system (worse schools, lower tax base, worse schools, etc.) It certainly seems to me like even in the past year MoCo has jumped the shark and gone from being center-left to far-left, and it's causing many parents to seriously consider moving before the real damage is done.[/quote]

But the school districts in Virginia are dealing with this too. And so are Frederick County and Howard County in Maryland. So where are you going to move to?[/quote]

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