FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

I'm sure there are people who want boundary changes--just like the 2008 South Lakes PTA. They want to choose other neighborhoods to come to their schools. You might be one of them.

The problem is that most people--and this is reflected in the community feedback meetings--do NOT want to disrupt their own communities for yours. That is not hard to understand. The only attack you have is to attack others--your statement: "More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents."

Let's break it out:
"well-funded" Please tell us where these funds are coming from. I don't live in Great Falls or near it. I did read that there was a donation of $5000 to Fairfacts. I don't consider that "well-funded."

"self-interested" Don't you think there is something wrong if parents are not interested in educating their own kids? Keeping their own community intact?

"entitled" I hardly feel entitled when a SB member says we have to do this and that kids are "resilient." Resilience is key--when disruptions occur. But, you don't deliberately disrupt kids and cause stress to families when there are other solutions. This is about communities.

"dismissiveness" ? you must be kidding. Just look at how dismissive all these pages of comments are.

Do you know what I think is "dismissive?" Moving kids around because the school system cannot figure out how to help some kids who are struggling.

[Anonymous]

If you live in the periphery of any school zone, boundary changes will always be a possibilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

What you are omitting is that they are also explaining that "No on wants boundary changes for their own kids and communities. You cut off the meaning of their comments.

The people like your post who want boundary changes also do not want boundary changes for their own kids and communities, so they actually fall into not wanting boundary changes if it means their own kid and kids friends will have to change schools. You are actually all in agreement about not wanting your own school reszoned.

The people who want boundary changes want boundary changes for other people's kids

Other people's kids are not your pawns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

I'm sure there are people who want boundary changes--just like the 2008 South Lakes PTA. They want to choose other neighborhoods to come to their schools. You might be one of them.

The problem is that most people--and this is reflected in the community feedback meetings--do NOT want to disrupt their own communities for yours. That is not hard to understand. The only attack you have is to attack others--your statement: "More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents."

Let's break it out:
"well-funded" Please tell us where these funds are coming from. I don't live in Great Falls or near it. I did read that there was a donation of $5000 to Fairfacts. I don't consider that "well-funded." Fairfacts matters has over $50,000

"self-interested" Don't you think there is something wrong if parents are not interested in educating their own kids? Keeping their own community intact? I would love it if people could also see that comprehensive change would increase efficiencies for the whole school system and that no kid will be moved by themselves. Their neighborhood would all go together.

"entitled" I hardly feel entitled when a SB member says we have to do this and that kids are "resilient." Resilience is key--when disruptions occur. But, you don't deliberately disrupt kids and cause stress to families when there are other solutions. This is about communities.
some communities have gotten accustomed to raising a stink and styming changes that would have been good policy

"dismissiveness" ? you must be kidding. Just look at how dismissive all these pages of comments are. We will have to agree to disagree.

Do you know what I think is "dismissive?" Moving kids around because the school system cannot figure out how to help some kids who are struggling. that’s not why this is being done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you live in the periphery of any school zone, boundary changes will always be a possibilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

+1. No one guaranteed a school assignment. Just a district.

[Anonymous]

Do you know what I think is "dismissive?" Moving kids around because the school system cannot figure out how to help some kids who are struggling. that’s not why this is being done.

I have a bridge to sell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do you know what I think is "dismissive?" Moving kids around because the school system cannot figure out how to help some kids who are struggling. that’s not why this is being done.

You are delusional if you think this isn’t why it’s being done. With VA’s new accreditation requirements there are certain schools that won’t pass. They are trying to move kids to being scores up. And before you’re changing boundaries bring back the hundreds that pupil place out. If you’re pupil placing for IB you should be required to work toward the IB diploma. Not just take a handful of classes and call it a day. There are so many broken Things to fix in FCPS before they start moving kids around

[Anonymous]

"well-funded" Please tell us where these funds are coming from. I don't live in Great Falls or near it. I did read that there was a donation of $5000 to Fairfacts. I don't consider that "well-funded." Fairfacts matters has over $50,000

Do you have any idea of how much it costs to FOIA FCPS?

FAIRFACTS may only involve one community, but they opened the Pandora's Box to many others. I am grateful for this. Otherwise, few would even know about the boundary study--because most people assume their kids will stay in the same schools. And, after observing the process, it is clear that the School Board is planning a fruitbasket turnover which will not result in anything good.
Look no further than the Coates study which left out Floris--the school which shares a large boundary with it. Yet they left in schools much further away that share NO boundary. Was this deliberate or accidental? Either choice indicates that FCPS is not able to carry out an effective process.

With all the political and career turmoil in this area, this is not the time --if there ever is one--to conduct this mess.

[Anonymous]

More than $50,000 is extremely well funded opposition. It’s weird that PP can’t admit that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you know what I think is "dismissive?" Moving kids around because the school system cannot figure out how to help some kids who are struggling. that’s not why this is being done.

You are delusional if you think this isn’t why it’s being done. With VA’s new accreditation requirements there are certain schools that won’t pass. They are trying to move kids to being scores up. And before you’re changing boundaries bring back the hundreds that pupil place out. If you’re pupil placing for IB you should be required to work toward the IB diploma. Not just take a handful of classes and call it a day. There are so many broken Things to fix in FCPS before they start moving kids around

+1. FCPS does not want a bunch of schools to not meet the accreditation requirements. The only way to mitigate that is to move higher performing students who are mostly also from higher SES neighborhoods to those schools. There is no way to close the achievement gap from the bottom up and we have decades of data to prove it. We also have decades of data to show that most kids who pupil place allegedly for IB are not actually interested in getting a full IB diploma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

What you are omitting is that they are also explaining that "No on wants boundary changes for their own kids and communities. You cut off the meaning of their comments.

The people like your post who want boundary changes also do not want boundary changes for their own kids and communities, so they actually fall into not wanting boundary changes if it means their own kid and kids friends will have to change schools. You are actually all in agreement about not wanting your own school reszoned.

The people who want boundary changes want boundary changes for other people's kids

Other people's kids are not your pawns.

DP. The old paradigm in FCPS was that boundary changes were a last resort (i.e., there needed to be acute overcrowding - like over 115% capacity - or extreme under-enrollment) and modular seats (but not trailers) counted towards calculating a school's design and program capacity.

You still had School Board members like Kathy Smith and Elaine Tholen making sure that any boundary changes favored their schools at the expense of others, but the initial threshold for boundary changes limited the extent of the potential disruption to communities.

Now that's gone out the window with the "comprehensive county-wide boundary review," and the open-ended factors that can be cited to justify boundary changes. They aren't setting any objective thresholds to trigger a boundary change. Meanwhile, you have School Board members like Mateo Dunne, whose own school (West Potomac) got a huge expansion paid for by all county taxpayers, claiming that we can't expand other schools and that modular capacity should be ignored because modulars are just (his words) "trailers with plumbing." That opens up a ton more schools to potential boundary changes.

Add to that the sometimes tangible desire on the part of some School Board members to redistrict schools like Langley, McLean, and West Springfield, and people just feel like their kids are being set up to serve a political agenda. People can talk about how FCPS needs to operate efficiently, but then we also see Karl Frisch wasting over $85 million on a completely unnecessary new ES in Dunn Loring (it will no doubt end up getting repurposed at some point) and it's abundantly clear that efficiency is not a priority for this School Board. If they had even a scintilla of common sense, they would have stripped that boondoggle out of the CIP, and put the funds to better use, but loyalty to Frisch outweighed any sense of fiduciary duty to taxpayers.

Reid puts on a smiley face about the disaster in the making, but it's not the least bit persuasive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

I bet those IP addresses can be tracked back to gatehouse employees working from home LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

What you are omitting is that they are also explaining that "No on wants boundary changes for their own kids and communities. You cut off the meaning of their comments.

The people like your post who want boundary changes also do not want boundary changes for their own kids and communities, so they actually fall into not wanting boundary changes if it means their own kid and kids friends will have to change schools. You are actually all in agreement about not wanting your own school reszoned.

The people who want boundary changes want boundary changes for other people's kids

Other people's kids are not your pawns.

DP. The old paradigm in FCPS was that boundary changes were a last resort (i.e., there needed to be acute overcrowding - like over 115% capacity - or extreme under-enrollment) and modular seats (but not trailers) counted towards calculating a school's design and program capacity.

You still had School Board members like Kathy Smith and Elaine Tholen making sure that any boundary changes favored their schools at the expense of others, but the initial threshold for boundary changes limited the extent of the potential disruption to communities.

Now that's gone out the window with the "comprehensive county-wide boundary review," and the open-ended factors that can be cited to justify boundary changes. They aren't setting any objective thresholds to trigger a boundary change. Meanwhile, you have School Board members like Mateo Dunne, whose own school (West Potomac) got a huge expansion paid for by all county taxpayers, claiming that we can't expand other schools and that modular capacity should be ignored because modulars are just (his words) "trailers with plumbing." That opens up a ton more schools to potential boundary changes.

Add to that the sometimes tangible desire on the part of some School Board members to redistrict schools like Langley, McLean, and West Springfield, and people just feel like their kids are being set up to serve a political agenda. People can talk about how FCPS needs to operate efficiently, but then we also see Karl Frisch wasting over $85 million on a completely unnecessary new ES in Dunn Loring (it will no doubt end up getting repurposed at some point) and it's abundantly clear that efficiency is not a priority for this School Board. If they had even a scintilla of common sense, they would have stripped that boondoggle out of the CIP, and put the funds to better use, but loyalty to Frisch outweighed any sense of fiduciary duty to taxpayers.

Reid puts on a smiley face about the disaster in the making, but it's not the least bit persuasive.

This ES that we don't need could fund the middle school after school program for 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people on this thread keep saying “no one wants boundary changes” when there are posts supportive of a comprehensive review and explaining the reasons. More bullying and dismissiveness by the well-funded, self-interested, entitled opponents.

I bet those IP addresses can be tracked back to gatehouse employees working from home LOL.

This is a perfect example of the dismissiveness those of us who support the review for district wide efficiencies face. I’m a parent, not a gatehouse employee. I just care about running things more efficiently. I also wish they would get rid of the Dunn Loring useless project, try to get the king Abdullah land to address overcrowding, get rid of nardos king and her useless staff and trainings (but not the hearings office), fire the hayfield principal and coach, stop sending bad principals to gatehouse and more. I wish republicans had run non-nuts for SB, especially in Providence (where I don’t live). I value public education, know money is tight and getting tighter and think overenrolled schools next to underenrolled schools is wasteful.