FCPS HS Boundary

[Anonymous]

Is it Lewis or Justice that has the asinine "social justice academy"? Get rid of that, for starters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it Lewis or Justice that has the asinine "social justice academy"? Get rid of that, for starters.

Lewis.

That, plus IB, the gateway to transfer to another school.

Over 200 students transfer out of Lewis every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

You repopulate Lewis by closing the IB loophole, that 200+ kids use to transfer out of the school.

Do that, and suddenly there is no need to rezone anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it Lewis or Justice that has the asinine "social justice academy"? Get rid of that, for starters.

Lewis.

That, plus IB, the gateway to transfer to another school.

Over 200 students transfer out of Lewis every year.

They’d need to shut down pupil placements to the Edison Academy as well. Edison is also IB like Lewis but a lot of Lewis kids pupil place there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

You repopulate Lewis by closing the IB loophole, that 200+ kids use to transfer out of the school.

Do that, and suddenly there is no need to rezone anyone.

You keep saying this, but at best it would bring back less than half those transfers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

You repopulate Lewis by closing the IB loophole, that 200+ kids use to transfer out of the school.

Do that, and suddenly there is no need to rezone anyone.

You keep saying this, but at best it would bring back less than half those transfers.

DP. Every little bit helps? I’d push for that approach over a redistricting.

Not that either is a good idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

The best they could do at this point is crack down on transfers out. But, it would have to be across the board at all the HS’s. Not just Lewis. And even then you’d still have kids placing out for like, the highest level AP math classes and such that they don’t have enough enrollment to offer at the smallest schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

You repopulate Lewis by closing the IB loophole, that 200+ kids use to transfer out of the school.

Do that, and suddenly there is no need to rezone anyone.

You keep saying this, but at best it would bring back less than half those transfers.

It would increase enrollment more than redistricting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it Lewis or Justice that has the asinine "social justice academy"? Get rid of that, for starters.

Lewis.

That, plus IB, the gateway to transfer to another school.

Over 200 students transfer out of Lewis every year.

I guess that academy wasn't quite the draw they thought it would be. Who knew! When will FCPS get a clue.

[Anonymous]

Tonight’s Academic Matters segment (given after 11pm-not a great sign that they value academics) was a love fest about Lewis Academy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or maybe instead of bickering over whose kids should get screwed in a county redistricting, perhaps we should all just admit that the redistricting would be a colossal mistake and that redistricting arbitrarily picks winners and losers.

As if the current gerrymandered boundaries don't do the exact same thing. They should hire consultants from outside the area with no skin in the game to draw up boundaries that make logical sense and fully utilize county resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

The best they could do at this point is crack down on transfers out. But, it would have to be across the board at all the HS’s. Not just Lewis. And even then you’d still have kids placing out for like, the highest level AP math classes and such that they don’t have enough enrollment to offer at the smallest schools.

And you would also have to eliminate the “transfer to Langley HS because of Russian language” hack…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or maybe instead of bickering over whose kids should get screwed in a county redistricting, perhaps we should all just admit that the redistricting would be a colossal mistake and that redistricting arbitrarily picks winners and losers.

As if the current gerrymandered boundaries don't do the exact same thing. They should hire consultants from outside the area with no skin in the game to draw up boundaries that make logical sense and fully utilize county resources.

Actually, the current system doesn’t arbitrarily pick winners and losers. People know what they signed up for. It’s predictable. If they all of a sudden take a chunk of McLean and move them to falls church high, or west Springfield and move them to Lewis, then 1) it does at that point pick winners and losers and 2) it’ll be a big turn off for prospective purchasers in the county.

It’s not a good recipe for the county. Many more losers than winners.

Btw, the consultant thing is such BS. Some unqualified company is going to get a lucrative multi ten million dollar contract just because the board wants to politically insulate itself. If the SB members think it is such a good idea to go down this path, they should have the mettle to deal with the blowback from the community for those decisions, and it’s not like hiring a consultant absolves them from eventually voting on this. And could you imagine what will happen when the consultant with no skin in the game comes back and says that county-wide redistricting is a huge mistake that’ll be a net negative for the county? Then their plans are ruined.

It’s political suicide to go down this redistricting path, and hiring a consultant to do their bidding is just a colossal waste of resources - how many bus drivers could be hired for that amount? Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

The big error by FCPS is not making small adjustments every single year. In a different VA metro, the local public schools did those small tweaks every year. So, there were big boundary adjustments only if/when a new school opened.

A second issue with FCPS is that they try too hard to have formal/rigid school pyramids. In that other locality, almost every ES school was a split-feed to two different MSs, and most MSs were split-feed into two different HSs. A given neighborhood would only rarely split-feed however, so one was attending schools with others from the same neighborhood.

My neighborhood happened to be on the fringe between two elementary schools. I did 1st-2nd grade at school A then the whole neighborhood was shifted to do 3rd-4th at school B. It was just fine, bus ride times were close enough to the same, and no one was greatly upset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The smartest and least distuptive way for FCPS to address Lewis, would be to turn Lewis into a trades/skilled trades magnet, including moving the academy classes at any overcrowded school to Lewis.

Give Lewis zoned kids priority guaranteed placement in the magnet program.

Rezone the remaining students to Edison, Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County, based strictly on the closest commute. So, for example, Saratoga would go to South County. Crestview would go to Hayfield. Etc. Etc.

Grandfather any current high school students who want to graduate from Lewis. As they graduate, increase the magnate slots for the trades academy.

Isn't Edison about 2 miles from Lewis? Why would they put another trades/skills option HS so close to each other?

Move the academies from Edison and Mount Vernon and consolidate them at Lewis. Make it a full-time program so that kids aren’t shuttled back and forth from their base schools. Move the kids from Lewis who don’t want to attend a magnet trade school to Edison, Mount Vernon, Hayfield, Annandale, or SoCo.

The more "ideas" I see that don't involve West Springfield at all, yet would be disruptive to other schools, the more convinced I am that the starting point should be to redistrict West Springfield kids to Lewis. It's the combination of completely insulating West Springfield while imposing burdens and potential overcrowding on other schools that's so over-the-top.

Agreed. Take all of the kids south of the FC Parkway as well as Daventry and send them to Lewis. Of course, most of those parents will then just go private, but at least you'll get kids out of WSHS.

Why do you want kids out of WSHS so badly? Besides, if you’re looking at capacity + length of bus commute/need for fewer buses, it makes more sense to send at least the south of the parkway kids to South County via probably Newington Forest. And dump the split feeder at Sangster and send all the kids to LB.

How does that help populate Lewis? I thought that's what people were focused on. Lewis is under-populated and we have to find ways to send more kids there to prop it up. I haven't heard WSHS parents complain about school over-crowding but plenty of people are complaining that Lewis doesn't have enough kids. So we're going to redraw boundaries to force more kids over there.

Or maybe instead of bickering over whose kids should get screwed in a county redistricting, perhaps we should all just admit that the redistricting would be a colossal mistake and that redistricting arbitrarily picks winners and losers.

Or think about the kids who are currently screwed because of the current imbalances of the district lines and would benefit from a countywide assessment instead of drips and drabs sprinkled over a decade or two. The ones in over crowded schools that don’t have room for them and the ones in under-enrolled schools that impacts the course offerings.