Social Engineering

Our county school board is trying its hand at social engineering. It’s just announced a proposal to rearrange the school assignments in our area. There’s a new school being built in the area, and the board is using this situation to “make things fair.”

We live in an “above average” town. It’s not like Hollywood, or Palm Beach, but the populace has above average household incomes, is diverse (internationally), is well educated, and generally upper-middle to upper class. The streets are clean, crime is low, and the schools are good. (“All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,” as Garrison Keillor would say.) We chose to live here because of these facts.

When we were looking for a home in this town, six and a half years ago, we specifically looked for a home in this school zone — the elementary, middle, and high school in this neighborhood are excellent. For about a year now, we’ve been thinking about moving to a bigger house, and the one thing that Cowgrit and I are in total agreement about, with regard to our next house, is that it must still be in this school zone.

The elementary and middle schools are literally half a mile from our house. Driving on the road, they are less than one mile. They are within walking distance, and many kids in the area do walk to the schools.

The elementary school’s statistics are excellent. Phenomenal even. They should be: we pay higher taxes for the school and many parents volunteer at the school. All the good numbers for the school are among (or are the) highest in the county, and all the bad numbers for the school are among (or are the) lowest in the county. This is all why we chose to move here.

Now the school board has proposed to reorganize the school zones, and to bus students from other, distant zones to our school. (You have to see the zone maps to really understand the absurdity — blocks of neighborhoods separated by many miles, in different cities are zoned together for the same school.) The school board says things like “measure of diversity,” and “healthier schools,” and “make more comparable.”

This area has voted to increase their property taxes to pay for the schools, the families support their kids in school (this makes for good students), the parents volunteer at the schools, and the school population is extremely diverse (from 22 countries). But now some of the students are being taken out of this school to be sent elsewhere, and other students from elsewhere are being sent here.

That’s the typical school board-mentality solution to having poor schools and great schools: don’t work to make the poor schools better; instead, mix things up so the great schools weaken. Don’t raise some up, cut some down.

The school board “announced” this proposal quietly. They just posted it on their Web site, right before the Christmas break. Only because the parents in this area are on the ball with regard to their children’s education did it get noticed. Any responses must be submitted by January 1. Now, the issue is all the talk of the neighborhoods. The families have started banding together to respond to the proposal, and there’s only a few days before the proposal is approved. Cowgrit is all over this, as is every other parent in our neighborhood — even those not zoned to change schools. We just wrote our letter to the school board members, and we’ll be emailing it to each, individually, tomorrow.

I fear that no amount of negative response will change the school board’s decision, but I hope they develop severe headaches from the roar of enraged parents shouting about this issue. Before I had kids, and specifically moving to a good school zone, I would never have imagined caring at all about school zone rearrangements. But I’ve never liked bureaucracies, especially when they start playing social engineers, and telling everyone it’s for our own good.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com