The elephant in the room that has not been discussed this Board of Education election season is MCPS upcoming mega boundary study. Starting in January MCPS will begin a boundary study which includes 19 high schools and 31 middle schools. This represents 2/3’s of the County’s high schools and their feeder middle schools. This is, in effect, a Countywide redistricting.
To allow a large-scale Countywide redistricting, in 2018 the BOE changed policy FAA. They then changed their transfer policy (JEE) to make it difficult to transfer schools in case parents were not happy with redistricting results and changed their legal services policy (BOA) to allow unlimited spending on the best law firms, in the event there are lawsuits related to a countywide redistricting.
On September 24, 2018 the BOE adopted the updated version of Policy FAA which will allow for Countywide redistricting. On this day, current BOE member Lynn Harris testified in favor of the policy changes.
Lynne HarrisMs. Harris stated ”segregated schools with imbalances in the race culture and socioeconomic diversity of students, do not create an environment in which all students have the best chance of success. This is a social justice issue many school systems and communities are tackling head on.”
Ms Harris statements are surprising considering she is a lawyer. The Supreme Court has ruled that the racial balancing Ms. Harris advocates for is unconstitutional. Further while Ms. Harris claims schools are segregated, the Supreme Court ruled in Pasadena V Spangler that racial imbalances which occur due to natural demographic changes in a community do not constitute segregation. And as CleanSlate previously reported demographic imbalances in MCPS are largely due to a mass exodus of white students in MCPS over the past 20 years. A trend that may accelerate if MCPS redistricts schools on a large-scale basis against parent wishes.
Ms. Harris’ commitment to racial diversity is also curious because as CleanSlate previously reported Ms. Harris worked as a lawyer for the Bush administration opposing appeals from asylum seekers.
