Will Mclean High School ever be able to upsize
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Anonymous
| We are zoned for Mclean High School but the school capacity issue is such a troubling factor for us, we are thinking of moving to a different high school zone. Will FCPS ever address this and get the school upgraded? |
Anonymous
| Big expansion? Almost surely not in any reasonable amount of time during your time in Fairfax County, unless your kids are still a decade away from birth. The focuses now are on building a western high school and addressing severe overcrowding in the western pyramids with expansions and likely boundary changes. McLean in particular is surrounded by pyramids that still have plenty of space (Falls Church, Langley) and so boundary adjustments will likely be the go-to approach. |
Anonymous
| What grade is your kid in? If in early elementary school years, you may have a chance of them doing an expansion before 9th grade. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. |
Anonymous
|
There are two different issues - overcrowding and the state of the facility.
With respect to the overcrowding, look to FCPS to move the part of Timber Lane that feeds into McLean rather than Falls Church to Falls Church when the FCHS renovation is finished. With respect to the state of the facility, they'll just keep dipping into the infrastructure fund to make spot repairs and improvements when necessary. It won't get a full renovation for years. If you look at the statistics, despite the overcrowding, very few kids pupil place out of McLean, excluding kids in the pyramid who get into TJ. |
Anonymous
They've been talking about the western HS forever and don't even have a site. It's hyperbole to think it's a "focus," rather than a "placeholder." Meanwhile after having expanded South Lakes, Oakton, Madison, and Herndon, their plan is to expand Centreville to 3000. With the additional seats there, a new western HS becomes even more unlikely. |
Anonymous
McLean? 
Those families are already so disgustingly privileged. Why should FCPS spend a single penny on their school? |
Anonymous
| McLean is the epitome of unearned white/Asian privilege. |
Anonymous
|
No.
McLean is never going to get a significant expansion. This legitimate complaint by McLean parents has been going on for years. With no real results. They have threatened to incorporate the town - they have threatened to vote out school board members - and didn't get any results. Redistricting and patchwork improvements will continue. Why not move? Lots of other good schools and nice places to live. |
Anonymous
Probably because the threats have no teeth and everyone just rolls their eyes when they hear them made. |
Anonymous
McLean will get a significant expansion eventually but before that happens FCPS will have to come out with a new renovation queue and they will probably move some kids to Falls Church first. There's not really any sound defense to leaving McLean with the fewest permanent seats of any HS in FCPS when multiple areas that the Board of Supervisors has targeted for growth (Tysons, West Falls Church, and downtown McLean) feed in whole or in part to McLean. But the School Board and the Board of Supervisors don't coordinate very well. They do find ways to make patchwork improvements to the facility (examples - gym floors, fields, labs, roof, bathrooms, tiles). As long as it's done quietly, so the haters can't complain about any money getting spent on McLean, it works out OK. Again, very few families in the pyramid try to pupil place their kids to other schools with spiffier buildings. |
Anonymous
| The building at McLean sucks. The kids at McLean love MHS anyway. I'd choose a great community over a shiny new building any day of the week. |
Anonymous
Then why all the complaints? Because McLean just can't stand that some of the other high-SES pyramids like Langley, Oakton, and Madison have all gotten their renovations and McLean won't. |
Anonymous
Some of the complaints are troll posts, perhaps because some can't stand that people love the school and that it performs so well, despite a sub-par facility. No one begrudges Langley and Oakton getting renovations within the past decade as they were scheduled to be renovated. It didn't make a lot of sense that Madison got a big addition (not a renovation) recently, and McLean did not, when McLean is significantly more crowded than Madison, but there's not much to be done about it at this point. |
Anonymous
| McLean is severely neglected because of equity |
Anonymous
| It will not happen this decade. They likely will do a few spot patches, like the attempt to fix bathrooms, but nothing more. |