Should FCPS Reassign New Affordable Housing from Marshall to Langley?
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Anonymous
I just asked above but what elementary school would this new low income housing feed into? It isn’t as simple as just sending some poor kids to Langley. Would just that development and not the immediate surrounding area get zoned for a different high school? |
Anonymous
I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley. If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success. I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests. |
Anonymous
The development is zoned for Westbriar. |
Anonymous
At present, Westbriar ES and Kilmer MS. It would make sense to reassign the new buildings on Spring Hill Road and to the immediate north to Spring Hill ES and Cooper MS. Spring Hill has capacity and Cooper has about 150 fewer kids now than Kilmer. Kilmer has had temporary classrooms (trailers/modular) for years. Cooper is being renovated and expanded now. |
Anonymous
I know that Spring Hill is a split feeder and already one of the largest elementary schools in McLean. I thought the SB was going to get rid of the split feeder to Langley/McLean High but then they didn’t. Do they make these tiny boundary adjustments for equity? We moved here 4 years ago. I have been trying to follow these boundary changes. I know there was a huge push for equity changes via One Fairfax to change boundaries across all of Fairfax county and I believe it was axed due to unpopularity. I wouldn’t want my kids reshuffled for the sake of equity. |
Anonymous
They have in the past. Ft Hunt elementary has a little island that encompasses one low income housing development |
Anonymous
Langley was expanded to almost 2400 kids based on the assumption at the time by FCPS staff that it would enable Langley would take on some of the growth in Tysons. That hasn't happened yet; in fact, it was stymied by a School Board member who lives in Great Falls when FCPS staff proposed to assign part of Tysons to Langley. But the additional, new housing that's being built in a previously commercial area of Tysons adjacent to a part of Vienna that was just reassigned to Langley warrants a fresh look. There are no logistical impediments to assigning the area to an ES and MS that feed primarily or entirely to Langley, and the schools in question are less likely to end up overcrowded than Kilmer MS and Marshall HS if FCPS keeps adding more new housing in Tysons to those schools. The area is closer to Cooper and Langley than the areas that the School Board reassigned to Cooper/Langley last year, and much closer to those schools than other neighborhoods that have been assigned to those schools for decades. It's not like students in this area in Tysons will be walking to any of the schools in question, so the trope about how terrible "busing" is don't come into play here. You are correct that Madison is being expanded, but the area in question could not be assigned to Madison without creating an attendance island, which the School Board previously has said is something to be avoided. In addition, the expansion of Madison positions the school to take on additional kids from Oakton, one of FCPS's perennially most overcrowded schools, if necessary. Perhaps you envision a scenario where Marshall's most expensive neighborhoods in Vienna are reassigned to Madison, so that Marshall can be turned into the de facto Tysons HS, complete with a growing volume of affordable housing and a 30-35% FARMS rate, while Langley sits at 3% and Madison and McLean at 10% FARMS? To the extent that you imply that lower-income kids might be ill at ease and unable to thrive at a wealthy school like Langley, the experience at other schools suggests otherwise. There are low-income kids who live near Blake Lane zoned for Oakton, in the Cedar/Park area of Vienna zoned for Madison, and in the Timber Lane area of Falls Church zoned for McLean. By most accounts, those students fare well at those schools. Why should Langley be any different? As several have noted, this seems like a good opportunity to address some of the capacity imbalances in the Tysons area in a manner that is consistent with the county's commitment to One Fairfax. If you feel that it's an unacceptable exercise in gerrymandering, then surely you should also support a county-wide boundary review that also takes a fresh look at the appropriateness of sending kids who live in western Great Falls, as well as pockets of Herndon and Reston, to Langley, which is much further from their homes than Herndon, South Lakes, and Marshall. |
Anonymous
They have made tiny boundary adjustments where there are capacity imbalances among schools. That's how the Spring Gate Apartments in Tysons ended up at Kilmer/Marshall rather than Longfellow/McLean and how the remaining area in Tysons now zoned for Longfellow/McLean became an island. In this case, extending the Langley boundaries further south need not create an island. |
Anonymous
I believe that island was moved to Fort Hunt in the 1970s to address overcrowding at Hybla Valley. I don't think it had anything to do with equity. |
Anonymous
That sounds right. But it's a convenient straw-man to imply that adjustments that would mitigate capacity imbalances are "social engineering" when parents at the receiving schools don't like the demographics of the students being reassigned. |
Anonymous
Because Langley is below capacity, and has consistently been below capacity. Unless there is large-scale planned construction in Langley's boundaries, there should be an evaluation of how to get Langley to capacity before new housing automatically zones to schools at capacity. |
Anonymous
The anticipated development within the current Langley boundary is miniscule compared to what's projected within the current Marshall boundaries. To the extent that the poster to whom you responded just asked why Marshall couldn't just be expanded, that's not how things work in FCPS. Chantilly and McLean have been overcrowded for a decade and haven't been expanded. FCPS tries to use existing capacity and usually reactive rather than pro-active when it comes to dealing with future growth. This is as good an opportunity to be slightly pro-active as FCPS has had in years. |
Anonymous
We are going in circles. The FCPS projections show that Langley will be at 96% capacity by 2026-27. By comparision, Marshall is projected to be at 92% (or 98% excluding the modular addition) and Madison is projected to be at 82%. The capacity metric doesn't support the argument. |
Anonymous
You could easily assign it to Madison without creating an island. You would move the entire "panhandle" section of Marshall's boundary over to Madison (the area mostly covering the northern tip of Vienna that extends west from Tysons to Difficult Run. Madison would have the capacity to absorb that post renovation and that would also provide broader capacity relief to Marshall, which would help it take further Tyson's development in the future. Even with that change, Madison would also still have capacity to relieve Oakton if needed. |
Anonymous
We are going in circles, because you ignore the fact that FCPS's official projections don't take new housing into account until a developer has physically started construction, even if a development has been approved. However, the data available to the county reflects a potential increase of 661 high school students within the Marshall pyramid and only 4 high school students within the Langley pyramid. The data is available here: https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/planning-future/development-review-and-proffer-processes ("Residential Development Applications Dashboard"). Further, the comparisons of capacity should be made without regard to modulars, as trailers and modulars are inferior space to permanent classroom seats. |