May 30th Dunn Loring Heritage Day

[Anonymous]

FCPS has announced that there will be a “Heritage Day” celebration of the original Dunn Loring ES building on May 30th, prior to its demolition and the start of construction of a new 900-student elementary school.

The original building dates back roughly 50 years and was a Public Works Administration project. It is a beautiful building with historic charm that has been used for administrative offices in recent years.

And now it stands to be demolished, to feed the ego of Karl Frisch, who pushed through this project not because there is a need for a new elementary school in the area (the site is surrounded by under-enrolled elementary schools, with FCPS elementary schools projected to experience large declines in enrollment in both absolute and percentage terms over the coming years), but instead to ensure an elementary school would not be built in the Fairfax/Oakton area, as originally planned. The price tag for “Frisch’s Folly” is $86 million, and will only go up.

Because Dunn Loring is surrounded by schools that are under-enrolled, it will require significant boundary changes to at least half-dozen elementary schools. The biggest impacts will be to Freedom Hill and Stenwood, but other schools will also see boundary changes to backfill the schools that send students to Dunn Loring. By now, this School Board should know that parents value stability when it comes to school boundaries, but Dunn Loring promises upheaval.

This event should be a cause not for celebration, but mourning over the upcoming loss of a historic building and disgust over the waste of taxpayer money by Karl Frisch, who has neither children nor integrity. And shame on Frisch’s School Board colleagues, several of whom admit in private this school is not needed, but who nevertheless gave this project a green light because they don’t want to offend a fellow Democrat whose main (if not sole) talent is fundraising, largely from his wealthy LBGTQ “allies” in other states.

What a shame FCPS has lost any sense of fiscal prudence or what its real priorities should be.

[Anonymous]

DP but I want to encourage everyone here to write as many letters as possible about the gross misuse of FCPS funds by Karl Frisch and his cronies. Write to not only the school board and Gatehouse administration, but also your local and state politicians. The county Board of Supervisors is still discussing FCPS budget and they could put conditions around the funding that they give to the county.

-Signed, a Shrevewood parent who remembers the year before Covid when we were promised a boundary study in the fall of 2020 that would rezone a small portion of our students to the under enrolled Stenwood elementary school. Instead, Karl Frisch took advantage of all of the confusion around Covid to ram through plans for a school that nobody asked for and, by that time, was absolutely not needed because Shrevewood was actually well underenrolled after Covid and after some changes to the LLIV program that helped reduce enrollment further. I absolutely did NOT vote for him in the last election, nor did most of the people I know. He's been horrible for our community.

[Anonymous]

A white elephant courtesy of a white whale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP but I want to encourage everyone here to write as many letters as possible about the gross misuse of FCPS funds by Karl Frisch and his cronies. Write to not only the school board and Gatehouse administration, but also your local and state politicians. The county Board of Supervisors is still discussing FCPS budget and they could put conditions around the funding that they give to the county.

-Signed, a Shrevewood parent who remembers the year before Covid when we were promised a boundary study in the fall of 2020 that would rezone a small portion of our students to the under enrolled Stenwood elementary school. Instead, Karl Frisch took advantage of all of the confusion around Covid to ram through plans for a school that nobody asked for and, by that time, was absolutely not needed because Shrevewood was actually well underenrolled after Covid and after some changes to the LLIV program that helped reduce enrollment further. I absolutely did NOT vote for him in the last election, nor did most of the people I know. He's been horrible for our community.

He serves one community, but it's not Providence District residents.

[Anonymous]

This just makes me so sad. Dunn Loring is the prettiest building and could easily have been used again as a school or simply retained as an administrative building. What a waste, courtesy of the awful Karl Frisch.

[Anonymous]

It’s sad they are tearing down a beautiful older building and that they are wasting so much taxpayer money on a new building that isn’t even needed to feed the ego of Karl Frisch. We need to replace every School Board member who doesn’t object to this travesty.

[Anonymous]

I remember the Shrevewood community building where they told us about this whole fiasco. Nobody ever said anything about tearing down the beautiful historic building. We all thought it would just be gutted and turned into a small community ES (even then we knew it was unnecessary).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I remember the Shrevewood community building where they told us about this whole fiasco. Nobody ever said anything about tearing down the beautiful historic building. We all thought it would just be gutted and turned into a small community ES (even then we knew it was unnecessary).

It was never about helping Shrevewood or any kids. It was about Karl Frisch doing a favor for his friends who wanted to make sure Blake Lane Park remained available for their French Bulldogs. His only goal was making sure the money earmarked for a school in Fairfax/Oakton got spent elsewhere. Claiming they could renovate the old Dunn Loring building sounded much more environmentally attractive, but it turned out to be a lie.

He has no business on the School Board, nor do the other members who value solidarity with Frisch over fiscal responsibility. Vote them out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP but I want to encourage everyone here to write as many letters as possible about the gross misuse of FCPS funds by Karl Frisch and his cronies. Write to not only the school board and Gatehouse administration, but also your local and state politicians. The county Board of Supervisors is still discussing FCPS budget and they could put conditions around the funding that they give to the county.

-Signed, a Shrevewood parent who remembers the year before Covid when we were promised a boundary study in the fall of 2020 that would rezone a small portion of our students to the under enrolled Stenwood elementary school. Instead, Karl Frisch took advantage of all of the confusion around Covid to ram through plans for a school that nobody asked for and, by that time, was absolutely not needed because Shrevewood was actually well underenrolled after Covid and after some changes to the LLIV program that helped reduce enrollment further. I absolutely did NOT vote for him in the last election, nor did most of the people I know. He's been horrible for our community.

He is the absolute worst human on the Board. Shame on him. He is scum.

[Anonymous]

I'm a gay man and FCPS alum who was being sexually harrassed (gay baited) at school and my mom reached out to him.

No support was offered to me from him whatsoever, and I stand by not liking him.

The Dunn Loring money could have been used to partially fund upgrades at other schools, such as McLean high school (no I did not go there as I went to Chantilly, but feel sympathetic towards McLean).














l

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad they are tearing down a beautiful older building and that they are wasting so much taxpayer money on a new building that isn’t even needed to feed the ego of Karl Frisch. We need to replace every School Board member who doesn’t object to this travesty.

And the planned new school building is very ugly. It is so sad we are loosing a historic New Deal era school house. It could've been repurposed as anything--a community center for example. Or even renovated into a modern school. For a school system that never tears down school buildings--and always does phased renovations--this project makes no sense. Is as if the people behind the scenes wanted a gleaming new school building to pad a resume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s sad they are tearing down a beautiful older building and that they are wasting so much taxpayer money on a new building that isn’t even needed to feed the ego of Karl Frisch. We need to replace every School Board member who doesn’t object to this travesty.

And the planned new school building is very ugly. It is so sad we are loosing a historic New Deal era school house. It could've been repurposed as anything--a community center for example. Or even renovated into a modern school. For a school system that never tears down school buildings--and always does phased renovations--this project makes no sense. Is as if the people behind the scenes wanted a gleaming new school building to pad a resume.

I don’t doubt there are situations where tearing down an existing building and building a new school costs less. But the reality is that Dunn Loring was pitched as a renovation of an existing building and then they said it would need to be torn down. It just speaks to how little attention Karl Frisch had paid to the logistics of a new Dunn Loring school and the lack of candor with the public. Helping Shrevewood was never his real goal. It’s sickening.