Reply to MCPS BOE petition re: making student demographics the primary factor in redistricting decisions

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has anyone looked at the options for RM #5 that they were voting on?  Look at options C and D.  They're busing kids all over the place past one another.  In case you didn't know, they voted for Option B.
http://gis.mcpsmd.org/boundarystudypdfs/RMES5_UpdatedBOEAlternativesAE111417.pdf [/quote]
Two points:

- Having lived through that RM#5 process, I don't believe that the outcome would have been any different had this policy change been in effect. In that particular case, the other factors weighed so heavily in favor of Option B (and the other similar option) that I don't think anything would have changed even if diversity was given greater weight than any of the other three. (Remember, they are not proposing that diversity gets greater weight than the other three factors combined - just that it gets more individual weight than any of the other three.)

- Part of the reason Options C and D looked somewhat crazy was that MCPS was limited to redrawing ES boundaries within the RM cluster, which is already a very gerrymandered cluster going back to when Fallsgrove was moved from Wootton to RM 15 years ago. If the same process had involved looking at boundaries from neighboring clusters (as it likely will with Crown HS), I think they could have achieved better SES diversity while coming up with maps that would have had good geographic continuity.

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This policy change was introduced by Jill Ortman Fouse in response to what happened in the RMES #5 boundary study.  She explicitly said so on her public Facebook page - you can go read it.  Both Jill Ortman Fouse and Matt Post wanted options C and D - they did not think those looked crazy, those are the options that they wanted to be chosen.  The idea behind this policy is so that options like C and D will become more likely to pass in future boundary studies.[/quote]
I get that she voted that way, and that this is designed to make diversity more influential in the final decision. My point is just that, even if this new policy were in effect, I don't think it would have changed a single vote on RM#5. All it's saying is that diversity now counts for more than 25% (30? 35? who knows) - it's not saying diversity trumps every other factor.

Separately, I still go back to the fact that RM had a unique map where it was hard to balance these competing interests. I think many of the future decisions coming up are ones where there will be an opportunity to better balance diversity without resorting to anything too crazy from a geographic standpoint.[/quote]
DP... I was part of the boundary change, and I think if this new policy were in effect then, more of the folks in the BOE would have given Option C and D serious consideration.[/quote]
Based on what though? The new language just emphasizes diversity more - it doesn't tie anyone's hands in a circumstance like the one you're describing. Ultimately, people voted in RM#5 based on nearly unanimous feedback from residents in every cluster, and the fact that every other factor weighed so strongly towards the option they picked. (It was also a unique situation where the central office's mistake caused 12+ months of community work to be cast aside because they realized at the 11th hour that they were working off of bad data - hopefully, that type of thing never happens again.) The ES zones they left actually have very high diversity by MCPS country-wide standards. None of the 5 options that were considered (including the chosen one) would have left the type of disparity that you see between some of the HS clusters.

To me, this is a lot of hand-wringing over a fairly minor change in emphasis in the policy document that is unlikely to result in the "parade of horribles" people are suggesting.[/quote]

Actually, most of the parents at the meetings wanted option A not B.  To me B always made sense because under A College Gardens ES was overcapacity.

The funny part of all this is that RM may just be the most balanced school in the county as far as diversity goes.[/quote]

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