FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting, when APS did their surveys, they found immigrant communities wanted to be together not spread out across the county. It makes sense that an immigrant wants to have some friends from their language/culture. My grandparents cherished their friends from their European country who lived close the them in the USA also.

The assumption that spreading out the ESL community would be helpful doesn’t include the input of the ESL families.

DP. Who's making that assumption? It appears to be an assumption that anti-boundary change advocates are making so they can then shoot it down.

In prior boundary changes, before Supreme Court decisions made school boards hyper-sensitive to having their actions challenged in court, FCPS would very specifically model and make public the anticipated impact of different boundary change options on ESOL and FARMS rates at different schools. Since that isn't a race-specific analysis, they could continue to do that now, but they probably won't out of an abundance of caution.

In any event, the point is that they could decide that, if a boundary change is warranted for other reasons such as capacity utilization or reducing transportation times, they aren't going to select the option that would increase the ESOL/FARMS percentages at a school that already has a higher concentration of ESOL/FARMS kids and instead might go with the option that would reduce them. It doesn't mean they are going to "spread out" ESOL/FARMS kids "across the county" to make those rates the same at every school. It means they might reduce some of the disparities that exist today.

Some of you will object to any potential changes that might move your kids to a higher ESOL/FARMS school, but at least be honest about what the changes might look like. Indeed, it's the fact that the higher ESOL/FARMS schools are still going to be the higher ESOL/FARMS schools after any changes that worries some of you the most.

[Anonymous]

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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.

THIS! Why do people keep on trying to push some crazy conspiracy theory AND insult more than half of the students and schools in the county? Its almost like they are unable to have a normal discussion without freaking out.
I'm so sick of the conspiracy theorists accusing our FRM, EL, and disabled communities of being "bad kids" and that their "good kids" are going to be moved into low performing schools so that they can be superheros and save the day by raising test scores. Like that would even work!

Almost every high school in FCPS has a significant number of ESOL students. Even the "good" ones.
Many of the "good" schools also have programs for special education and disabled students.
So, your premise is wrong.

The problem is that the SB and Superintendent Reid apparently want to shift kids when it is not practical. Some of the communities they want to move have been assigned to their current schools long ago. This compromises the stability to which people are accustomed.

Would you want your child moved to improve the scores of another school? That is not a good reason.

Are you living under a rock? The ELL populations at FCPS high schools are very different:

English Learners - 2023-2024 numbers (percent of student population)

Lewis - 34%
Annandale - 33.5%
Mt. Vernon - 24%
Herndon - 32%
Justice - 41.5%

Langley - 3%
West Springfield - 5%
Madison - 5.8%
Oakton - 7.25%
McLean - 6.5%

Woodson was 6.1%. So they should be in the top 5.

And South County was 6.0.

I posted those and am not the person people are insinuating. Just giving examples of the disparity that exists in FCPS. Didn't try to pick the lowest five, just schools that came to mind that I knew would be low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s interesting, when APS did their surveys, they found immigrant communities wanted to be together not spread out across the county. It makes sense that an immigrant wants to have some friends from their language/culture. My grandparents cherished their friends from their European country who lived close the them in the USA also.

The assumption that spreading out the ESL community would be helpful doesn’t include the input of the ESL families.

DP. Who's making that assumption? It appears to be an assumption that anti-boundary change advocates are making so they can then shoot it down.

In prior boundary changes, before Supreme Court decisions made school boards hyper-sensitive to having their actions challenged in court, FCPS would very specifically model and make public the anticipated impact of different boundary change options on ESOL and FARMS rates at different schools. Since that isn't a race-specific analysis, they could continue to do that now, but they probably won't out of an abundance of caution.

In any event, the point is that they could decide that, if a boundary change is warranted for other reasons such as capacity utilization or reducing transportation times, they aren't going to select the option that would increase the ESOL/FARMS percentages at a school that already has a higher concentration of ESOL/FARMS kids and instead might go with the option that would reduce them. It doesn't mean they are going to "spread out" ESOL/FARMS kids "across the county" to make those rates the same at every school. It means they might reduce some of the disparities that exist today.

Some of you will object to any potential changes that might move your kids to a higher ESOL/FARMS school, but at least be honest about what the changes might look like. Indeed, it's the fact that the higher ESOL/FARMS schools are still going to be the higher ESOL/FARMS schools after any changes that worries some of you the most.

I wrote the Aps statement and I am categorically against boundary changes because the board didn’t allow for generous grandfathering. Indeed, they didn’t even CONSIDER it until the day before voting on the new policy. It shows a lack of caring for the students of FCPS, as a teacher I am appalled by their choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is an interesting list. So are you proposing to shift students from low ELL schools to high ELL schools to balance things out. Interesting idea. I bet it makes sense to make those moves based on proximity. Very interesting, as a boundary adjustment problem.

Let’s take a look at just a couple on the list:

Annandale - 33.5%
Justice - 41.5%

Now let’s look at the closest school with less than 10% ELL:

Langley - 3% (9 miles to Justice, 13 miles to Annandale)
West Springfield - 5% (10 miles to Justice, 5.5 miles to Annandale)
Madison - 5.8% (11 miles to Justice, 10 miles to Annandale)
Oakton - 7.25% (9 miles to Justice, 10 miles to Annandale)
McLean - 6.5% (7 miles to Justice, 10 miles to Annandale)

And the winner is:

Woodson - 6.3% (8.6 miles to Justice, 5.7 miles to Annandale)

What’s that you say? Woodson wasn’t on the list? Who would do such a thing?

No idea, maybe we could look at the BRAC member list and conjecture as to which Woodson member is part of the "make changes everywhere except where I am!" camp.

[Anonymous]

Some of you will object to any potential changes that might move your kids to a higher ESOL/FARMS school, but at least be honest about what the changes might look like. Indeed, it's the fact that the higher ESOL/FARMS schools are still going to be the higher ESOL/FARMS schools after any changes that worries some of you the most.

Some of us also do not want to be reassigned to a lower ESOL/FARMS school. We don't want to be reassigned at all. Period.
The School Board has not shown a need to shift any high schools at this time. And, several of the schools they have expressed concerns about have many students exiting by relying on the AP/IB programs.

[Anonymous]

reminder: School Board meeting tonight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:reminder: School Board meeting tonight.

Eh, look at the citizen speakers. At least 1/2 of the speakers plan to talk about trans rights and most of the others are speaking about MS start times. Don't expect much to come up about boundaries, other than perhaps a nod to the fact that Floris ES was inadvertently omitted from the scope of the Coates ES boundary study (which they plan to fix via the consent agenda, so they may not even acknowledge it).

[Anonymous]

Slides from the most recent BRAC meeting: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/3-26-2025SuperintendentBoundaryReviewAdvisoryCommitteePresentation.pdf

At this rate they’re never meeting their June deadline.

[Anonymous]

We are in an elementary split feeder - we knew that moving into our neighborhood and now in middle school don’t want to revert. Splitting kids after ES is not a huge deal but splitting and changing is MS/HS is much more of an issue academically and socially. If there is not a significant capacity issue - what are we fixing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Slides from the most recent BRAC meeting: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/3-26-2025SuperintendentBoundaryReviewAdvisoryCommitteePresentation.pdf

At this rate they’re never meeting their June deadline.

At least they are talking about things that have been discussed on this board over the years. The 6th grade to MS thing seems like a non-starter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in an elementary split feeder - we knew that moving into our neighborhood and now in middle school don’t want to revert. Splitting kids after ES is not a huge deal but splitting and changing is MS/HS is much more of an issue academically and socially. If there is not a significant capacity issue - what are we fixing?

According to the recent BRAC slides, 23% of Fairfax county students attend a middle school that’s a split feeder. So if maintaining a middle school cohort is important, there’s something to be fixed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Slides from the most recent BRAC meeting: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/3-26-2025SuperintendentBoundaryReviewAdvisoryCommitteePresentation.pdf

At this rate they’re never meeting their June deadline.

At least they are talking about things that have been discussed on this board over the years. The 6th grade to MS thing seems like a non-starter.

Their summary slide is still pretty delusional. They claim some middle schools would only be “moderately” overcrowded when only one middle school that isn’t already a 6-8 middle school would be below 120%. Then they say it will relieve elementary school crowding when only one elementary school is listed as being over 125% capacity.

The presentation already shows a startling lack of knowledge about FCPS. Like Falls Church capacity not reflecting the expansion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Some of you will object to any potential changes that might move your kids to a higher ESOL/FARMS school, but at least be honest about what the changes might look like. Indeed, it's the fact that the higher ESOL/FARMS schools are still going to be the higher ESOL/FARMS schools after any changes that worries some of you the most.

Some of us also do not want to be reassigned to a lower ESOL/FARMS school. We don't want to be reassigned at all. Period.
The School Board has not shown a need to shift any high schools at this time. And, several of the schools they have expressed concerns about have many students exiting by relying on the AP/IB programs.

🤣🤣🤣 yeah that why there is a study.... just wait. If your kids travel excessive distance and there are closer schools be ready.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Slides from the most recent BRAC meeting: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/3-26-2025SuperintendentBoundaryReviewAdvisoryCommitteePresentation.pdf

At this rate they’re never meeting their June deadline.

It seems like they are simultaneously spoon feeding information about split feeders and attendance islands that could have been covered weeks ago and studiously avoiding any discussion of the things that will ultimately be of concern to parents if they simply propose to redistrict based on split feeders, attendance islands, and current capacity, such as whether people want to be redistricted into AAP centers, IB schools, etc.

It’s also weird that they focus on current capacity issues without acknowledging the ongoing expansions of schools like Falls Church HS or FCPS’s own projections suggesting that the overcrowding at a number of schools may decrease over the next five years.

Very amateurish and seemingly designed to guarantee that FCPS “does something” even when it’s unclear whether the juice would be worth the squeeze or whether families want boundary changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Slides from the most recent BRAC meeting: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/3-26-2025SuperintendentBoundaryReviewAdvisoryCommitteePresentation.pdf

At this rate they’re never meeting their June deadline.

At least they are talking about things that have been discussed on this board over the years. The 6th grade to MS thing seems like a non-starter.

Their summary slide is still pretty delusional. They claim some middle schools would only be “moderately” overcrowded when only one middle school that isn’t already a 6-8 middle school would be below 120%. Then they say it will relieve elementary school crowding when only one elementary school is listed as being over 125% capacity.

The presentation already shows a startling lack of knowledge about FCPS. Like Falls Church capacity not reflecting the expansion.

Agree with all of this. More gearing up for solutions in search of a problem.