Tell me about the schools in Herndon/Chantilly - Crossfield, Oak Hill, Navy, Fox Mill, Lees Corner
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Anonymous
| We're looking at Franklin Farm and the surrounding neighborhoods (moving from the Marshall Pyramid). I'm curious about these ES's. The problem with ours is a huge amount of teacher turnover, a lack of focus on STEAM (minimal extracurriculars/clubs/etc that I see a lot of other local ES's have). What I do like about our school is switching kids up for differentiation (e.g. the older grades change teachers for math so they are taught to their level). One of my children is not AAP, the other will likely be in AAP (but who knows), so we're looking for a good general ed program. |
Anonymous
| Fox Mill is awesome. Not a lot of teacher turn over and strong admin. |
Anonymous
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Fox Mill family here. We love it but DS is in the Japanese program so I can’t speak to the Gen Ed program. Our friends have kids in the Gen Ed program and are mostly happy with it. Between COVID distance learning and the remodel, the PTA has not gotten as many after school options running. Some of it is the available space, because of parts of the school being closed, but I think they lost some more active parents during COVID and are just finding their stride with extra curricular. There were a lot more options pre-COVID.
The community at the school is strong, there has been limited turn over with Teachers, and the Admin has been pretty stable. Overall happy with the school. The one area that I have concerns with is the number of kids that the Fox Mill kids know when they go to High School. They go to Rachel Carson for MS, which is excellent, but hardly anyone from RCMS goes to South Lakes High School. It feels like the kids are disadvantaged when they get to high school. No one in the neighborhood seems to be all that upset about it but it feels like it is isolating. |
Anonymous
| Lees Corner is a great little neighborhood school that feeds into an excellent HS. |
Anonymous
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Oak Hill and Fox Mill are currently under construction as part of a renovation. Crossfield is also in the cue for construction/renovation.
https://www.fcps.edu/about/Capital-Improvement-Project-Status Navy is the AAP Level IV center. Tiny strip of Nestlewood area of FF feeds into Navy. Those kids go to Franklin MS (?). |
Anonymous
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If you are concerned about STEM clubs, you should check out the PTAs of the schools and see how much support there would be to start activities.
I know of a school where the PTA just wasn't interested in doing Math Olympiad. |
Anonymous
| OP here, really not as concerned about STEM/STEAM as I am about the community and whether the school is well regarded and families like it there. There are a couple schools that get brought up in this forum a lot and fortunately those are in areas we can't afford to live in, I just want to make sure we're avoiding schools like that where parents get all up in arms about AAP vs General Ed, or are racists, or things like that. We are a mixed race family (half Asian/half white), and I hope we'd be welcomed in these communities, I think there are decent sized asian/south asian populations? |
Anonymous
+1. And to answer your concerns about racial diversity OP, Lees Corner is roughly 30% Asian, 10% mixed race. |
Anonymous
Fox Mill has Japanese Immersion and a Japanese Cultural Committee. While not South Asian, the school is pretty open to Asian cultural discussion and embraces at least Japanese culture. There is not a huge AAP push at the school. The school is only 2 years into local level IV and uses the cluster model. Kids who are interested in LIV attend Oak Hill as the Center school. I have not heard anything negative about any of the listed schools. |
Anonymous
| I live in one of these neighborhoods, and am active on the PTA, and honestly have not heard anything negative about any of these schools. I know teachers at most of these schools and I hear almost all good things. |
Anonymous
You might want to avoid Navy then. The AAP vs Gen Ed culture is real and sadly I feel like it’s ruined the experience for us. The teachers are great, but when you split everyone into “the smart kids” and “the not smart kids”, and everyone knows who is in which class, you’re setting yourself up for a not so great learning experience. If we had a choice, we would have chosen Fox Mill. It’s a super tight knit community and everyone (parents, teachers, kids) are lovely. If you value community, those are your people. |
Anonymous
| Oak Hill is being renovated, but it looks like it is almost done. |
Anonymous
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My kids were at crossfield and now go to navy.
Navy is majority Asian, Crossfield is majority white and the AAP kids feed into navy. Navy is more academically focused and has more after school activities that are STEM oriented. I prefer the admin at crossfield though since the navy principle changed. |
Anonymous
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Navy is stepford wives ish.
They have had issues. No way i would put my kids there |
Anonymous
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Oak Hill is a center school so I would expect that there is some type of AAP/Gen Ed issues.
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