Lewis Academy - community input?
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Anonymous
That limits the window during which students from other schools can avail of Academy courses and makes additional demands on the fleet (and schools end at different hours as well). This is going to be an expensive boondoggle to try and make Lewis look more attractive without grappling with some of the more fundamental reasons why this is the case. |
Anonymous
DP - a more refined take would be that they take feedback when it aligns with their existing preferences. |
Anonymous
The fundamental reason is that Lewis, Herndon, Justice, Falls Church, Annandale, and MVHS have large amounts of affordable housing complexes inside their boundaries that draw immigrants and ESOL newcomers to live in those apartments. No amount of traditional schooling is going to transform a young adult ELL student into a top-tier graduate. Regardless of the miraculous achievements FCPS makes with ESOL students, the traditional SAT/AP/IB/SOL scores will always suffer at these schools. It's truly as simple as that. If your main concern is buses, I would argue that Chantilly and West Potomac are poorly designated as academies because they are on the extremities of the county and don't make sense geographically like Lewis does. But that's all besides the point. This is an opportunity to create a worthy academy in a centrally-located, significantly under-enrolled school building in a county that is hungry for selective and advanced programs. The opportunity is there but the implementation needs work. |
Anonymous
But still one without a factual basis, just based on an axe to grind. |
Anonymous
Yes, and MW is a destination school for talented teachers, all while being located in a neighborhood that makes Springfield Estates look like west Springfield. |
Anonymous
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At today's work session the Board met with the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee to have their annual discussion. McLaughlin and Cohen mentioned how WSHS and LBSS are in an unfair position because their students can't access academies easily without losing 3 class periods. Other Board members agreed that the CTE academies are too far and too much class time is lost in travel for most base schools.
More reasons to place a real CTE academy at Lewis to take advantage of available space, yet nobody even remembered or thought about such a possibility. |
Anonymous
I'm the PP to whom you are responding. I didn't submit an idea to FCPS when there was community engagement. But, I watched how they responded to those who did. I heard the FCPS people claim that they were there to get community input, but in reality, they had a plan that they were already going to implement. It actually worked out for me b/c I wanted them to implement the plan they started with. But, it seemed like a sham to post re-zoning map options all over the cafeteria and break into groups and elicit "feedback" -- and then do the same thing at another school for that community input -- and then go right ahead and follow the plan they had intended to do all along. I seemed pro forma ... but hey, I was fine with the rezoning as it worked out. Those who actually came to the meetings with ideas probably didn't feel like they were listened to. |
Anonymous
The whole point of this academy is to create left wing social justice activists. You know this so quit being ridiculous. Creating partisans is not the role of a public school. |
Anonymous
Chantilly is not on the "extremities" of the county by any stretch. You'd have to be living in a prior decade to think that was the case. And there is already an Academy program down Franconia Road at Edison. They don't need another one at Lewis, unless the intent - which it is - is to just to spend more money on Lewis and not grapple with the fact that the IB program there is particularly ill-suited to the student population and largely serves to give families an option to transfer to other schools. |
Anonymous
I won't lose much sleep worrying about how LBSS and WSHS students are suffering from a lack of fairness... |
Anonymous
You watch Fox? |
Anonymous
Lewis has IB, a rigorous program. 4 IB diplomas and it's a 2 year course sequence. Edison STEM and WP Health Sciences are useful for students eventual employment whether they do comm college for 2 or end up with 2/2 or 4 year. Immersion went into FCPS with little divisionwide planning. It was whatever school opted in and loads were chosen in Hunter Mill and Dranesville. Hunter mill had 1st Spanish dual as a way to bum more resources into ESL. Apparently the Lewis Pyramid has no Spanish Immersion or Spanish two way immersion in the pyramid? https://www.fcps.edu/academics/world-languages-immersion-programs And none proposed by the Lee rep or at large members? |
Anonymous
GOP Word Salad. If teaching actual history and not “Lee was a patriot” and “not all slavery was bad” bothers you, you need to seek Jesus. |
Anonymous
Jesus needs to stay out of public schools, as does the new left-wing religion of CRT, which at its core has many religious overtones. |
Anonymous
| The solution for Lewis is this: allow academically inclined/college prep students to transfer to other schools and make Lewis a Vocational/Technical high school for students who want to learn building trades like HVAC, become an electrician or stone mason, or an auto mechanic, or heavy equipment operator. Those are well paying skills that are truly needed and would change the lives of students and their families by providing marketable skills. That’s what the vast majority of Lewis students need most! |