Reply to Tired of Name Changes/Bad Planning

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Reply to "Tired of Name Changes/Bad Planning - Vote NO on School Bonds"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If FCPS and the School Board were responsible and really committed to community engagement, that's the dialogue they would encourage.  Do we want more schools with over 2500 students?  Are we prepared to have some students in trailers longer if we build a new school?  How important is it to make full use of schools with extra capacity like Mount Vernon and Lee?  What disparities, in terms of class sizes, are appropriate between schools in high ESOL/FARMS areas and those in wealthier areas?  Should we keep spending money busing kids to AAP centers and TJHSST?  Is IB worth the extra costs?

None of these questions really are discussed openly, either among School Board members or with the public.  You end up with a system that caters only to special interests, and the middle gets the declining share of what's left, at least until they flee for Loudoun.   [/quote]

Voting against the bond would do nothing to foster community engagement or address the issues you mention. Quite the opposite: voting it down would worsen the very capacity problems you claim to be concerned about.

You say "[n]one of these questions really are discussed openly." Where are you getting that from? How many school board meetings, staff meetings, and working groups do you attend? How many times have you actually raised your questions with the board and the staff? What examples can you point to of the community organizing on one of those questions and bringing their concerns to the board, only to be dismissed? Of course they're paying attention to these things. You might not like what they're doing about them, and they may even be doing the wrong thing. But their handling of those issues has nothing to do with renaming Stuart, and I have yet to see any evidence otherwise. Public comments like "it took up a lot of our time" and "it was a tough choice" don't actually imply that other agenda items got ignored; pushed back a little, maybe, but not ignored. Stop trying to blame every problem on the Stuart renaming.

Your swipe at "special interests" reveals what you're really up to, and that's punishing the board for allowing various boogeymen--limousine liberals, social justice warriors, NAACP, etc.--to score a political win, even if it was on what should have been a non-issue (refusing to allow schools to be named after traitors), and even if it means denying hundreds of millions of dollars for improving our schools.[/quote]

If you want to be an effective shill for FCPS, you're going to have to pay better attention to what's been going on and then come up with a better defense than that. Because anyone who has been paying any attention knows full well that they rarely solicit meaningful community input and instead largely choose to ignore the input they do receive.  And yet you want to fault people for declining to engage more actively with a group whose disregard for anyone who does represent one of their favored special interest groups could not be more obvious?

Enough is enough. It's time to send this Board a vote of no confidence. [/quote]

DP.  Go ahead and vote no, complain on DCUM, decline to engage more actively with the school board, and see how that works for you.  I would suggest organizing with like minded people, send letters to the school board, show up at SB meetings and be vocal, and contact the post about why the school board is not making the right choices.  You never know, there may be an article about the inefficiencies of the SB that can help your cause.  You can't blame the SB if you decline to engage.  Well you can, but it gets you nothing of what you want. [/quote]

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