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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Mythical Western HS
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Anonymous
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Fairfax country is still adapting: it was a horse town when I moved here. There were small farms from falls church to Tysons when I moved here. Some still had a couple animals. The was even one in FCC. Chantilly, Fair Oaks, Herndon, Great Falls areas? Transitioning farm land.My Herndon neighbors had still had horses in the early 2000s.
People need to stop acting like DC has been some big cosmopolitan region. DC was and still is a po-dunk city with interesting quirks because it is the capital. |
Anonymous
Whatever, grandpa. It's a county approaching 1.2 million people now. It would be nice if it were managed accordingly. |
Anonymous
100% agreed that it needs to be managed better. My point is that it isn’t that much further along than Loudoun. And compared to other US cities? Yes, the DMV is podunk and acts like it is some great sophisticated place. It is not at the top of the list. |
Anonymous
Seems off topic. People were discussing whether the advertised western HS will get built and, if not, why not. Not whether the DC area is a "great sophisticated place." |
Anonymous
And yet, they all do. Especially the Democrats. |
Anonymous
When FCPS built the secondary schools it also had plans to build one in North Reston. Baron Cameron site next to Aldrin-Aldrin students used to go to Forestville. Chatter into the 1990's and early 2000's was that it would be for Langley-Forestville/Great Falls, Herndon-Aldrin/Armstrong, South Lakes-Forest Edge/Lake Anne. |
Anonymous
FCPS built the three secondary schools (Hayfield, Robinson, and Lake Braddock) before it built South Lakes in 1978, so that's just history at this point. South County opened as a secondary school but the understanding was always that it would become a high school when a middle school was built. The longer running discussion was around the Floris and Oak Hill areas having their "own" school, since that area probably got redistricted as often as any other in the county over the years. However, once Floris and Oak Hill realized a new school might also include poorer parts of Herndon and Reston, the enthusiasm of some in that area waned quite a bit. |
Anonymous
Oak Hill / Floris deserves its own high school. I know some people want to consider that area as part of Herndon but Oak Hill is distinct from Herndon as Oakton is distinct from Vienna. Floris used to have its own Post Office and its own vocational (agricultural) high school. https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/frying-pan-park/school Ideally converting Carson to a secondary school would have been the best for Oak Hill parents. Hutchison site would be bad logistically. However, at this point, I would rule out both options. |
Anonymous
Deserves? All the kids deserve to avoid overcrowding. It's that entitled thinking of ONLY your children in YOUR district that causes problems in the school board in the first place. Unfortunately, I really do believe that it will never happen because it would mean that all of the people who live up and down Centerville Road in high valued homes do not want their kids to be with lower income kids from Herndon and the issues that poverty causes. Which in turn lowers their own property values. I live in Reston and see it firsthand. But now with the Metro open, it will be interesting to see how that changes the housing picture...which is really what drives the reputations of schools. |
Anonymous
The biggest change is the potential for a huge amount of multi-family housing to be built near the new Silver Line stations, almost all of which is currently zoned for Westfield. The plan to expand Centreville to 3000 kids, when little growth is anticipated within the current Centreville boundaries and the five-year projections have Centreville at around 2450 kids, implies some Westfield and Chantilly kids stand to be reassigned to Centreville once it's a 3000-seat mega-school. |
Anonymous
+1. It seems the entire concern of overcrowding is often coupled with selfish intentions. Proponents of large expansions to already-large schools are asking the taxpayer to subsidize the costs of growth. Obviously the easiest and least expensive solution that can solve overcrowding by next school year is a boundary change to use available capacity in schools with lower enrollment (Langley, Robinson, Fairfax). Plans for a new western school and renovations should continue, but overcrowding does not need to be at the forefront of FCPS's problems when the obvious solution is there and it is only entitlement that holds back action. |
Anonymous
So Langley parents prevailed in the end? Many posters on this board were absolutely sure that once the new Western HS gets built the boundary change would happen and Great Falls kids be reassigned to Herndon High. |
Anonymous
Langley - Elaine Tholen made sure that only kids in a few already built-out neighborhoods got moved from McLean to Langley because Great Falls wanted to cap the number of kids moved to Langley (staff had proposed to move an area in Tysons that is still growing to Langley, and Tholen shot it down). That means Langley stays under-enrolled and her Great Falls neighbors can stop worrying about getting bumped to Herndon some day. Also, if you used all the capacity at Langley, you'd end up over-crowding Cooper MS, which is the middle school feeder to Langley. If you want more kids at Langley, Dranesville needs a School Board representative who isn't a shill for Great Falls like Tholen. And you'd have to figure out what to do about Cooper being under-sized relative to Langley. Fairfax - City of Fairfax owns Fairfax HS and it's under-enrolled now because the City of Fairfax told FCPS several years to pull county kids out of Fairfax or risk the City of Fairfax terminating its agreement with FCPS to operate the four schools owned by the City of Fairfax. That's how the Fairfax Villa ES ended up getting moved to Woodson. So FCPS can't make unilateral decisions to move kids to Fairfax. Robinson - Robinson is a big school, and it will have some capacity, but the closest schools that are projected to be over-enrolled are Centreville and Woodson. FCPS has already announced plans to expand Centreville to 3000 seats, so that's off the table, and Woodson, while somewhat overcrowded, isn't anywhere near as overcrowded as Chantilly and McLean. So it could help some with Woodson overcrowding, if necessary, but that's probably about it. Otherwise, I'm always impressed by the chutzpah of those (and you may or may not fall in this category) who wait until their own schools are renovated and expanded, and then draw the line and say everyone else should just suck it up and be redistricted without their own schools getting any attention or additional capital resources. Also, some of the schools that FCPS is currently shortchanging, like McLean, aren't "already-large schools"; instead, they are schools with far smaller numbers of permanent seats than other schools, but enrollments that are now above average. Chantilly is bigger, but if they are going to expand Centreville to 3000, it's hard to see why it shouldn't have a similar number of permanent seats (the acreage at Centreville and Chantilly is about the same). |
Anonymous
Yes. Back in 2018 when the School Board started to talk about boundary policy, Janie Strauss made a comment to the effect that she'd told Langley parents in Great Falls to expect to be redistricted when a new western high school was built. She didn't say where, but it was interpreted to mean that the Great Falls neighborhoods that had attended Herndon prior to 1994 (i.e., an area west of Springvale Road) would be moved back to Herndon. That infuriated those parents, who created a group ("One Great Falls," which changed its name to "Voices of Fairfax") to protest any such idea. It culminated in a meeting at Forestville ES in June 2019, in which several dozen Langley parents screamed at Strauss about how hard they'd worked to afford a house in the Langley district, how Herndon was dangerous and not as academically rigorous, and how they'd leave the county or pull their kids out of FCPS if they were moved to Herndon. It was not a pleasant gathering. None of this was lost on Elaine Tholen, the Great Falls resident running to replace Strauss on 2019. Like any good Democrat, Tholen had originally expressed her support for the county's "One Fairfax" policy, which some believed called for a county-wide boundary review in FCPS. When her neighbors gave her an earful, she pulled the reference to "One Fairfax" off her web page, and then did two things with her Great Falls/Langley neighbors primarily in mind. First, she made sure that not too many kids ended up getting redistricted from overcrowded McLean to Langley, as a result of which Langley remains below capacity and FCPS continues to project that McLean will remain well over capacity for years to come. Second, she has consistently downplayed the likelihood that a new Western high school would ever get built. I'm not aware of any public indication that Tholen has been working behind the scenes to kill (or further delay) the western high school or to expand a school like Centreville to 3000 seats. But the continued lack of real activity towards a new Western high school, along with the recently announced big planned expansion of Centreville, which is in the southwestern part of the county far from Great Falls, are great news if you're one of the Great Falls parents who wants to stay at Langley for years to come. |
Anonymous
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Great Falls only wishes they had that level of control.
Nuking the boundaries for the entire county was widely unpopular. The school board’s adamant refusal to grant Jane Strauss’ early 2019 request to move some apartments from overcrowded McLean to underenrolled Langley was proof that they were serious. At least, they were serious while no one was looking. A few YouTube videos with clips of their sessions helped spread awareness and the board heard from parents across the county. It was always why Brabrand put out a desperate newsletter to every parent in the county lol. |