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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Not arguing that it is or isn't just that clearly, MCPS is putting more importance on diversity than anything else.  And it's not "barely".

People should also keep in mind that for low income families, not living within walking distance to schools would be a hardship for them.[/quote]

Are you speaking as a low-income person yourself?

In school boundary debates, when affluent people say, "It's a hardship for low-income families to not live within walking distance to schools," that very often means, "I want the poor kids to go to the school over there that my kid doesn't go to." Just something to be aware of.[/quote]

In last year's RMES#5 boundary study, low income families who lived near Twinbrook literally said it would be a hardship for them to get to College Gardens or Ritchie Park. They wanted to walk and keep their community support.

So you can stop playing the racist card now.[/quote]

This was also true a couple years ago when they were talking about moving some kids from Gaithersburg Elementary to under-enrolled Wootton cluster elementary schools.  The Gaithersburg parents fought for an addition to Gaithersburg instead of being bussed to Wootton cluster elementary schools arguing that it would be a hardship for them to get themselves and their children to the further away schools and that they wanted to continue to have access to the Gaithersburg Wellness Center and other resources at Gaithersburg ES.  It has been a remarkably consistent position across multiple communities in the last few years of boundary studies/issues.   [/quote]

No one likes change -- yet school boundaries have been and will continue to be changed from time to time.  Its important to listen to the community but ultimately someone is probably not going to like the outcome.  [/quote]

It's not just a boundary change if you move away from neighborhoood schools to try to counteract housing segregation. It's a whole new experiment, and has some real challenges from where it has been tried:  
neighborhood socioeconomics are constantly shifting, so how many times are you willing to make kids change schools to hit target numbers?  
Special programs like free breakfast/aftercare can't be realistically implemented in every school, so at risk kids would lose out and/or face greater stigma.
At risk kids would be 'left behind' when placed in a school full of more advanced peers.
Loss of cohesive parent/neighborhood involvement in schools due to random distribution of parents.

The current situation of low performance for low ses schools is not great either, obviously.  Failing schools should not be tolerated or rewarded.  But we know school choice/incentive programs (like magnets) can turn around struggling schools.  Instead of effectively demolishing the low ses schools and just shipping these  kids off to be a minority in a wealthy school, it lures and serves gifted kids and gives the school (and neighborhood) a chance to slowly build up a stronger reputation.  The fact that mcps isnt focusing on that solution and instead moving towards 'forced ses bussing' is short sighted and Seems like it will be yet another failed top-down theoretical social experiment performed on these kids and parents.  
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