Reply to APS Boundary tool--anyone get it to work yet?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I agree. Leaders should lead and make the unpopular decisions, instead of leaving it to a community that thinks nothing of segregation when little Johnny may not get to go all the way through ES, MS, and HS with all of the same kids. [/quote]

Oh please don't sound so holier than thou.  [b]It's not wrong that many people don't put demographic diversity at the top of their list when balancing multiple competing factors.  To me it's a nice-to-have, for my own child I have other factors that are more important.  In this case, many families zoned for W-L worry about losing IB access, which was a prime reason they bought in a W-L zone. For some, they do want community continuity for their children and families.  For some, they see no reason to attend a school 50% further away when there is at least one and possibly two HS closer.  And yes, some people do look at a school's performance or FARMS rate and want to send their kid to a school that is already high-performing rather than having their kid be one of those there to help improve it.
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FWIW, My planning unit is not in play this go-around but I'm watching the issue closely. [/quote]

And that, folks, is the definition of white privilege. [/quote]

Hi there. NP here. My family is NOT WHITE and we purchased in W-L in one of the planning units under consideration specifically because of IB and W-L's numbers (and we stretched hard to afford it over a home zoned for Wakefield). Painting educational planning as a white person's concern is tremendously insulting to minorities who very much want the best opportunities for their children.
[b]
This is a CB issue -- they are the ones concentrating affordable housing in particular areas of the county with NO thought to how it will impact school overcrowding and the distribution of poverty in our county. If affordable housing were more equally distributed instead of being 95% concentrated on the Pike and in central Arlington near Ballston, I guarantee all schools would be more diverse both racially and with regards to SES. [/b]

And if the county adopted a rational approach to new development that considered impact on county services (such as schools, transportation, police/fire, etc) BEFORE approving literally any and all new development (including affordable housing), this would NEVER have become the issue it has.[/quote]

Exactly. It's very reasonable for parents to prioritize proximity to schools. I want my kids to be close to school and close to their friends. I also welcome diversity (we chose to live in a mixed area) and think that the solution doesn't lie in planning units - it's a county planning issue that needs to be addressed. [b]Make the communities diverse[/b], don't rely on bussing. 
[/quote]

Oh sure you do.  :roll:

The only way the county can encourage socioeconomic diversity is by maintaining and/or expanding affordable housing in areas where little to none currently exists. But when anyone tries to do this, they are met with massive resistance, and in some cases lawsuits, from your civic associations. Maybe you missed it, but there were people cheering on DCUM when moderately priced units is Westover were bulldozed to make way for more luxury townhouses. And your neighborhoods almost pushed through an affordable housing master plan that would have excluded geographic targets, meaning the county would have codified socioeconomic segregation in a planning document. So it's the chicken or the egg. If we try to encourage diverse neighborhoods by making more areas affordable and by removing economic barriers, we'll naturally get more economically diverse student populations. But we're swatted down at every turn. And if we ask you not to move more economically disadvantaged students into the school with the highest percentage of economically disadvantages students through slightly more creative boundaries, we're stopped because "walkable neighborhood schools." The end result is status quo. Don't pretend you don't know this.

Also, please don't interpret what I'm writing to mean that I think you're all burning crosses and secretly voting for Trump. But to ignore issues of SYSTEMIC racism, inherent in most neighborhood planning documents and schools systems, is not exactly progressive. Maybe we are not worse than many surrounding jurisdictions, but we're not better in this regard either. And I feel like we could be. We are small and wealthy county, and we can maximize the potential of our most disadvantaged students without harming the advantaged students in any meaningful way. My thought is: first, do no harm. I'm trying to play with the tool to find a way that doesn't increase the economically disadvantaged population at Wakefield while maintaining walkability for W-L students and also better balancing enrollment across the three schools. Like they said at the meeting last night, this will not and is not intended to fix all of our ills, but let's not screw the pooch in the name of geographical expedience. This a temporary solution to a population crisis, and the most elegant solution is one that doesn't make us look bad in newspapers, and one that won't set us back from becoming the community we claim we want to be. The long-term solution, which will include 1300 additional seats somewhere, will likely result in another boundary process in the coming years, and that is when we can really make significant changes to address diversity and instructional opportunities system-wide.

[/quote]

"[i]Your[/i] civic associations" "[i]Your[/i] neighborhoods" WTF?!

Dick, you don't know me.  I have never opposed new affordable housing projects. I don't go to every single CB meeting to vocalize this, but I do support them. And, gasp, I also supported the homeless shelter close to my house.

A big factor for us when we were choosing our neighborhood and neighborhood school was having diverse neighbors (incl. SES). Many of our neighbors feel the same way. We do already have that in ES-MS-HS. We just don't want to ship off our kids to the other side of the county when there is a perfectly fine, diverse HS close to us. And generally I think most parents would want a school close to them. It helps build community - something we value. So don't read my prioritizing proximity as anything else. It just makes you look like a huge dick. 
[/quote]

The Lyon Village Civic association tied the county up in lawsuits against the Clarendon church project to the tune of $12 million. If you live there, I hope you voted out the people who were responsible for that. [/quote]

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