Anonymous wrote:Sorry to jump into this discussion but I have a question. I attended the school board meeting 2 weeks ago and was present for the BCC cluster part. Several people, who I believe live near RH, got up and gave very impassioned (kinda even melodramatic) speeches about option 5 being a bad option. Not knowing much about this, I assume that option 5 is the one that takes all the East Betheda kids out of RH and sends them to BE. My question is why do the residents of RH neighborhood care so much? Why does it affect them? I was confused as to why this is such a contentious issue. I have no stake in this fight - not my schools just truly wondering.

The problem is that these melodramatic Rosemary Hills parents of which you speak are guilty of the very thing over which they attempt to discredit East Bethesda parents. That is to say that they are afraid of their children being buried in a sea of non-white and/or lesser privileged children. So hang on for dear life to an agenda that lets them import East Bethesda kids to RH for the purpose of avoiding such an "atrocity." You see, it's not that they want East Bethesda kids to go to school in a diverse environment; why should they care about that! It's that they themselves don't want their own children buried in what they perceive will be a sea of minorities. The irony here is that they point fingers at East Bethesda residents, calling out the cry of racism.

In reality, if you look closely, the irony here is that it's East Bethesda that wants schools drawn based on community lines (send kids to a school in their own community), and RH that wants school boundaries drawn based on 2 well-known proxys for race and class stratum (FARM and ESOL). In fact, read the thread and you'll find not only numerous mention of these 2 proxies, but will overtly statements that illustrate their guiding metric (race). Now tell me who is the racist? The group that makes their decision based on geography, or the group that makes their decision based on race. They aren't fooling anyone, however.

Anonymous wrote:12:38 - thanks for your reasoned post. I hope that when my kids go to RHPS in a couple of years, we can look forward to people with your values being our children's peers. I think we will be losing some families who value walking to school over diverse schools, but that's their value system, and it seems they will find like-minded folks at their schools as well. A win-win as long as we haven't started down a slippery slope for RHPS, but I'm optimistic that there are enough people who value diversity that we won't see the urban flight people are worried about.

Calling that a reasoned post, does not make it so. The point, as was pointed out earlier, is not that people want a walk able elementary school. The point is that people want, to the extent that it is possible, their children schooled within in their community. As one other poster mentioned, there are 4-5 MCPS elementary schools closer to their home than Rosemary Hills. Yet for some preposterous reason their children will not only have to forgo those options, but also separate their siblings at the elementary level.

It is anything but reasonable to inject your outdated, and immoral agenda into other people's lives, at the expense of adding a burden to the family unity, time constraints, and logistics of another. Your regressive "project" ends where other's lives begin, particularly when it comes to little children.

RHPS was a science and technology magnet school at one point. It was very successful in pulling kids to RHPS. Apparently that project was abandoned because it had served its purpose? Maybe MCPS needs to bring that magnet program back as a program for the whole school population.

12:38 - thanks for your reasoned post. I hope that when my kids go to RHPS in a couple of years, we can look forward to people with your values being our children's peers. I think we will be losing some families who value walking to school over diverse schools, but that's their value system, and it seems they will find like-minded folks at their schools as well. A win-win as long as we haven't started down a slippery slope for RHPS, but I'm optimistic that there are enough people who value diversity that we won't see the urban flight people are worried about.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry to jump into this discussion but I have a question. I attended the school board meeting 2 weeks ago and was present for the BCC cluster part. Several people, who I believe live near RH, got up and gave very impassioned (kinda even melodramatic) speeches about option 5 being a bad option. Not knowing much about this, I assume that option 5 is the one that takes all the East Betheda kids out of RH and sends them to BE. My question is why do the residents of RH neighborhood care so much? Why does it affect them? I was confused as to why this is such a contentious issue. I have no stake in this fight - not my schools just truly wondering.

Because long long ago in the late 70s and early 80s (shockingly, not actually that long ago) our cluster was de facto segregated due to the housing patterns -- Rosemary Hills was the "black" elementary with the highest minority rates and lowest academic performance and the rest of the elementaries were essentially all white. This was complicated by declining demographics -- the population was dropping and there were not enough kids to keep all the existing schools open. Plus, the law was clear -- school systems could not maintain separate but equal accommodations and if the school board closed schools in a way that ensured the continuing segregation of our cluster, there was bound to be a lawsuit. After much community debate and contention, the school board AND the community came up with the existing paired school arrangement and vowed to support it with enough resources to make both the upper and lower paired schools academically successful and the BOE promised not to disturb this arrangement so that it would have time to grow support in the community. (See also, http://bethesda.patch.com/articles/opinion-beyond-neighborhood-boundaries-diverse-urban-schools-promote-cross-cultural-understanding) In addition, the BoE also created a language magnet at Rock Creek Forest to create integration by "pulling" students to that school (instead of "pushing" them via busing).

Since then, the BCC cluster has been reasonably well integrated AND academically successful. Many of us who live in the cluster fear that beginning to unravel this system will unravel the integration in our cluster, and eventually the academic success also. The movement of E. Bethesda children to BES values the "walking community" over the cluster integration. What if this principle were applied throughout our cluster? Why should CCES and NCC continue to remain paired with RHPS, those children can't walk to RHPS either? Why should any of the other paired or consortium school options continue to exist w/i MCPS? (much of Silver Spring and Takoma is either paired or part of the DownCounty Consortium, which was created for exactly the same integration effects.)

I know whereof I speak. I grew up at one of the "white" cluster schools while the integration fight was ongoing. I and my siblings benefited as children from being raised in an integrated, academically strong school environment. My children go to the school in the cluster and have participated in both the forced busing of the paired school integration approach and the "choice" integration created by academic magnets. Each approach -- forced integration by busing and integration by choice -- has its pros and cons, but I remain a staunch supporter of integration as it's currently configured in our cluster (with most elementary busing routes under 1/2 hour). There are negatives to busing (and I know because my kids will never be able to walk to any of their schools), but IMO they are far outweighed by the positive benefits of integration for our kids and our larger community.

Anonymous[b wrote:]We pay Bethesda taxes[/b]....our kids should to go to Bethesda schools...neighborhood schools.....not be bused halfway across the county for someone's "project"

I'm sorry: What "Bethesda taxes" do you pay? Do you mean property tax, which we all pay at the same rate? Your property tax may be higher because your house has a higher valuation, but that is not "Bethesda taxes." Bethesda is not a "special taxing district" or incorporated town.

K-2 and 3-5

This appears elsewhere in the county as well. New Hampshire Estates and Cresthaven in Silver Spring are K-2 and 3-5.

I don't live in this cluster, but I think the split matriculation K-2 and 3-5 is really ridiculous and only a few communities in Bethesda and CC have to shoulder this burden so that the FARMS rate can be balanced.

Sorry to jump into this discussion but I have a question. I attended the school board meeting 2 weeks ago and was present for the BCC cluster part. Several people, who I believe live near RH, got up and gave very impassioned (kinda even melodramatic) speeches about option 5 being a bad option. Not knowing much about this, I assume that option 5 is the one that takes all the East Betheda kids out of RH and sends them to BE. My question is why do the residents of RH neighborhood care so much? Why does it affect them? I was confused as to why this is such a contentious issue. I have no stake in this fight - not my schools just truly wondering.

Give me a break. Everyone in MCPS is bussed - it is not unique to RHPS. If you live in Bethesda, presumably you know this already since public school buses are all over the roads. So please find a new argument with some basis in reality! Or just concede that you have an irrational hysteria surrounding a school that happens to be 10 feet over the line into Silver Spring and has a relatively small proportion of kids of color and/or kids from less well-off households.

21:04, A great post. If the MCPS is going to bus, they should make it county wide and not make it a burden on just a few neighborhoods in Bethesda and Chevy Chase.

If they're going to bus, I think they either need to start busing everyone or bus nobody. And if they're going to split elementary school into 2 different schools for some students, they need to do so for all students. Leading scholars are on board that you don't integrate through busing. You do it through choice. If you want to pretend to integrate in Montgomery County, you bus. If you want to actually integrate in Montgomery County, you establish a top-notch magnet in an economically disadvantaged community. It really is that simple.

Anonymous wrote:We pay Bethesda taxes....our kids should to go to Bethesda schools...neighborhood schools.....not be bused halfway across the county for someone's "project"

Thank you for posting this. On the subject of taxes, one also has to ask a few other questions about why these contrarians insist on busing other people's children so far out of their way. Has anyone seen the price of fuel lately? How about wear and tear on the buses? What about inappropriately splitting up siblings at the elementary level? How about making a kid waste time logging additional hundreds of hours riding several thousand miles on county roads as others have mentioned?

As for someone's "project", you're spot-on about that as well. Looking at some of the earlier posts in this thread you can easily see that many of the folks in favor of this are getting excited about mixing children from different demographic and class strata with a wreckless disregard for the developmental, environmental, financial, and familial implications of their "project."

It takes a lot of nerve to stomp on little kids, while waving the banner of "doing good." We need to put together an effort to lobby the Board of Education, and in particular candidates in the upcoming elections to put this absurd movement down so that we can find a return to normalcy and balance in the cluster.

"Bethesda" tax likely meant > real property tax $$ due to value of land that house sits on. Not in East Bethesda, but our Bethesda lot nearly cost $700k (pre- house).

We walk to BE from East Bethesda everyday with about 2-3 other families as well.