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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
how often does FFX redistrict?
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Anonymous
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We're relatively new to this area and I was reading the posts about the Annandale redistricting. We've never lived in an area where schools got redistricted but it seems to happen fairly frequently here. How often exactly? And if you get redistricted, can you be grandfathered in at your previous school if you bought prior to the redistricting?
We paid an arm and a leg ( or maybe I should say a bigger arm and a leg) to be in a high school district we wanted, that borders another district we absolutely don't want. There is no hint of redistricting at this point but I'm asking because our kids are still young and I wonder what our options would be, besides selling and moving again, if we got redistricted a few years from now. |
Anonymous
If you followed any of the South County and/or Annandale redistricting, you surely heard about the increasing rate of over-crowding at several (many?) FCPS schools, complete with birth rate data and projections about influx into various pockets of the County. So to answer the "how often exactly?" question, it is not known to be on a specific schedule, but it is likely to occur with increasing frequency. Then add in a markedly changed School Board in 2012, and the redistricting issue becomes even harder to predict. Grandfathering can be liberal (as is the case with the Annandale redistricting) but it not based on when one purchased property.
Your options will be what everyone else's options are -- selling and moving again, opting for an alternative to public school, or perhaps pupil placement due to program. |
Anonymous
Redistrictings are frequent in FFX and Loudoun, less so in Arlington (though some expect part of W-L to get redistricted to Wakefield soon). Grandfathering varies, but it has nothing to do with the assigned schools when you bought your house. It depends on your child's grade level. So, for example, rising 6th graders at an elementary school may be grandfathered, but younger kids may be required to attend the new school. At the middle and high school level, the grandfathering is more liberal (so, for example, a student who just completed the 9th grade at Annandale HS won't be redistricted to Woodson or Edison in the fall of 2012, but a younger sibling just entering high school in 2012 will attend the new school). Depending on the boundary change, you can also "pupil place" your kids back to the other school. So, for example, if part of West Springfield HS (an AP school) gets reassigned to Lee HS (an IB school), and your rising 9th grader would attend Lee after the redistricting, you can "pupil place" him back to West Springfield so long as he takes pre-AP and AP courses. The down side of this is that you have to provide transportation and your kid may be separated from his friends in the neighborhood. There usually are a fair number of pupil placements in the first year or two after a redistricting, but it tapers off over time. For example, after FCPS redistricted some kids at Westfield, Oakton and Madison (AP schools) to South Lakes HS (an IB school) starting in the fall of 2008, there were a huge number of pupil placements back to those schools. Now the number is much smaller. Kids end up wanting to stay with their friends at their existing schools, and parents get more comfortable with the new schools. |
Anonymous
| Keep an eye on the enrollment statistics. If you bought into a school that isn't projected to be over-enrolled, chances are your kid will get to stay in that school boundary. Annandale's redistricting happened because that high school was projected at something like 114% (or more) over-enrollment, while surrounding high schools like Falls Church were under-enrolled. It made sense to ease the crowding at Annandale, by shifting some boundaries, but it did make some waves, particularly because Woodson has much higher test scores and different demographics than Annandale. |
Anonymous
That makes sense, except that FCPS's estimates of school capacity and its enrollment projections bounce around every year, and we're currently in a situation where there are many schools that are projected to be over-capacity in a few years. So the local high school may be under-enrolled, but the local middle school may be over-enrolled. It makes things trickier. Annandale was projected to be at 115% of its capacity (with a modular addition) in a few years, not 114% over-enrolled. I think you meant the former. |
Anonymous
| We could give you more info if you told us what district you are in and what district you don't want to be in. If its Oakton/South Lakes, you are in the clear because they just redid those borders. If you are in Langley, somehow that district always mysteriously maintains its borders. Etc etc |
Anonymous
| OP here. Thank you for the replies. That gave me the idea of checking a school capacity map and I think we're ok. I'd rather not say where we are and where we don't want to be since I don't want to offend anyone or start a war given how upset some people have been getting on the other threads (let's just say we could have bought a much nicer house in the district we don't want to be in). |
Anonymous
Admirable restraint. |
Anonymous
Where did you find this? After this post, I looked and didn't have much luck. Even if it's not it map form, statistics with capacity and enrollment would be nice to see. Thanks. |
Anonymous
See the CIP book, especially pages 16 - 21. http://www.fcps.edu/fts/cipbook2012-16.pdf |
Anonymous
About 3 months after the school board adopted that, FCPS' projections changed, and changed radically. Apparently, the state is now providing them with birthrate information at a much more specific level. As a result, there have been enormous projection changes. Of course, this means either that their earlier projection methodology was incredibly inaccurate, and they failed to 1) figure out there was a problem and 2) fix it; or they are giving far too much weight to the birthrate information in their new projections. Either way, it's hard to view their enrollment projections as anything approaching accurate. And of course, FCPS will always make the numbers do what they want (change the program capacity, change "ideal" capacity levels, emphasize design capacity, ignore portions of modular capacity, etc. etc.). Just don't expect the explanation they give you in one situation to apply to the next. Dashboard has the most up-to-date projection numbers. |