FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, the schools that are succeeding are going to give up students in order to pull up scores at other schools?

That is what this is about?

Bottom line: this is intended to make the schools look better that are struggling. It is not designed to make instruction better for the students.

Yes, exactly.

This is basic “cooperative learning.” It is what they intend to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of blame to go around for the current situation in FCPS:

- Federal Government - lax enforcement of immigration laws for an extended period of time
- Fairfax County zoning - the lack of apartments or more affordable homes in some areas (or very little anyway) is one example, with too many apartments in other areas
- FCPS - sticking with bad programs that drove people away, AAP structure, making bad decisions in earlier boundary adjustments that made some schools worse off, liberal pupil placement that allowed families with more means to live in one school zone and attend another (not something poorer families can do)
- FCPS residents (current and former) - self segregating by only looking at schools with Great Schools above 7; over time this drove schools below a 7 down even further (a very insidious change).

So FCPS is not crazy to try to raise the scores of the schools by making some boundary changes. The schools themselves aren't necessarily bad - the administrators, faculty, and facilities are fine, but the schools are faced with high ELL and FRL numbers that set them up for trouble. If they continue to fail does the state step in? FCPS doesn't want that.

Now they could certainly try some things first - eliminate IB and getting rid of AAP middle school centers are a couple of examples.

This is crazy. Schools are definitely not all the same, some are good and some are really bad. High achieving schools are good because the PARENTS are investing in making sure their kids are learning. FCPS needs to improve the bad schools, not move children and use those kids to improve schools instead of doing the work of improving struggling schools. Moving kids around is just socialist ideology and uses kids like pawns instead of educating children. This SB just uses other people’s children as their own resource to carry out their social agenda and cover up the terrible job they are doing of educating. The SB and Reid and her gatehouse employees act with impunity, hide behind taxpayer (parent) funded lawyers and big law firms and appear to believe they have no accountability to students and parents.

Many schools have programs and populations that bring scores down. Doesn’t mean they are bad school. If you moved certain special ed programs and/or ESL kids into high achieving schools, the same would happen. I personally think every school should either have some ESL kids and/or specific Special Ed programs. You will see that these very good schools are the same as other schools that have these populations.

[Anonymous]

You are missing the point and reframing the issue. The point is not to move high achieving kids of particular demographics to “fix” lower achieving schools. Rather actually address the issues in lower achieving schools without dragging kids around and disrupting their education to make certain schools look better.

[Anonymous]

The point is to eliminate inefficiencies in capacity, transportation. The point is to improve individual school scores. That is just the conspiracy pushed by people on this thread that has festered for hundreds of pages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The point is to eliminate inefficiencies in capacity, transportation. The point is to improve individual school scores. That is just the conspiracy pushed by people on this thread that has festered for hundreds of pages.

Do you hear yourself?

This is not going to eliminate inefficiencies in capacity and transportation. But,you did point out the true goal. Meanwhile, you will be reducing scores in many schools. EQUITY!

Where is the goal of improving scores for struggling students? When has our School Board seriously discussed the elephant in the room?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The point is to eliminate inefficiencies in capacity, transportation. The point is to improve individual school scores. That is just the conspiracy pushed by people on this thread that has festered for hundreds of pages.

The inefficiencies in capacity are due to extremely poor facilities planning on FCPS’s part. Now FCPS wants to cover up its own incompetence by moving kids around to backfill empty seats. In some cases that will mean longer commutes for kids, so they will just be increasing one inefficiency to reduce another one.

[Anonymous]

The hysteria revolves around the idea of reassigning entire elementary schools to different pyramids. I don’t think many people are in support of that.

The reality of most of FCPS inefficiencies is assigning students to the wrong elementary school for their pyramid. Majority of the attendance islands are at the elementary level and they are zoned to the same middle school/high school. In other cases it’s sending them out of pyramid to attend an AAP center or sending small slivers of elementary schools to different middle schools/high schools. A lot of this could be fixed by sending these pockets of students to their next nearest (or in some cases, much closer) elementary schools without touching the middle school and high school assignments.

But since they’re stalling on releasing any sort of scenario that would set the tone for the magnitude of proposed changes, the conspiracies will control the narrative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the new FAQs:

“Will the data used for boundary decisions be accessible to the public?

Yes, Fairfax County Public Schools is committed to transparency throughout the comprehensive boundary review process. The data used to inform decision-making, such as enrollment projections, school capacity, demographic information, and transportation considerations, will be made available to the public whenever possible.

However, any personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data will be protected and not shared to ensure the privacy and security of students and families. Some data may be summarized or protected as necessary, but every effort will be made to provide relevant information in a clear and accessible manner while maintaining confidentiality.”

Although FCPS states that it is “committed to transparency,” it remains to be seen how FCPS meets the stated commitment to make the relevant data available to the public.

When and how will this data become available? It is only useful if it is presented completely and in a useable format concurrently with any proposal on which the data is based. The data should also be made available in the same manner in which it is available to those creating the proposals, without requiring the public to use specialized software that is only available to FCPS. Otherwise, any “opportunity to comment” is illusory.

Timing for comments/responding to surveys should allow for sufficient processing of the data by the public. Otherwise, survey results will not reflect a fully informed public.

Alexandria City Public Schools is very transparent with their direction of boundary changes. They record and post their redistricting meetings and openly provide the draft options. Below is their link. We have a direct neighbor to show FCPS how this can be done vs hiding everything in secrecy and making the community spin.

https://www.acps.k12.va.us/school-board/acps-redistricting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whattttt im so confused. Per the new FAQ:

“The timeline for implementing new boundaries has not yet been determined, as it will depend on the outcomes of the boundary review process and the decisions made by the Fairfax County School Board. Similarly, any other related implementation decisions, including allowing current students to remain at their existing schools, have not yet been determined. These considerations will take into account operational feasibility and the district's educational goals.”

Seems pretty notable that they quietly updated their FAQ on the timing of this. And they canceled another one of the BRAC meetings earlier this week (according to a PP)? They didn't have one in March that I can tell. Things are not going well, I guess?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of blame to go around for the current situation in FCPS:

- Federal Government - lax enforcement of immigration laws for an extended period of time
- Fairfax County zoning - the lack of apartments or more affordable homes in some areas (or very little anyway) is one example, with too many apartments in other areas
- FCPS - sticking with bad programs that drove people away, AAP structure, making bad decisions in earlier boundary adjustments that made some schools worse off, liberal pupil placement that allowed families with more means to live in one school zone and attend another (not something poorer families can do)
- FCPS residents (current and former) - self segregating by only looking at schools with Great Schools above 7; over time this drove schools below a 7 down even further (a very insidious change).

So FCPS is not crazy to try to raise the scores of the schools by making some boundary changes. The schools themselves aren't necessarily bad - the administrators, faculty, and facilities are fine, but the schools are faced with high ELL and FRL numbers that set them up for trouble. If they continue to fail does the state step in? FCPS doesn't want that.

Now they could certainly try some things first - eliminate IB and getting rid of AAP middle school centers are a couple of examples.

This is crazy. Schools are definitely not all the same, some are good and some are really bad. High achieving schools are good because the PARENTS are investing in making sure their kids are learning. FCPS needs to improve the bad schools, not move children and use those kids to improve schools instead of doing the work of improving struggling schools. Moving kids around is just socialist ideology and uses kids like pawns instead of educating children. This SB just uses other people’s children as their own resource to carry out their social agenda and cover up the terrible job they are doing of educating. The SB and Reid and her gatehouse employees act with impunity, hide behind taxpayer (parent) funded lawyers and big law firms and appear to believe they have no accountability to students and parents.

Many schools have programs and populations that bring scores down. Doesn’t mean they are bad school. If you moved certain special ed programs and/or ESL kids into high achieving schools, the same would happen. I personally think every school should either have some ESL kids and/or specific Special Ed programs. You will see that these very good schools are the same as other schools that have these populations.

+1. The old newcomer program at then Stuart is a good example. The program was designed to place ELL students into an environment where they could get additional support to learn English, assimilate to American culture, learn useful trade skills, and become productive citizens of Fairfax County. We can all agree the effort to keep them off the streets was a good action that a good school would do, but it became a worse school by the numbers.

[Anonymous]

Again, this is reframing the issue and sidestepping the point, which is that redrawing boundaries to “improve individual school scores” is just a plan to mask poor performing students and schools by moving higher achieving students with different demographics to improve scores. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s been shown all over the place. Gatehouse needs to stop overpaying a bunch of admin staff and actually improve instruction and schools themselves, not use UMC children to achieve what they determine to be their version of “equity.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, this is reframing the issue and sidestepping the point, which is that redrawing boundaries to “improve individual school scores” is just a plan to mask poor performing students and schools by moving higher achieving students with different demographics to improve scores. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s been shown all over the place. Gatehouse needs to stop overpaying a bunch of admin staff and actually improve instruction and schools themselves, not use UMC children to achieve what they determine to be their version of “equity.”

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, this is reframing the issue and sidestepping the point, which is that redrawing boundaries to “improve individual school scores” is just a plan to mask poor performing students and schools by moving higher achieving students with different demographics to improve scores. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s been shown all over the place. Gatehouse needs to stop overpaying a bunch of admin staff and actually improve instruction and schools themselves, not use UMC children to achieve what they determine to be their version of “equity.”

DP. Except they haven’t released any plans yet and we know their practice over the past 15 years was to do just the opposite - tinker with boundaries at the margins in ways that typically increased rather than mitigated disparities between nearby schools.

It’s odd that you’ve gotten so worked up over the mere possibility that they might do something that would burst your segregated bubble. Would it really be so horrible to wait until there are actual proposals on the table before reacting so negatively?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, this is reframing the issue and sidestepping the point, which is that redrawing boundaries to “improve individual school scores” is just a plan to mask poor performing students and schools by moving higher achieving students with different demographics to improve scores. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s been shown all over the place. Gatehouse needs to stop overpaying a bunch of admin staff and actually improve instruction and schools themselves, not use UMC children to achieve what they determine to be their version of “equity.”

DP. Except they haven’t released any plans yet and we know their practice over the past 15 years was to do just the opposite - tinker with boundaries at the margins in ways that typically increased rather than mitigated disparities between nearby schools.

It’s odd that you’ve gotten so worked up over the mere possibility that they might do something that would burst your segregated bubble. Would it really be so horrible to wait until there are actual proposals on the table before reacting so negatively?

DP. Waiting for the proposals serves the school board. It’ll be far too late at that point, and you know that.

Don’t silence families shilling for the school board. It’s a really bad look, especially when you pretend that it’s the sensible thing to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, this is reframing the issue and sidestepping the point, which is that redrawing boundaries to “improve individual school scores” is just a plan to mask poor performing students and schools by moving higher achieving students with different demographics to improve scores. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s been shown all over the place. Gatehouse needs to stop overpaying a bunch of admin staff and actually improve instruction and schools themselves, not use UMC children to achieve what they determine to be their version of “equity.”

DP. Except they haven’t released any plans yet and we know their practice over the past 15 years was to do just the opposite - tinker with boundaries at the margins in ways that typically increased rather than mitigated disparities between nearby schools.

It’s odd that you’ve gotten so worked up over the mere possibility that they might do something that would burst your segregated bubble. Would it really be so horrible to wait until there are actual proposals on the table before reacting so negatively?

DP. Waiting for the proposals serves the school board. It’ll be far too late at that point, and you know that.

Don’t silence families shilling for the school board. It’s a really bad look, especially when you pretend that it’s the sensible thing to do.

So the only way to have any impact is to make assertions about FCPS’s intentions and future proposals that may well turn out to be unfounded? Maybe that’s strategic, but it’s also dishonest. And I note that you apparently have no problem with past decisions by FCPS that increased disparities between nearby schools. I guess it was fine for FCPS to basically create a system of winners and losers as long as you came out ahead.

I don’t think you proofread your second paragraph.