FCPS HS Boundary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing a discussion from another thread over here because it is more relevant here.

As a bus drove by, I just checked travel times for Langley vs. Herndon. At least for folks north of route 7, there is really no difference between bus times.

Herndon High - 15 minutes from us, Langley High 17 minutes. Net difference, a de minimus 2 minutes. I encourage you to confirm yourselves.

Turns out buses as a pretext in this neck of the woods isn’t compelling.

I don’t know why Langley and Herndon are always brought up. Langley is now overcrowded. GF feeds into Langley. Other people are often trying to move GF families to Herndon. It is one thing if Langley was overcrowded but Langley isn’t overcrowded.

We are zoned for Langley and have watched for years while they make tiny boundary changes to Langley.

The afternoon and evening commute times are longer to Langley from some parts of GF. The reason Langley is brought up is because McLean is overcrowded so some kids could get shifted to Langley which could mean some LHS kids who are closer to Herndon should get shifted there.

In my experience there are always some McLean families near Langley who’d like to be rezoned to the wealthier, renovated school. Most would prefer to stay put and have pointed out that, with the modular addition, McLean isn’t overcrowded to the degree that FCPS has said in the past warrants redistricting.

However, Herndon has been expanded to almost 2800 seats, they are now projecting it will only have slightly over 1900 kids in five years, and you have members like Lady (who lives in Herndon) and McDaniel who seem to be promoting boundary changes. It’s not crazy to think they may propose to move more of McLean to Langley and then move part of Langley to Herndon.

If you don’t want further boundary changes in Dranesville, let Robyn Lady and the at-large members know. They are floundering right now because they are starting to realize they will ultimately be accountable for any future boundary changes, regardless of what they say about just relying on staff recommendations.

When you look at the Herndon situation you can see how bad the school board is at this. In 2016, Herndon was at 2300 students and over the capacity design of 2145. They projected Herndon to get to 2500 students by 2021 with an expansion underway to raise capacity to 2500 and be right at 100% utilization. They kept these projections throughout the expansion even though Herndon's enrollment stayed flat at 2300 for the next three years. Then, instead of expanding to 2500 capacity they pumped it up to 2800. Now in 2024, they are still at 2300 enrollment and projected to stay at 2300 for the next four years with a new capacity utilization of 85%. Oh no, now we are at a capacity utilization deficit and we need to fix it. Bad planning and bad use of taxpayer money over-expanding and now we need to shift boundaries.

The latest projections in the 2025-29 CIP have Herndon HS at 2240 students in 2024-25, 2135 students in 2025-26, 2008 students in 2026-27, 1932 students in 2027-28, and 1920 students in 2028-29. They are showing Herndon at 71% capacity in 2028, not 85%.

You may say that only underscores your point about bad planning if they expanded Herndon to a design capacity of 2779 seats and then a year or two later significantly changed their projections to reflect a major decline in Herndon's enrollment. It would be great if someone really dug into how they are coming up with these numbers. But, in the interim, people in Dranesville need to assume that staff will make recommendations in a year or two that may be intended to justify the scale of the Herndon expansion after-the-fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many McLean kids come from the two attendance islands inside the Marshall boundaries?

McLean has two attendance islands. Neither is inside the Marshall boundaries.

The first island is in Tysons and bordered by Langley to the north and Marshall to the east, west, and south. The second is in Falls Church and bordered by Marshall to the west, Falls Church City to the north and east, and Falls Church to the south.

If I had to guess, I'd say about 175 kids come from the first island (Spring Hill) and 180 kids from the second island (Timber Lane). If they moved the first island to Langley and the second to Falls Church, McLean would be slightly over capacity excluding the modular and under capacity including the modular. I believe most would prefer no further boundary changes unless the overcrowding is more acute, even with the modular, and/or they've committed to a future upgrade of the school.

I didn’t understand why more of Spring Hill didn’t get moved to Langley. This would have been such an easy fix.

They did another chance this year with Kent gardens and they only shifted around elementary schools with no changes to high school.

Elaine Tholen told Longfellow/McLean parents in 2022 that they couldn't move more kids than they moved in 2021 or it might overcrowd Cooper. But she's gone, Herndon has been expanded, and Robyn Lady is new so it's a different ballgame.

Most people outside the McLean pyramid aren't familiar with the boundary changes that affected elementary schools within that pyramid. One of the schools, Franklin Sherman, had its boundaries largely redrawn with almost 50% of the existing neighborhoods moved to two other schools and an even larger (in terms of kids, not geography) area moved from Kent Gardens to Franklin Sherman. Most grades were grandfathered, so there weren't many complaints, but it showed how they will make big changes to boundaries if they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many McLean kids come from the two attendance islands inside the Marshall boundaries?

McLean has two attendance islands. Neither is inside the Marshall boundaries.

The first island is in Tysons and bordered by Langley to the north and Marshall to the east, west, and south. The second is in Falls Church and bordered by Marshall to the west, Falls Church City to the north and east, and Falls Church to the south.

If I had to guess, I'd say about 175 kids come from the first island (Spring Hill) and 180 kids from the second island (Timber Lane). If they moved the first island to Langley and the second to Falls Church, McLean would be slightly over capacity excluding the modular and under capacity including the modular. I believe most would prefer no further boundary changes unless the overcrowding is more acute, even with the modular, and/or they've committed to a future upgrade of the school.

I didn’t understand why more of Spring Hill didn’t get moved to Langley. This would have been such an easy fix.

They did another chance this year with Kent gardens and they only shifted around elementary schools with no changes to high school.

Elaine Tholen told Longfellow/McLean parents in 2022 that they couldn't move more kids than they moved in 2021 or it might overcrowd Cooper. But she's gone, Herndon has been expanded, and Robyn Lady is new so it's a different ballgame.

Most people outside the McLean pyramid aren't familiar with the boundary changes that affected elementary schools within that pyramid. One of the schools, Franklin Sherman, had its boundaries largely redrawn with almost 50% of the existing neighborhoods moved to two other schools and an even larger (in terms of kids, not geography) area moved from Kent Gardens to Franklin Sherman. Most grades were grandfathered, so there weren't many complaints, but it showed how they will make big changes to boundaries if they want.

^ And just to be clear Tholen purported to be talking about Cooper after its renovation, not before or during its renovation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many McLean kids come from the two attendance islands inside the Marshall boundaries?

McLean has two attendance islands. Neither is inside the Marshall boundaries.

The first island is in Tysons and bordered by Langley to the north and Marshall to the east, west, and south. The second is in Falls Church and bordered by Marshall to the west, Falls Church City to the north and east, and Falls Church to the south.

If I had to guess, I'd say about 175 kids come from the first island (Spring Hill) and 180 kids from the second island (Timber Lane). If they moved the first island to Langley and the second to Falls Church, McLean would be slightly over capacity excluding the modular and under capacity including the modular. I believe most would prefer no further boundary changes unless the overcrowding is more acute, even with the modular, and/or they've committed to a future upgrade of the school.

I didn’t understand why more of Spring Hill didn’t get moved to Langley. This would have been such an easy fix.

They did another chance this year with Kent gardens and they only shifted around elementary schools with no changes to high school.

Elaine Tholen told Longfellow/McLean parents in 2022 that they couldn't move more kids than they moved in 2021 or it might overcrowd Cooper. But she's gone, Herndon has been expanded, and Robyn Lady is new so it's a different ballgame.

Most people outside the McLean pyramid aren't familiar with the boundary changes that affected elementary schools within that pyramid. One of the schools, Franklin Sherman, had its boundaries largely redrawn with almost 50% of the existing neighborhoods moved to two other schools and an even larger (in terms of kids, not geography) area moved from Kent Gardens to Franklin Sherman. Most grades were grandfathered, so there weren't many complaints, but it showed how they will make big changes to boundaries if they want.

They didn’t change the high school though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing a discussion from another thread over here because it is more relevant here.

As a bus drove by, I just checked travel times for Langley vs. Herndon. At least for folks north of route 7, there is really no difference between bus times.

Herndon High - 15 minutes from us, Langley High 17 minutes. Net difference, a de minimus 2 minutes. I encourage you to confirm yourselves.

Turns out buses as a pretext in this neck of the woods isn’t compelling.

I don’t know why Langley and Herndon are always brought up. Langley is now overcrowded. GF feeds into Langley. Other people are often trying to move GF families to Herndon. It is one thing if Langley was overcrowded but Langley isn’t overcrowded.

We are zoned for Langley and have watched for years while they make tiny boundary changes to Langley.

The afternoon and evening commute times are longer to Langley from some parts of GF. The reason Langley is brought up is because McLean is overcrowded so some kids could get shifted to Langley which could mean some LHS kids who are closer to Herndon should get shifted there.

In my experience there are always some McLean families near Langley who’d like to be rezoned to the wealthier, renovated school. Most would prefer to stay put and have pointed out that, with the modular addition, McLean isn’t overcrowded to the degree that FCPS has said in the past warrants redistricting.

However, Herndon has been expanded to almost 2800 seats, they are now projecting it will only have slightly over 1900 kids in five years, and you have members like Lady (who lives in Herndon) and McDaniel who seem to be promoting boundary changes. It’s not crazy to think they may propose to move more of McLean to Langley and then move part of Langley to Herndon.

If you don’t want further boundary changes in Dranesville, let Robyn Lady and the at-large members know. They are floundering right now because they are starting to realize they will ultimately be accountable for any future boundary changes, regardless of what they say about just relying on staff recommendations.

When you look at the Herndon situation you can see how bad the school board is at this. In 2016, Herndon was at 2300 students and over the capacity design of 2145. They projected Herndon to get to 2500 students by 2021 with an expansion underway to raise capacity to 2500 and be right at 100% utilization. They kept these projections throughout the expansion even though Herndon's enrollment stayed flat at 2300 for the next three years. Then, instead of expanding to 2500 capacity they pumped it up to 2800. Now in 2024, they are still at 2300 enrollment and projected to stay at 2300 for the next four years with a new capacity utilization of 85%. Oh no, now we are at a capacity utilization deficit and we need to fix it. Bad planning and bad use of taxpayer money over-expanding and now we need to shift boundaries.

The latest projections in the 2025-29 CIP have Herndon HS at 2240 students in 2024-25, 2135 students in 2025-26, 2008 students in 2026-27, 1932 students in 2027-28, and 1920 students in 2028-29. They are showing Herndon at 71% capacity in 2028, not 85%.

You may say that only underscores your point about bad planning if they expanded Herndon to a design capacity of 2779 seats and then a year or two later significantly changed their projections to reflect a major decline in Herndon's enrollment. It would be great if someone really dug into how they are coming up with these numbers. But, in the interim, people in Dranesville need to assume that staff will make recommendations in a year or two that may be intended to justify the scale of the Herndon expansion after-the-fact.

I think everyone is assuming that the SB will make changes to justify the expansion and that is why people in Dranesville are freaking out. Hopefully there is a lawsuit and we get to see behind the scenes how they came up with these numbers that were so very wrong and whether there was another agenda behind the dramatic over-expansion of Herndon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: The one that makes the most sense out of all the elementary schools geographically is Keene Mill, which would also bring an AAP center to the Lewis pyramid.

This would take KMES from a part of a walkable pyramid to a 100% bussing HS connection. It would be terrible on multiple fronts, and the KMES boundary is a huge portion of WSHS's non-white demographic, which would be a huge step backward for WSHS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: The one that makes the most sense out of all the elementary schools geographically is Keene Mill, which would also bring an AAP center to the Lewis pyramid.

This would take KMES from a part of a walkable pyramid to a 100% bussing HS connection. It would be terrible on multiple fronts, and the KMES boundary is a huge portion of WSHS's non-white demographic, which would be a huge step backward for WSHS.

KM literally shares a field with Irving. I cannot see them sending kids whose backyards literally touch Irving to a different pyramid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: The one that makes the most sense out of all the elementary schools geographically is Keene Mill, which would also bring an AAP center to the Lewis pyramid.

This would take KMES from a part of a walkable pyramid to a 100% bussing HS connection. It would be terrible on multiple fronts, and the KMES boundary is a huge portion of WSHS's non-white demographic, which would be a huge step backward for WSHS.

Except for Orange Hunt, most of the ES feeder schools are anywhere from 49 to 62 percent minority, with KMES being the 62 percent. It definitely has a larger minority population than the other schools, by roughly 10 percent, but I wouldn't say it's a "huge portion." Other than Orange Hunt (likely because it's German immersion), most of the WS elementary schools are pretty similar from an ethnic demographic perspective. I'm not in favor of any of the WS-area schools getting redistricted (other than eliminating that split feeder at LBSS to keep those middle school kids at LBSS for high school, which makes a ton of sense and would likely be pretty non-controversial).

[Anonymous]

And you think you necessarily get what you want in FCPS? Haven’t really found it works that way.

[Anonymous]

And you think you necessarily get what you want in FCPS? Haven’t really found it works that way.

No truer words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I think everyone is assuming that the SB will make changes to justify the expansion and that is why people in Dranesville are freaking out. Hopefully there is a lawsuit and we get to see behind the scenes how they came up with these numbers that were so very wrong and whether there was another agenda behind the dramatic over-expansion of Herndon.

They have offered no reason for expanding Herndon so dramatically, so one can only assume they have a plan they haven't shared. They've now made room at Herndon for all of Forestville and Great Falls Elementary schools, so they can now move a lot of the Tysons-area apartment buildup into Langley to achieve their desired FARMS rates.

The last time they tried modifying the boundary policy to include socioeconomic balance as the key driver, there was immediate and immense pushback from a lot of places. The lessons they learned from this are (1) keep everything as quiet as possible (hide things in unrecorded work sessions, behind attorney/client privilege and absurdly expensive FOIA searches), (2) push things through as quickly as possible with as little stakeholder notification and involvement as possible, and (3) do it right after the new school board is seated so there's plenty of time before any of them need to stand for elections again, hoping people will forget that their kids and property values got screwed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think everyone is assuming that the SB will make changes to justify the expansion and that is why people in Dranesville are freaking out. Hopefully there is a lawsuit and we get to see behind the scenes how they came up with these numbers that were so very wrong and whether there was another agenda behind the dramatic over-expansion of Herndon.

They have offered no reason for expanding Herndon so dramatically, so one can only assume they have a plan they haven't shared. They've now made room at Herndon for all of Forestville and Great Falls Elementary schools, so they can now move a lot of the Tysons-area apartment buildup into Langley to achieve their desired FARMS rates.

The last time they tried modifying the boundary policy to include socioeconomic balance as the key driver, there was immediate and immense pushback from a lot of places. The lessons they learned from this are (1) keep everything as quiet as possible (hide things in unrecorded work sessions, behind attorney/client privilege and absurdly expensive FOIA searches), (2) push things through as quickly as possible with as little stakeholder notification and involvement as possible, and (3) do it right after the new school board is seated so there's plenty of time before any of them need to stand for elections again, hoping people will forget that their kids and property values got screwed.

After what happened with LCPS and Youngkin, reminding parents where there is a state wide election is going to be part of the GOP playbook. Sure you can't vote against the board, but you can punish their party

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I think everyone is assuming that the SB will make changes to justify the expansion and that is why people in Dranesville are freaking out. Hopefully there is a lawsuit and we get to see behind the scenes how they came up with these numbers that were so very wrong and whether there was another agenda behind the dramatic over-expansion of Herndon.

They have offered no reason for expanding Herndon so dramatically, so one can only assume they have a plan they haven't shared. They've now made room at Herndon for all of Forestville and Great Falls Elementary schools, so they can now move a lot of the Tysons-area apartment buildup into Langley to achieve their desired FARMS rates.

The last time they tried modifying the boundary policy to include socioeconomic balance as the key driver, there was immediate and immense pushback from a lot of places. The lessons they learned from this are (1) keep everything as quiet as possible (hide things in unrecorded work sessions, behind attorney/client privilege and absurdly expensive FOIA searches), (2) push things through as quickly as possible with as little stakeholder notification and involvement as possible, and (3) do it right after the new school board is seated so there's plenty of time before any of them need to stand for elections again, hoping people will forget that their kids and property values got screwed.

It backfires because it leads to a few higher SES schools that border lower SES school taking the brunt of the burden of balancing while the wealthier schools stay the same. The farms rate in the county is out of control and going to get worse thanks to the county board welcoming affordable housing as fast as it can be build. All of that housing is concentrated in a few regions. Even the 'good schools' in those regions are now high farms. Meanwhile, neighboring schools have negligible farms rates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the change.org for those opposing changing the WSHS boundary:

https://chng.it/56yWH8hGLv

This is just related to West Springfield elementary. Keene Mill is closer. It would make more sense to look there.

Agree.

It is specific to one elementary school.

If they want community support, they need to include all of that pyramid, not just one neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

After what happened with LCPS and Youngkin, reminding parents where there is a state wide election is going to be part of the GOP playbook. Sure you can't vote against the board, but you can punish their party

Correct. For that reason I think they will pass the new boundary policy as quickly as possible, then stay quiet until December when they will suddenly pop up a board meeting item with a fully-formed new map ready for voting.