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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Mythical Western HS
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Anonymous
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I just looked up the latest CIP. They still don’t have the site!
Are the FCPS really going to build this? A few years ago CIP indicated that the new school would be built near Hutchison to provide the relief to Chantilly, Southlakes, Westfield, Oakton and Centreville. Now it looks like we are back to square one. The CIP doesn’t say much about the new HS other than the site has not been determined. |
Anonymous
| Ugh |
Anonymous
This was discussed on another thread. The latest CIP indicates for the first time that the upcoming Centreville expansion will build that school out to 3000 seats. And, as you point out, they have no site for Western HS. Granted, it's not easy to find a site with enough land for a new high school now. The best site was sold to the Saudis years ago. In addition, you have people who are worried that a new HS would be less attractive than their current high school, or that it might lead to a series of boundary changes that moves some kids from Langley to Herndon. Those people have every incentive to oppose the construction of a new high school, especially if it were built near Hutchison. As a practical matter, what that means is that people with younger kids in the Centreville, Chantilly, Herndon, Oakton, South Lakes, and Westfield pyramids should make sure they are comfortable with sending their kids to a school that may each have more than 2600 kids. Western HS is not going to happen for many years, if ever. Some will give up on FCPS and move to Loudoun, where they are disciplined and build new schools regularly to keep the individual HS enrollments down. |
Anonymous
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There was a period when Prince William had two high schools in the western part of the county - Battlefield and Patriot - that had gotten huge.
But Prince William opened Gainesville HS last year, and now the enrollments at Battlefield and Patriot are coming down. Patriot is just over 2100, Battlefield is just over 2300, and Gainesville just over 2000. Fairfax on the other hand twiddles its thumbs while School Board members change school names, fight with each other over their commitment to "social justice" and "equity," and hold out the promise of a mythical Western HS that few expect to get built within the next decade. It's what we've come to expect from a school system in decline. They claim it's still in the pipeline and no one believes them because they have so little credibility. |
Anonymous
| When 2023 does the SB hold elections? |
Anonymous
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Loudon is still experiencing its initial build out as it transforms from rural to suburban. I'm sure Fairfax County was able to keep up once upon a time. Loudon is building and/or redeveloping like mad on every square inch they can, just like Fairfax did. Give it a decade or two for all the young professionals to start families in their brand-new houses and it will be the same issue there. |
Anonymous
The usual time, the general election in November. There are no open primaries either, everything is decided by the parties so expect the usual clown show of candidates from both sides, even if some members decide not to run for re-election. Super great! |
Anonymous
How can there be no primaries? So who decides who is going to run on each side? Do the Democrats have any awareness of what is at stake? It shouldn’t even been linked to political parties. Can we put that on the ballot? |
Anonymous
There are no primaries because there are no primaries. School Board candidates don't run as party nominees; rather, they typically seek endorsements from either the local Democrats or the local Republicans. And those endorsements are based on votes that only local party members are eligible to vote in. You can try to join the local Democrats or the local Republicans, although the local Democrats in particular have made it clear that they are going to reject membership applications over the next year from people that they think are shadow Republicans (which may include anyone who has ever been critical of a current Democratic office holder). In theory, many people will say they would prefer moderate candidates rather than the more extreme candidates that the current process tends to generate (the Democratic activists who join the party tend to be further left than the typical Democratic voter, and the GOP activists who join the party tend to be further right than the typical Republican voter). But the candidates who run purely as independents don't win. |
Anonymous
Sure, eventually. Loudoun is still in growth mode. Fairfax is at a stage of mature development where it ought to be managing its resources strategically, yet fails to do so because it's so poorly managed and driven by politics. Even Montgomery County, which has a smaller economic base than Fairfax and fewer students, and is further along the growth cycle than Fairfax, has plans to add at least two new high schools (Crown and Woodward) over the coming years to address overcrowding at high schools like Walter Johnson. In comparison, Fairfax just plods along. It spends enormous amounts of money renovating a few schools every year, based largely but not entirely on a school renovation queue that was developed almost 15 years ago, and before much of the growth in some parts of the county had started to occur. Occasionally, it departs from the renovation queue, but as often as not it slavishly adheres to the queue, as a result of which it ends up adding capacity at some schools that isn't really needed (or then used), while ignoring overcrowding elsewhere for years on end. When it most needs to be nimble and flexible, FCPS is sluggish and wasteful. |
Anonymous
No. They've been talking about this since BEFORE my kid was in Kindergarten (DC is now in 10th). It's not happening anytime soon. And shame on them for that. |
Anonymous
School board members are not supposed to have a political party.vote candidates not parties. |
Anonymous
THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF THE CURRENT SCHOOL BOARD. When this was still being talked about 10 yo, there were Republicans on the board -Elizabeth Schulz comes to mind- and they did nothing as well. |
Anonymous
Would it really take that much courage for FCPS to just admit the "new western HS" is a fiction? They could trot out any number of excuses - declining birth rates, lower FCPS enrollments, community preferences, etc. Don't bother responding - we all know the answer. |
Anonymous
It's the current School Board that's authorizing the release of CIPs that continue to refer to a "new Western high school" as if it's a thing, when few actually expect it to get built any time within the next 20 years. And when Schultz was on the School Board, it was also controlled by Democrats, just not to the same extent it is now (9-3 and 10-2 vs. 12-0). Also, the current School Board is coming to the end of its term soon, so it's a bit tired to keep blaming their predecessors for all the things they haven't tackled. |