Mt. Diablo Unified School District leaders, staff, parents and community members are “thrilled” that the State Board of Education has unanimously voted to deny a petition to create a new unified school district in the Northgate area of Walnut Creek, said MDUSD Board Member Cherise Khaund.
The State Board found that the petition failed to meet required legal criteria, there was no compelling reason to create a new district, and there were compelling reasons not to approve it.
“Settling this issue once and for all means that we can now unite in working together for an excellent education for all,” said Khaund, whose trustee area includes the Northgate territory and whose children attend District schools. During the District’s presentation to the State Board, Khaund stressed the many exemplary programs in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, which would have been split into two districts if the petition had been approved.
26 parents, staff members, union representatives, teachers, MDUSD Board Members, a County Supervisor, community members, a former student, and Concord City Council members called into the State Board meeting in support of MDUSD and in opposition to the petition. There were no callers in support of the petition.
State Board members voted 10-0 to deny the petition, saying they were impressed by the public comments and did not hear any compelling arguments in favor of creating a new Northgate district. Instead, they said all students deserve the kind of education the petitioners were trying to carve out for their students.
“I personally found the public comment quite thunderous,” said State Board Member Kim Pattillo Brownson, noting that the Board heard from people whose lives and whose children’s lives would be impacted. “What I didn’t really hear was anything terribly specific as to what was not working.” She said the proposal would have created an isolated and less diverse smaller district and a larger district that would isolate “majority minority students and majority minority schools on the other side of that divide.”
Haha
Ha!
… no surprise MDUSD and the state board have tentacles to each other going back a long time…. too bad
Great decision! Keep the diversity. This decision might give the poor kids a chance to have good education from in a rich neighborhood school. Let them have a chance of living an American dream. Like my HS school friend, she illegally entered the country. Got bussed to a great HS in a rich neighborhood. Went on to UCSD and Harvard Law School.
I went to a jr high school in Los Angeles when I was a kid. It was as diverse as you could get. It was hell. The Black kids would not talk to white kids and the Latin kids hung out by themselves according to their gang. The Asian kids hung out in their own group and there was absolutely no school spirit. Worse school I ever went to.
@Paul….So is she still an illegal alien?
Paul: Interesting how some point with pride to what outrages others. This illegal can also be viewed as costing taxpayers 168K in costs (its 14K per student per year in CA), in addition to whatever subsidized medical and housing, and she took the space of a citizen in a rare UC system slot actual citizens paid taxes for, just so she can take another rare spot at a top university. How very globalist of you with other people’s taxes and kid’s opportunities.
She is a US citizen now. And is a partner at a top law firm. She racks in about $500k/year. She pays taxes, Since tax is lifetime, I guess that she repaid all the incurred costs when she was illegal and pay it forward. Good for her for beating out others for for the spot at prestigious universities! She earned it! And guess what we even have an elected politician (i think Pedro ocompo?) with background similar as her. Viva la raza!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Campos
That is the illegal alien who made it just like my friend.
@To Do List…. Paul, and people like him, will never “get it”.
Paul: You are not getting the point. If this Campos guy had stayed in his country, another person would have been in the position of Vice Chairman of the Democratic Party of California and all those other jobs. Those jobs would not have been vacant. He pushed others who were citizens out the way to get there. And there is no reason to believe he has some super special world class skill set where he swooped in and saved society. He is replaceable, just as you or I at our jobs.
@paul your ignorance of the issue is glaring. This doesnt provide poor kids a chance at a rich school. Theyre not going to bus kids from Antioch into Walnut Creek. It means the district gets less money from the state as a result of the loss of these schools to the new district. It means the bloated unwieldy underperforming MDUSD continues to poorly manage the schools in areas where homeowners pay a premium property tax based on the historic performance of the schools.
And the diversity is there- only its Asian, Hispanic and Eastern Indian kids vs black kids( theres the third rail)
51.3% White
19.2% Asian
14.7%Hispanic
12.7% Two or More Races
1.5% Black
0.3% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
0.2% American Indian/Alaska Native
thats nearly 50% minorities so you dont have to add it up.
It means my kids have to suffer the consequences of being part of this massive bureaucratic bloat while I pay high property taxes and mortgage costs to benefit schools in a different city with chronic issues unrelated to education.
Oh, Paul. You are so misguided. I did not see your earlier post expressing triumph that your friend could take US jobs. I’m sure you were tickled with joy of how US manufacturing a couple of decades ago were offshored to China also. It is the same issue. Not a cheap shot, it is exactly the same issue. It is purposeful support of foreign nationals over citizens. You don’t seem to believe in country or any debt to those who built this country. And unless you are just trolling, Viva la raza was a phrase whose origins were from the farm workers of Cesar Chavez, and he hated illegal immigration because it harmed the wages of those here legally. He would have wanted your friend deported.
@to do list.
I am pro business so i am ecstatic that business outsourcing to countries to save cost. Not to mention that I am glad we import high skills workers through h1b1 because it is cheap and not all our citizens can do the jobs! It is nothing personal, just business.
We should welcome immigrants. Keep the one with skills and deport the troublemakers!
Paul: At least you have a structure to your views, but decisions made at the company level can have bad results at the country level. Lots of economists blame this offshoring on the decline of the middle class and increasing division between the rich and poor in the US, with the companion social hostility between race and income classes. In addition, the increasing reliance on China and other hostile countries has put the US at risk, as observed with China’s monopolization of many medical supplies at the start of the Covid lockdowns and the supply chain issues with computer chips. We also see foreign countries buying political influence to our country’s disadvantage. Anyway, I did not want to turn this into a non-stop debate.
Ricardoh – same here – in LA…. I had Hispanic friends and Afro-American friends – at one point they both told me pick a side….
I get why some of the parents would want to get their kids out of MDUSD but it does have the appearance of elitism and perhaps racism. Maybe the solution is to work on switching the schools to charter schools so they could draw a more diverse group of students from all over the area. If that isn’t the next move then I think we know what’s really up with this movement. I personally would like to see a voucher system put in place but we all know that won’t happen anytime soon with the current crop of clowns running the State.
Did anyone expect anything different?
Thank goodness all that ADA money is safe.
This decision is a good move to desegregate school
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111060299/school-segregation-report
These schools aren’t segregated.
The only things that are segregated are Paul’s beliefs and reality.
’cause the union told them to deny it. Seems the diversity officers need to get to work. Love that last quote “… on the other side of that divide”. I live in Walnut Creek, went to my friend’s kid’s graduation at LL. I read through list of graduates, I don’t see how it could get any more diverse. It’s awesome, I was there, I read it, I saw the crowd. People need to shut up about diversity, the comments are 5-10 years out of date.
I guess a person’s idea of diversity can vary. Are you talking about the immediate local area, the larger surrounding area, the state, or the country? If you look up Las Lomas’ demographics and compare them with that of Northgate HS, they ballpark similar. If you start to include larger areas (going up to the state demographics), those two schools still compare favorably, except in two areas- whites and hispanics. They would both be looked upon as being white heavy and hispanic and african american light.
If someone talks about “diversity”, they should help others out and give an example of what type of ethnic breakdown would they consider to be diverse. And even then, they would need to comment on whether they value diversity or not. Some folks might not care if things are diverse at all.
The parents don’t have to take this. They should engage in a mass withdrawal of their kids from this lousy and corrupt district and enroll them in private or parochial schools. If this means having to work two jobs, then so be it. Either you care about your kids or you engage in theatrics in an attempt to convince others – and yourself – that you care.
It has nothing to do with elitism and everything to do with getting out from under the control of the Mt Diablo School District that is woke. MDUSD is too large. Too many cooks spoil the, well you know the thing.
Was the outcome ever in doubt? lol
They still don’t think they are doing anything wrong. How can the abomination of the past 2 years not count as enough failure to qualify. As someone else said- unions is the answer. It is not, as someone else said, elitism or racism. Wanting your kids to have the quality of education they deserve is not an -ism. A good parent is willing to blow up systems if it means protecting their kid.
Ha Ha
MDUSD is the most dysfunction district I’ve ever seen, an incompetent school board and board president, and a corrupt district administration. I will support no more parcel taxes or bond measures for these idiots. And don’t tell me that this hurts the kids, when they already hurt the kids, over and over, AND screw the teachers over and over. Fire them all. Mt. Diablo is the new Oakland USD.
MDUSD is way to Large and has no accountability or resources to support this HUGE DISTRICT.
Disappointed since 2006 kindergarten stage.
More taxes and bond measures year after year. … and we still hear that there’s not enough money, even though the lottery was supposed to fix it.
Lying democrat politicians….
GOD help us that DeSaulnier or Swalwell or Weenie-Weiner gets wind of this!! I would suspect one of those jokers will want to have a “town hall” meeting to clear the air!
After all, the November mid-terms are coming up and the Demos need all the lies, etc to bolster their claims and attempt to overrun the elections!
Trying to dislodge these fat, lazy communists from the public education system isn’t going to be easy work. The key is CRT. That school district in Virginia got rid of their board because of the lies and misinformation surrounding the teaching of CRT.
“Poor kids are just as smart as white kids.”
Anyone remember who made that brilliant statement.
Geoffrey the GAFFE?????
Sorry Toys are Us…. Just a joke….
ALL the research shows diversity is, in fact, bad. No one gets what they really need. MDUSD is a racist organization that only hurls insults at parents who want better for their kids.
Our kid did an intradistrict transfer to Northgate. Kid is part Caucasian with other ethnicities mixed in. Got great education, played sports, lots of friends. I was at one of his games once where some parents were selling food there to help fundraise for the team. We lived in a city nearby but these parents lived in the Northgate general area. They were complaining that day that they wished that Northgate would either stop doing intradistrict transfers or preferably have their own Northgate School district separate from MDUSD. The talk wasn’t about how MDUSD school district was too big but how the “minorities ” were making Northgate a little bit rougher. I laughed and said how the current team had their best record since the mid 1980s. Also said this particular team had one of the highest GPA’s of all the sports teams, how most of the team were not only intradistrict kids whom happen to also be minorities (from Concord, Pitt and Antioch) but also were the best players on the team. I ended by saying how my mixed race intradistrict son (whom they often said was a great player and team leader) loved playing and being on this particular team. Great camaraderie! That shut them up!
A good majority (my son included) graduated as scholar athletes who went on and graduated college or went on to trade school, joined the military, or immediately joined the work force.
This was almost 10 years ago.
But are they wrong? Minorities from others schools tend to bring in their gang activity and “rough” the schools up a bit. Don’t want to believe me? Just call the police office and ask them. Some of these transfers can bring in a lot of good, but be honest with yourself and everyone else here. It’s not usually the white kids causing problems at schools like Ygnacio, is it. NG should just go Charter and be done with it. That way they could control what is going in and out.
@ OP
What’s gang activity have you seen at Foothill or Northgate? Answer: NONE! Stop the ridiculous and misleading statements. There’s nothing “rough” about Northgate. It’s a great school with great kids, even those ones in the tougher neighborhoods like Limeridge!
We purchased our home in the Crossings/Limeridge area 17 years ago. Both areas are in the Foothill/Northgate feeder area, and our property values are tied to the school system, as in any other neighborhood. Our child graduated from both Foothill and Northgate.
This group has been trying to pull this since before we purchased. They’ve tried every approach possible and have been rejected every time. We’ve taken part in every one of the debates. Make no mistake, the people pushing this are very much elitists. They just can’t get past the idea that, after spending millions for their homes in Walnut Creek, their little snowflakes have to be subjected to an education shared by those lowlifes in Concord, Pleasant Hill, and surrounding areas. I’ve heard several say just that at meetings.
As very active parents at both Foothill and Northgate, I can also say that the majority of the Northgate parents (certainly not all, but the majority) are so involved with their careers and chasing the dollar, that you can’t get them to volunteer to help in extra curricular activities. In many instances, those that volunteer the most come from areas that would be pushed out if this group every succeeds in their efforts, which they won’t. They just want to drop their kids off and go on with their lives. They couldn’t be bothered.
Give it up people. You knew the school district when you purchased your home, just as we did.
Seems like your comment on parent’s lack of empathy and involvement is true.
If I understood this article correctly, Zero Parents showed up at this hearing in support???????
If the NG parents really want a good education for their kids, they can sell their McMansions and rent a place cottage in Lamorinda. Many families with modest means squeeze into cozy condos in Moraga (Ascot), austere apartments in Downtown Lafayette or Orinda in-law units to give their kids access to the East Bay’s best schools. There are still 2 and 3 BR condos on the east end of Lafayette that trade for less than $1 million bucks, too.
Swallow your pride, share a wall and do the right thing for your kids!
Nobody over here will call you “racist,” “classist” or “elitist” because you sacrifice to give your children the best possible opportunities.