Montgomery County Public Schools is studying the school boundaries within the county because “facility construction has not been able to keep pace with” the significant population growth within the county, according to MCPS.
The plan has two phases: Phase 1, scheduled to last until winter of 2020, promotes publicity on the issue, after which the boundary analysis will be conducted by New York-based WXY Architecture + Urban Design. Phase 2, starting in the Winter of 2020 and ending in Spring 2020, will gather feedback on the study. The analysis focuses on equity, school capacity, and access to schools, according to the MCPS website.
Activists argue that redistricting is necessary because of significant inequities within the county, which activists term de-facto segregation, while opponents cite concerns over commute times and uprooting students.
MCPS points out that the boundary analysis is only a preliminary study and WXY will only make recommendations to the MCPS Board of Education in Spring 2020.
Proponents cite what they call de-facto school segregation the county, where some schools are almost exclusively white and others almost exclusively non-white as a reason for this plan. Springbrook senior Michael Solomon called the current boundaries “inherently flawed” in a Spring 2019 interview with David Villani for the Walt Whitman High School Black&White newspaper.
Drew Skilton, who graduated last year from Walter Johnson High School, told The MoCo Student on the sidelines of an April 2019 meeting that the boundary changes was necessary to measure the measure the county’s changing demographics since the last time such a study was conducted, about 40 years ago. The boundary study, he said, should ensure that all students go to diverse schools that represent the outside world.
Common concerns across photos of posters written by attendees of public hearings about the plan shared by MCPS included commute times for students and uprooting students from their school because of the plan. Solomon countered that no is asking for students to be “shipped off” across the county in order to integrate schools.
Activists for the proposal have accused their opponents of racism, citing their concerns over alleged forced diversification and a reduction in property values. Under a Bethesda Beat article that caused quite a stir among proponents and opponents of the plan, one user for example commented that the plan forces “diversity at the expense of everything else.”
Some in the comment section said that their property values would be reduced, saying that property values fund MCPS. Solomon characterized the concern over property value as parents caring more about their property value than improving public education. (The MoCo Student could only find four examples of this concern among the 272 photos shared by MCPS and not all opponents in the comment section had this concern.)
Ultimately, if changes occur, they are unlikely to take effect for the 2020-2021 school year, since the analysis needs to be finished by June 1, 2020 and the Board still needs to review the plan and possibly draft legislation to make changes to the MCPS boundaries.
Article by Joel Lev-Tov of Springbrook High School
Graphic by Katherina Hua of Robert Frost Middle School
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