FCPS Skyview Boundary Revised Scenario 1 / 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't go to the meeting.

Did they address the issue of Westfield not having enough students?

They did. They mentioned planned development in the area and also that they would look to move academy programs to Westfield.

Moving academy programs doesn't help with keeping advanced courses, because those students drop in for a class and then go back to their base schools, correct?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its absolutely insane that they did not move those Herndon kids over to a closer school and left them at Oakton in both scenarios.

Literally one of the reasons they bought the school was to reduce overcrowding at *OAKTON* and to keep those kids from having to go such a long way to school.

Now both scenarios have no one moving out of Oakton, but leaving South Lakes and Westfield without enough students.

It makes no sense.

A school in the perfect location falls into their lap and they still manage to make a complete disaster out of it.

And the self-dealing by Seema Dixit and apparently, Kyle McDaniel, needs to be reviewed by an FCPS ethics office.

The first revised scenario does move kids out of Oakton, just not all of Crossfield.

I’d check my facts more carefully next time before composing such a screed.

By the way, there’s no requirement for School Board members to recuse themselves from decisions affecting schools to which they are zoned. In the past, School Board members like Stu Gibson and Elaine Tholen were visibly involved in championing boundary changes that benefited their own schools (South Lakes and Langley). If you don’t like it, your recourse is to vote her out next year because the chances of an ethics inquiry are nil.

However, people seem to have no problem suggesting that Lee's Corner which is on Chantilly's doorstep to Westfield--which is not close in any way.

What I don't understand is why, if they can make Brookfield such an egregious split feeder (picking winners and losers) why can't they do the same with Bull Run? There are people at Bull Run who live in neighborhoods that border Westfield schools. That would make sense. And, yes, I know they picked one small area of Bull Run to add to Westfield--an area that is one of the closer ones to Centreville.

That one small area of Bull Run is now an "island", I thought they were supposed to be getting rid of attendance islands, not making new ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone please explain why so many in crossfield are so laser focused on staying Oakton? I would MUCH prefer my teen having a close option like Skyview rather than the outrageously long commute to Oakton.

They paid oakton price to buy the house in oakton hs. They did not mind the commute to oakton when they bought the house and still do not mind that. For the people who were willing to pay the extra to buy in oakton hs, going to a better school out weighs 10+ minutes of extra commute time. As simple as that.

I actually do not understand why people who hates commute to oakton so much would buy in crossfield in the first place.

This right here is the answer. We bought houses in the Oakton district and absolutely knew the distance from our neighborhoods to the high school.

While I strongly prefer Oakton HS, my biggest concern is that scenario 1 is absolutely bananas in the way the board is proposing to split just a few Crossfield neighborhoods and send that handful of kids to Carson/Skyview. So my kids will have spent 7+ years with their peers at Crossfield, most of their class would move onto Franklin/Oakton, and then they would start MS knowing maybe 5 kids at a school of 1,400 (Carson). The math isn't mathing, and there is a plethora of research that shows what a terrible idea this is from a mental health standpoint.

There's nothing compelling about this. Everyone knows where their zoned high school is when they purchase a house and they also know that can be changed at any time. It makes NO sense to send Herndon kids all the way to Vienna to Oakton when there are going to be 800 empty seats at Westfield and 400 empty seats at South Lakes.

I find students' mental health pretty compelling, but to each their own.

Rezoning your house from Oakton to a close by high school has nothing to do with your HS kids mental health, since they will be grandfathered into Oakton.
More sleep will be great for future kids' mental health though.

Many of us don't have high schoolers who will be grandfathered anywhere, which is why we're concerned. My kids are in elementary and middle school.

Then they will go to whatever middle and high school they go to with the rest of your neighbors.

No they won't, that's the point. Scenario 1 breaks up Crossfield neighborhoods. Four districts will have buses going down the same street. Crossfield shouldn't be a 3/4-way split feeder (Carson, Franklin, Hughes) (Skyview, Oakton, South Lakes, Chantilly). Not to mention, a lot of these kids that are 6th graders now, will have to go to Carson for 1 year and then switch to another new school (Franklin) with a whole other group of new kids. They won't have the 2 years in MS to make friends going into HS.

Scenario 1 send the western edge of Crossfield to Skyview. I don’t consider the western edge to be “neighbors” with the eastern edge. They’re miles apart.

Crossfield has been a split (Oakton and South lakes) for years. If you’re going to claim all splits are bad, then you have to send them all to one of those 3 (Oakton, Skyview, or South lakes). Oakton can’t absorb more kids and keeping Crossfield there will result in another change during the next boundary review cycle; so much for the coveted stability people keep talking about. So which is it? Skyview or South lakes? Or back off on the claim that splits are inherently bad and live with it?

I actually think it would make sense for FCPS to send all of Crossfield to a single HS, but that is not how any of the scenarios have been drawn to date, so I'm assuming that idea is off the table.

I don't understand your thinking about classmates not being "neighbors." So your ES kids don't have friends who live in other neighborhoods that are a few miles away?

Crossfield should not be split BUT if it HAD to be, it should be split by West Ox Rd. West of West Ox should go to Franklin/Oakton. East of West ox to Carson/Skyview.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't go to the meeting.

Did they address the issue of Westfield not having enough students?

They did. They mentioned planned development in the area and also that they would look to move academy programs to Westfield.

Moving academy programs doesn't help with keeping advanced courses, because those students drop in for a class and then go back to their base schools, correct?

Right. It doesn't add full time students to Westfield or help with staffing or keeping APs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its absolutely insane that they did not move those Herndon kids over to a closer school and left them at Oakton in both scenarios.

Literally one of the reasons they bought the school was to reduce overcrowding at *OAKTON* and to keep those kids from having to go such a long way to school.

Now both scenarios have no one moving out of Oakton, but leaving South Lakes and Westfield without enough students.

It makes no sense.

A school in the perfect location falls into their lap and they still manage to make a complete disaster out of it.

And the self-dealing by Seema Dixit and apparently, Kyle McDaniel, needs to be reviewed by an FCPS ethics office.

The first revised scenario does move kids out of Oakton, just not all of Crossfield.

I’d check my facts more carefully next time before composing such a screed.

By the way, there’s no requirement for School Board members to recuse themselves from decisions affecting schools to which they are zoned. In the past, School Board members like Stu Gibson and Elaine Tholen were visibly involved in championing boundary changes that benefited their own schools (South Lakes and Langley). If you don’t like it, your recourse is to vote her out next year because the chances of an ethics inquiry are nil.

However, people seem to have no problem suggesting that Lee's Corner which is on Chantilly's doorstep to Westfield--which is not close in any way.

What I don't understand is why, if they can make Brookfield such an egregious split feeder (picking winners and losers) why can't they do the same with Bull Run? There are people at Bull Run who live in neighborhoods that border Westfield schools. That would make sense. And, yes, I know they picked one small area of Bull Run to add to Westfield--an area that is one of the closer ones to Centreville.

Its obviously because Seema Dixit intervened to preserve her own property values.

“Obviously”. More like conspiracy theory.

Can you think of an explanation for the consultants to change their minds on moving all of Bull Run and instead, move just one random low income building instead?

This question was asked and answered last night at the meeting. You either weren’t there or missed that part. They said the online map went live before the consultant and FCPS had finished the final scenarios.

You can accept it at face value, or keep twisting in the wind with your conspiracy theories. Your choice.

I don't think it takes a crazy conspiracy theorist to see this explanation is absurd.
The consultant put the maps online "before they were finished"? No freaking way would that happen. We are supposed to believe they were still working on the substance of who was moved where 5 minutes before maps were to be posted?

The consultants final scenarios designated Walney Oaks as an area that made sense to move to Westfield. Instead of leaving it for the community to discuss, someone at FCPS demanded the map be edited.

So from the comprehensive boundary project here is what went down with Walney Oaks. In some of the scenarios they got moved to Westfield, but they argued against it saying they could hear the Chantilly marching band from their community (would love to go test that out). Ultimately FCPS withdrew all of the proposed changes to high schools in the comprehensive boundary because of what was coming with the Skyview boundary project. The Walney group currently goes to Franklin and was advocating hard to be moved to Rocky Run, presumably as a defensive move to put them in a cohort with the rest of Chantilly. The move to Rocky Run was not in any of the 5 scenarios proposed, nor was it in the Reid's final recommendation of about 15 changes that were presented in a slide deck to the School Board. Suddenly though in a revised deck they were added as an additional change moving them from Franklin to Rocky Run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone find this odd that even though they adjusted the boundaries slightly between 1 and 2, the numbers worked out exactly the same? Were they given instructions not to go over 103%?

Oakton
Existing Conditions-103% capacity, 2642 kids
Scenario 1: 103% capacity, 2642 kids
Scenario 2: 103% capacity, 2642 kids

Scenario 1 gets Oakton down to 98% capacity. That’s the scenario that makes Crossfield even more of a split feeder than it is now.

They said they’d leave ES alone for now but it sounds like they ought to revisit this and perhaps move the small part of Crossfield they’d move to Skyview in Scenario 1 to Floris or McNair.

McNair?? Look at the map.

What about Floris, then?

Just trying to think of a longer-term solution that gets at least part of current Crossfield to Skyview so Skyview has enough kids, without turning Crossfield into an even worse split.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone find this odd that even though they adjusted the boundaries slightly between 1 and 2, the numbers worked out exactly the same? Were they given instructions not to go over 103%?

Oakton
Existing Conditions-103% capacity, 2642 kids
Scenario 1: 103% capacity, 2642 kids
Scenario 2: 103% capacity, 2642 kids

Scenario 1 gets Oakton down to 98% capacity. That’s the scenario that makes Crossfield even more of a split feeder than it is now.

They said they’d leave ES alone for now but it sounds like they ought to revisit this and perhaps move the small part of Crossfield they’d move to Skyview in Scenario 1 to Floris or McNair.

Floris and McNair are not adjacent to the FF area currently zoned to Crossfield, but they may be able to slightly reduce the area and be divvied between Fox Mill and Oak Hill, both of which have some space. The area north of West Ox Road already has quite a few families pupil placing to FMES for Japanese.

I agree that ES boundaries needs to be revisited because there are some wacky ES boundaries like Navy and Crossfield that need some cleaning up to make this aall more logical. Also the Ashvale Dr triangle between Tuckaway and Thompson road, wouldn’t transportation make more sense to Lees Corner?

[Anonymous]

The most charitable read of Seema Dixit's behavior here is that she and her neighbors wanted to stay at Centerville, but she was under pressure to move some kids to Westfield. She realized that she could move 100 kids in an apartment building (hey, they don't vote or make political contributions or show up for boundary meetings, right?) and it would "fix" the overcrowding at Centreville without any of the people she considers her actual constituents being upset.

Decreasing the FARMs rate at Centreville and preserving her own property value was just a happy coincidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its absolutely insane that they did not move those Herndon kids over to a closer school and left them at Oakton in both scenarios.

Literally one of the reasons they bought the school was to reduce overcrowding at *OAKTON* and to keep those kids from having to go such a long way to school.

Now both scenarios have no one moving out of Oakton, but leaving South Lakes and Westfield without enough students.

It makes no sense.

A school in the perfect location falls into their lap and they still manage to make a complete disaster out of it.

And the self-dealing by Seema Dixit and apparently, Kyle McDaniel, needs to be reviewed by an FCPS ethics office.

The first revised scenario does move kids out of Oakton, just not all of Crossfield.

I’d check my facts more carefully next time before composing such a screed.

By the way, there’s no requirement for School Board members to recuse themselves from decisions affecting schools to which they are zoned. In the past, School Board members like Stu Gibson and Elaine Tholen were visibly involved in championing boundary changes that benefited their own schools (South Lakes and Langley). If you don’t like it, your recourse is to vote her out next year because the chances of an ethics inquiry are nil.

However, people seem to have no problem suggesting that Lee's Corner which is on Chantilly's doorstep to Westfield--which is not close in any way.

What I don't understand is why, if they can make Brookfield such an egregious split feeder (picking winners and losers) why can't they do the same with Bull Run? There are people at Bull Run who live in neighborhoods that border Westfield schools. That would make sense. And, yes, I know they picked one small area of Bull Run to add to Westfield--an area that is one of the closer ones to Centreville.

Its obviously because Seema Dixit intervened to preserve her own property values.

“Obviously”. More like conspiracy theory.

Can you think of an explanation for the consultants to change their minds on moving all of Bull Run and instead, move just one random low income building instead?

This question was asked and answered last night at the meeting. You either weren’t there or missed that part. They said the online map went live before the consultant and FCPS had finished the final scenarios.

You can accept it at face value, or keep twisting in the wind with your conspiracy theories. Your choice.

I don't think it takes a crazy conspiracy theorist to see this explanation is absurd.
The consultant put the maps online "before they were finished"? No freaking way would that happen. We are supposed to believe they were still working on the substance of who was moved where 5 minutes before maps were to be posted?

The consultants final scenarios designated Walney Oaks as an area that made sense to move to Westfield. Instead of leaving it for the community to discuss, someone at FCPS demanded the map be edited.

So from the comprehensive boundary project here is what went down with Walney Oaks. In some of the scenarios they got moved to Westfield, but they argued against it saying they could hear the Chantilly marching band from their community (would love to go test that out). Ultimately FCPS withdrew all of the proposed changes to high schools in the comprehensive boundary because of what was coming with the Skyview boundary project. The Walney group currently goes to Franklin and was advocating hard to be moved to Rocky Run, presumably as a defensive move to put them in a cohort with the rest of Chantilly. The move to Rocky Run was not in any of the 5 scenarios proposed, nor was it in the Reid's final recommendation of about 15 changes that were presented in a slide deck to the School Board. Suddenly though in a revised deck they were added as an additional change moving them from Franklin to Rocky Run.

yes, and then the consultants proposed moving them with other Brookfield kids to Westfield. Which everyone agreed made complete sense.

so the real question is who lives in Walney Oaks with political influence on Reid?

[Anonymous]

Well, or who lives in that neighborhood and makes political contributions to which school board member?

[Anonymous]

Moving academy programming doesn't help Westfield because it doesn't get them students.

They need to put in some kind of attractive academic programming that would make people want to send their kids their full time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moving academy programming doesn't help Westfield because it doesn't get them students.

They need to put in some kind of attractive academic programming that would make people want to send their kids their full time.

Agree, this is a good idea.

[Anonymous]

I'm amazed no one from Westfield is raging in here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm amazed no one from Westfield is raging in here

Well, half their students are being moved out and those families are happy.

For a school community to lose half their students and a third of their teachers is really terrible. I can't think of the last time FCPS disrupted and screwed over an existing HS to this extent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its absolutely insane that they did not move those Herndon kids over to a closer school and left them at Oakton in both scenarios.

Literally one of the reasons they bought the school was to reduce overcrowding at *OAKTON* and to keep those kids from having to go such a long way to school.

Now both scenarios have no one moving out of Oakton, but leaving South Lakes and Westfield without enough students.

It makes no sense.

A school in the perfect location falls into their lap and they still manage to make a complete disaster out of it.

And the self-dealing by Seema Dixit and apparently, Kyle McDaniel, needs to be reviewed by an FCPS ethics office.

Actually, FCPS first said they bought the school to reduce overcrowding at Centreville, Chantilly, and Westfields.

In the initial October meetings when they started the boundary conversations, Oakton wasn't overcrowded. Now, magically, it is. Does anyone else find that fascinating?

I"m not sure why that's "fascinating". Either a school is overcrowded, or it isn't. This is a knowable fact.

Oakton is overcrowded right now, at 103% capacity. And it is overcrowded in both potential scenarios, which is ridiculous given how close some kids zoned for Oakton live to high schools projected to have hundreds of empty seats.

Well, the target is 85-105%. Oakton is on target.