Should FCPS Reassign New Affordable Housing from Marshall to Langley?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:.

This is simple. FCPS can decide whether the Langley pyramid, which has more capacity than others near Tysons, should take on these additional students, or not. If not, they should budgeting now to add capacity to schools in other pyramids. The fact that you're so overwrought about it doesn't make it any more complicated.

If you are talking about future capacity (which is the only thing relevant to a discussion of future development), Madison is projected to have much more capacity than Langley post-renovation.

The area in question is contiguous to Langley's boundaries, not Madison's.

The area in question is actually contiguous to McLean's boundaries, not Langley's, thanks to Tholen's boundary shift switcheroo last year.

This is correct. The development abuts McLean’s boundary, which is on the other side of Route 7. It is close to both Madison’s boundary (about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of Old Courthouse Road) and to Langley’s boundary (on the other side of the Toll Road, about 1/4 mile away). However, it only supports PP’s straw man to focus on the Langley boundary.

There’s no impediment to extending Langley’s boundaries across the Toll Road down to Spring Hill Road. In fact, the new buildings will be much closer to Langley than many current Langley-zoned neighborhoods on the other side of the Toll Road.

Your efforts to manufacture reasons why assigning these buildings to Langley would somehow be illogical border on the absurd. For all your cheap talk about how Langley would have no problems with kids living in apartments, your posts make clear you’d go to extreme lengths to try and derail it.

I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley.

If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success.

I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests.

Langley was expanded to almost 2400 kids based on the assumption at the time by FCPS staff that it would enable Langley would take on some of the growth in Tysons. That hasn't happened yet; in fact, it was stymied by a School Board member who lives in Great Falls when FCPS staff proposed to assign part of Tysons to Langley. But the additional, new housing that's being built in a previously commercial area of Tysons adjacent to a part of Vienna that was just reassigned to Langley warrants a fresh look.

There are no logistical impediments to assigning the area to an ES and MS that feed primarily or entirely to Langley, and the schools in question are less likely to end up overcrowded than Kilmer MS and Marshall HS if FCPS keeps adding more new housing in Tysons to those schools. The area is closer to Cooper and Langley than the areas that the School Board reassigned to Cooper/Langley last year, and much closer to those schools than other neighborhoods that have been assigned to those schools for decades. It's not like students in this area in Tysons will be walking to any of the schools in question, so the trope about how terrible "busing" is don't come into play here.

You are correct that Madison is being expanded, but the area in question could not be assigned to Madison without creating an attendance island, which the School Board previously has said is something to be avoided. In addition, the expansion of Madison positions the school to take on additional kids from Oakton, one of FCPS's perennially most overcrowded schools, if necessary. Perhaps you envision a scenario where Marshall's most expensive neighborhoods in Vienna are reassigned to Madison, so that Marshall can be turned into the de facto Tysons HS, complete with a growing volume of affordable housing and a 30-35% FARMS rate, while Langley sits at 3% and Madison and McLean at 10% FARMS?

To the extent that you imply that lower-income kids might be ill at ease and unable to thrive at a wealthy school like Langley, the experience at other schools suggests otherwise. There are low-income kids who live near Blake Lane zoned for Oakton, in the Cedar/Park area of Vienna zoned for Madison, and in the Timber Lane area of Falls Church zoned for McLean. By most accounts, those students fare well at those schools. Why should Langley be any different?

As several have noted, this seems like a good opportunity to address some of the capacity imbalances in the Tysons area in a manner that is consistent with the county's commitment to One Fairfax. If you feel that it's an unacceptable exercise in gerrymandering, then surely you should also support a county-wide boundary review that also takes a fresh look at the appropriateness of sending kids who live in western Great Falls, as well as pockets of Herndon and Reston, to Langley, which is much further from their homes than Herndon, South Lakes, and Marshall.

You could easily assign it to Madison without creating an island. You would move the entire "panhandle" section of Marshall's boundary over to Madison (the area mostly covering the northern tip of Vienna that extends west from Tysons to Difficult Run. Madison would have the capacity to absorb that post renovation and that would also provide broader capacity relief to Marshall, which would help it take further Tyson's development in the future. Even with that change, Madison would also still have capacity to relieve Oakton if needed.

The "panhandle" section includes the wealthiest neighborhoods zoned to Marshall along with the small part of Tysons that is being discussed on this thread for potential reassignment to Langley.

The impact would be to foreclose Madison from taking on kids from Oakton in the future (which especially might be necessary in the future if part of Chantilly needs to move to Oakton), reduce the FARMS rate at Madison, and drive up the FARMS rates at Marshall to over 30%, That doesn't seem right. It would create a big divide between (1) Langley and Madison and (2) every other FCPS high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.

This is simple. FCPS can decide whether the Langley pyramid, which has more capacity than others near Tysons, should take on these additional students, or not. If not, they should budgeting now to add capacity to schools in other pyramids. The fact that you're so overwrought about it doesn't make it any more complicated.

If you are talking about future capacity (which is the only thing relevant to a discussion of future development), Madison is projected to have much more capacity than Langley post-renovation.

The area in question is contiguous to Langley's boundaries, not Madison's.

The area in question is actually contiguous to McLean's boundaries, not Langley's, thanks to Tholen's boundary shift switcheroo last year.

This is correct. The development abuts McLean’s boundary, which is on the other side of Route 7. It is close to both Madison’s boundary (about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of Old Courthouse Road) and to Langley’s boundary (on the other side of the Toll Road, about 1/4 mile away). However, it only supports PP’s straw man to focus on the Langley boundary.

There’s no impediment to extending Langley’s boundaries across the Toll Road down to Spring Hill Road. In fact, the new buildings will be much closer to Langley than many current Langley-zoned neighborhoods on the other side of the Toll Road.

Your efforts to manufacture reasons why assigning these buildings to Langley would somehow be illogical border on the absurd. For all your cheap talk about how Langley would have no problems with kids living in apartments, your posts make clear you’d go to extreme lengths to try and derail it.

I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley.

If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success.

I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests.

Langley was expanded to almost 2400 kids based on the assumption at the time by FCPS staff that it would enable Langley would take on some of the growth in Tysons. That hasn't happened yet; in fact, it was stymied by a School Board member who lives in Great Falls when FCPS staff proposed to assign part of Tysons to Langley. But the additional, new housing that's being built in a previously commercial area of Tysons adjacent to a part of Vienna that was just reassigned to Langley warrants a fresh look.

There are no logistical impediments to assigning the area to an ES and MS that feed primarily or entirely to Langley, and the schools in question are less likely to end up overcrowded than Kilmer MS and Marshall HS if FCPS keeps adding more new housing in Tysons to those schools. The area is closer to Cooper and Langley than the areas that the School Board reassigned to Cooper/Langley last year, and much closer to those schools than other neighborhoods that have been assigned to those schools for decades. It's not like students in this area in Tysons will be walking to any of the schools in question, so the trope about how terrible "busing" is don't come into play here.

You are correct that Madison is being expanded, but the area in question could not be assigned to Madison without creating an attendance island, which the School Board previously has said is something to be avoided. In addition, the expansion of Madison positions the school to take on additional kids from Oakton, one of FCPS's perennially most overcrowded schools, if necessary. Perhaps you envision a scenario where Marshall's most expensive neighborhoods in Vienna are reassigned to Madison, so that Marshall can be turned into the de facto Tysons HS, complete with a growing volume of affordable housing and a 30-35% FARMS rate, while Langley sits at 3% and Madison and McLean at 10% FARMS?

To the extent that you imply that lower-income kids might be ill at ease and unable to thrive at a wealthy school like Langley, the experience at other schools suggests otherwise. There are low-income kids who live near Blake Lane zoned for Oakton, in the Cedar/Park area of Vienna zoned for Madison, and in the Timber Lane area of Falls Church zoned for McLean. By most accounts, those students fare well at those schools. Why should Langley be any different?

As several have noted, this seems like a good opportunity to address some of the capacity imbalances in the Tysons area in a manner that is consistent with the county's commitment to One Fairfax. If you feel that it's an unacceptable exercise in gerrymandering, then surely you should also support a county-wide boundary review that also takes a fresh look at the appropriateness of sending kids who live in western Great Falls, as well as pockets of Herndon and Reston, to Langley, which is much further from their homes than Herndon, South Lakes, and Marshall.

This is spot on, well explained. But all of this debate is useless - as pointed out by others on this thread, Langley has a firewall against additional FARMS and this wall will be difficult to climb over. It is frustrating that parents in this area have not been able to affect a change over the past few years, although many of us have tried.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look on a map, this school is closest to Marshall. Why wouldn't the obvious answer be to expand Marshall? I don't understand why this is a hot button issue at all.

Because Langley is below capacity, and has consistently been below capacity. Unless there is large-scale planned construction in Langley's boundaries, there should be an evaluation of how to get Langley to capacity before new housing automatically zones to schools at capacity.

We are going in circles. The FCPS projections show that Langley will be at 96% capacity by 2026-27. By comparision, Marshall is projected to be at 92% (or 98% excluding the modular addition) and Madison is projected to be at 82%. The capacity metric doesn't support the argument.

We are going in circles, because you ignore the fact that FCPS's official projections don't take new housing into account until a developer has physically started construction, even if a development has been approved. However, the data available to the county reflects a potential increase of 661 high school students within the Marshall pyramid and only 4 high school students within the Langley pyramid.

The data is available here: https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/planning-future/development-review-and-proffer-processes ("Residential Development Applications Dashboard").

Further, the comparisons of capacity should be made without regard to modulars, as trailers and modulars are inferior space to permanent classroom seats.

The issue isn't Marshall. It's Madison, which has the most projected capacity (and I'm not aware of any such development planned in the Madison pyramid).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.

This is simple. FCPS can decide whether the Langley pyramid, which has more capacity than others near Tysons, should take on these additional students, or not. If not, they should budgeting now to add capacity to schools in other pyramids. The fact that you're so overwrought about it doesn't make it any more complicated.

If you are talking about future capacity (which is the only thing relevant to a discussion of future development), Madison is projected to have much more capacity than Langley post-renovation.

The area in question is contiguous to Langley's boundaries, not Madison's.

The area in question is actually contiguous to McLean's boundaries, not Langley's, thanks to Tholen's boundary shift switcheroo last year.

This is correct. The development abuts McLean’s boundary, which is on the other side of Route 7. It is close to both Madison’s boundary (about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of Old Courthouse Road) and to Langley’s boundary (on the other side of the Toll Road, about 1/4 mile away). However, it only supports PP’s straw man to focus on the Langley boundary.

There’s no impediment to extending Langley’s boundaries across the Toll Road down to Spring Hill Road. In fact, the new buildings will be much closer to Langley than many current Langley-zoned neighborhoods on the other side of the Toll Road.

Your efforts to manufacture reasons why assigning these buildings to Langley would somehow be illogical border on the absurd. For all your cheap talk about how Langley would have no problems with kids living in apartments, your posts make clear you’d go to extreme lengths to try and derail it.

I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley.

If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success.

I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests.

Langley was expanded to almost 2400 kids based on the assumption at the time by FCPS staff that it would enable Langley would take on some of the growth in Tysons. That hasn't happened yet; in fact, it was stymied by a School Board member who lives in Great Falls when FCPS staff proposed to assign part of Tysons to Langley. But the additional, new housing that's being built in a previously commercial area of Tysons adjacent to a part of Vienna that was just reassigned to Langley warrants a fresh look.

There are no logistical impediments to assigning the area to an ES and MS that feed primarily or entirely to Langley, and the schools in question are less likely to end up overcrowded than Kilmer MS and Marshall HS if FCPS keeps adding more new housing in Tysons to those schools. The area is closer to Cooper and Langley than the areas that the School Board reassigned to Cooper/Langley last year, and much closer to those schools than other neighborhoods that have been assigned to those schools for decades. It's not like students in this area in Tysons will be walking to any of the schools in question, so the trope about how terrible "busing" is don't come into play here.

You are correct that Madison is being expanded, but the area in question could not be assigned to Madison without creating an attendance island, which the School Board previously has said is something to be avoided. In addition, the expansion of Madison positions the school to take on additional kids from Oakton, one of FCPS's perennially most overcrowded schools, if necessary. Perhaps you envision a scenario where Marshall's most expensive neighborhoods in Vienna are reassigned to Madison, so that Marshall can be turned into the de facto Tysons HS, complete with a growing volume of affordable housing and a 30-35% FARMS rate, while Langley sits at 3% and Madison and McLean at 10% FARMS?

To the extent that you imply that lower-income kids might be ill at ease and unable to thrive at a wealthy school like Langley, the experience at other schools suggests otherwise. There are low-income kids who live near Blake Lane zoned for Oakton, in the Cedar/Park area of Vienna zoned for Madison, and in the Timber Lane area of Falls Church zoned for McLean. By most accounts, those students fare well at those schools. Why should Langley be any different?

As several have noted, this seems like a good opportunity to address some of the capacity imbalances in the Tysons area in a manner that is consistent with the county's commitment to One Fairfax. If you feel that it's an unacceptable exercise in gerrymandering, then surely you should also support a county-wide boundary review that also takes a fresh look at the appropriateness of sending kids who live in western Great Falls, as well as pockets of Herndon and Reston, to Langley, which is much further from their homes than Herndon, South Lakes, and Marshall.

This is spot on, well explained. But all of this debate is useless - as pointed out by others on this thread, Langley has a firewall against additional FARMS and this wall will be difficult to climb over. It is frustrating that parents in this area have not been able to affect a change over the past few years, although many of us have tried.

You may be right, but both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board are up for re-election in 2023. There's a widespread sense that there's poor coordination between other county officials and the School Board/FCPS.

Specifically, the county promotes growth and touts its commitment to equity, whereas FCPS's planning is anything but pro-active and the School Board members are seen as just looking after their favored schools/constituents. This would be a good opportunity to be somewhat pro-active, since all the signs are that far more additional housing units are going to get built in the Marshall district than in the Langley district, and also to make good FCPS's earlier position that the expansion of Langley during its renovation would allow Langley to share in the Tysons growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look on a map, this school is closest to Marshall. Why wouldn't the obvious answer be to expand Marshall? I don't understand why this is a hot button issue at all.

Because Langley is below capacity, and has consistently been below capacity. Unless there is large-scale planned construction in Langley's boundaries, there should be an evaluation of how to get Langley to capacity before new housing automatically zones to schools at capacity.

We are going in circles. The FCPS projections show that Langley will be at 96% capacity by 2026-27. By comparision, Marshall is projected to be at 92% (or 98% excluding the modular addition) and Madison is projected to be at 82%. The capacity metric doesn't support the argument.

We are going in circles, because you ignore the fact that FCPS's official projections don't take new housing into account until a developer has physically started construction, even if a development has been approved. However, the data available to the county reflects a potential increase of 661 high school students within the Marshall pyramid and only 4 high school students within the Langley pyramid.

The data is available here: https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/planning-future/development-review-and-proffer-processes ("Residential Development Applications Dashboard").

Further, the comparisons of capacity should be made without regard to modulars, as trailers and modulars are inferior space to permanent classroom seats.

The issue isn't Marshall. It's Madison, which has the most projected capacity (and I'm not aware of any such development planned in the Madison pyramid).

At present, there isn't much additional planned development in the Madison district. However, Madison may need to accommodate areas to the west given the overcrowding in some of those areas. And, as noted, reassigning Marshall-zoned neighborhoods in the Vienna "panhandle" to Madison would have a major impact on Marshall's demographics. Is your goal to turn Marshall into Tysons South HS with a 30% FARMS rate? If so, keep pushing this alternative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The county is planning to build 500 units of new affordable housing in Tysons in the Marshall HS district:

https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/housing/news/2022/media-advisory-affordable-housing-in-tysons

This is new housing so there are no existing residents with ties to particular schools.

As I understand it, Marshall is at capacity and it’s quite hard to place into Marshall now for IB. Langley on the other hand is still below capacity. Would this not be a good opportunity for FCPS to honor its commitment to equity and One Fairfax by assigning this new development to Langley?

Espeically if Langely has lower FARMS rate it sounds like a good way to improve SES diveristy.

Honestly if Langley parents could read the societal cards they'd realize that these students would HELP their students in college admissions and likely have little impact on their children's experience of school quality. In high school--unlike gen ed in ES--students are tracked by the courses they take. Only the higher achieving lower SES kids would be in the courses that most Langley students are taking now--and they'd likely be a great example because they are succeeding with less privilege. (There might even be social benefits--your kid won't gripe that everybody else goes skiing in Colorado, vacationing in Europe, wears x, y and z designer etc. because there's more of a SES range).

Low SES diversity means that your UMC relatively weaker student ends up falling below the GPA and SAT mean just because everyone is a such a strong student. Students are assessed in the context of their school. Likewise course rigor. If it's the norm to take 10 APs and your kid isn't, they are ranked as not taking the most rigorous course load. But the percentages shift with SES diversity and the most rigorous courseload criteria becomes a little looser. Even the highest students look better when there is a wider range.

My hope is that the students who come would integrate well and benefit from the strongest education--and many likely will. But, really, I think the highest gain would be for the higher SES kids in the school.

Curious - what school do *your* kids attend? Because I assure you, no one talks any of the bolded. That's simply a figment of the imaginations of people whose kids do not attend Langley. It's almost like a parody. But thanks for your "concern."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.

This is simple. FCPS can decide whether the Langley pyramid, which has more capacity than others near Tysons, should take on these additional students, or not. If not, they should budgeting now to add capacity to schools in other pyramids. The fact that you're so overwrought about it doesn't make it any more complicated.

If you are talking about future capacity (which is the only thing relevant to a discussion of future development), Madison is projected to have much more capacity than Langley post-renovation.

The area in question is contiguous to Langley's boundaries, not Madison's.

The area in question is actually contiguous to McLean's boundaries, not Langley's, thanks to Tholen's boundary shift switcheroo last year.

This is correct. The development abuts McLean’s boundary, which is on the other side of Route 7. It is close to both Madison’s boundary (about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of Old Courthouse Road) and to Langley’s boundary (on the other side of the Toll Road, about 1/4 mile away). However, it only supports PP’s straw man to focus on the Langley boundary.

There’s no impediment to extending Langley’s boundaries across the Toll Road down to Spring Hill Road. In fact, the new buildings will be much closer to Langley than many current Langley-zoned neighborhoods on the other side of the Toll Road.

Your efforts to manufacture reasons why assigning these buildings to Langley would somehow be illogical border on the absurd. For all your cheap talk about how Langley would have no problems with kids living in apartments, your posts make clear you’d go to extreme lengths to try and derail it.

I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley.

If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success.

I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests.

THIS x infinity. Excellent post.

[Anonymous]

If you parse the data on residential development, FCPS has identified "planned" and "approved" residential development that is not yet "under construction" and reflected in FCPS's enrollment projections, but which could yield an additional 1,447 high school students. Those students are not evenly distributed throughout FCPS; rather, 76% of the potential additional students would attend just five high schools: South Lakes (285), McLean (225), Westfield (225), Marshall (220), and Edison (149). In comparison, virtually no growth from new housing units is projected within Langley's boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you parse the data on residential development, FCPS has identified "planned" and "approved" residential development that is not yet "under construction" and reflected in FCPS's enrollment projections, but which could yield an additional 1,447 high school students. Those students are not evenly distributed throughout FCPS; rather, 76% of the potential additional students would attend just five high schools: South Lakes (285), McLean (225), Westfield (225), Marshall (220), and Edison (149). In comparison, virtually no growth from new housing units is projected within Langley's boundaries.

Wow, that's a great pull. So almost 1/3 of these new students would come from the Tysons area. Clearly Madison and Langley should be considered to absorb some of those numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you parse the data on residential development, FCPS has identified "planned" and "approved" residential development that is not yet "under construction" and reflected in FCPS's enrollment projections, but which could yield an additional 1,447 high school students. Those students are not evenly distributed throughout FCPS; rather, 76% of the potential additional students would attend just five high schools: South Lakes (285), McLean (225), Westfield (225), Marshall (220), and Edison (149). In comparison, virtually no growth from new housing units is projected within Langley's boundaries.

Wow, that's a great pull. So almost 1/3 of these new students would come from the Tysons area. Clearly Madison and Langley should be considered to absorb some of those numbers.

Right, the main growth areas reflected in the residential projections are Tysons (McLean & Marshall), Reston (South Lakes), Herndon/Silver Line (Westfield), and Route 1/Huntington (Edison).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What elementary and middle school would this feed into?

At present, Westbriar ES and Kilmer MS. It would make sense to reassign the new buildings on Spring Hill Road and to the immediate north to Spring Hill ES and Cooper MS. Spring Hill has capacity and Cooper has about 150 fewer kids now than Kilmer. Kilmer has had temporary classrooms (trailers/modular) for years. Cooper is being renovated and expanded now.

I know that Spring Hill is a split feeder and already one of the largest elementary schools in McLean. I thought the SB was going to get rid of the split feeder to Langley/McLean High but then they didn’t.

Do they make these tiny boundary adjustments for equity? We moved here 4 years ago. I have been trying to follow these boundary changes. I know there was a huge push for equity changes via One Fairfax to change boundaries across all of Fairfax county and I believe it was axed due to unpopularity. I wouldn’t want my kids reshuffled for the sake of equity.

They have in the past. Ft Hunt elementary has a little island that encompasses one low income housing development

I believe that island was moved to Fort Hunt in the 1970s to address overcrowding at Hybla Valley. I don't think it had anything to do with equity.

That sounds right. But it's a convenient straw-man to imply that adjustments that would mitigate capacity imbalances are "social engineering" when parents at the receiving schools don't like the demographics of the students being reassigned.

DP. Please do provide evidence that this is the case. The rest of us know that is absurd, but I look forward to you presenting actual proof that anyone has said that, much less thinks it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look on a map, this school is closest to Marshall. Why wouldn't the obvious answer be to expand Marshall? I don't understand why this is a hot button issue at all.

Because Langley is below capacity, and has consistently been below capacity. Unless there is large-scale planned construction in Langley's boundaries, there should be an evaluation of how to get Langley to capacity before new housing automatically zones to schools at capacity.

We are going in circles. The FCPS projections show that Langley will be at 96% capacity by 2026-27. By comparision, Marshall is projected to be at 92% (or 98% excluding the modular addition) and Madison is projected to be at 82%. The capacity metric doesn't support the argument.

FACTS do not compute to the PP. It's all about what she *wants.*

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.

This is simple. FCPS can decide whether the Langley pyramid, which has more capacity than others near Tysons, should take on these additional students, or not. If not, they should budgeting now to add capacity to schools in other pyramids. The fact that you're so overwrought about it doesn't make it any more complicated.

If you are talking about future capacity (which is the only thing relevant to a discussion of future development), Madison is projected to have much more capacity than Langley post-renovation.

The area in question is contiguous to Langley's boundaries, not Madison's.

The area in question is actually contiguous to McLean's boundaries, not Langley's, thanks to Tholen's boundary shift switcheroo last year.

This is correct. The development abuts McLean’s boundary, which is on the other side of Route 7. It is close to both Madison’s boundary (about 1/2 mile away, on the other side of Old Courthouse Road) and to Langley’s boundary (on the other side of the Toll Road, about 1/4 mile away). However, it only supports PP’s straw man to focus on the Langley boundary.

There’s no impediment to extending Langley’s boundaries across the Toll Road down to Spring Hill Road. In fact, the new buildings will be much closer to Langley than many current Langley-zoned neighborhoods on the other side of the Toll Road.

Your efforts to manufacture reasons why assigning these buildings to Langley would somehow be illogical border on the absurd. For all your cheap talk about how Langley would have no problems with kids living in apartments, your posts make clear you’d go to extreme lengths to try and derail it.

I do not think anyone is manufacturing reasons. I also think that the argument that Langley parents would have any issue with these students (or FARMS students generally) attending Langley is contrived. The problem with your line of argument is that you appear to be intentionally ignoring the geographical and practical reasons suggesting strongly that Langley is a less logical option than (a) Marshall (where the geography is presently assigned and which is the closest school to the development) or (b) Madison, which will have lower utilization than Langley (or Marshall or McLean) when the development opens and which is also closer to the development than Langley.

If your point is that the school board should ignore all of those factors and make boundary decisions based primarily on equity, that's fine. It's a fair position, even if it's unlikely to be one that is ultimately the primary driver for boundary decisions -- setting boundaries based primarily on equity would open a big can of worms and likely require lots of difficult decisions and significant redistricting county-wide. Whatever the school board might say about equity, it is not likely to have the stomach for that approach because it would lead to lots of angry parents. That's not a recipe for political success.

I also get the impression that much of your argument is driven by some desire to "stick it" to Langley. That's odd. Again, I don't think most people in the Langley boundary care. It also isn't necessarily consistent with what is in the best interests of the kids who will live in that development. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to Langley. Maybe it's in their best interest to go to a closer school with a better georgraphic connection to the area. I have no idea and I'm clearly not qualified to make that determination (and likely no one who posts on this board is qualified). But the decision must necessarily consider a far broader range of factors than Langley's diversity and whether these kids would add to diversity at Langley . . . that argument suggests that the kids are being used as pawns in a bigger debate. Regardless of the best school choice, that is not a decisional process focused on anyone's best interests.

Langley was expanded to almost 2400 kids based on the assumption at the time by FCPS staff that it would enable Langley would take on some of the growth in Tysons. That hasn't happened yet; in fact, it was stymied by a School Board member who lives in Great Falls when FCPS staff proposed to assign part of Tysons to Langley. But the additional, new housing that's being built in a previously commercial area of Tysons adjacent to a part of Vienna that was just reassigned to Langley warrants a fresh look.

There are no logistical impediments to assigning the area to an ES and MS that feed primarily or entirely to Langley, and the schools in question are less likely to end up overcrowded than Kilmer MS and Marshall HS if FCPS keeps adding more new housing in Tysons to those schools. The area is closer to Cooper and Langley than the areas that the School Board reassigned to Cooper/Langley last year, and much closer to those schools than other neighborhoods that have been assigned to those schools for decades. It's not like students in this area in Tysons will be walking to any of the schools in question, so the trope about how terrible "busing" is don't come into play here.

You are correct that Madison is being expanded, but the area in question could not be assigned to Madison without creating an attendance island, which the School Board previously has said is something to be avoided. In addition, the expansion of Madison positions the school to take on additional kids from Oakton, one of FCPS's perennially most overcrowded schools, if necessary. Perhaps you envision a scenario where Marshall's most expensive neighborhoods in Vienna are reassigned to Madison, so that Marshall can be turned into the de facto Tysons HS, complete with a growing volume of affordable housing and a 30-35% FARMS rate, while Langley sits at 3% and Madison and McLean at 10% FARMS?

To the extent that you imply that lower-income kids might be ill at ease and unable to thrive at a wealthy school like Langley, the experience at other schools suggests otherwise. There are low-income kids who live near Blake Lane zoned for Oakton, in the Cedar/Park area of Vienna zoned for Madison, and in the Timber Lane area of Falls Church zoned for McLean. By most accounts, those students fare well at those schools. Why should Langley be any different?

As several have noted, this seems like a good opportunity to address some of the capacity imbalances in the Tysons area in a manner that is consistent with the county's commitment to One Fairfax. If you feel that it's an unacceptable exercise in gerrymandering, then surely you should also support a county-wide boundary review that also takes a fresh look at the appropriateness of sending kids who live in western Great Falls, as well as pockets of Herndon and Reston, to Langley, which is much further from their homes than Herndon, South Lakes, and Marshall.

This is spot on, well explained. But all of this debate is useless - as pointed out by others on this thread, Langley has a firewall against additional FARMS and this wall will be difficult to climb over. It is frustrating that parents in this area have not been able to affect a change over the past few years, although many of us have tried.

You may be right, but both the Board of Supervisors and the School Board are up for re-election in 2023. There's a widespread sense that there's poor coordination between other county officials and the School Board/FCPS.

Specifically, the county promotes growth and touts its commitment to equity, whereas FCPS's planning is anything but pro-active and the School Board members are seen as just looking after their favored schools/constituents. This would be a good opportunity to be somewhat pro-active, since all the signs are that far more additional housing units are going to get built in the Marshall district than in the Langley district, and also to make good FCPS's earlier position that the expansion of Langley during its renovation would allow Langley to share in the Tysons growth.

Fairfax County Planning and Development is also all in on equity and they will be seeking affordable housing options in developed areas because they now admit that concentrating affordable housing along Route 1 and Culmore was a mistake. FCPS and gatekeeping parents will find themselves needing to accept poor families into high-SES schools very soon. Watch the latest Fairfax County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services video where they go over this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What elementary and middle school would this feed into?

At present, Westbriar ES and Kilmer MS. It would make sense to reassign the new buildings on Spring Hill Road and to the immediate north to Spring Hill ES and Cooper MS. Spring Hill has capacity and Cooper has about 150 fewer kids now than Kilmer. Kilmer has had temporary classrooms (trailers/modular) for years. Cooper is being renovated and expanded now.

I know that Spring Hill is a split feeder and already one of the largest elementary schools in McLean. I thought the SB was going to get rid of the split feeder to Langley/McLean High but then they didn’t.

Do they make these tiny boundary adjustments for equity? We moved here 4 years ago. I have been trying to follow these boundary changes. I know there was a huge push for equity changes via One Fairfax to change boundaries across all of Fairfax county and I believe it was axed due to unpopularity. I wouldn’t want my kids reshuffled for the sake of equity.

They have in the past. Ft Hunt elementary has a little island that encompasses one low income housing development

I believe that island was moved to Fort Hunt in the 1970s to address overcrowding at Hybla Valley. I don't think it had anything to do with equity.

That sounds right. But it's a convenient straw-man to imply that adjustments that would mitigate capacity imbalances are "social engineering" when parents at the receiving schools don't like the demographics of the students being reassigned.

DP. Please do provide evidence that this is the case. The rest of us know that is absurd, but I look forward to you presenting actual proof that anyone has said that, much less thinks it.

No reasonable person can read your posts and not come away with the clear understanding that you're all about policing who goes to Langley and where kids currently at Langley may go in the future. We can all see how you challenge every post suggesting that assigning Dominion Square West to Langley would be a good idea and applaud every post suggesting that it's a bad idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look on a map, this school is closest to Marshall. Why wouldn't the obvious answer be to expand Marshall? I don't understand why this is a hot button issue at all.

Because Langley is below capacity, and has consistently been below capacity. Unless there is large-scale planned construction in Langley's boundaries, there should be an evaluation of how to get Langley to capacity before new housing automatically zones to schools at capacity.

We are going in circles. The FCPS projections show that Langley will be at 96% capacity by 2026-27. By comparision, Marshall is projected to be at 92% (or 98% excluding the modular addition) and Madison is projected to be at 82%. The capacity metric doesn't support the argument.

FACTS do not compute to the PP. It's all about what she *wants.*

Other posts have already responded to this, including by sharing the FCPS data on projected student yields from new housing developments that are not yet incorporated in the enrollment projections to which PP referred.