How many middle schools feed into McLean High
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
You may be interested to know that the size of the grade actually drops when they move from Longfellow to McLean.
Up until about 5 years ago, Longfellow was an AAP school and Cooper was not. So there were something around 50-100 kids who went from Longfellow to Langley rather than McLean. In addition, around 50 -100 kids per year go to TJ or private school. So unlike areas where 2 or 3 middle schools combine to double the size of the grade moving from 8th to 9th, the 9th grade at McLean was regularly 150 or so kids smaller than the grade at Longfellow. Now that AAP kids from Langley district go to Cooper, the drop in class size isn't as significant but it still happens. Longfellow is a huge MS. |
Anonymous
There have been different factors at play at different times. The biggest drop off in the number of 8th graders at Longfellow who attended McLean as freshmen the following year was back in 2013-14 to 2016-17. There were two years in that four-year period in which the drop-off was over 150 kids, due to the AAP kids from the Langley pyramid going back to Langley and kids going to TJ and privates. Then the number went down when the AAP kids from the Langley pyramid went to Cooper and now it's going down more because of the TJ admissions changes, which mean fewer Longfellow kids are going to TJ. So now it's about 50 fewer freshman at McLean than 8th graders at Longfellow the prior year. However, the number of kids at Longfellow is also down slightly because of the Cooper/Longfellow (and Langley/McLean) boundary change adopted in early 2021. In general, Longfellow has more kids in a grade than McLean, but it's also less overcrowded because the school was expanded when it was renovated in 2012. At the time it was renovated they hadn't yet decided they would move the AAP kids from the Langley pyramid back to Cooper, so the expansion was based on the assumption those kids would continue to attend Longfellow. The main driver of moving the kids from the Langley pyramid back to Cooper wasn't overcrowding at Longfellow, so much as overcrowding at Kilmer (about 1/2 the middle school AAP kids in the Langley pyramid had been going to Kilmer, and the other half to Longfellow). In comparison, McLean's last renovation had been about 7-8 years earlier, and they hadn't done as much to expand MHS at the time, which is why it's more overcrowded now even with fewer kids per grade than Longfellow. |
Anonymous
| AAP just confuses everything. It's ridiculous. |
Anonymous
It’s less of an issue now at Longfellow now since it doesn’t have out-of-boundary kids for AAP. |
Anonymous
I used to agree, but it sort of works. In other areas, the transition to high school is very stressful. Here, the transition to middle school is very stressful. My DC’s middle school has some portion of 10 elementary schools feeding into it. But now that that is done, mostly the same kids go through 12th grade together. They still meet new kids each year because it’s so large, but they have more time to gel as a community. I’m on board now that we have experienced it. |
Anonymous
| Only one MS? How is it possible then for McLean HS to be overcrowded??? |
Anonymous
It's just a function of the building sizes. There are two grades at Longfellow and four grades at McLean. Longfellow has a design capacity of 1374 seats, so in theory McLean should have twice that many seats (2748 seats). But instead McLean only has 1993 permanent seats. McLean doesn't need 2748 seats now because some Longfellow kids go to TJ and privates, but it needs more than 1993 permanent seats. Unfortunately, facilities planning in FCPS has been a disaster for years. This is just one example where there's a mismatch between the capacities of schools within a pyramid. They are currently renovating Cooper, the middle school feeder to Langley, but leaving it with less than 1/2 the number of seats at Langley. |
Anonymous
What does that mean - leaving it at half the number of seats at Langley? |
Anonymous
The middle school is large. |
Anonymous
It means that Langley, which has four grades (9-12), was built out to 2370 seats during its renovation. Since Langley now only draws from Cooper, and Cooper has two grades (7-8), you'd expect Cooper, once its expansion is finished, to have about 50% of the number of seats at Langley - 1185 seats. But the plans for Cooper only call for expanding it to 1120 seats. This has played out in discussions with Elaine Tholen about the continued overcrowding at McLean. When people asked why some more kids can't be moved to the Langley pyramid, when Langley remains under capacity, her response was that it couldn't be done because it might overcrowd Cooper. So, just as with the capacity mismatch at Longfellow and McLean, there's a capacity mismatch with Cooper and Langley. |
Anonymous
This is 100% true. We all knew at the time that the renovation was not big enough and many people were pushing for a brand new multi-story building to be put in the LMS fields rather than a reno. In fact, before they completed the reno they turned several basement storage rooms into classrooms by knocking out exterior brick walls to make windows and they turned a large multipurpose room into a science lab. Even with those changes, it was too small the day that it opened. Even with the 100+ AAP kids who have moved back to Cooper the building is too small. An additional part of the problem is that much of the new housing around Tysons feeds to Longfellow and McLean. |
Anonymous
I tried to update this to reflect not just base boundaries, but also the current AAP program assignments (FCPS doesn't spell this out explicitly, so this may not be 100% accurate, but it should be fairly close): One feeder: Fairfax - Johnson Justice - Glasgow Lake Braddock - Lake Braddock (secondary school) Langley - Cooper McLean - Longfellow South County - South County West Potomac - Sandburg Woodson - Frost Two feeders: Centreville - Liberty, Rocky Run Herndon - Herndon, Hughes Mount Vernon - Whitman, Sandburg Robinson - Robinson (secondary school), Lake Braddock South Lakes - Carson, Hughes West Springfield - Irving, Lake Braddock Three feeders: Chantilly - Franklin, Rocky Run, Carson Edison - Holmes, Twain, Glasgow Falls Church - Jackson, Poe, Glasgow Hayfield - Hayfield (secondary school), Lake Braddock, Twain Lewis - Key, Lake Braddock, Twain Madison- Kilmer, Thoreau, Jackson Marshall - Kilmer, Thoreau, Jackson Four feeders: Annandale - Holmes, Poe, Frost, Glasgow Oakton - Carson, Franklin, Thoreau, Jackson Westfield - Carson, Franklin, Stone, Rocky Run So this suggests that 1/3 of the neighborhood high schools in FCPS only draw from a single middle school, when you factor in AAP middle school assignments. |
Anonymous
However, the number of AAP students involved varies and is generally a small percentage of the total population of the grade at the high school. |
Anonymous
That's going to vary considerably by high school. High schools don't have AAP programs, but some high schools will have relatively high percentages of kids who were in ES/MS AAP programs. |
Anonymous
|
There’s more to a school than its building. We don’t regret picking McLean over Langley. What made you pick McLean over Langley, if you don't mind sharing? |