FCPS HS Boundary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A focus right now should be the policy they are working on - 8130.

Everyone should let them know, whether you think you’re up for a boundary change or not, that it is unacceptable to only grandfather in high school seniors to a boundary change. At a minimum, juniors and seniors should have the option to finish high school where they started. I’d personally prefer changes to start with a freshman class.

And they are working on language for “expedited boundary changes” needing only public notice vs. public hearings if less than 15% of the school is moved.

If you communicate with a SB member right now, they are passing the buck, saying their only focus is policy 8130 and the Superintendent will use it to implement changes.

Let’s make sure those two reasonable items are included in that policy.

Yep, let the board know if you want your freshman or sophomore to stay with their friends in high school, rather than be sent to a brand new school as a sophomore or Junior because the SB believes they are too soft and that the stress of a forced new high school would be good character development for them.

This is not hyperbole. That is the sentiment expressed in the governance meeting yesterday.

By which School Board members? We need names to hold these people accountable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Yes, this is son frustrating, The county needs to stop encouraging people who don't contribute their share of taxes to move here ugh. It's becoming a fiscal death spiral and it's completely unsustainable.

Please let your SB representative know. I think they are slowly getting the message, but we need everyone to reach out to let them know how negatively impactful county wide redistricting will be.

That is not a school board issue. You need to talk to county, state, and federal representatives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A focus right now should be the policy they are working on - 8130.

Everyone should let them know, whether you think you’re up for a boundary change or not, that it is unacceptable to only grandfather in high school seniors to a boundary change. At a minimum, juniors and seniors should have the option to finish high school where they started. I’d personally prefer changes to start with a freshman class.

And they are working on language for “expedited boundary changes” needing only public notice vs. public hearings if less than 15% of the school is moved.

If you communicate with a SB member right now, they are passing the buck, saying their only focus is policy 8130 and the Superintendent will use it to implement changes.

Let’s make sure those two reasonable items are included in that policy.

Yep, let the board know if you want your freshman or sophomore to stay with their friends in high school, rather than be sent to a brand new school as a sophomore or Junior because the SB believes they are too soft and that the stress of a forced new high school would be good character development for them.

This is not hyperbole. That is the sentiment expressed in the governance meeting yesterday.

By which School Board members? We need names to hold these people accountable.

I believe it was dranesville rep Robin lady. Others were generally supportive of the approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Yes, this is son frustrating, The county needs to stop encouraging people who don't contribute their share of taxes to move here ugh. It's becoming a fiscal death spiral and it's completely unsustainable.

Please let your SB representative know. I think they are slowly getting the message, but we need everyone to reach out to let them know how negatively impactful county wide redistricting will be.

That is not a school board issue. You need to talk to county, state, and federal representatives.

The redistricting is being driven largely by the school board, so not sure what you mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A focus right now should be the policy they are working on - 8130.

Everyone should let them know, whether you think you’re up for a boundary change or not, that it is unacceptable to only grandfather in high school seniors to a boundary change. At a minimum, juniors and seniors should have the option to finish high school where they started. I’d personally prefer changes to start with a freshman class.

And they are working on language for “expedited boundary changes” needing only public notice vs. public hearings if less than 15% of the school is moved.

If you communicate with a SB member right now, they are passing the buck, saying their only focus is policy 8130 and the Superintendent will use it to implement changes.

Let’s make sure those two reasonable items are included in that policy.

Yep, let the board know if you want your freshman or sophomore to stay with their friends in high school, rather than be sent to a brand new school as a sophomore or Junior because the SB believes they are too soft and that the stress of a forced new high school would be good character development for them.

This is not hyperbole. That is the sentiment expressed in the governance meeting yesterday.

By which School Board members? We need names to hold these people accountable.

I believe it was dranesville rep Robin lady. Others were generally supportive of the approach.

So she not only wants to dump Great Falls kids into Herndon, she wants to pull them out of Langley even sooner to make it happen? Why is some retired freak who doesn’t even have kids scheming to ruin kids’ lives? Can’t she just go play golf?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

But isn't that equity?


No. Equity, as defined by the leftist in charge here, is where the government ensures equal outcomes, which they achieve by driving everyone towards the same mediocrity. Equality is giving everyone an even playing field and realizing that not everyone will succeed to the same level.

We wouldn't say we want health equity where everyone has a cold - we recognize that most people are usually healthy but some people are really sick, so we concentrate those people in hospitals because that's where the doctors and specialists are. We don't send surgeons around to every house.

We wouldn't say we want crime equity where everyone is subjected to the same level of violent crime - we concentrate the violent criminals in prisons because that's where the guards are.

Some kids need to be in an intensive ELL environment. Some kids need to be in a far more structured disciplinary environment. Some kids have severe learning disabilities. Rather than spreading underperforming kids out, and putting those specialists and resources everywhere - not to mention the extra expense as well as the impact of reduced attention on higher-acheiving kids - they would be best served by concentrating them where the specialists are. Yes, it might cost more to bus them around, but bus drivers are cheap compared to learning specialists, and in a decade the buses will drive themselves and be solar powered anyway.

It will be very interesting when they take the kids with IEP's and kids who are ELLs and behavior problems out of WSHS and concentrate them somewhere else. If you think people are upset now, just wait. FCPS will not have a chance of winning the ensuing civil rights lawsuit. All federal money for those kids will be pulled in a heartbeat. And it's not a small sum of money. Your house value will definitely go down when your property taxes get jacked up.

what PP suggested is illegal at the state and federal level, but even if federal per pupil funding was pulled, the county would end up better off because the amount of money needed to educate those kids is more than the feds provide

I taught in a school where they experimented with putting ALL the ESOL kids in one class. That teacher had a terrible year. Terrible. Then got fired.

How did the other classes fare without them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A focus right now should be the policy they are working on - 8130.

Everyone should let them know, whether you think you’re up for a boundary change or not, that it is unacceptable to only grandfather in high school seniors to a boundary change. At a minimum, juniors and seniors should have the option to finish high school where they started. I’d personally prefer changes to start with a freshman class.

And they are working on language for “expedited boundary changes” needing only public notice vs. public hearings if less than 15% of the school is moved.

If you communicate with a SB member right now, they are passing the buck, saying their only focus is policy 8130 and the Superintendent will use it to implement changes.

Let’s make sure those two reasonable items are included in that policy.

Yep, let the board know if you want your freshman or sophomore to stay with their friends in high school, rather than be sent to a brand new school as a sophomore or Junior because the SB believes they are too soft and that the stress of a forced new high school would be good character development for them.

This is not hyperbole. That is the sentiment expressed in the governance meeting yesterday.

By which School Board members? We need names to hold these people accountable.

I believe it was dranesville rep Robin lady. Others were generally supportive of the approach.

So she not only wants to dump Great Falls kids into Herndon, she wants to pull them out of Langley even sooner to make it happen? Why is some retired freak who doesn’t even have kids scheming to ruin kids’ lives? Can’t she just go play golf?

Great Falls is used to their rep only caring about Langley. This is what happens when parents don't vote their own interests

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Yes, this is son frustrating, The county needs to stop encouraging people who don't contribute their share of taxes to move here ugh. It's becoming a fiscal death spiral and it's completely unsustainable.

Please let your SB representative know. I think they are slowly getting the message, but we need everyone to reach out to let them know how negatively impactful county wide redistricting will be.

That is not a school board issue. You need to talk to county, state, and federal representatives.

The redistricting is being driven largely by the school board, so not sure what you mean.

Read what Pp said, “The county needs to stop encouraging people who don't contribute their share of taxes to move here ugh. It's becoming a fiscal death spiral and it's completely unsustainable.” That is not a SB issue.

[Anonymous]

County FARMs rates have doubled to 40%. This change has taken place over the last 15 years. To put this in perspective, Alexandria is 53% FARMs students.

There’s nowhere else for the increasing poor population to live in NOVA. Arlington is too expensive and Alexandria is out of room. Plenty of room here in Fairfax.

You can’t hide from this anymore. Especially in our progressive enclave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:County FARMs rates have doubled to 40%. This change has taken place over the last 15 years. To put this in perspective, Alexandria is 53% FARMs students.

There’s nowhere else for the increasing poor population to live in NOVA. Arlington is too expensive and Alexandria is out of room. Plenty of room here in Fairfax.

You can’t hide from this anymore. Especially in our progressive enclave.

So to sum up, let’s just drag the whole system down to the lowest level? You know that the ability to sustain services for the FARMS kids is dependent on tax revenue directly linked to property value, including in outsized percent the property value in these low farms areas.

Redistricting doesn’t solve anything for those kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

But isn't that equity?


No. Equity, as defined by the leftist in charge here, is where the government ensures equal outcomes, which they achieve by driving everyone towards the same mediocrity. Equality is giving everyone an even playing field and realizing that not everyone will succeed to the same level.

We wouldn't say we want health equity where everyone has a cold - we recognize that most people are usually healthy but some people are really sick, so we concentrate those people in hospitals because that's where the doctors and specialists are. We don't send surgeons around to every house.

We wouldn't say we want crime equity where everyone is subjected to the same level of violent crime - we concentrate the violent criminals in prisons because that's where the guards are.

Some kids need to be in an intensive ELL environment. Some kids need to be in a far more structured disciplinary environment. Some kids have severe learning disabilities. Rather than spreading underperforming kids out, and putting those specialists and resources everywhere - not to mention the extra expense as well as the impact of reduced attention on higher-acheiving kids - they would be best served by concentrating them where the specialists are. Yes, it might cost more to bus them around, but bus drivers are cheap compared to learning specialists, and in a decade the buses will drive themselves and be solar powered anyway.

It will be very interesting when they take the kids with IEP's and kids who are ELLs and behavior problems out of WSHS and concentrate them somewhere else. If you think people are upset now, just wait. FCPS will not have a chance of winning the ensuing civil rights lawsuit. All federal money for those kids will be pulled in a heartbeat. And it's not a small sum of money. Your house value will definitely go down when your property taxes get jacked up.

what PP suggested is illegal at the state and federal level, but even if federal per pupil funding was pulled, the county would end up better off because the amount of money needed to educate those kids is more than the feds provide

I taught in a school where they experimented with putting ALL the ESOL kids in one class. That teacher had a terrible year. Terrible. Then got fired.

How did the other classes fare without them?

Didn’t hear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

But isn't that equity?


No. Equity, as defined by the leftist in charge here, is where the government ensures equal outcomes, which they achieve by driving everyone towards the same mediocrity. Equality is giving everyone an even playing field and realizing that not everyone will succeed to the same level.

We wouldn't say we want health equity where everyone has a cold - we recognize that most people are usually healthy but some people are really sick, so we concentrate those people in hospitals because that's where the doctors and specialists are. We don't send surgeons around to every house.

We wouldn't say we want crime equity where everyone is subjected to the same level of violent crime - we concentrate the violent criminals in prisons because that's where the guards are.

Some kids need to be in an intensive ELL environment. Some kids need to be in a far more structured disciplinary environment. Some kids have severe learning disabilities. Rather than spreading underperforming kids out, and putting those specialists and resources everywhere - not to mention the extra expense as well as the impact of reduced attention on higher-acheiving kids - they would be best served by concentrating them where the specialists are. Yes, it might cost more to bus them around, but bus drivers are cheap compared to learning specialists, and in a decade the buses will drive themselves and be solar powered anyway.

It will be very interesting when they take the kids with IEP's and kids who are ELLs and behavior problems out of WSHS and concentrate them somewhere else. If you think people are upset now, just wait. FCPS will not have a chance of winning the ensuing civil rights lawsuit. All federal money for those kids will be pulled in a heartbeat. And it's not a small sum of money. Your house value will definitely go down when your property taxes get jacked up.

what PP suggested is illegal at the state and federal level, but even if federal per pupil funding was pulled, the county would end up better off because the amount of money needed to educate those kids is more than the feds provide

I taught in a school where they experimented with putting ALL the ESOL kids in one class. That teacher had a terrible year. Terrible. Then got fired.

What do you mean "experiment"? Do you realize your exact scenario happens every year at schools with courses under English Language Development that are specifically made for having ALL the ESOL kids in one classroom and they succeed in improving their English?

The school had so many ESOL kids that they usually were spread across multiple classes as clusters. They combined three clusters into one. It went as well as could be expected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:County FARMs rates have doubled to 40%. This change has taken place over the last 15 years. To put this in perspective, Alexandria is 53% FARMs students.

There’s nowhere else for the increasing poor population to live in NOVA. Arlington is too expensive and Alexandria is out of room. Plenty of room here in Fairfax.

You can’t hide from this anymore. Especially in our progressive enclave.

Stop giving zoning variances and stop subsidizing low income housing. Massive low income developments are only economical when they are subsidized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:County FARMs rates have doubled to 40%. This change has taken place over the last 15 years. To put this in perspective, Alexandria is 53% FARMs students.

There’s nowhere else for the increasing poor population to live in NOVA. Arlington is too expensive and Alexandria is out of room. Plenty of room here in Fairfax.

You can’t hide from this anymore. Especially in our progressive enclave.

Stop giving zoning variances and stop subsidizing low income housing. Massive low income developments are only economical when they are subsidized.

This is partially political, but I think we are heading the opposite direction of this recommendation. In fact, Fairfax is piloting a UBI effort in the coming months, IIRC.

And the optics of Lewis/WSHS and Langley/Herndon are pretty stark. I don’t think the progressive side of our governing officials in Fairfax county want to perpetuate the idea of the “wrong side of the tracks.”

Plus with renovation plans/queues being so slow and out of date, boundary changes are actually an efficient method of using our existing infrastructure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:County FARMs rates have doubled to 40%. This change has taken place over the last 15 years. To put this in perspective, Alexandria is 53% FARMs students.

There’s nowhere else for the increasing poor population to live in NOVA. Arlington is too expensive and Alexandria is out of room. Plenty of room here in Fairfax.

You can’t hide from this anymore. Especially in our progressive enclave.

Stop giving zoning variances and stop subsidizing low income housing. Massive low income developments are only economical when they are subsidized.

This is partially political, but I think we are heading the opposite direction of this recommendation. In fact, Fairfax is piloting a UBI effort in the coming months, IIRC.

And the optics of Lewis/WSHS and Langley/Herndon are pretty stark. I don’t think the progressive side of our governing officials in Fairfax county want to perpetuate the idea of the “wrong side of the tracks.”

Plus with renovation plans/queues being so slow and out of date, boundary changes are actually an efficient method of using our existing infrastructure.

Get back to me when they build anything like https://www.pennrose.com/apartments/virginia/residences-at-north-hill/ is built in Vienna or Greatfalls