How Students In Montgomery County Are Leading The Push For School Redistricting

Ananya Tadikonda sits on the Montgomery County Board of Education  — when she’s not sitting in class at Richard Montgomery High School, where she’s finishing up her senior year.

But don’t assume that because Tadikonda has homework and college admissions to worry about that she’s not a fully engaged board member. Her resolution for a controversial school boundary study, bolstered by support from a variety of different student groups, passed 7-1 earlier this year.

It’s part of a quieter, more local strain of student activism than headline-grabbing youth demonstrations on gun violence and climate change, but it’s no less audacious.

The goal of the study Tadikonda proposed? Examine the zoning for all 207 schools in the county, with an eye to understanding how the school system might reduce overcrowding and increase diversity in all of its school buildings. The county hasn’t conducted that kind of analysis since the late 1980s, according to longtime Board of Education member Pat O’Neill.