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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Current Herndon HS parents
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Anonymous
People keep repeating that schools like Herndon and others are failing when they are not and exaggerating issues. What is the purpose of that than to create a special zone? It’s A Brave New World. |
Anonymous
I don’t like them, but they are right. It makes sense to do boundaries from scratch every so often. Boundary changes are disruptive, and a county-wide one more so. Therefore it needs to be on a regular but infrequent interval, something like every 25-30 years. From-scratch boundaries will necessarily leave many many neighborhoods at the same school, but would change the edges of every pyramid. As to the board being afraid of the blowback, the county is now firmly blue. They have survived recall efforts and triumphed in the last election despite their bungling of the COVID response, using taxpayer funds to buy sexually explicit material for school libraries, ignoring staff recommendations to enact a last minute switcheroo for the Langley/Mclean boundary, wasting money and causing disruption with the Dunn Loring fiasco, and more. They can be confident that people will suck it up and come back for more. If a few are particularly vulnerable at the next election cycle, they will just step down and bide their time for a future elected position or just work for the party behind the scenes. The new (dem) members will be easily won because they will have no blame for the new boundaries, which—again—will not affect everyone. We could even be looking at a change that leaves 80% of the people where they are and some may be glad to be moved. |
Anonymous
Democracy is basically dead in Fairfax County. It's a one-party county. There's no way to vote out the corrupt, incompetent, or evil - and the ability to do that is the supposed principal virtue of democracy. But, no worries, I'm sure one-party rule is going to go well here just like it does everywhere else. |
Anonymous
I don't see much logic here - just a blanket suggestion that they should redraw all the boundaries every 25-30 years because they can do so with relative impunity. They shouldn't change boundaries just because they can, but only because there is a clearly articulated and compelling reason to do so, taking into account that people may have chosen where to live in part based on specific programs available at certain schools, whether it's an Academy program, AP, IB, a foreign language sequence, or something else. The reality is that things are different now than when they last did county-wide changes in the mid-1980s, when the degree of standardization when it came to academic programs was far greater than it is today. And, by the way, the most significant change over the past 50 years when it comes to the School Board is the replacement of a board appointed by the Board of Supervisors with an elected board, which occurred due to dissatisfaction with boundary changes in the 1980s and early 1990s and related school closures. In those cases, as might be the case here, it did not matter that certain recommendations may have originated with staff; the subsequent dissatisfaction was aimed at the board members. |
Anonymous
Look at how the Glasgow study ended up bringing Frost and the Woodson pyramid boundaries into the mix because of AAP shared enrollment. Point is the amount of cross-pyramid interactions can get quite high when we consider split feeders and assigned AAP centers. |
Anonymous
What’s going on with Glasgow is a case study as to why people should be wary of boundary changes. It’s not overcrowded as typically analyzed. Some folks decided it was just too big and chaotic, so Ricardy Anderson demanded a boundary study. Staff came up with a proposal that didn’t suggest moving anyone to Woodson, but did hint at possibly moving AAP kids at Belvedere and Glasgow to Canterbury Woods and Frost. Note that this involved an implicit but undiscussed policy decision that the Annandale pyramid - in between the Justice and Woodson pyramids - should remain without AAP centers. And then people freaked out because they hadn’t been given advanced notice and staff got told to go back to the drawing board. If a one-off boundary study started off so poorly, imagine how many more issues would come up were there a county-wide proposal. More recently, Glasgow has now been specifically flagged by the VDOE as one of 10 troubled schools, yet a redistricting there to reduce the enrollment might further concentrate poverty at the school, making it harder to hit the state benchmarks. None of this really relates to Herndon, other than to underscore that from everything I can tell most Herndon families don’t want their kids to be pawns serving someone else’s grand plans. |
Anonymous
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This begins and ends with uneven housing policies that already created winners and losers. Now let’s finish what we started and solidify the school boundaries.
$$$$$$ |
Anonymous
Ha. WE didn’t start anything. The board members certainly didn’t run on this platform when they were running for the board last year. You’re like the extreme left fringe’s hype-man. |
Anonymous
Under enrollment and over enrollment at various schools across the county is a mess. They should redraw as a matter of fiscal responsibility. No unnecessary expansions or new buildings. We can be sure that with this particular board, they will want to make changes based also on demographics, and that they a where they are wrong. But the voters chose them, and I am sure that not a single Democrat voter will voice an objection to “equity.” |
Anonymous
We should agree that under-enrollment or overcrowding needs to be a compelling reason to redraw boundaries, and not just an excuse to redraw boundaries. In other words, the under-enrollment should be at a level that raises concerns as to a school's ability to provide required services to students, or the over-crowding should be at a level that raises safety and security concerns. Few schools would meet those criteria. In addition, with FCPS having expanded so many schools, basic considerations of fairness suggest that additions should be considered for overcrowded schools before boundaries are changed, given the disruption associated with boundary changes. Those who wait until their own schools receive extensive renovations and additions, and then declare that "fiscal responsibility" demands that no one else get similar treatment, are hard to take seriously. Fairfax is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and our students deserve better than to be moved around like widgets. |
Anonymous
You seem grumpy and punitive. But, sure, let’s burn the whole house down because you’re in a bad mood. |
Anonymous
No. We should not throw away millions on unneeded expansions. Of course, in the recent past if not even further back, the board has just loved to throw away money. |
Anonymous
Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. A boundary change for capacity is not a punishment. Boundary changes for “equity,” and in fact curriculum, policies, facilities management et al for “equity” is what the voters chose when they voted for this board. |
Anonymous
Schools that need additions should be expanded, especially if the alternative is sending them to schools that may have different programs or inadvertently accelerating flight from a school. What’s fair for Oakton, Centreville, and Herndon (and quite a few other schools that have been expanded) is fair for Chantilly. McLean, and Annandale. If you believe prior expansions of some schools may have been unwarranted, the solution is not to compound that error by changing boundaries just to cover up that error. Over time, growth within a school’s current boundaries may well absorb the additional capacity. |
Anonymous
So which do you want - boundary changes for capacity reasons or boundary changes for “equity”? They aren’t necessarily the same thing and in fact could be at cross-purposes. Either way the criteria should be clearly defined with changes made only when truly necessary. |