FCPS School Board candidates in Dranesville
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
I’m not that impressed with Karloutsos. She may be a newcomer but she’s just one more person who’d put the interests of Langley over everyone else in Dranesville. You can see it in her proposals, which would add programs and resources to Langley, encourage the wealthiest kids at McLean to transfer to Langley, ignore the part of Marshall in Dranesville, and do nothing for Herndon. |
Anonymous
FWIW, it seems that the issue she is addressing is trying to alleviate overcrowding nearby and filling an underenrolled school. What suggestions do you have for Herndon? |
Anonymous
Right, by spending more money on the school that just got an $80M renovation and creating incentives for the wealthier kids to withdraw from the other school. About what you’d expect from a Trump Republican. |
Anonymous
There was a questionnaire sent to school board candidates specifically about the overcrowding at McLean, here is her response: “Finding a solution for McLean High School overcrowding is a top priority for me...McLean students should be eligible for an open enrollment transfer to Langley, which is under capacity...this would give parents and students the option instead of forcing students into another school by some future boundary change”. She also opposes the latest boundary adjustment draft #8 the school board almost voted in this summer, that would have likely resulted in busing, and she has 4 kids in FCPS, clearly some comments in this forum are not fully informed. See her responses to the boundary and overcrowding issue (she is the only Dranesville candidate that even bothered addressing these issues, neither of the other two candidates seem to really care about what should have been a central concern for the FCPS board for years and years! https://drive.google.com/file/d/14KpKOOZzHZEtwqGbclTxrksBMtefKeA-/view |
Anonymous
Who do you think will take advantage of an open enrollment policy? It's the families with enough resources to arrange transportation on their own to Langley - $$$$. And since FCPS has limited experience with such a policy, it wouldn't know in advance whether it would address the overcrowding at McLean. And as mentioned she wants FCPS spending more on Langley - she proposes adding both IB and Academy courses to Langley - even though FCPS just spent close to $80M on the school. The money should be spent elsewhere. Other candidates, including Tholen, have responded to a McSpaces questionnaire about boundaries and overcrowding. https://mcspaces1955.wixsite.com/mclean/candidate-information?fbclid=IwAR1mYtw9LUYpkBGSv5-tei_2ctDazQRWCy2IX4VFQpUPdnqA6KpG_Ph3zNI |
Anonymous
|
More candidates probably responded to Mcspaces because it's not blatantly partisan like Voices of Fairfax. VOF is a front for Republicans from the Langley district. Although a few were apparently Democrats in the Nixon era.
|
Anonymous
School Board is supposed to be bipartisan. I am pretty sure that lots of Great Falls residents who support VOF also vote for Dems, by the way. I just read the responses on the mcspaces. The weakest responses were from Omeish and Keys-Gamarra. (Keys-Gamarra is on the current board and tried to explain away its actions. What was her commitment to the vote considered by Strauss in January?) Tholen's response did not seem to support any short term action. That bothers me. I thought that the best responses were from Anastasia and Rachna. |
Anonymous
Tholen appeared at a recent School Board meeting to testify in favor of addressing the overcrowding at McLean. She also wrote this letter: "I have been talking with families across the Dranesville district for months. In McLean, the issue of the overcrowded high school is a major topic of concern. McLean High School is over-capacity and at present there is no plan in the current Fairfax County Public School’s (FCPS) Capital Improvement Program (CIP) to alleviate these overcrowded conditions. https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/adopted-FY2020-24.pdf All short-term options to alleviate McLean’s overcrowding need to be explored, and all decisions should be made in an open, transparent and evidence-based way. Now is the time to act if we hope to have anything in place for the 2020-2021 school year. The issues are real. In order to serve all of its students, McLean has 18 trailers on the site. There are safety, health and educational concerns this overcrowding creates for students. As a teacher myself, I would like to point out that these conditions negatively affect our staff as well. Teachers are without classrooms. They are forced to move through crowded hallways with carts, and work in cramped classrooms and office spaces. This neither supports the teachers’ mission to teach our children to the very best of their ability, nor does it provide an optimal environment for our children to learn. While we need to take action very soon, the move of any McLean students to the Langley pyramid needs to be based on sound data, and careful consideration of any future development and population expansion that may occur within the areas currently designated for Langley HS. In the simplest terms: McLean is currently at 114 percent capacity and projected to be at 126 percent capacity in school year 2023-24. All the other area high schools (Herndon, South Lakes, Marshall) are either projected to be at or slightly over capacity in that same time period. Langley is under capacity now at 82 percent and projected to be at 79 percent capacity by the 2023-24 school year. But it is critical that Langley’s capacity numbers be closely monitored so that all neighborhoods currently in Langley HS can stay there. Any move of students between Langley and McLean would be just the first step toward solving the McLean overcrowding problem. I ask the Board to begin looking into the initial planning for an addition to McLean HS. If there is discussion of putting a modular at the school, while that may increase capacity in the short-term, a modular cannot be viewed as a permanent solution. To address the effects of overcrowding at McLean HS in the short term, the FCPS School Board needs to act now. Janie Strauss, the current Dranesville School Board member, is proposing an amendment to the CIP to allow school district staff to begin investigating the movement of some McLean students to Langley. Based on my conversations with Dranesville parents, it is clear that there is concern and a variety of viewpoints over the potential scope and methods to begin this move. The school board must plan to maximize community input throughout this upcoming decision making process. In my view, the implementation of the One Fairfax policy, adopted by the Board of Supervisors and the School Board in 2016, means that all students across our county deserve to be in efficient, well run school facilities without capacity issues. All of our students deserve the safest, most efficient and healthiest environment possible for learning, and we need to take the first steps for McLean HS. Elaine Tholen" This seems to be more grounded in reality than Karloutsos's suggestion that an open enrollment policy could go into effect immediately. Anastasia's ideas all seem half-baked. |
Anonymous
Omeish's response was terrible! |
Anonymous
|
Tholen's response on mcspaces to timeframe:
"2) What would you consider a realistic time-frame to provide overcrowding relief? As much as I would like to see immediate relief of this problem, realistically the community input process for boundary changes takes time and any type of construction project will take years for the procurement of the funds for planning and construction plus the multi-year construction time. I would hope we could finalize boundary changes for the 2020-2021 school year by starting that process immediately. The community input process will determine how the boundary change may be phased in for those students already started at McLean, etc. Construction of an addition to the school needs to take place but if it goes through the usual bond and planning process, a completed addition is 7 years out. I will do my best to look for expedited ways to do this but realize within the overall county framework of needs, that may be difficult." Doesn't sound as firm as her other response. No creative suggestions at all. |
Anonymous
Do Republicans even exist in GF? With the except of two, all the people I know in GF are devout Democrats. That being said, party politics need to be removed from the school board, so people can focus on educating our kids. There’s too much meta gaming with politics going on. |
Anonymous
Langley area and especially GF consistently votes primarily for R candidates in SB elections. Strauss got re-elected w/support from Herndon, McLean and Marshall areas. This year should be no different, at least if Dranesville isn't to end up with a SB rep who only cares about Langley pyramid and sees other areas as after-thought. |
Anonymous
Langley/McLean don't need "creative suggestions" that are impractical or wasteful, like Karloutsos's suggestion to add IB and Academy programs at Langley and then encourage McLean kids to flee for Langley. They just need a standard boundary change, executed promptly after community input. |
Anonymous
+1000. They should also start planning for an addition at McLean. |
Anonymous
| Did anyone find out how likely it is that Karloutsos will even be living in VA come January 20, 2021? |