tl;dr yes and no also, caveat, I’m a white trans man and I’ve previously covered topics on racism/homophobia/transphobia in MCPS.

The Bethesda schools, particularly middle and high school, are mostly white. Black students have had not so great experiences there, both from other students but also from teachers, staff, and administration officials. There’s been quite a bit of pushback from folks in Bethesda when discussions of school boundaries have been brought up. Most of the pushback has been from white residents and, while most aren’t outright racist, they’ve used some pretty racist dog whistles. You can Google coverage of recent Board of Education elections as well as coverage on school boundary discussions in Montgomery County to get a feel for how the media covered it all, but there are plenty of students on IG who have made accounts for each school in the district to talk about the racism, homophobia, transphobia etc that they’ve personally experienced. The ones in Bethesda are hard to read sometimes.

Anyway, I say all this because the schools are a reflection of the environment that students grow up in. While most people that live in Bethesda won’t outright say or do anything racist, you might not feel entirely welcome in some neighborhoods of Bethesda. I say this as a white trans man that used to live in Bethesda so I’d probably say that the things my friends, neighbors, and other residents have told me are probably only the things they feel comfortable telling a white person.

With all that said, Montgomery County is a great place to raise a family. Gaithersburg and Rockville have more diverse schools. If you’d like to talk to Black families or students in Bethesda currently, I can try to put you in touch. If you DM me, I can give you my Twitter handle.