FCPS Boundary Review - New Maps

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty clear from that meeting that Sandy Anderson is the driving force behind this process. Meren was expressing a lot of doubts about how fast this was moving given the number of outstanding questions.

It's also clear that they have no intention of providing transportation to any kid who is grandfathered in and chooses to stay at their base school after a boundary change. Anderson and Lady both endorsed that approach.

Meren is probably hearing from constituents who want to be moved to KAA and are not happy with the minimal changes that have been suggested for the area. The Aviation program is not likely to go over well in the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty clear from that meeting that Sandy Anderson is the driving force behind this process. Meren was expressing a lot of doubts about how fast this was moving given the number of outstanding questions.

It's also clear that they have no intention of providing transportation to any kid who is grandfathered in and chooses to stay at their base school after a boundary change. Anderson and Lady both endorsed that approach.

Meren is probably hearing from constituents who want to be moved to KAA and are not happy with the minimal changes that have been suggested for the area. The Aviation program is not likely to go over well in the area.

Meren did sound like she might be willng to give up IB. Most of that area that would like to be moved probably would be happy with that.

She also addressed the Pupil Placement issue. I knew a kid over twenty years ago who pupil placed as a sophomore because of "difficult social issues." He just wanted to be on a winning state championship lacrosse team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People on this board are unhinged.

Good morning, Gatehouse staff.

Like this - this and your crazy it's all a conspiracy theorizing makes you sound crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty clear from that meeting that Sandy Anderson is the driving force behind this process. Meren was expressing a lot of doubts about how fast this was moving given the number of outstanding questions.

It's also clear that they have no intention of providing transportation to any kid who is grandfathered in and chooses to stay at their base school after a boundary change. Anderson and Lady both endorsed that approach.

Meren is probably hearing from constituents who want to be moved to KAA and are not happy with the minimal changes that have been suggested for the area. The Aviation program is not likely to go over well in the area.

Meren did sound like she might be willng to give up IB. Most of that area that would like to be moved probably would be happy with that.

She also addressed the Pupil Placement issue. I knew a kid over twenty years ago who pupil placed as a sophomore because of "difficult social issues." He just wanted to be on a winning state championship lacrosse team.

I watched the YouTube video of this part of the meeting this a.m. and Meren sounded pretty frustrated at multiple issues around this process, including the timing, the inability to get maps, whether anyone on staff/Thru were incorporating community/BRAC feedback etc. McDaniel didn't say much. Ricardy Anderson also seemed pretty frustrated at the timing issue and the fact they aren't planning to host a meeting in every pyramid as they'd said they would do when passing the boundary review update that kicked this off. S. Anderson, Lady, Fritsch and St. John Cumming, however, all still seem on board with moving this thru as quickly as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There aren’t errors. It’s all fake. Reid has her maps and hired Thru for “transparency” and is pretending the first round were errors so she can release her own maps and pretend the errors were fixed by Thru.

Superintendent Reid doesn't know the county's geography all that well or the demographic variations in the various parts of the county. So I roughly doubt she has her own dream boundary scenarios to push through at the end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People on this board are unhinged.

Good morning, Gatehouse staff.

Like this - this and your crazy it's all a conspiracy theorizing makes you sound crazy.

DP. The incompetence of Reid and Thru Consulting invites conspiracy theories because a natural reaction is to think no one could really be this stupid and that it must be a ruse.

Remember that these people tossed out maps that created new attendance islands when they were supposed to be eliminating them, vastly increased the commuting distances of some kids. and had multiple proposals to send kids living next door to one school to a different school. It was seriously sloppy work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There aren’t errors. It’s all fake. Reid has her maps and hired Thru for “transparency” and is pretending the first round were errors so she can release her own maps and pretend the errors were fixed by Thru.

Superintendent Reid doesn't know the county's geography all that well or the demographic variations in the various parts of the county. So I roughly doubt she has her own dream boundary scenarios to push through at the end.

No. If she looks at a map she can pick what SHE thinks are great solutions. Just like THRU. No matter that next door neighbors are sent in different directions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There aren’t errors. It’s all fake. Reid has her maps and hired Thru for “transparency” and is pretending the first round were errors so she can release her own maps and pretend the errors were fixed by Thru.

Superintendent Reid doesn't know the county's geography all that well or the demographic variations in the various parts of the county. So I roughly doubt she has her own dream boundary scenarios to push through at the end.

I agree. She lives in her own world of imagined possibility and, while she seems to spend an inordinate amount of time traveling around the county to visit different schools (which her aides then write up every week), it’s unclear that she has any idea where she’s been driven.

[Anonymous]

Every parent in Fairfax County (and, really, every resident) should watch the video of yesterday's work session) before the next School Board election.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:when are they going to release the new maps

will they delay maps after new school boundary

when does the time change get released

They keep talking about new maps getting released in October.

They are vague on when boundary maps for the new school might come out because they were first discussing whether the new school would be a neighborhood school, a magnet, or some hybrid.

It sounded like they wouldn't land on time changes until later in the year. The main discussion around that was that some time change options would strain bus resources, but this would be mitigated if students who are grandfathered to their existing schools are not provided transporation. As discussed earlier, St. John-Cunning lied and said transportation was never provided to students' existing schools when boundary changes are being phased in, which is just blatantly false. It's scary how misinformed some board members are about how FCPS has operated in the past. In any event, while no formal decision was made, people should assume based on this work session that they will not provide transportation to the current schools of grandfathered students affected by boundary changes, unlike in years past with prior boundary changes.

There was discussion at some point about whether this time line needs to be adjusted. I interpreted that (though who knows whether I understood correctly) that just maybe they should delay it a year.
That would make sense:
1. define boundaries for new school
2. see what the population is across the county (it may be dropping)

You're right, that was discussed, but it didn't seem there was any consensus. Some members said it was more important to get things right than just a meet a timeline, but a few members like Sandy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning seemed very focused on sticking to the schedule. I don't know if it's Anderson just really wanting to deliver the Lewis part of Rolling Valley to West Springfield, and making other changes to the WSHS boundaries, but she's all about changing boundaries sooner whether people like it or not (lots of cliches about how "change is hard" and "we can never make everyone happy").

The Anderson laser focus on Rolling Valley/Lewis neighborhoods is simply mind boggling.

Even more so when you consider that Hunt Valley is a much larger voting constituency for her than those Lewis/Rolling Valley neighborhoods.

And just like when Daventry was moved from Lewis to WSHS, replacing Hunt Valley with Rolling Valley/Lewis will likely end up resulting in a larger number of students added to WSHS than removed from the school, due to all the private school and pupil placed to LB students that will return to WSHS now that they aren't zoned to Lewis

Hunt Valley is a stable cohort of students.

Rolling Valley is a much larger number of students than currently claimed by Anderson, just like Daventry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did see a few obvious errors on the maps, but what are some of the things that the board or Reid are calling errors? I’m concerned that people are thinking things are errors and will be fixed, but Thru isn’t considering them to be errors at all and will leave them unchanged. Like that little piece of Silverbrook/South County by South Run Park that they decided to rogue move to Sangster/LB, in their view that’s possibly not an error. since they took Sangster’s island and sent it to Newington Forest/South County, now an equal piece must be moved back into its place.

Both Sandy Anderson and Dr. Reid have stated publicly multiple times that the Hunt Valley recommendations are an error and that Hunt Valley's maps were supposed to look very different.

There is a pre ordained rezoning map for Hunt Valley, that is different than the 3 scenarios presented by Thru and which predates the rezoning process, based on publicly statements by both Reid and Anderson. Neither would say what the "Hunt Valley errors" are, just that their maps were wrong from what fcps had intended for them.

There were 2 other schools with error according to FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There aren’t errors. It’s all fake. Reid has her maps and hired Thru for “transparency” and is pretending the first round were errors so she can release her own maps and pretend the errors were fixed by Thru.

Agree.

Reid and Anderson's statements about the Hunt Valley maps bring "errors" yet not correcting or disclosing the errors just proves that there is a preexisting map, at least for Hunt Valley.

I think that the early reports from the leaker who saw maps rezoning Hunt Valley to Lewis were accurate, and the original leaked maps are why Sandy Anderson is so unwaverably fixated on zoning Rolling Valley from Lewis to WSHS even though it makes zero sense.

My money is on the original plan was to move Hunt Valley to Lewis, flipping it with Rolling Valley to WSHS, but Thru threw a monkey wrench into their plans by actually looking at the maps and seeing that neither RV to WSHS or HV to Lewis makes sense geographically, so Thru came up with a much more logical map. (Keeping RV at Lewis and rezoning the areas outside the parkway to closer Saratoga so they have an unbroken feeder pattern and remain at Lewis, and taking the HV neighborhoods outside the Pkwy and sending them to closer South County)

If the "correct" maps involved Hunt Valley remaining at WSHS, Anderson and Reid would have said so, if only to get people off their backs.

The only thing they said was Hunt Valley to South County is a mistake that was not supposed to happen. If HV staying at WSHS was not supposed to happen, and Hunt Valley to South County is an error, then that leaves Hunt Valley with the leaked maps from over a year ago showing Hunt Valley getting rezoned to Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But it does seem like Reid (and in a performative way, Thru) is the person coming up with maps and boundary changes, NOT the school board. Is that what everyone else thinks? There may be some deals behind the scenes, but ultimately, the Superintendent is presenting the maps to the community and the school board at the same time "in the fall".

Really, if they aren't done by October I don't see any way to make changes for the 26-27 school year.

I also still think it's hilarious that their boundary policy calls for a review every 5 years. It's going to take that long for this first attempt to go into effect. Actually, longer than that considering the grandfathering. There would be zero time to assess how any changes have worked before they are required to start looking at boundaries again.

Reid (and Anderson) said publicly that she hadn't even seen the maps when the first round came out,, but then said the Thru maps had an error with Hunt Valley going to South County.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People on this board are unhinged.

Or, they just follow the school board meetings and the school board is the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But it does seem like Reid (and in a performative way, Thru) is the person coming up with maps and boundary changes, NOT the school board. Is that what everyone else thinks? There may be some deals behind the scenes, but ultimately, the Superintendent is presenting the maps to the community and the school board at the same time "in the fall".

Really, if they aren't done by October I don't see any way to make changes for the 26-27 school year.

I also still think it's hilarious that their boundary policy calls for a review every 5 years. It's going to take that long for this first attempt to go into effect. Actually, longer than that considering the grandfathering. There would be zero time to assess how any changes have worked before they are required to start looking at boundaries again.

Reid (and Anderson) said publicly that she hadn't even seen the maps when the first round came out,, but then said the Thru maps had an error with Hunt Valley going to South County.

I mean, there’s a very obvious error in Scenario 2. It sends an area south of Middle Run Stream Valley Park to SCHS while keeping it at Irving for MS.