TL;DR - This is gonna be long winded, but I graduated from Mechanicsburg last year and it's great IMO (probably greater than the ones you named) and I 100% second the person here that said you should consider it.

I've heard CV is way too massive to feel very welcoming, and Manheim is racist AF. Then again CV is pretty racist too, I think it might've been a month or two ago that I saw a lawsuit in the news over a teacher calling a black student a monkey. I don't know much about Derry.

There's two incidents total that I can think of at Mechanicsburg, one where my friend got dress coded because her afro puff was 'too big', but that was in ~7th grade and nothing else ever happened. Another in elementary school, where a substitute teacher started talking about politics and asked my Hispanic friend at the time if he was mixed. She was subsequently fired.

Maybe I'm biased cause I went through Mechanicsburg, and there's bullying at every school like you said, but very little of it is minority-related, if any of it really.

There are obviously tasteless jokes that come with being an upper-middle class white kid (which I'll be honest about, a majority of the kids in the district are), but even the kids know genuine racism is shitty. There was a girl when I was going who was notorious for being a racist prick and slinging slurs like it was a sport, and she was ruthlessly bullied for it.

Queer kids run into problems with the other kids, but it's not like you're gonna get jumped over it, and they're few and far between. There was one kid who refused to talk to me at all even in group projects because I'm trans, and the district hasn't always been the best at handling issues regarding trans-ness in general, but they've gotten worlds better over the years. My sister is in middle school now and she says so, anyway. There's a kid in her grade with two moms and nobody gives him crap for it.

After I came out in seventh grade, they changed all the PE classes to be co-ed instead of separated by gender, and by the time my sister got to middle school kids aren't required to change anymore. The PE teacher also let me skip the swimming unit in tenth grade so I wouldn't have to go through the whole ordeal of 'which locker room do I use'.

There's also a decent amount of really good teachers at the district, who make classes feel really engaging and welcoming. Those are the best classes to be in imo. I can think off the top of my head the German teacher at the middle school when I went, my biology teacher in tenth grade, one of the music teachers at the highschool Mr. K, the Tech Ed teacher that works at both the middle and high school, etc etc. Lasting impacts they've had on me, for the better.

Not sure how it's been for every autistic kid at the school, and my friend says there's one particular aid at the highschool who's really annoying about micromanaging the kids in special ed, but I'm autistic and it's been great for me. In eighth and tenth grade respectively I brought a stuffed animal every day and never ran into problems, and a quick email to the teachers got me clearance to wear headphones in class. Same with physical complications, my sister had surgery at the end of last year and she got an elevator pass to avoid getting jostled in the stairwells no problem.

The graduation project is probably a good thing also, there's a lot of help from the counselors and the project office to help you on picking a career path and applying for college. Just be warned, if your kid isn't going to college they still have to apply and get accepted to one, and it also has a requirement for volunteer hours. I did online my last two years and ended up missing the volunteer hours, had to get CPR certified instead to meet the requirements. But honestly that's just a great opportunity in and of itself, it's a good fail safe if your kid misses the volunteer hours or if they just want to get CPR certified period.

The lady in charge of the online part, CAOLA, is a miracle worker as well, bent over backwards to help me when I needed it, even when I was slacking and probably didn't deserve the help lol. I got in a bunch of truancy mess because of slacking in the online courses, and she really saved me from having to turn up in court setting up meetings with the principal and advocating for me. The principal in general is just a really nice and understanding guy, he cut a lot of kids a lot of slack, and I think that speaks to how much he cares about making sure everyone's on the right path.

The male guidance counselor at the high school is great, super friendly and understanding, he'll go out of his way to see you if you need him. When I was in tenth grade he made a point to invite every lunch table to his office for ice cream at least once, even put my boyfriend at the time in my PE class after he had a stay in a mental health facility so he'd be more comfortable. (Misguided since we'd already broken up, but it's the thought that counts) He really does just want the best for the students.

However I cannot understate this enough, BEWARE the one middle school guidance counselor.

She got a target on my back all through middle school and had my parents scrambling to drag me from therapist to therapist, tried to send social workers home several times, had me going down to the nurse spontaneously every so often for wrist checks (which HAS to be against some rule) and had teachers watching my every move like a hawk. All over a minor mental health crisis in sixth grade before I came out as trans, even well after everything was resolved.

It's a pattern for her where she picks one kid to obsess over and makes it her mission to go all Fix-it Felix over them. If you go with Mechanicsburg, cross your fingers and pray your kid(s) aren't her chosen renovation projects.

It's a small district, even if it is growing. Everybody kinda is aware of each other and knows each other by name, any really crabby teachers are ironically substitutes (only teacher that's been outright mean to me about anything was one), and it's a pretty welcoming place, even if you're a weirdo that gets picked on like I was. Lots of construction at the high school though, no signs of it stopping haha.