FCPS Skyview Boundary Revised Scenario 1 / 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You think this SB is eager to jump back into
more rezoning drama? LOL.

They have five other pending studies and 2030 (next county-wide review) will be here before you know it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Where are the thousand students for Centreville's supposed expansion going to come from if they can't find students to keep Westfield within FCPS's own margins for building usage?

Seems to me that the neighborhood behind Centreville that is sent to Fairfax would be perfect for Centreville.

Then you have open seats to fill at Fairfax HS.
The most financially prudent decision is not to expand Centreville at all.

Fairfax can take some of Woodson. There are currently kids very close to Centreville getting sent to Fairfax when it’s much farther away.

Then you are upsetting Fairfax parents who want to stay at Fairfax AND Woodson parents who want to stay at Woodson. I'm sure the SB will really go for that.

There have long been families that would like to attend closer Centreville rather than Fairfax, just as there are now families who are happy to attend Skyview because it is closer than their current schools.

Woodson, unlike Centreville, has already been renovated and expanded, so if it’s still overcrowded it would be perfectly defensible to move some kids to Fairfax if FHS has space.

Annnnnnd lots of families who prefer Fairfax. Annnnd all the angry Woodson parents who don't want to be downgraded to FHS. That's a lot of unnecessary drama for FCPS.

If and when the SB ever puts their big boy pants on again the drama will subside. Most of the drama exists because the SB gives all the circus performers a big stage.

But screwing Westfield and then using that as the basis to shortchange Centreville - all while bending over backwards to placate people at Oakton and a few other schools - is a recipe for disaster.

There is no way Seema Dixit will let anything negative happen to Centreville. Centreville is clearly her baby. She wants her own kids to attend a beautiful renovated building and her property value to be tied to a beautiful renovated building (preferably with no pesky low income types).

[Anonymous]

no one at FCPS or on the SB has even raised an iota of concern with the waste of taxpayer money that is this 3000 seat expansion.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Where are the thousand students for Centreville's supposed expansion going to come from if they can't find students to keep Westfield within FCPS's own margins for building usage?

Seems to me that the neighborhood behind Centreville that is sent to Fairfax would be perfect for Centreville.

Then you have open seats to fill at Fairfax HS.
The most financially prudent decision is not to expand Centreville at all.

Fairfax can take some of Woodson. There are currently kids very close to Centreville getting sent to Fairfax when it’s much farther away.

Then you are upsetting Fairfax parents who want to stay at Fairfax AND Woodson parents who want to stay at Woodson. I'm sure the SB will really go for that.

There have long been families that would like to attend closer Centreville rather than Fairfax, just as there are now families who are happy to attend Skyview because it is closer than their current schools.

Woodson, unlike Centreville, has already been renovated and expanded, so if it’s still overcrowded it would be perfectly defensible to move some kids to Fairfax if FHS has space.

Annnnnnd lots of families who prefer Fairfax. Annnnd all the angry Woodson parents who don't want to be downgraded to FHS. That's a lot of unnecessary drama for FCPS.

If and when the SB ever puts their big boy pants on again the drama will subside. Most of the drama exists because the SB gives all the circus performers a big stage.

But screwing Westfield and then using that as the basis to shortchange Centreville - all while bending over backwards to placate people at Oakton and a few other schools - is a recipe for disaster.

There is no way Seema Dixit will let anything negative happen to Centreville. Centreville is clearly her baby. She wants her own kids to attend a beautiful renovated building and her property value to be tied to a beautiful renovated building (preferably with no pesky low income types).

agree this is accurate

[Anonymous]

We aren't zoned to Westfield, but I sent a message to the SB about how unfair the "final" scenario is to their community. Hopefully some pressure will keep them from moving anyone else out, at least.

[Anonymous]

Wasn't there something with the Centreville expansion zoning where the County was trying to get land back at Cub Run rec center that they gave to FCPS? It was something really strange.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I look at the existing Westfield boundary and the new Westfield boundary, it looks like it has been split into half where the upper half goes to Skyview and lower half goes to Westfield. So what is the outcry about? Or am I missing something?

FCPS is not loading Westfield by fanning out from it's borders, Loudoun County, Prince William County. The upper half is Dulles/Floris to Skyview so the only base schools to load Westfield are Chantilly and Centreville. All 3 at large members should be active participants in loading Westfield to at least 90% since the final has Chantilly at 99%.

The building is 6.5 miles from the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Westfield was built core capacity 2500 but got a classroom only addition of about 300 so the actual original building is cramped at full program capacity. Common sense would move some part time Chantilly academy classes to the Westfield addition.

South Lakes does not border other jurisdictions and is surrounded by 6 FCPS contiguous school boundaries. Similar for Oakton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We aren't zoned to Westfield, but I sent a message to the SB about how unfair the "final" scenario is to their community. Hopefully some pressure will keep them from moving anyone else out, at least.

Thank you! I hope more people do this!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If I look at the existing Westfield boundary and the new Westfield boundary, it looks like it has been split into half where the upper half goes to Skyview and lower half goes to Westfield. So what is the outcry about? Or am I missing something?

FCPS is not loading Westfield by fanning out from it's borders, Loudoun County, Prince William County. The upper half is Dulles/Floris to Skyview so the only base schools to load Westfield are Chantilly and Centreville. All 3 at large members should be active participants in loading Westfield to at least 90% since the final has Chantilly at 99%.

The building is 6.5 miles from the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Westfield was built core capacity 2500 but got a classroom only addition of about 300 so the actual original building is cramped at full program capacity. Common sense would move some part time Chantilly academy classes to the Westfield addition.

South Lakes does not border other jurisdictions and is surrounded by 6 FCPS contiguous school boundaries. Similar for Oakton.

A "final scenario" that leaves Westfield at 74% with its two neighboring schools at 101% and 99% is patently absurd. Someone at FCPS needs to grow a spine.

[Anonymous]

Not a Westfield parent, but I'm frankly disgusted FCPS is taking a normal, functioning, run of the mill HS and putting it on course for a downward spiral just because they can't handle conflict.

If they will treat one school like this, your school could be next.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If I look at the existing Westfield boundary and the new Westfield boundary, it looks like it has been split into half where the upper half goes to Skyview and lower half goes to Westfield. So what is the outcry about? Or am I missing something?

FCPS is not loading Westfield by fanning out from it's borders, Loudoun County, Prince William County. The upper half is Dulles/Floris to Skyview so the only base schools to load Westfield are Chantilly and Centreville. All 3 at large members should be active participants in loading Westfield to at least 90% since the final has Chantilly at 99%.

The building is 6.5 miles from the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Westfield was built core capacity 2500 but got a classroom only addition of about 300 so the actual original building is cramped at full program capacity. Common sense would move some part time Chantilly academy classes to the Westfield addition.

South Lakes does not border other jurisdictions and is surrounded by 6 FCPS contiguous school boundaries. Similar for Oakton.

A "final scenario" that leaves Westfield at 74% with its two neighboring schools at 101% and 99% is patently absurd. Someone at FCPS needs to grow a spine.

Agreed, they have the ability to move ES that are a reasonable distance to Westfield and drop both Chantilly and Centreville to the low 90% capacity. That would make sense. It is probably one ES from each one of the schools. Then all of the schools are probably at 90% capacity and have some additional space in the building.

SLHS will be at 83% capacity without Floris and Fox Mill, the issue there is that they are losing more MC and UMC students that bolster the IB classes.

[Anonymous]

Their story about South Lakes is that 7000 housing "units" are being proposed. Who knows how many of those are actually going to be built and most of those will not be the type of housing that high schoolers live in, but that's their cover story for SLHS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Their story about South Lakes is that 7000 housing "units" are being proposed. Who knows how many of those are actually going to be built and most of those will not be the type of housing that high schoolers live in, but that's their cover story for SLHS.

SLHS is at a reasonable capacity level after the move. There has been a lot of new housing in the area, to include apartments and townhouses and single family homes. It also shares borders with Oakton and can take students from Oakton if needed. I know that there are Crossfield families that hate hearing this, but Crossfield is likely to be moved to SLHS in a few years when Oakton is well over capacity.

SLHS has a great community and is a good school. It's biggest downside is IB but the School Board doesn't want to hear that. They could easily set up an IB academy or two in the county and bus kids who want IB to those schools and probably have a pretty robust IB program. The way they run IB right now, they can't even get the equivalent of one HS graduating class out of all the IB Diplomas across all the IB schools. I am not counting the specialized IB certificates that they have brought in to make the IB numbers look better but the actual IB diplomas.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The entire Walney area should be moved to Westfield. Brookfield should be a 50% split feeder. The Chantilly Mews kids should be moved back to CHS. The rest of Bull Run should be moved to Westfield. That would give Westfield around 2300-2400 students.

What would that do to Centreville? If people are worried about what Westfield can offer with 2100 kids they should ask what Centreville could offer with 1800 kids.

The bigger problem here is that they should have taken a harder look at the Oakton boundaries. When you open Skyview but leave Oakton with over 2700 kids you are ensuring some other schools serving western Fairfax are going to shrink drastically.

Instead they followed their typical approach of saying they want to move as few kids as possible. But when their starting point is moving over 1000 kids out of Westfield to populate Skyview, that approach no longer makes sense.

These people screw everything up, over and over again. And they pay themselves on the back for doing it.

Centreville is already a very small school. I think they have around 2100 students right now, and that's overcrowded. I don't think losing half of Bull Run would make much difference.

It would actually bring them into FCPS's "ideal capacity" zone. The capacity is only 1943 students.

And yet there was and perhaps still is a plan to expand Centreville to 3000.

If you think it’s the natural order of things to leave CVHS with 1943 or fewer seats you have to ask why we bothered to expand Oakton so much, or why it would be a problem for Westfield to have 2150 kids but OK for Centreville to have hundreds fewer.

People here are so blatantly transparent in advocating for changes that benefit their schools to the detriment of others.

The current scenario brings Westfield down from 2750 to 2083 students with a program capacity of 2800 and a building capacity of over 3000.
Centreville currently has 2181 and the scenario brings it down to 2118 with a program capacity of 1943.

Obsessing over current building and program capacities is the opposite of smart or proactive thinking, when those capacities are largely a product of ad hoc decisions made in the past and the timing of when a school came up in a renovation queue developed almost 20 years ago.

Not sure what you mean by "obsessing". Are you saying it makes financial sense to expand Centreville for a thousand more kids when FCPS can't find kids to attend Westfield, which borders Centreville?

It’s not that they can’t find kids to attend Westfield, it’s that they won’t.

Same practice result: tons of space for students at Westfield means no need to add tons of space at Centreville.

By that logic empty seats at Herndon should have meant KAA was never acquired.

Obviously the SB didn’t agree.

And it’s not 3000 or nothing when it comes to Centreville. They can add some capacity to bring it in line with the majority of high schools.

The SB got that one right. Herndon is even further from our neighborhood than Westfield, and without a road like 28 to (theoretically) zip along most of the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Their story about South Lakes is that 7000 housing "units" are being proposed. Who knows how many of those are actually going to be built and most of those will not be the type of housing that high schoolers live in, but that's their cover story for SLHS.

SLHS is at a reasonable capacity level after the move. There has been a lot of new housing in the area, to include apartments and townhouses and single family homes. It also shares borders with Oakton and can take students from Oakton if needed. I know that there are Crossfield families that hate hearing this, but Crossfield is likely to be moved to SLHS in a few years when Oakton is well over capacity.

SLHS has a great community and is a good school. It's biggest downside is IB but the School Board doesn't want to hear that. They could easily set up an IB academy or two in the county and bus kids who want IB to those schools and probably have a pretty robust IB program. The way they run IB right now, they can't even get the equivalent of one HS graduating class out of all the IB Diplomas across all the IB schools. I am not counting the specialized IB certificates that they have brought in to make the IB numbers look better but the actual IB diplomas.

SLHS share borders with 5 other pyramids