FCPS Skyview Boundary Revised Scenario 1 / 2

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why Westfield is the whipping boy of this school board and neighborhoods seem frantic to avoid it.

It has a farms rate in the normal range for a middle of the pack FCPS HS, its not overcrowded, has successful sports teams, seems to send kids to the normal range of colleges based on instagram.

I don't live in the area but why did FCPS decide this school was going to be the designated dumping ground?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had done this properly and stuck to objective standards, this could have been settled months ago. And, with a lot less angst.

In the past, SB members were always non-committal to neighborhoods, while at least pretending to listen. I never recall an earlier superintendent making promises or even getting involved. Staff was involved, but we never saw the superintendents.

It was mostly SB members doing the wheeling and dealing, but they were careful not to make promises.

Reid promised Walney Oaks. Somehow, they were taken totally out of the equation. And, those final scenarios did not include most of Crossfield.

I don't see them changing it now, but the School Board could if they wanted to do so. I don't think they will.

I still wonder if Kyle McDaniel and Melanie Meren will join together at the last minute to strike some sort of deal with everyone else to swap Crossfield and Fox Mill. They both seem pretty adamant about putting Crossfield at Skyview and keeping Fox Mill out.

Why would they do this when it would piss off so many people?

McDaniel already said he will not bring forth any amendments to the final scenario as he knows how much work and due diligence FCPS and the consultants have put into it…his words from his call last week not mine. Meren has not been publicly specific about not moving Fox Mill except apparently in a few emails to people on this board. She will at best make a statement and abstain from voting.

In other words, it’s important to respect the process, even when that same process has been utterly corrupted. Clowns.

[Anonymous]

There's nothing wrong with Westfield, other than an inconvenient location.

It has more poor kids than the other western high schools like Centreville, Chantilly, Oakton. So its perceived as less desirable by UMC families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing Westfield parents could have done here. The SB and FCPS decided Westfield was going to be the Biggest Loser in the boundary game. There is no rationale otherwise for the decisions they are making. The new Brookfield split feeder is literally like they looked at the map and tried to figure out who to move based on which neighborhoods had the least political/economic power.

Never in other rezonings have they let individual neighborhoods dictate where their kids are going to go to school.

I agree with this. What happened in previous rezonings was the SB member of that area was greatly deferred to. Since she is part of the Reid loving "in" group, she probably personally dictated the last two scenarios. She probably decided on that Brookfield split including Walney Oaks--maybe she didn't realize WO had gotten a special deal from someone else. That's why the map had to be pulled down and edited. She personally decided to move that one apartment area out of Centreville. The other SB members probably don't even know the specifics of where the apartments are, where the SFHes are.

I think this is exactly what happened. She moved the Walney Oaks area to give herself cover on moving those Bull Run apartments and Chantilly Mews area. That's why all the slide shows and the address search had Walney Oaks moving. But Reid had personally promised some rando at a meeting not to move WO. So the published map got pulled down and edited (but they forgot to edit the slides and tool bar until someone mentioned it on here).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had done this properly and stuck to objective standards, this could have been settled months ago. And, with a lot less angst.

In the past, SB members were always non-committal to neighborhoods, while at least pretending to listen. I never recall an earlier superintendent making promises or even getting involved. Staff was involved, but we never saw the superintendents.

It was mostly SB members doing the wheeling and dealing, but they were careful not to make promises.

Reid promised Walney Oaks. Somehow, they were taken totally out of the equation. And, those final scenarios did not include most of Crossfield.

I don't see them changing it now, but the School Board could if they wanted to do so. I don't think they will.

I still wonder if Kyle McDaniel and Melanie Meren will join together at the last minute to strike some sort of deal with everyone else to swap Crossfield and Fox Mill. They both seem pretty adamant about putting Crossfield at Skyview and keeping Fox Mill out.

Why would they do this when it would piss off so many people?

McDaniel already said he will not bring forth any amendments to the final scenario as he knows how much work and due diligence FCPS and the consultants have put into it…his words from his call last week not mine. Meren has not been publicly specific about not moving Fox Mill except apparently in a few emails to people on this board. She will at best make a statement and abstain from voting.

In other words, it’s important to respect the process, even when that same process has been utterly corrupted. Clowns.

The Westfield families, who followed the process of commenting on the boundary tool and emailing their school board members, were ignored.
The only people who got special treatment were the ones who did NOT follow the process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why Westfield is the whipping boy of this school board and neighborhoods seem frantic to avoid it.

It has a farms rate in the normal range for a middle of the pack FCPS HS, its not overcrowded, has successful sports teams, seems to send kids to the normal range of colleges based on instagram.

I don't live in the area but why did FCPS decide this school was going to be the designated dumping ground?

The starting point was the decision to buy KAA, which lies within the Westfield boundaries.

You cannot create boundaries for Skyview without moving three ES that feed mostly or entirely to Westfield into Skyview (Coates, Floris, McNair).

That means you then have to backfill Westfield, at least to some extent, and people in wealthier areas zoned to Centreville and Chantilly quickly started fighting with each other over whether Lees Corner or the Centreville part of Bull Run should get moved.

Rather than piss off one of those areas, they pivoted towards just reassigning some poorer areas to Westfield and leaving it much smaller in a few years than it is now. It is exactly how they dealt with other boundary changes during the county-wide review, just on a larger scale. They don’t care if it adds Westfield to the growing list of pariah schools in the county, so long as it quiets the noisiest voices now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had done this properly and stuck to objective standards, this could have been settled months ago. And, with a lot less angst.

In the past, SB members were always non-committal to neighborhoods, while at least pretending to listen. I never recall an earlier superintendent making promises or even getting involved. Staff was involved, but we never saw the superintendents.

It was mostly SB members doing the wheeling and dealing, but they were careful not to make promises.

Reid promised Walney Oaks. Somehow, they were taken totally out of the equation. And, those final scenarios did not include most of Crossfield.

I don't see them changing it now, but the School Board could if they wanted to do so. I don't think they will.

I still wonder if Kyle McDaniel and Melanie Meren will join together at the last minute to strike some sort of deal with everyone else to swap Crossfield and Fox Mill. They both seem pretty adamant about putting Crossfield at Skyview and keeping Fox Mill out.

Why would they do this when it would piss off so many people?

Does a better job of balancing the enrollments at Oakton and South Lakes.

Gets rid of some of the longest commutes to a high school in FCPS.

Does not start to recreate the conditions that led a prior School Board to move kids into South Lakes in 2008.

Relieves overcrowding at Oakton at a time when substantial residential growth is expected closer to OHS.

Keeps families already mostly at an AP school at an AP school.

The path of least resistance is to move Fox Mill but objectively moving Crossfield to Skyview makes more sense. But we have a School Board and superintendent who regularly cater to the loudest voices with the most money.

That ship has sailed. Meren might try, but she is way too late to the party.

Looking at this objectively, that would have been the correct call.

I was involved in boundary studies in the past--that is why I follow this thread. So many mistakes made here:

In the past, politics were involved, but it was usually one neighborhood's argument against another. It was not just which neighborhood had more power. (Except, of course, South Lakes boundary study with Strauss refused to pony up any of her constituents while totally supporting Stu and Kathy's game.)

This has dragged out way too long. The Comprehensive Boundary study was underway when this started. When Skyview was purchased, common sense would have said that the Comp. Boundary should be delayed until Skyview was set. Skyview easily could have been set right away.

RIO stepped in VERY early in this process. Seems to me that they had a "heads up!"

As I recall, and someone on here may know, I think I read about Reid listening to Walney Oaks very early in this process. I don't know when or where the meeting occurred. But, someone needs to give a logical answer to how this happened. Why that one pocket? Doesn't make sense.

Honestly, Westfield could have come out of this very well balanced. Someone really dropped the ball here looking out for thier schools. The initials of that someone are S.D.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing Westfield parents could have done here. The SB and FCPS decided Westfield was going to be the Biggest Loser in the boundary game. There is no rationale otherwise for the decisions they are making. The new Brookfield split feeder is literally like they looked at the map and tried to figure out who to move based on which neighborhoods had the least political/economic power.

Never in other rezonings have they let individual neighborhoods dictate where their kids are going to go to school.

I agree with this. What happened in previous rezonings was the SB member of that area was greatly deferred to. Since she is part of the Reid loving "in" group, she probably personally dictated the last two scenarios. She probably decided on that Brookfield split including Walney Oaks--maybe she didn't realize WO had gotten a special deal from someone else. That's why the map had to be pulled down and edited. She personally decided to move that one apartment area out of Centreville. The other SB members probably don't even know the specifics of where the apartments are, where the SFHes are.

I think this is exactly what happened. She moved the Walney Oaks area to give herself cover on moving those Bull Run apartments and Chantilly Mews area. That's why all the slide shows and the address search had Walney Oaks moving. But Reid had personally promised some rando at a meeting not to move WO. So the published map got pulled down and edited (but they forgot to edit the slides and tool bar until someone mentioned it on here).

So incredibly stupid for Michelle Reid to have gone on a walking tour auctioning off boundaries earlier with zero understanding of county geography or the implications for other schools. She never had any business heading a school division this big.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing wrong with Westfield, other than an inconvenient location.

It has more poor kids than the other western high schools like Centreville, Chantilly, Oakton. So its perceived as less desirable by UMC families.

I am not sure that the ES that could have been moved understood that many of the high FARMs kids were being moved to Skyview so that the FARMs rate will drop at the school.

I don't know a ton about Centreville or Westfield other then the families I know who attend the schools love them and are proud of them. I get the impression that it less not liking Westfield and more wanting to stay at a school that they like. Also, the location is not ideal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing Westfield parents could have done here. The SB and FCPS decided Westfield was going to be the Biggest Loser in the boundary game. There is no rationale otherwise for the decisions they are making. The new Brookfield split feeder is literally like they looked at the map and tried to figure out who to move based on which neighborhoods had the least political/economic power.

Never in other rezonings have they let individual neighborhoods dictate where their kids are going to go to school.

I agree with this. What happened in previous rezonings was the SB member of that area was greatly deferred to. Since she is part of the Reid loving "in" group, she probably personally dictated the last two scenarios. She probably decided on that Brookfield split including Walney Oaks--maybe she didn't realize WO had gotten a special deal from someone else. That's why the map had to be pulled down and edited. She personally decided to move that one apartment area out of Centreville. The other SB members probably don't even know the specifics of where the apartments are, where the SFHes are.

I think this is exactly what happened. She moved the Walney Oaks area to give herself cover on moving those Bull Run apartments and Chantilly Mews area. That's why all the slide shows and the address search had Walney Oaks moving. But Reid had personally promised some rando at a meeting not to move WO. So the published map got pulled down and edited (but they forgot to edit the slides and tool bar until someone mentioned it on here).

So the current map was edited to honor Reid’s “promise” but the final decision is up to the School Board. Someone needs to make a motion to amend the proposal to add back Walney Oaks. That way Reid won’t have broken her promise; she simply will have been overridden by the SB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing Westfield parents could have done here. The SB and FCPS decided Westfield was going to be the Biggest Loser in the boundary game. There is no rationale otherwise for the decisions they are making. The new Brookfield split feeder is literally like they looked at the map and tried to figure out who to move based on which neighborhoods had the least political/economic power.

Never in other rezonings have they let individual neighborhoods dictate where their kids are going to go to school.

I agree with this. What happened in previous rezonings was the SB member of that area was greatly deferred to. Since she is part of the Reid loving "in" group, she probably personally dictated the last two scenarios. She probably decided on that Brookfield split including Walney Oaks--maybe she didn't realize WO had gotten a special deal from someone else. That's why the map had to be pulled down and edited. She personally decided to move that one apartment area out of Centreville. The other SB members probably don't even know the specifics of where the apartments are, where the SFHes are.

I think this is exactly what happened. She moved the Walney Oaks area to give herself cover on moving those Bull Run apartments and Chantilly Mews area. That's why all the slide shows and the address search had Walney Oaks moving. But Reid had personally promised some rando at a meeting not to move WO. So the published map got pulled down and edited (but they forgot to edit the slides and tool bar until someone mentioned it on here).

Right. She's not that smart, and she's not following along closely, so she didn't know Walney Oaks had somehow extracted VIP status from FCPS. Moving WO area gave her cover to get rid of the low income apartment area that fed to Centreville HS and she could also add in Chantilly Mews b/c their SES status was balanced by WO, so it didn't look like she was only moving low income kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had done this properly and stuck to objective standards, this could have been settled months ago. And, with a lot less angst.

In the past, SB members were always non-committal to neighborhoods, while at least pretending to listen. I never recall an earlier superintendent making promises or even getting involved. Staff was involved, but we never saw the superintendents.

It was mostly SB members doing the wheeling and dealing, but they were careful not to make promises.

Reid promised Walney Oaks. Somehow, they were taken totally out of the equation. And, those final scenarios did not include most of Crossfield.

I don't see them changing it now, but the School Board could if they wanted to do so. I don't think they will.

I still wonder if Kyle McDaniel and Melanie Meren will join together at the last minute to strike some sort of deal with everyone else to swap Crossfield and Fox Mill. They both seem pretty adamant about putting Crossfield at Skyview and keeping Fox Mill out.

The RIO parents have done a fine job of being really, really loud about not wanting to move and the FMES have been consistent in wanting to move.I would be surprised if this gets shifted. Moving FMES is politically easy and doesn't put most of the school board at risk. It is less about moving Fox Mill and more about not moving Crossfield. Crossfield families have been very loud about not wanting to move. They need numbers at Skyview and Fox Mill families have been supportive of moving. SLHS doesn't have the same voting power as Crossfield so Fox Mill moves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is absolutely nothing Westfield parents could have done here. The SB and FCPS decided Westfield was going to be the Biggest Loser in the boundary game. There is no rationale otherwise for the decisions they are making. The new Brookfield split feeder is literally like they looked at the map and tried to figure out who to move based on which neighborhoods had the least political/economic power.

Never in other rezonings have they let individual neighborhoods dictate where their kids are going to go to school.

I agree with this. What happened in previous rezonings was the SB member of that area was greatly deferred to. Since she is part of the Reid loving "in" group, she probably personally dictated the last two scenarios. She probably decided on that Brookfield split including Walney Oaks--maybe she didn't realize WO had gotten a special deal from someone else. That's why the map had to be pulled down and edited. She personally decided to move that one apartment area out of Centreville. The other SB members probably don't even know the specifics of where the apartments are, where the SFHes are.

I think this is exactly what happened. She moved the Walney Oaks area to give herself cover on moving those Bull Run apartments and Chantilly Mews area. That's why all the slide shows and the address search had Walney Oaks moving. But Reid had personally promised some rando at a meeting not to move WO. So the published map got pulled down and edited (but they forgot to edit the slides and tool bar until someone mentioned it on here).

So the current map was edited to honor Reid’s “promise” but the final decision is up to the School Board. Someone needs to make a motion to amend the proposal to add back Walney Oaks. That way Reid won’t have broken her promise; she simply will have been overridden by the SB.

The logical person to do that would be Seema Dixit, but she doesn't want to piss off her wealthier constituents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they had done this properly and stuck to objective standards, this could have been settled months ago. And, with a lot less angst.

In the past, SB members were always non-committal to neighborhoods, while at least pretending to listen. I never recall an earlier superintendent making promises or even getting involved. Staff was involved, but we never saw the superintendents.

It was mostly SB members doing the wheeling and dealing, but they were careful not to make promises.

Reid promised Walney Oaks. Somehow, they were taken totally out of the equation. And, those final scenarios did not include most of Crossfield.

I don't see them changing it now, but the School Board could if they wanted to do so. I don't think they will.

I still wonder if Kyle McDaniel and Melanie Meren will join together at the last minute to strike some sort of deal with everyone else to swap Crossfield and Fox Mill. They both seem pretty adamant about putting Crossfield at Skyview and keeping Fox Mill out.

The RIO parents have done a fine job of being really, really loud about not wanting to move and the FMES have been consistent in wanting to move.I would be surprised if this gets shifted. Moving FMES is politically easy and doesn't put most of the school board at risk. It is less about moving Fox Mill and more about not moving Crossfield. Crossfield families have been very loud about not wanting to move. They need numbers at Skyview and Fox Mill families have been supportive of moving. SLHS doesn't have the same voting power as Crossfield so Fox Mill moves.

Right. In the slides, they pointed out that the Fox Mill area was one of the only ones that were totally green in favor of moving to Skyview.

There is no need to upset the apple cart here, if you are a SB member. They don't care about the downstream effects on South Lakes or Westfield.

[Anonymous]

Westfield was always going to be a loser in the Siyview boundary because it was going to lose all of its neighborhoods north of Route 50. How much a loser they were going to be was always going to come down to how FCPS balanced Westfield, Chantilly and Centreville enrollments.