Fall 2022 Over/Under-Enrollment at FCPS High Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Edison on the other side of Lewis is essentially equal enrollment at West Springfield.

Edison HS is much closer to Lewis HS than West Springfield. WS is twice as many miles as Edison to Lewis, and a more than double the driving time due to having to cross the Mixing Bowl.

Perhaps rezoning from Edison to Lewis should be your focus instead of this odd fixation on WSHS.

In terms of student driving time and limiting fcps environmental footprint, Edison to Lewis just makes more sense.

If they would just put daventry back to Lewis it would be fine. That neighborhood already is closer to Lewis than wshs. Parents just fussed. Put them at Garfield/key/Lewis.

WSES is one of the smallest elementary schools in fcps.

Remove Daventry from WSES and that school will be down to 1 or 2 classes per grade. It is a tiny elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:September 2022 FCPS HS enrollments vs. current or planned permanent capacity:

Severely Over-Crowded:

Centreville 133.1%
Chantilly 129.8%
McLean 122.1%

Modestly Over-Crowded to Modestly Under-Enrolled:

West Springfield 105.8%
Woodson 105.6%
Edison 105.2%
Marshall 102.6%
Oakton 102.1%
Robinson 99.9%
Fairfax 97.6%
Annandale 96.4%
Hayfield 96.0%
Westfield 93.8%
Herndon 93.6%
Justice 93.3%
Lake Braddock 92.7%
South Lakes 92.5%
West Potomac 90.8%
South County 90.3%

Significantly Under-Enrolled:
Langley 89.2%
Madison 85.1%
Falls Church 84.1%
TJ 82.5%
Mount Vernon 79.6%
Lewis 78.8%

At some point, FCPS will announce expansion plans for Centreville as part of its upcoming renovation. Chantilly and McLean remain overcrowded with either no solution offered (Chantilly/Stella Pekarsky) or a weak solution put in place that isn't adequately addressing the problem (McLean/Tholen). At the other end of the enrollment spectrum, Mount Vernon remains over 20% under-capacity, yet FCPS just expanded nearby West Potomac to 3000 seats, and Lewis has under 1700 students this fall while West Springfield now has over 2500 kids.

I’m surprised at the Madison number given that this forum never focuses on it (versus Langley). We are Vienna slated for Marshall and my guess that will only grow given Tyson’s expansion and affordable housing built up.

I was surprised to see Madison’s enrollment go down so much this year and that it has under 500 freshmen. Maybe a blip.

[Anonymous]

WTF is TJ underenrolled?

Change it to an Academy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Edison on the other side of Lewis is essentially equal enrollment at West Springfield.

Edison HS is much closer to Lewis HS than West Springfield. WS is twice as many miles as Edison to Lewis, and a more than double the driving time due to having to cross the Mixing Bowl.

Perhaps rezoning from Edison to Lewis should be your focus instead of this odd fixation on WSHS.

In terms of student driving time and limiting fcps environmental footprint, Edison to Lewis just makes more sense.

If they would just put daventry back to Lewis it would be fine. That neighborhood already is closer to Lewis than wshs. Parents just fussed. Put them at Garfield/key/Lewis.

WSES is one of the smallest elementary schools in fcps.

Remove Daventry from WSES and that school will be down to 1 or 2 classes per grade. It is a tiny elementary school.

I mean, keep them at WSES if you want, but then parents used that as leverage to get those kids to wshs (when it really was just an opportunity to get away from Lewis)

[Anonymous]

My daughter was wait-listed at TJ, coming from Longfellow, and she never got in.

Yet TJ is under-enrolled??!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The monthly membership reports go back to 2006-07. County-wide the number of high school students this fall is the largest it's been at any time since the fall of 2006. The number of middle-school students continued to decline this year and is about the same number as a decade ago. The number of elementary school students is up this fall, but still well below pre-Covid levels and closer to the levels back in 2009 and 2010. Guess we'll see if that translates into lower numbers of high school students in the coming years - it seems like the trends are very lumpy with some schools continuing to see enrollment increases and others flat or declining.

This is interesting. Our ES ended 2019-2020 at 991 students. 2020-2021 dropped to 878 but then rebounded to 941 last year. I figured it would stay around that number this year but it dropped again to 872.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WTF is TJ underenrolled?

Change it to an Academy

They expanded the school when it was renovated and now they are increasing the class sizes (there are substantially more freshmen and sophomores than juniors and seniors). In two more years it will be closer to full capacity.

[Anonymous]

Chantilly has got to get a school board member willing to advocate for it in the next election. Pekarsky does not GAF.

[Anonymous]

My kids are at Chantilly HS. It is truly ridiculous. You guys complaining about West Springfield HS truly have no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at Chantilly HS. It is truly ridiculous. You guys complaining about West Springfield HS truly have no idea.

The people at West Springfield aren’t complaining about the slight overcrowding there. They are protesting any suggestion kids at their school should be moved to under-enrolled Lewis.

But, yeah, the situation at Chantilly is ridiculous. This School Board is beyond incompetent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at Chantilly HS. It is truly ridiculous. You guys complaining about West Springfield HS truly have no idea.

West springfield people are not complaining.

There is a poster from Lewis who regularly starts threads about WSHS and how they think that WSHS needs to be rezoned to Lewis. There is at least one thread started each month about this, and any time anyone starts a thread about one of the overcrowded schools like WestPo, McLean or the western high schools, they try to redirect the thread to West Springfield and Lewis.

It happens like clockwork.

No one from WSHS is complaining online about this.

Really, when there are multiple schools around 30% over capacity, the schools that are just barely over capacity should not even be part of this discussion.

[Anonymous]

I’m OP, not at Lewis, and simply think it speaks poorly of FCPS that Lewis with under 1700 kids last month is so close to West Springfield with 2650.

You or another WS poster took that as if I were saying FCPS should redistrict now but I wasn’t suggesting that. After all WSHS has already been expanded and perhaps no one should be reassigned to Lewis without a deeper dive into why it’s chronically under-enrolled.

I do think FCPS planning is atrocious and the School Board inattentive. West Springfield was renovated around the same time as Marshall. West Springfield was expanded to about 2500 seats and Marshall to about 2100, but it’s Marshall that pulls from over 1/2 of growing Tysons. So why was more spent on WS? Similarly they just expanded Madison to 2500 seats but are leaving McLean with under 2000 permanent seats, even though McLean picks up the rest of Tysons and the growth in Vienna is much lower. And nothing is being done for Chantilly right now - Stella Pekarsky was the Chair of the School Board for a year and wasted an opportunity to have a bully pulpit about the overcrowding there.

It seems to me that if FCPS had competent leadership and oversight they’d be analyzing why they have misallocated resources and figuring out how to make better decisions in the future. But they are too focused on politics to pay much attention to operations.

[Anonymous]

Well, we all know they added even more space to West Springfield than was originally approved to make damn sure no one would ever have to be moved to Lewis.

There is almost a thousand student difference in schools 4 miles apart. Think about what WS can offer that Lewis cannot. And don't forget the huge disparity in wealth at the two schools. And remember that the School Board moved wealthier neighborhoods from Lewis to WS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The monthly membership reports go back to 2006-07. County-wide the number of high school students this fall is the largest it's been at any time since the fall of 2006. The number of middle-school students continued to decline this year and is about the same number as a decade ago. The number of elementary school students is up this fall, but still well below pre-Covid levels and closer to the levels back in 2009 and 2010. Guess we'll see if that translates into lower numbers of high school students in the coming years - it seems like the trends are very lumpy with some schools continuing to see enrollment increases and others flat or declining.

But we need to fix this now! Just because the number of middle school students and elementary school students has declined doesn't mean that high schools aren't overenrolled right now!

It is stupid and short sighted to rezone and disrupt a bunch of kids education for a problem that will resolve itself when the next 2 or 3 classes graduate.

(I am not talking about the schools that are 20% above capacity, but about the schools in the 1-10% above capacity.)

I agree with this. I'd focus on those three schools at the top. Not that the school board will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, we all know they added even more space to West Springfield than was originally approved to make damn sure no one would ever have to be moved to Lewis.

There is almost a thousand student difference in schools 4 miles apart. Think about what WS can offer that Lewis cannot. And don't forget the huge disparity in wealth at the two schools. And remember that the School Board moved wealthier neighborhoods from Lewis to WS.

.

The School Board says it is focused on improving equity, but the reality is that they are protecting wealthier schools at the expense of poorer ones. They can rename schools in an attempt to appear concerned about social justice, which does nothing to actually help the students at those schools, but they continue to do everything in their power to make sure that students from wealthier neighborhoods don’t have to attend school with less affluent kids! The hypocrisy is blatant and galling.