FCPS HS Boundary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

How close in quality were the schools when you switched? That’s much of what matters, but also, most kids need CONSISTENCY. It’s the thing that guidance counselors and doctors stress. That’s why your change things little by little suggestion is such bonkers. You lose that constancy, and all of a sudden kids/parents/family can’t rely on schools. They. Will. Look. Elsewhere.

You assume that redistricting families is this simple mathematical equation. I adamantly believe it’s the exact opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

So the goal is to anger more parents by making them either pay for private or send their kids to a terrible school?

[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.

Lake Braddock is the main gerrymandered high school.

But that is because for a long time it was the catch all school any time new neighborhoods were built.

Nothing nefarious, but definitely gerrymandered.

Lewis, Edison, Hayfield and West Springfield all have very compact borders.

Any rezoning to those schools will create geerymandering, not eliminate it.

[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.

They hired consultants just a couple of years ago, to look into rezoning. FCPS held community meetings all over the district with the consultants, along with surveys.

In short, the consultants determined that rezoning was unnecessary and not warranted, especially if it resulted in students getting zoned out of their neighborhoods with longer bus commutes.

Did you not attend the meetings or complete the surveys? They were very wel publicized.

Fcps published the survey results. People across all school zones were overwhelmingly against rezoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

Their parents picked the school.

Are you involved in PTA leadership at Lewis?

Even a small core group of parent volunteers can make a tremendous difference in a school.

[Anonymous]

So if they do a county-wide boundary study, they won't ignore the capacity at schools that recently have been expanded like Herndon, are currently being expanded like Falls Church, and are scheduled to be expanded like Centreville. They should also wait for the next renovation queue and factor in expansions that should have already been scheduled, but haven't. Otherwise they are making county-wide boundary changes largely (although not entirely) on the basis of a renovation queue created over 15 years ago and some random decisions by the School Board since 2008 to expand some schools outside the renovation queue while neglecting others that, with the benefit of hindsight, had a greater need for additional capacity.

Get an updated renovation queue in place, take steps to shore up Lewis in the interim, and then and only then if boundary changes are truly necessary start revising boundaries. As it stands, this is heading towards being a huge disaster for FCPS from which it likely will never recover.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

RE the bolded part

We have lived all over the country, west to east, north to south.

Never have we seen what you describe in the bolded part.

Most place have a continuous, unbroken path from elementary to high school, a literal pyramid.

As in 8 elementary schools feed into two middle schools (4/4), which then feed into 1 high school.

No split feeders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

RE the bolded part

We have lived all over the country, west to east, north to south.

Never have we seen what you describe in the bolded part.

Most place have a continuous, unbroken path from elementary to high school, a literal pyramid.

As in 8 elementary schools feed into two middle schools (4/4), which then feed into 1 high school.

No split feeders.

This is by far the more common model. It's understandable why FCPS ended up with split feeders, but it's not something they should aspire to. One of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in recent memory was passing up a chance to make Kilmer a straight feeder to Marshall and Thoreau a straight feeder to Madison, and instead turning Thoreau into a three-way split feeder to Madison, Marshall, and Oakton, while leaving Kilmer a split feeder to Marshall and Madison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Their parents picked the school.

Are you involved in PTA leadership at Lewis?

Even a small core group of parent volunteers can make a tremendous difference in a school.

Oh, please, how can I pick to go to Langley? I don't want the language transfer application that can be denied at the principal's discretion. I want to pick to attend Langley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

Their parents picked the school.

Are you involved in PTA leadership at Lewis?

Even a small core group of parent volunteers can make a tremendous difference in a school.

Oh, please, how can I pick to go to Langley? I don't want the language transfer application that can be denied at the principal's discretion. I want to pick to attend Langley.

Be rich

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if they do a county-wide boundary study, they won't ignore the capacity at schools that recently have been expanded like Herndon, are currently being expanded like Falls Church, and are scheduled to be expanded like Centreville. They should also wait for the next renovation queue and factor in expansions that should have already been scheduled, but haven't. Otherwise they are making county-wide boundary changes largely (although not entirely) on the basis of a renovation queue created over 15 years ago and some random decisions by the School Board since 2008 to expand some schools outside the renovation queue while neglecting others that, with the benefit of hindsight, had a greater need for additional capacity.

Get an updated renovation queue in place, take steps to shore up Lewis in the interim, and then and only then if boundary changes are truly necessary start revising boundaries. As it stands, this is heading towards being a huge disaster for FCPS from which it likely will never recover.

The real question is can Langley find a way to get rid of their 2% of farms students? Can you do attendance islands around maid's quarters?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lake Braddock is the main gerrymandered high school.

But that is because for a long time it was the catch all school any time new neighborhoods were built.

Nothing nefarious, but definitely gerrymandered.

Lewis, Edison, Hayfield and West Springfield all have very compact borders.

Any rezoning to those schools will create geerymandering, not eliminate it.

LB has weird borders but 1) it’s still under capacity and 2) it picks up part of Fairfax Station/Clifton where the density is a lot less. Same with Robinson. Those kids have a long commute to school but they have to go somewhere and there aren’t as many kids there compared to the closer-in neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lake Braddock is the main gerrymandered high school.

But that is because for a long time it was the catch all school any time new neighborhoods were built.

Nothing nefarious, but definitely gerrymandered.

Lewis, Edison, Hayfield and West Springfield all have very compact borders.

Any rezoning to those schools will create geerymandering, not eliminate it.

Have you ever looked at a map? Hayfield's boundary shape puts Louisiana congressional districts to shame

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Stop with they all knew BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

RE the bolded part

We have lived all over the country, west to east, north to south.

Never have we seen what you describe in the bolded part.

Most place have a continuous, unbroken path from elementary to high school, a literal pyramid.

As in 8 elementary schools feed into two middle schools (4/4), which then feed into 1 high school.

No split feeders.

This is by far the more common model. It's understandable why FCPS ended up with split feeders, but it's not something they should aspire to. One of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in recent memory was passing up a chance to make Kilmer a straight feeder to Marshall and Thoreau a straight feeder to Madison, and instead turning Thoreau into a three-way split feeder to Madison, Marshall, and Oakton, while leaving Kilmer a split feeder to Marshall and Madison.

How many of these school systems were county-wide? How many had over 150,000 students? That’s the scale we need to be looking at for comparison. FCPS has between 180,000-189,000 students.