Weyanoke Elementary School

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know anything about Weyanoke Elementary School? We live in that district (relatively new to the neighborhood), and when I looked at the test scores and disciplinary statistics I was pretty taken aback. One of our neighbors told us there was no way he'd enroll his daughter there, and that it was one of the worst elementary schools in the state. Is there more to the story or should I go ahead with exploring private schools? DD has another 1.5 years before kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

When we’re grown and gone…Weyanoke is our school it will carry on.

It was a great school about 40 years ago, not sure about it now though.

[Anonymous]

I clicked because my son went there in 3rd and 4th grade literally 40 years ago. It was pretty bad then to the point where we moved to an entirely different school district. Don't know about now.

[Anonymous]

If you lived next door to TJ you'd go to Weyanoke for elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Please go visit the school and make your own decision based on talking with actual people. Felicia Usher is a lovely principal and cares deeply about the students and families. Make an appointment next fall.

[Anonymous]

Everyone likes to say the great schools scores, test scores in general and some of the stats don’t matter but they do. Our elementary school was rated a 5 and that was our experience. Trust your gut instinct

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone likes to say the great schools scores, test scores in general and some of the stats don’t matter but they do. Our elementary school was rated a 5 and that was our experience. Trust your gut instinct

Yes, please trust your gut instinct about a place you’ve never visited and an anonymous forum and test scores that are tied completed to household income.

[Anonymous]

I looked at some data for this school. It seems to be in flux - significant decrease in reported poverty over the past couple of years, and now hitting all the SOL benchmarks, but also a spike in chronic absenteeism. Since it seems like those statistics are somewhat at odd with one another, I'd definitely try to get a better understanding as to what's going on at the school and in the local neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone likes to say the great schools scores, test scores in general and some of the stats don’t matter but they do. Our elementary school was rated a 5 and that was our experience. Trust your gut instinct

+1, I’ve worked with FCPS a long time and in multiple regions. There is a correlation between test score (and great schools ranking) and whether or not it was a “good score”.

With that in mind, I have a current co-worker who taught at Weyanoke for 3 or so years. She doesn’t give it glowing reviews.

[Anonymous]

Its GS rating is 1. Greatschools.com is whatever, but a score 3 or below would deter me.

[Anonymous]

Ms Usher was AP at my DCs school before moving to Weyanoke and she is a great principal. While I don’t have experience with Weyanoke, I do with Holmes the middle school it feeds to. Weyanoke is title one school with a huge immigrant community. Some of those students start with no knowledge of English and material barriers to success. Almost 60% are English language learners. It is by far the poorest school that feeds into Holmes. The school really doesn’t have a scouting culture. We try to recruit there for Cub and Girl Scouts and there aren’t a lot of families interested. I’m not afraid of title 1. We send our children to Holmes and Annandale. From what I know of the school, the advantages are that they have small class sizes, solid principal, there is a great deal of economic diversity, TJ students tutor at the school.

[Anonymous]

Holmes changed so much. Decades ago it was a high performing school for 7th and 8th graders and it had over 1200 kids. Now it's 3 grades, only has 900 kids, and is very poor. Between closing the neighborhood high school and turning other middle schools into AAP centers it really went downhill. Weyanoke is just a few blocks away from Holmes.

[Anonymous]

My daughter currently goes to Weyanoke (1st grade). Like you, my wife and I were concerned about the scores/statistics, and were debating private school. We decided to give Weyanoke a try and if we had any concerns we would move her to private. It's been almost two years now and we still don't have any concerns. The staff seems really great, and happy to be working there. I've been very impressed with the principal, and as you'll see, people only have good things to say about her. My daughter's grades have been near-perfect, her reading skills are excellent, and she just received a good score on the first test used in the advanced academics screener, so by third grade she may be at a "better" school anyway (if accepted). Most importantly, she seems happy at Weyanoke, and she has made some good friends.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if TJ being the closest High School actually makes the area more depressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if TJ being the closest High School actually makes the area more depressed.

In a sense, yes.

When Jefferson High closed, all of Jefferson got moved to Annandale. As a result, the low-income apartments that had been concentrated at different points along Route 236 (Landmark, which had been assigned to Jefferson, and just inside the Beltway, which was already at Annandale) ended up at Annandale. Over time, Annandale got overcrowded, and multiple single-family neighborhoods zoned to Annandale got moved to other schools, concentrating poverty at Annandale. That snowballed over time, also making the area near TJ more run-down.

On the other hand, other schools in eastern Fairfax like Justice and Falls Church didn't experience such major boundary changes, and still ended up much poorer, starting in the late 1980s. There had long been low-slung garden apartments in these areas, but what really changed was that low-income immigrants with kids (as opposed to, say, younger singles without kids) starting pouring into those apartments. So if the typical resident of one of those units in the 70s was a 25-year-old secretary or teacher sharing an apartment with another secretary or teacher, by the 90s it was starting to be a half-dozen or more immigrants, including several kids, from Central America.