What can an average parent do to contest boundary review?

[Anonymous]

where do you find the ppt and the maps? I check FCPS website and found nothing valuable. I will turn to FB group now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been periodically reading the incredible thread on the boundary review. It would be helpful if it was broken out now by region because it is really hard to digest.

I have looked at the slides after the meetings and they do not all agree with one another and also are difficult to make sense of.

If there are issues with the realignments what say does the average parent have in the process? Do we have a representative? Do we write the board? Do we start a class action?

The process seems to actually be making some schools worse. How can you redistrict and put schools over capacity? That seems insane.

Reading the other thread I know that there are some parents that really understand this and the politics. Please help and educate me.

From the other thread on boundary changes:

For capacity discussion BRAC should ask for clear data for each school on: Transfers in (and from where) + transfers out (and where to)


Yes, this data is available on the dashboard, but it should be included with BRAC. I wonder if BRAC is even taking that into consideration. The reasons for the transfer should also be included. Is that information available to the public? It is not on the dashboard, but it is pretty easy to assume that AP vs IB is a big driver.

If the already inbound students are not attending the school and transferring elsewhere, why would we redistrict other students to that school when keeping inbound students would solve low numbers? It makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

I agree it's really hard to figure out what might be happening to your school from the massive DCUM thread. Keyword searching can only get you so far.

I've been keeping up on Facebook groups (The Fairfacts Matters group isn't all that helpful for me because we don't live near Langley etc, but sometimes you can find out more general info). Also ask parents in your school if there's a locally focused Facebook parents group. Our ES PTA has been adding this as a line item to their monthly meeting just to make sure it gets on parents' radar and they can get directed to the Facebook group if they want more information.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, pay more attention to school board elections. That is where the “voice” of parents is designed to be heard. There will be groups of citizens who are unhappy with the results of new school boundaries whatever they end up being, but I hope the board doesn’t put too much weight on these “squeaky wheels.” The board is supposed to be looking out for all FCPS students, not just those whose parents yell the loudest.

(I know this response is going to ruffle feathers but don’t worry about replying to me as I have no intention of revisiting this thread.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, pay more attention to school board elections. That is where the “voice” of parents is designed to be heard. There will be groups of citizens who are unhappy with the results of new school boundaries whatever they end up being, but I hope the board doesn’t put too much weight on these “squeaky wheels.” The board is supposed to be looking out for all FCPS students, not just those whose parents yell the loudest.

(I know this response is going to ruffle feathers but don’t worry about replying to me as I have no intention of revisiting this thread.)

What a clown post. No school board member ran on these boundary changes, and they were asked. Tear them a new one now for hiding the unpopular agenda during the election season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, pay more attention to school board elections. That is where the “voice” of parents is designed to be heard. There will be groups of citizens who are unhappy with the results of new school boundaries whatever they end up being, but I hope the board doesn’t put too much weight on these “squeaky wheels.” The board is supposed to be looking out for all FCPS students, not just those whose parents yell the loudest.

(I know this response is going to ruffle feathers but don’t worry about replying to me as I have no intention of revisiting this thread.)

It’s fine if you want to play the “hit-and-run” game, but it’s fanciful at best to suggest what they are currently doing is looking out for all FCPS students. They are looking out for themselves by trying to pass the buck to a clueless third-party consultant who clearly does not know the region well, and then provide themselves with yet another layer of insulation by claiming the changes were vetted by an advisory group of parents and party activists who were brought along for the ride.

If you want to fall for that, bless your heart, but it shouldn’t go unchallenged. This isn’t stepping up to the plate to befit all students, but an abdication of responsibility accompanied by future proclamations that they made “hard choices” that would largely be unnecessary if they were scrutinizing their expenditures more carefully and engaging in forward-looking planning.

[Anonymous]

You can also post suggestions directly to FCPS. I have received acknowledgment of submissions.

https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/maps/2024-2026-boundary-review/submit-school-assignment-or-boundaries-question

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to educate yourself... it is a lot.

This means a dedicated chunk of time going down the rabbit hole of board docs, fcps dashboards and school board videos, going back to last summer at a minimum when policy 8130 was revised, through the October work session with Thru to ger the recent background, back to the boundary history from 2018/2019 that defined FCPS long term goals of county wide rezoning for equity and One Fairfax.

Go to the county site and research One Fairfax. The website might have been changed to blunt trump's ire, but when I checked a month or so ago it hadn't been updated yet.

The first few pages of the most recent boundary thread has lots of good links to background items.

Talk to your neighbors to see if there is a neighborhood based facebook group on this topic. Usually, they are centered on elementary schools, because even though the main catalyst for rezoning is to change high school boundaries, it will be done by changing elementary school zones and feeder patterns.

The fb groups tend to have a lot of grear info specific to your school zone. Many of them started last summer. Ours did. The page managers are usually very good about quickly disseminating the important, school specific info.

Join FairFacts on FB. They were started by a bunch of pi$$ed off Langley parents, have some crazy posters who post a lot, but the mods are good about sharing very comprehensive information about the process, as well as expensive FOIA information.

Then, once you are informed and engaged on an elementary school neighborhood level, stat tuned in because a lot of balls are going to drop in May when FCPS has the 3rd map release for capacity rezoning recommendations.

The complaints you are seeing now are for the relatively simple and mostly non controversial fixing of split feeders and attendance islands.

Once FCPS moves on to rezoning for capacity issues, all he** will break out because most of the overcapacity high schools are high performing AP schools located next to undercapacity, low performing IB schools. People paid a premium to purchase homes specifically zoned for these high schools, and often to specifically avoid IB schools. Some of the over capacity high schools, like WSHS, have a very tiny geographical footprint, where nearly all neighborhoods are within 3 miles of the school and most are under 2 miles from the high school, so rezoning means the school board is picking winners and losers by rezoning.

This is why networking with your elementary zone is important, because when the maps are released next month, the fight will be on the elementary school neighborhood level, not the high school level.

The crazy thing with their 60-105% window is that WSHS will trip that threshold, which means proposals to move WSHS kids to South County and/or Lewis likely will get rolled out in early May. On the other hand, Herndon will be over 60%, even though it now has hundreds of empty seats, and Langley will be under 105%, which suggests they'll leave those boundaries alone.

Thru can just say they were following the guidelines, but the 60% threshold doesn't appear in the Capital Improvement Programs as the relevant standard for "significant under-capacity" (they lump everything under 85% in the same bucket), so people are entitled to know its source. Politically, I would not want to be a School Board member defending any proposal to reassign kids who live within 3 miles of West Springfield to another school, while kids who travel over 10 miles to Langley are not redistricted even though Herndon has capacity. If WSHS parents were pleading for relief, you could justify it, but that is clearly not the case.

You are correct.

The new 60% capacity to 105% capacity that FCPS just created aout of the blue basically puts a target on WSHS only, and protects every other high school in FCPS.

Is anyone else over 105% capacity? Chantilly maybe?

There are currently 6 schools which tip the 105% scale:
- West Springfield: not yet addressed.
- Chantilly: not yet addressed
- McLean: resolved with Spring Hill reassignment
- Falls Church: resolved with expansion (but not yet addressed)
- Centreville: resolved with expansion (but not yet addressed)
- Edison: resolved by reassigning Bren Mar Park

No high school cracked the Top 10 most under capacity list.

The problem is that the rules change and numbers can be manipulated. For example, the reason given for the 2008 South Lakes Boundary study was that all high schools should not exceed 2000. (I doubt anyone expected that would ever happen, but that was the reason given. Ironically, the SB had just expanded Westfield to 3000 shortly before they took students from Fox Mill and Floris and sent them to South Lakes. Some of these neighborhoods had just been sent from Oakton to Westfield a short time before.
In order to add students to Oakton because of the loss of Fox Mill to South Lakes, Kathy Smith ponied up students from Chantilly that did not want to move. That is why there is a split feeder at Navy.

If the SB has a mindset on something, there is little parents can do. My suggestion would be to lean on the Board of Supervisors since this is not good for the community as a whole. It is disruptive and antagonistic in many cases and pits neighborhood against neighborhood.

The Board of Supervisors isn't going to do anything. They are too busy trying to figure out how to get more affordable housing to encourage MORE people to come here and overwhelm our school
system. Plus they've already raised the eyre of the SB with the funding cuts and will like to cut funds again next year and every year until this president leaves

[Anonymous]

Why are there two threads on this? Why hasn't Jeff locked one? I requested and he ignored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to educate yourself... it is a lot.

This means a dedicated chunk of time going down the rabbit hole of board docs, fcps dashboards and school board videos, going back to last summer at a minimum when policy 8130 was revised, through the October work session with Thru to ger the recent background, back to the boundary history from 2018/2019 that defined FCPS long term goals of county wide rezoning for equity and One Fairfax.

Go to the county site and research One Fairfax. The website might have been changed to blunt trump's ire, but when I checked a month or so ago it hadn't been updated yet.

The first few pages of the most recent boundary thread has lots of good links to background items.

Talk to your neighbors to see if there is a neighborhood based facebook group on this topic. Usually, they are centered on elementary schools, because even though the main catalyst for rezoning is to change high school boundaries, it will be done by changing elementary school zones and feeder patterns.

The fb groups tend to have a lot of grear info specific to your school zone. Many of them started last summer. Ours did. The page managers are usually very good about quickly disseminating the important, school specific info.

Join FairFacts on FB. They were started by a bunch of pi$$ed off Langley parents, have some crazy posters who post a lot, but the mods are good about sharing very comprehensive information about the process, as well as expensive FOIA information.

Then, once you are informed and engaged on an elementary school neighborhood level, stat tuned in because a lot of balls are going to drop in May when FCPS has the 3rd map release for capacity rezoning recommendations.

The complaints you are seeing now are for the relatively simple and mostly non controversial fixing of split feeders and attendance islands.

Once FCPS moves on to rezoning for capacity issues, all he** will break out because most of the overcapacity high schools are high performing AP schools located next to undercapacity, low performing IB schools. People paid a premium to purchase homes specifically zoned for these high schools, and often to specifically avoid IB schools. Some of the over capacity high schools, like WSHS, have a very tiny geographical footprint, where nearly all neighborhoods are within 3 miles of the school and most are under 2 miles from the high school, so rezoning means the school board is picking winners and losers by rezoning.

This is why networking with your elementary zone is important, because when the maps are released next month, the fight will be on the elementary school neighborhood level, not the high school level.

The crazy thing with their 60-105% window is that WSHS will trip that threshold, which means proposals to move WSHS kids to South County and/or Lewis likely will get rolled out in early May. On the other hand, Herndon will be over 60%, even though it now has hundreds of empty seats, and Langley will be under 105%, which suggests they'll leave those boundaries alone.

Thru can just say they were following the guidelines, but the 60% threshold doesn't appear in the Capital Improvement Programs as the relevant standard for "significant under-capacity" (they lump everything under 85% in the same bucket), so people are entitled to know its source. Politically, I would not want to be a School Board member defending any proposal to reassign kids who live within 3 miles of West Springfield to another school, while kids who travel over 10 miles to Langley are not redistricted even though Herndon has capacity. If WSHS parents were pleading for relief, you could justify it, but that is clearly not the case.

You are correct.

The new 60% capacity to 105% capacity that FCPS just created aout of the blue basically puts a target on WSHS only, and protects every other high school in FCPS.

Is anyone else over 105% capacity? Chantilly maybe?

There are currently 6 schools which tip the 105% scale:
- West Springfield: not yet addressed.
- Chantilly: not yet addressed
- McLean: resolved with Spring Hill reassignment
- Falls Church: resolved with expansion (but not yet addressed)
- Centreville: resolved with expansion (but not yet addressed)
- Edison: resolved by reassigning Bren Mar Park

No high school cracked the Top 10 most under capacity list.

The problem is that the rules change and numbers can be manipulated. For example, the reason given for the 2008 South Lakes Boundary study was that all high schools should not exceed 2000. (I doubt anyone expected that would ever happen, but that was the reason given. Ironically, the SB had just expanded Westfield to 3000 shortly before they took students from Fox Mill and Floris and sent them to South Lakes. Some of these neighborhoods had just been sent from Oakton to Westfield a short time before.
In order to add students to Oakton because of the loss of Fox Mill to South Lakes, Kathy Smith ponied up students from Chantilly that did not want to move. That is why there is a split feeder at Navy.

If the SB has a mindset on something, there is little parents can do. My suggestion would be to lean on the Board of Supervisors since this is not good for the community as a whole. It is disruptive and antagonistic in many cases and pits neighborhood against neighborhood.

The Board of Supervisors isn't going to do anything. They are too busy trying to figure out how to get more affordable housing to encourage MORE people to come here and overwhelm our school
system. Plus they've already raised the eyre of the SB with the funding cuts and will like to cut funds again next year and every year until this president leaves

WOW. Just read what you wrote, you ignorant, entitled, disgusting rich person. Have you looked at house prices lately? Affordable housing nowadays is needed for someone who makes less than the national average salary. This area is absurdly expensive. We can't all be rich Langley mommas in $4 Million houses.

[Anonymous]

It would help to have some non-partisan candidates who actually care about educational results that I could vote for.

In practice, though maybe not in theory, all FC school board candidates in recent years have been from one party or the other. Both sets of candidates have been too extreme for my taste.

[Anonymous]

What are the odds we could be moved out of Chantilly HS? We are in walking distance practically!

[Anonymous]

Stop voting left

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are the odds we could be moved out of Chantilly HS? We are in walking distance practically!

Who knows? Chantilly is over the capacity threshold they’ve said is relevant (over 105% capacity, including modular seats) and they recently proposed to move kids who live in the townhouses next door to Westgate ES to a different ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are the odds we could be moved out of Chantilly HS? We are in walking distance practically!

Who knows? Chantilly is over the capacity threshold they’ve said is relevant (over 105% capacity, including modular seats) and they recently proposed to move kids who live in the townhouses next door to Westgate ES to a different ES.

Chantilly is projected to lose membership. Leave it alone.