Fall 2022 Over/Under-Enrollment at FCPS High Schools

[Anonymous]

Dr. Seuss isn’t banned. I have his books in my classroom. I just choose to read different ones to the students.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:There’s not a single member of the current School Board with an ounce of courage. They pick soft targets (Asian immigrants hoping their kids will get into TJ) but they’d never take on vocal parents like the white parents at Langley or West Springfield.

Why do you keep dragging West Springfield into your discussion about overenrolled schools when WSHS is around the average enrollment capacity of the majority of fcps high schools? Why do you call WS a "white" school when it is majority minority with one of the highest percentages of African American students in all of FCPS?

It is such a bizarre fixation to have this strange focus on one school that is not over enrolled and has one of the most compact boundaries in the county. It is almost as if you are trolling.

What does the "average enrollment capacity of the majority" of schools mean? Like you exclude a bunch of schools and then say West Springfield is then about average?

In any event, West Springfield (2650) has the fifth largest HS enrollment in the county this year, behind only Chantilly (2917), Lake Braddock (2896), West Potomac (2725), and Oakton (2679). Lewis, with which WS shares a large border, has the smallest enrollment (1685). Does anyone think a school with 1685 kids can offer the same classes or the same number of sessions of classes as one with 2650 kids?

Lewis is IB.

Start there.

Lewis teacher here. I know we’re allegedly under capacity, but I don’t see it. The halls are overcrowded during class change, the 4 lunch periods are packed, classrooms are all utilized and I don’t know anyone not teaching an obscure elective who doesn’t have capacity enrollment in their classes. So yeah, sending a couple thousand kids over here— in a building that hasn’t been touched since 2001— is of questionable value.

The sports speak for the under-enrollment. I understand demographics play a role, but even Justice, Annandale, Herndon, and Mount Vernon have some relatively strong sports programs despite their similar demographics. On the other hand, Lewis struggles to have enough players for many of their teams.

The fact that some sports only have JV with no other option, and even the lone JV teams have bare minimum players is just plain depressing. Those kids deserve a full and rich high school experience both academically and with activities.

Lack of JV teams doesn’t mean the building isn’t crowded though.

But 78% of capacity does.

Aren't the low income schools supposed to be smaller?

Um, are you saying we are designating Lewis as low income? That's not the way this works, that's not how any of this works.

DP. Why the tone? Ever heard of Title 1? And certainly, DCUM has no issue designating certain schools the "wealthy schools."

FCPS does not have Title 1 high schools - just Title 1 elementary schools.

ITA that all boundaries should be erased and re-drawn. It won’t happen, but it should. Kids that attend Lewis should have the same class offerings that kids at Robinson or Marshall have. But if FCPS did that, parents on here would complain that Lewis had smaller class sizes and it was unfair. What’s unfair is disparate educational opportunities within a public school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at the McLean/Langley problem.
1. these schools were redistricted in 1984 and nothing has changed since that time, despite huge numbers of houses being built in the Tysons area that are all districted to Longfellow/McLean.
2. there are multiple neighborhoods in McLean that are much closer (even walkable) to Langley that continue to be sent to McLean - send those back to Langley
3. Great Falls needs its own high school. The vast majority of kids at Langley live in GF (many drive more than 30 minutes to school). Rather than expanding other schools there needs to be a 7-12 school that serves Great Falls.

The “vast majority” of Langley students are not from GF. If you use elementary school enrollment as a proxy, it’s less than half.

Regardless, FCPS isn’t building a high school with a septic system (which would be required in most of GF).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Saratoga had the opportunjty to get rezoned from then Lee (Lewis) intk the brand new South County High School, but the residents successfully fought the rezoning.

If I remember correctly, residents wanted to be included in South County and thought it was a done deal, but at the last minute dirty politicians threw Saratoga under the bus so that Mason Neck would be sent to the new school instead. Saratoga Elementary’s mascot is the Stallions, the same as South County’s, but it’s students are in the Lewis Pyramid.

I always wondered about Saratoga. It's like the red-headed stepchild being bussed up the parkway to Key MS and Lewis HS when the other five elementary schools that feed into it are from Springfield proper. Didn't know about the South County bait and switch though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Saratoga had the opportunjty to get rezoned from then Lee (Lewis) intk the brand new South County High School, but the residents successfully fought the rezoning.

If I remember correctly, residents wanted to be included in South County and thought it was a done deal, but at the last minute dirty politicians threw Saratoga under the bus so that Mason Neck would be sent to the new school instead. Saratoga Elementary’s mascot is the Stallions, the same as South County’s, but it’s students are in the Lewis Pyramid.

I always wondered about Saratoga. It's like the red-headed stepchild being bussed up the parkway to Key MS and Lewis HS when the other five elementary schools that feed into it are from Springfield proper. Didn't know about the South County bait and switch though.

South county isn’t great so they aren’t missing much. But Saratoga has always been Lee/Lewis, right? I remember that from the 80s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Saratoga had the opportunjty to get rezoned from then Lee (Lewis) intk the brand new South County High School, but the residents successfully fought the rezoning.

If I remember correctly, residents wanted to be included in South County and thought it was a done deal, but at the last minute dirty politicians threw Saratoga under the bus so that Mason Neck would be sent to the new school instead. Saratoga Elementary’s mascot is the Stallions, the same as South County’s, but it’s students are in the Lewis Pyramid.

I always wondered about Saratoga. It's like the red-headed stepchild being bussed up the parkway to Key MS and Lewis HS when the other five elementary schools that feed into it are from Springfield proper. Didn't know about the South County bait and switch though.

If you remove Saratoga from the Lewis pyramid, Lewis' student body would be down to the 1300s. This actually highlights how Lewis is clearly not capturing enough students from their Springfield portion of the boundary. We have to acknowledge that neighborhood trends change. I grew up around there, and now many of those SFH areas are full of older folks and not many families are moving in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Saratoga had the opportunjty to get rezoned from then Lee (Lewis) intk the brand new South County High School, but the residents successfully fought the rezoning.

If I remember correctly, residents wanted to be included in South County and thought it was a done deal, but at the last minute dirty politicians threw Saratoga under the bus so that Mason Neck would be sent to the new school instead. Saratoga Elementary’s mascot is the Stallions, the same as South County’s, but it’s students are in the Lewis Pyramid.

I always wondered about Saratoga. It's like the red-headed stepchild being bussed up the parkway to Key MS and Lewis HS when the other five elementary schools that feed into it are from Springfield proper. Didn't know about the South County bait and switch though.

If you remove Saratoga from the Lewis pyramid, Lewis' student body would be down to the 1300s. This actually highlights how Lewis is clearly not capturing enough students from their Springfield portion of the boundary. We have to acknowledge that neighborhood trends change. I grew up around there, and now many of those SFH areas are full of older folks and not many families are moving in.

If the school were better and the older people could get more money for their houses there would be more turnover. It’s not like Springfield is some dream location for retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.

The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

Setting the bar high and enforcing uniform behavior standards across all students, without regard to race or other woke status points, is a traditional approach. Yammering on about "disparate discipline" statistics being a problem to be solved (by cracking down on the most trivial of infractions by certain students due to their race, while allowing much more serious misbehavior by other groups of students due to their race, in an attempt to fix your school's "disparate discipline" problem) is pure Team Blue.

Shortchanging students by not providing basic materials (textbooks!) while spending millions of dollars renaming schools because some historic figure doesn't live up to [insert current year] woke political standards is pure Team Blue.

I could go on with the litany of issues that FCPS focuses on instead of the core mission of providing a strong academic experience to a well-behaved student population in a safe environment. We could just have a strong school district that just focuses on teaching and applies an equal standard to every child, instead of dabbling in every woke political fad or pandering to emotional political issues. But instead we have FCPS, where striver parents who sense the sinking quality are desperately trying to get their kids into AAP to get them out of the morass that "Gen-Ed" has become.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Saratoga had the opportunjty to get rezoned from then Lee (Lewis) intk the brand new South County High School, but the residents successfully fought the rezoning.

If I remember correctly, residents wanted to be included in South County and thought it was a done deal, but at the last minute dirty politicians threw Saratoga under the bus so that Mason Neck would be sent to the new school instead. Saratoga Elementary’s mascot is the Stallions, the same as South County’s, but it’s students are in the Lewis Pyramid.

I always wondered about Saratoga. It's like the red-headed stepchild being bussed up the parkway to Key MS and Lewis HS when the other five elementary schools that feed into it are from Springfield proper. Didn't know about the South County bait and switch though.

Saratoga should be zoned for South County.

But the residents fought getting rezoned to South County years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.

The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

Setting the bar high and enforcing uniform behavior standards across all students, without regard to race or other woke status points, is a traditional approach. Yammering on about "disparate discipline" statistics being a problem to be solved (by cracking down on the most trivial of infractions by certain students due to their race, while allowing much more serious misbehavior by other groups of students due to their race, in an attempt to fix your school's "disparate discipline" problem) is pure Team Blue.

Shortchanging students by not providing basic materials (textbooks!) while spending millions of dollars renaming schools because some historic figure doesn't live up to [insert current year] woke political standards is pure Team Blue.

I could go on with the litany of issues that FCPS focuses on instead of the core mission of providing a strong academic experience to a well-behaved student population in a safe environment. We could just have a strong school district that just focuses on teaching and applies an equal standard to every child, instead of dabbling in every woke political fad or pandering to emotional political issues. But instead we have FCPS, where striver parents who sense the sinking quality are desperately trying to get their kids into AAP to get them out of the morass that "Gen-Ed" has become.

I recently saw some stats compiled by a parent who sat through every single school board and planning meeting from the past year (literally thousands of hours) and timed how much time the school board spent on various topics.

The vast majority of time, close to 1/4 of the school board's time, was spent on accolades and recognizing various groupd. Things like the calendar, budget, esser funds, superintendent stuff, and SRR/pronouns very high.

Academics combined were less than 4% of their time combined.

Learning loss was less than a percentage of the school board's time over the past year

Advanced academics was less than a single percentage of their time.

Special ed was slightly over 1% of their time.

Academic/curriculum was around 1-2% of their time.



Over 95% of the school boards time over the past year was spent on anything but academic issues or improving education.

Their most important priority over the past year was making pronouncements honoring different groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.

The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.

If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.

The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

Setting the bar high and enforcing uniform behavior standards across all students, without regard to race or other woke status points, is a traditional approach. Yammering on about "disparate discipline" statistics being a problem to be solved (by cracking down on the most trivial of infractions by certain students due to their race, while allowing much more serious misbehavior by other groups of students due to their race, in an attempt to fix your school's "disparate discipline" problem) is pure Team Blue.

Shortchanging students by not providing basic materials (textbooks!) while spending millions of dollars renaming schools because some historic figure doesn't live up to [insert current year] woke political standards is pure Team Blue.

I could go on with the litany of issues that FCPS focuses on instead of the core mission of providing a strong academic experience to a well-behaved student population in a safe environment. We could just have a strong school district that just focuses on teaching and applies an equal standard to every child, instead of dabbling in every woke political fad or pandering to emotional political issues. But instead we have FCPS, where striver parents who sense the sinking quality are desperately trying to get their kids into AAP to get them out of the morass that "Gen-Ed" has become.

I recently saw some stats compiled by a parent who sat through every single school board and planning meeting from the past year (literally thousands of hours) and timed how much time the school board spent on various topics.

The vast majority of time, close to 1/4 of the school board's time, was spent on accolades and recognizing various groupd. Things like the calendar, budget, esser funds, superintendent stuff, and SRR/pronouns very high.

Academics combined were less than 4% of their time combined.

Learning loss was less than a percentage of the school board's time over the past year

Advanced academics was less than a single percentage of their time.

Special ed was slightly over 1% of their time.

Academic/curriculum was around 1-2% of their time.



Over 95% of the school boards time over the past year was spent on anything but academic issues or improving education.

Their most important priority over the past year was making pronouncements honoring different groups.

Accolades, pronouncements, resolutions, etc was more than double the next closest topic, budget, which occupied less than 10% of their time.

Capital improvement was less than 5% of their time.

[Anonymous]

Rezoning will always be controversial and cause parents to fight. However, when you buy a house there are no guarantees that your house will not be rezoned. But no one has the balls to do it so status quo it is in FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rezoning will always be controversial and cause parents to fight. However, when you buy a house there are no guarantees that your house will not be rezoned. But no one has the balls to do it so status quo it is in FCPS.

No, it’s not status quo. If they think parents will not object, they will move kids out of overcrowded schools. They widen the existing demographic gaps and then act shocked at what they’ve done. There’s a long line of hypocrites on the School Board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.

The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.

If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.

DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.