Here is someone who's explaining well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/post/bethesda-hevy-chase-middle-school-debate-heats-up/2012/01/11/gIQArdifrP_blog.html

PP, read the whole thread

I hope you don't mind my posting, I've been following this thread on and off over the weeks. As an outsider looking in, I also have to wonder why the local Rosemary Hills parents are so insistent on getting children from outside communities to attend their elementary school.

What does it matter to them? Why all the passion? Could someone please explain?

Anonymous wrote:For the poster who likes to use the words "regressive" and "Illogical", you don't fool me. You may have traded in the white hood and tried to drape Yourself in words like "community" and "walkable" and "environment", but you don't fool me. Why don't you just come out and say you don't want my brown kids at your school? Come on, say it, admit it, at least on an anon forum!

Wow. This is so off based. You have no idea what you are talking about. Really. So just stop. The diversity is a good thing. You have completely ignored the true logistical challenges that exist. Can you get that through your thick head? Think, I say. Think.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You have hit the nail on the head. Thank you!

Anonymous wrote: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.

You are so wrong and have no clue what you are talking about. Shut your mouth. Please.

Anonymous wrote:Me, my family, my neighbors. Me, me, me. ( I love me).

Are you okay? You must "love you" to insist that little kids you've never met step in-line for your pet project.

Either that, or you haven't a clue what the Rosemary Hills School Busing Project is really about. Please re-read first couple of pages of the thread to get up to speed.

What hypocrisy.

Me, my family, my neighbors. Me, me, me. ( I love me).

Anonymous wrote:Geez, Thousands-Of-Miles Lady, please find something else to do or somewhere else to kvetch. You've posted here about 10 billion times and you aren't helping your cause. Oh, and your previous posts made it clear that your kids don't even go to RHPS... so please, move along.

If you don't like the truth then there's no need to read it and craft a reply. The PP clearly didn't understand what the real problem was, or much like you, was leveraging bad argument (Bethesda taxes) to spin off a reply that trivialized the real problem (your "project"). Your project being either:

1) This 30-40 year old Rosemary Hills sociology experiment that must progressively dig deeper and deeper into other areas of the county to sustain it's original intent.
or
2) Bringing what you perceive will be wealthier kids from Bethesda to Rosemary Hills for fear of having your children drown in a sea of what you perceive will be FARMS and ESOL children

As for "finding something else to do," it's difficult to find something else to do when for 9 out of 12 months in the year there's a system in place that inflicts someone else's community project (see above) on that of my family and other families in my community.

Make no mistake, there's precious little in this world in the lives of most people that's more important than their family. Perhaps you fail to understand that. Encroach on it with this absurd busing model that's used almost nowhere else in all of MCPS, and you should be well prepared to deal with flak and resistance. You clearly aren't. My family, or your project? I choose my family, as do my other neighbors here. Sorry. Now with any luck, the next time you post, you'll stick to the topic at hand instead of lowering yourself to personal attacks and your comical bullying technique.

Enjoy.

Geez, Thousands-Of-Miles Lady, please find something else to do or somewhere else to kvetch. You've posted here about 10 billion times and you aren't helping your cause. Oh, and your previous posts made it clear that your kids don't even go to RHPS... so please, move along.

Good riddance to you.

I think the crux of the problem is that these little children are being forced to ride thousands of miles out of their way, and separated from their siblings, in a way that others in the county are not.


Although I can understand that if you are paying taxes in Bethesda you are probably paying more per square foot in taxes than someone in other areas of the county, I think that's more of a distraction from the argument.

As stated above, the problem is that little children are being dragged across the county, separated from siblings, and family logistics interfered with in a way that's not done to other families with little children in the county. THAT is the problem. The nail in the coffin is that, at least according to some of the posters in this thread it's being forced involuntarily for some oddball, outdated sociology experiment that started in the Rosemary Hills neighborhood 30 years ago. That is BIG GOVERNMENT at it's worst and is fine for Rosemary Hills, but leave the rest of us out of it.

Again - good riddance to you.

I am very confused now...To those who think higher property taxes gives Bethesda the right to lobby for EB kids to go to BE, what the heck? Since the beginning of civilization your tax money does not belong to you to do whatever you deem proper, period. To those who believe big government should stay out of our lives, what are you doing dealing with public schools, what do you think the word 'public' means? Res Publicae, the " people's thing", latin origins of the word republic. I can't wait to move to Howard County...

15:17 here again, and I stand corrected:

From our house to Blair is 1.3 miles.
From our house to Northwood is 3.2 miles.

From our house to Einstein is 4.6 miles. Over three times the distance of our house to Blair.

So, why are we zoned for Einstein?

If this isn't busing by PP's definition, what is?

Anonymous wrote:It is not true that the Woodside neighborhood is bused very very far out of their community to Einstein. It is about 3.5 miles from that area to Einstein, and more like 3 miles from them to Montgomery Blair. Kennedy is even further than Einstein. It's true that 3 miles is closer than 3.5 but really, they have to draw the lines somewhere. I may have taken that post a little personally because the poster said the Woodside kids were being brought in to provide economic diversity to what I am presuming she thinks is a poor school. It's actually kind of nice up here in Kensington -- she should take a look.

Anonymous wrote:17:15, I'm from East Bethesda and have posted several messages here. If what you say is true about your kids being bused very very far out of their community to Einstein HS that's absurd and wrong as what's happening at RH (save for the fact that RH adds in the additional stressors of involuntarily dragging along VERY young children at the K-2 level, and the unnecessary division of siblings).

These 1970s style regressive projects that involve big-government nosing into our families lives need to end regardless of WHERE they're happening. PERIOD.

15:17 here and that is absolutely not true. Blair is less than one mile from our house (we live near the intersection of Colesville and Dale) and Einstein is about 4 miles away.

Einstein *is* a poor school. The FARMS rate is close to 40%.

Anonymous wrote:Did you know the boundaries when you moved in?

17:15 here - are you asking me? Yes, we did. We have a high school student in a magnet, another in a middle school magnet, but if DC#2 winds up at Einstein, that's ok by us. Not ideal, but ok.

My question remains: Why isn't this sort of socioeconomic redistribution-based busing done in the western part of MoCo?