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School Board to Vote on "Bussing" -- July 22, 2019

School Board to Vote on "Bussing" -- July 22, 2019

-- by Paul Bolon, Chair, Providence Republicans, 07/19/2019

[Fairfax GOP] Volunteers,

I don't usually write “content” messages to you, as I figure we each have our own preferred sources of news and opinion. But the School Board is posed to take a radical step, and I think you should know about it.

For 20 years the School Board has tried, and failed, to close the "achievement gap" between minority children on the one hand and white and Asian-American children on the other. The Board now is now rushing forward to essentially remove school boundaries. Why? Same goal, close the achievement gap. The Board's theory is that thoroughly mixing children by race and income will close the gap. It won't, and more kids will be on longer bus rides. "Diversity above all."

Below is an email written by a local group that tracks the county schools and school board. Some of the quoted statements are hard to believe:

From: [undisclosed]
Date: July 19, 2019 at 8:12:27 AM EDT
Subject: URGENT: RECKLESS FAIRFAX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD TO VOTE ON WIDESPREAD SCHOOL BOUNDARY CHANGES THIS MONDAY JULY 22 at 5PM - NEED TO PROTEST

No one realizes what the school board is doing as they have been deliberately deceptive. Particularly among the people that pay the most taxes in Fairfax and live in expensive houses in desirable school districts, this is going to send people into bankruptcy by wiping out the value of their homes, which are pegged largely on the good schools. That is, children may be forced to go to new schools further away, or even lose their current friends, teachers, and traditions.

The meeting is chaired by outgoing school board member Pat Hynes, who says below, "The school bd and Supt are developing a comprehensive boundary plan, to serve the goal of diversity above all."

The board is not accepting any public comment (because they do not respect parents and taxpayers), so people need to just go and let them know in whatever means they see fit that we're tired of the school board focusing more on redistributionism, race and identity politics than they do on education. Bring signs, turn their backs, or just shout and yell -- it's not like they can do much to you except throw you out, and it's what liberals would do.

ACTION NEEDED: Attend July 22 School Board Meeting And Speak Out Against Boundary Policy

The Fairfax County School Board is meeting on Monday, July 22 to discuss proposed changes to the opaquely-named "Boundary Policy 8130.7."

The policy says, astoundingly: when redrawing school boundaries in the future, the opinion of residents and a negative impact on quality of education may not be taken into account.

Instead, the board says school boundaries must be redrawn based on "socioeconomic and or racial composition of students in affected schools," in accordance with their "One Fairfax" policy.

The proposed new policy for boundary changes removes the following criteria for consideration of boundary changes, compared to the existing policy. They will be tasked with changing boundaries without regard to:

  • the overall impact on students and families
  • busing costs
  • considering school feeder alignments
  • INSTRUCTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS.

Recognizing that saying that quality of education doesn't matter as much as racial and economic redistributionism is a politically suicidal position for a school board, so they aim to pass this policy during a lame duck session with most school board members retiring -- taking the bullet so that the new school board members under whom school boundaries will actually be redrawn can claim their hands are tied.

This move will destroy home values and deliberately reduce the quality of education in Fairfax's most heralded schools, and we need the school board members who take that vote to have something to lose. They most kill or postpone all discussion and votes involving One Fairfax or school boundary changes until after the lame duck.

BACKGROUND:
The "One Fairfax" policy expressly aims to create equality (defined through the distribution of race and poverty) throughout all of Fairfax County's 1.2 million residents by breaking up what Fairfax politicians call "islands of excellence" within its 400 square mile boundaries.

Since they do not have a solution to improve equality by increasing the performance of low-performing schools, they will attain equality by deliberately reducing the quality of Fairfax's dwindling number of top schools. Anyone in a widely sought-after school district is affected by this.

The policy aims to equalize quality of schools by taking high-performing students from top schools and redistricting them to schools with low test scores. Under this scenario, no individual child in Fairfax County becomes smarter -- but on paper, the receiving schools' average test scores improve, leading to bonuses for administrators.

The school board has moved aggressively towards this goal, while often masking their moves in bureaucratic language that is hard for outsiders to parse. As one example, it commissioned a study on the impact to higher-earning children, and the study found negative outcomes -- so the school board shopped around for a new study that could be used to justify their goal.

WHO AND WHEN:
Join neighbors at the July 22 meeting, (Monday, July 22, 2019) and bring signs and be prepared to make politicians understand that they are playing with lives and life savings.

School board meeting, this Monday at 5pm, Gatehouse Administration Center I, 8115 Gatehouse Road, Room 1600, Falls Church, VA

At the meeting, they will act like this is just a boring meeting about obscure issues. But that is the devious way the school board operates: they screw you over like frogs boiling, voting on obscure and complicated-seeming policies while shrugging that it's no big deal. This is a key step, and if it isn't stopped now, it will be too late -- they'll later claim they're just implementing a previously enacted policy.

Here are the emails of Fairfax County School Board members, who are involved in taking this devastating vote:

The Next Fairfax County School Board Meeting is Thursday July 25 at 7pm, and they will take 10 speakers and 5 videos for citizens to voice their dissent for 3 minutes in front of the school board, which one may sign up to reserve starting Monday morning at fcpsedu. Suggest signing up to speak.

Also, spread the word far and wide. Do not expect others to fight your own battles with this out of control, wasteful, and reckless school board. Lastly, vote them all out of office. The most radical ones are all Democrats who do not care about citizens and children, but only care about special interest groups.