Skyview Information for Families of Attending Kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

They really need to do better for the 10th graders. I might be ok with DD having to take one year of online foreign language, but not 3.
And they had better offer plenty of advanced math and APs otherwise I will switch her back. But right now she really wants to go to Skyview.

What classes is she signed up for next year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Numbers have dropped substantially especially for 10th graders. They have about 400 for 9th and only 280 for 10th grade. A lot of kids have opted out because of electives, sports, band, leaving friends, etc. Fairfax really messed up, they should have just drawn boundaries and allowed student to opt out if they wanted to. Which is how every other county works.

It's fairly common when opening a new school to reassign rising 9th and 10th graders to the new school and allow rising juniors to opt in or out.

FCPS didn't do this with Skyview because it would have meant delaying its opening at least another year, until more of the space had been reconfigured.

Stupid, vain decision by Michelle Reid. And it's not like opening earlier with an opt-in model is going to provide significant overcrowding relief where it's needed the most (Chantilly, not Westfield).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

They really need to do better for the 10th graders. I might be ok with DD having to take one year of online foreign language, but not 3.
And they had better offer plenty of advanced math and APs otherwise I will switch her back. But right now she really wants to go to Skyview.

What classes is she signed up for next year?

I don’t want to out her, but she is on track for maximum HN/AP as they become available.
I’m not too discouraged. I went to a tiny private high school with literally 25 kids per grade, so 2 hundred and something students from mostly families who value education, it should be OK. She will be able to play her sport at her base school and already has ideas for clubs/intramurals she wants to be a part of at Skyview.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Numbers have dropped substantially especially for 10th graders. They have about 400 for 9th and only 280 for 10th grade. A lot of kids have opted out because of electives, sports, band, leaving friends, etc. Fairfax really messed up, they should have just drawn boundaries and allowed student to opt out if they wanted to. Which is how every other county works.

It's fairly common when opening a new school to reassign rising 9th and 10th graders to the new school and allow rising juniors to opt in or out.

FCPS didn't do this with Skyview because it would have meant delaying its opening at least another year, until more of the space had been reconfigured.

Stupid, vain decision by Michelle Reid. And it's not like opening earlier with an opt-in model is going to provide significant overcrowding relief where it's needed the most (Chantilly, not Westfield).

Or drawn the boundaries for 9th and 10th, give 10th the option to opt out, and started in Fall 2026 with closer to 1000 students.

[Anonymous]

FCPS is handling this so incredibly poorly. They should have set boundaries, spent a year on construction, and then opened up with full 9th and 10th grade glasses in 27-28.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is handling this so incredibly poorly. They should have set boundaries, spent a year on construction, and then opened up with full 9th and 10th grade glasses in 27-28.

They can't do a very job of teaching kids about the benefits of delayed gratification when opening Skyview prematurely demonstrates Reid is all about immediate sound bites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

There will be plenty of kids to fill those needs.

How? If they only have 250 sophomores and need 30 per class to staff it?

The math doesn't math for the staffing formulas and only 250 kids in a grade. they are either going to go way over the typical HS budget for teachers or cut way back on the classes available/offered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

There will be plenty of kids to fill those needs.

How? If they only have 250 sophomores and need 30 per class to staff it?

The math doesn't math for the staffing formulas and only 250 kids in a grade. they are either going to go way over the typical HS budget for teachers or cut way back on the classes available/offered.

+1.

[Anonymous]

I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

I think if this is true then we know how the boundaries are going to fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

Offering a niche language like Japanese when you have such a small population does not make sense. The Japanese teacher would need to come to the school just to teach one class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

Offering a niche language like Japanese when you have such a small population does not make sense. The Japanese teacher would need to come to the school just to teach one class.

This is possible and makes sense. I don't know why they do not do that more in FCPS. They do it with specialists like those dealing with low vision and hearing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

Offering a niche language like Japanese when you have such a small population does not make sense. The Japanese teacher would need to come to the school just to teach one class.

This is possible and makes sense. I don't know why they do not do that more in FCPS. They do it with specialists like those dealing with low vision and hearing.

Because its not an efficient use of the teacher's time and complicates the staffing formulas for the 3-4 high schools the teacher is traveling to.

It is easier logistically for kids to take Japanese through FCPS Online Campus. That doesn't work for athletes, but Skyview won't have kids who are athletes attending for the next two years. so maybe it won't be an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

Offering a niche language like Japanese when you have such a small population does not make sense. The Japanese teacher would need to come to the school just to teach one class.

The Japanese teacher can walk from Carson, where there are 30 kids in Japanese Immersion 1 and 2, to Skyview for the 15+ kids who are moving to Skyview that will be in Japanese 3 and the kids who are coming from SLHS who will be in Japanese 4. Fox Mill ES is a Japanese Immersion program, which continues at Carson. There are kids who attend Westfield that have participated in the JI program that will be at Skyview as well as the Fox Mill kids that opted in to Skyview.

Westfield and SLHS offer Japanese because of the JI program at Fox Mill, it made sense that it would be an option at Skyview, especially since they have kids who enrolled in Japanese 3 at South Lakes and Westfield that opted in for Skyview.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that they might have a Japanese 3/4 combined class so that Japanese is available to 9th and 10th graders. They might do something similar with other languages or classes.

I would guess that the 10th grade class will grow as kids move into the area and will join the school. It is going to be a smaller class but I think it can work well with some creativity.

Offering a niche language like Japanese when you have such a small population does not make sense. The Japanese teacher would need to come to the school just to teach one class.

Certainly can be more than one class:

Japanese 3/4 for kids who took J IB2 in 8th, J2 in 9th, or J3 in 9th
Japanese 2 for kids who took J 1AB in 7th/8th or J1 in 9th
Japanese 1 for 1st year WL students