Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
Redistricting shouldn’t be a fairy tale. The problem is that we have an elected vs an appointed school board, with members who want to keep their “power” base and stay in office. Maybe they view it as a stepping stone to higher office, but as it is nothing will change. The Board of Supervisors needs to withhold FCPS funding until the school board gets its act together and stops wasting taxpayer money on unnecessary school expansions when plenty of space is available in other schools.
If a countywide redistricting were held, the system could reboot and eliminate the “bad school vs good school” dynamic that currently exists. Schools would be of a similar size, offering the same programs, and with a similar FARMS rate. It won’t succeed on a piecemeal basis, but could be successful if politicians had the guts to do the right thing vs preserve their petty fiefdoms.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Wealth is not evenly distributed throughout Fairfax Co and the school locations are fixed.
You can add capacity to bring every high school up to a minimum number of permanent seats. You can also do more to align the courses or programs available (the most obvious being to offer AP, not IB, at every school, or having just one IB magnet). You can't achieve similar FARMS rates across the county without getting rid of contiguous school boundaries. In some instances, you could mitigate some of the current disparities between or among nearby schools and still have contiguous or largely contiguous boundaries.
So the plan is to take the high performing schools near farms schools and redistrict to create a ton of mediocre schools all the while leaving schools like Langley untouched?
It would be easy to reassign some of the new affordable housing in Tysons zoned for Marshall to Langley, and Langley would still have contiguous boundaries. McLean has an attendance island in Falls Church that feeds into a Title I elementary school (Timber Lane), so it's not like it can't be done.
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Lewis currently has a "2" equity score on GreatSchools. Not a lot of crashing left to do there.
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
I'm confused by what you're saying. In 2007, South Lakes was viewed similarly to the three or four schools you mention. In response, FCPS changed the boundaries in 2008, the enrollment at South Lakes increased more than expected, and FCPS responded by later building an addition to South Lakes outside the renovation queue.
But here you seem to be saying that the "solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools" and FCPS shouldn't do boundary changes. So it's OK to have addressed issues at South Lakes by changing the boundaries and then expanding the school, but others should just accept their schools are well over-capacity or under-enrolled until (1) FCPS "fixes" the under-enrolled schools and (2) people gradually move over to those schools?
Also, changes in enrollment result from many things other than whether a school is viewed as "good" or "bad." The enrollment at Lewis and Mount Vernon has been relatively flat, but the enrollment at Justice has increased substantially in recent years (leading to FCPS's plan to expand its capacity to 2500 seats). Langley, McLean, and Marshall are all viewed as "good," but McLean and Marshall are the schools that have seen the huge jumps in enrollment because their neighborhoods are more affordable and centrally located.
South Lakes Boundary was barely changed, there were schools that were supposed to be shifted that were not because of parent push back. The Parents from Fox Mill had to actively petition for classes to be added at South Lakes to meet their kids needs and SLHS still doesn't have the same classes available in the same number as the kids at Oakton HS. In the end, a small change was made so that it looked like something was done but the re-balancing wasn't what was really needed. The Fox Mill kids are a small percentage of the kids at Carson and then they have no one from Carson who moves to SLHS with them. It is not exactly ideal. Most of the kids from Fox Mill are in that school within a school scenario where most of them are taking Honors and IB classes and don't interact with a lot of the other kids. So it is pretty much one cohort of kids from Fox Mill with a few Floris kids tossed in that are together from K-12. Not exactly a shining example of change. I guess the scores improved and the school is going to be over crowded in a few years because of the recent addition. Oh, and people don't put in to move for AP because no one wants to go to Herndon.
If you think that this is a boundary adjustment that worked then what we are looking for is small changes to make it look like something is being done and effecting a small population who don't have the same clout as the larger schools that were able to resist the change.
So yeah, I don't see the SLHS example as the best example of a change. I see a school within a school that people seem to be ok with excepting because test scores went up.
Do you want to really effect SLHS? Move everyone from Floris and Crossfield to SLHS but that is not going to happen. Those are bigger schools with more money and clout.
The South Lakes boundary change in 2007 was a major change that moved kids from Oakton, Westfield, and Madison to South Lakes, which at the time had an enrollment of under 1400 (vs. its current enrollment of over 2500). Yes, Janie Strauss made sure that Herndon and Langley stayed out of the boundary study entirely, but many other neighborhoods were moved.
Then, when the enrollment went up more than expected, they built an addition at South Lakes, even when it wasn't scheduled for a full renovation. Now, South Lakes gets a large number of pupil placements for IB, including over 150 kids from Herndon. Had FCPS not done the boundary change, the enrollment would not have increased so much as to require the addition, and had the boundary change not happened and the addition not been built, it wouldn't be getting all the pupil placements now.
It was probably the last purposeful boundary change undertaken with the specific intent of increasing a school's enrollment and aligning its demographic profile more closely with neighboring schools. A lot of people didn't like it, and indeed the backlash may have intimidated School Board members from pursuing similar changes elsewhere, but had they done nothing South Lakes would now be closer to Lewis, both in enrollment and perceived standing, than it is now to other schools like Westfield and Fairfax.
Thanks for the info! It was bigger then I realized. Appreciate that
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Lewis currently has a "2" equity score on GreatSchools. Not a lot of crashing left to do there.
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Lewis currently has a "2" equity score on GreatSchools. Not a lot of crashing left to do there.
2 can go to 1. Just look at West Potomac
Which only underscores the irrelevance of the impact of a potential boundary change on a GS "equity" rating to future FCPS decision-making.
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Lewis currently has a "2" equity score on GreatSchools. Not a lot of crashing left to do there.
The equity rating is an absurd and meaningless rating. Using it in defense of anything immediately discredits any argument you make. Langley's equity rating is a 9/10. They have 2% ELL, 3% FARMs, 1.6% Black, and 7% Hispanic population. How on earth is Langley deserving of a 9/10 equity rating?
Anonymous wrote:You get the school district you vote for
Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values.
Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.
Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.
Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.
FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles. When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down. The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint. The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.
If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario. Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.
DP. I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant. Here's the thing: "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down. If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it. The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine. It's just too bad more parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.
PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will. That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.
Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all. Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.
You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.
Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.
If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.
Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.
The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.
And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.
I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.
It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.
As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen. To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes. So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.
As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them. The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed. Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread. In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort.
The reason behind the massive over enrollment is that parents don't want their schools redistricted to the under enrolled schools because of the issues that surround those schools, primarily the massive gaps between the kids who are struggling (ESOL and lower SES kids). No one wants to move to Lewis or Justice or Herndon. Heck, people are hesitant about South Lakes. Since the solution is not build capacity at over crowded schools we need to look at why no one wants their kids at those lower enrolled high schools. Parents will fight being redistricted into a poorly performing school with fewer class opportunities then what is available at their existing school. And since the parents who are fighting that move have more money and are more likely to vote, the School Board is not going to make a huge boundary change to redistribute the population in a way that makes sense. The School Board members are interested in keeping their current positions or being elected to a higher position, they are not going to piss off their constituents with a massive redistricting.
My kid is zoned for South Lakes and we are happy with the school. Redistricting for us would probably lead to his going to Oakton or South Lakes, so I don't have a real dog in the redistricting fight.
You can say it is a boundary thing only but that ignores the fact that it is not. That the School Boards focus on equity and finding band aids to try and staunch the bleeding at the struggling schools is very much the issue. If Lewis and Justice and Herndon and Mt Vernon had better programs and were not struggling with the issues that come from high ESOL and high FARMs students, parents would be less likely to fight a boundary change. You will not get buy in from the voting population for massive redistricting without improving the quality of those schools. That means that you need to address the programs at those schools and at the ES and MS that support them so that the schools can improve.
Or go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep saying that all it takes is boundary change. Then suggest that kids from Great Falls should be shifted to Herndon while some of the kids from Herndon are shifted to schools that are closer to them and watch the fur fly.
It really does only take a boundary change to drastically change the composition and overall course rigor of a school. Imagine Lewis absorbs 400 WSHS and 100 Edison students through boundary changes which would increase Lewis' population to 2185 students. On average, those 500 new students are of much higher SES and much lower FARMs rate than the current Lewis population. On average, well over 50% of those 500 students would take AP/IB courses according to average AP/IB participation at WSHS and Edison. That's an influx of 250 students to Lewis that now requires the school to expand their advanced course selection.
Meanwhile, in this fairy tale, WSHS and Edison still remain with 2250 and 2150 students, respectively, and their average SES and FARMs would stay effectively the same. Nothing changes at their schools, and all the kids at Lewis get brought up to have similar opportunity. This can be applied to MVHS as well.
So you're going to add a little over 100 per class (probably much less because parents would choose private over lewis) and think that's enough to create a cohort large enough to transform the school?
I think you overestimate the real threat of switching to private for most pyramids. Langley and McLean certainly can hold their own with that threat, but the middling pyramids the likes of WSHS are far more MC. I wouldn't bank on hundreds of families being able to afford private, especially not after purchasing expensive property in the boundary.
But yes, 500 students is 25% of a student body. That's plenty to kickstart a transformation for any school. In just one year, the GreatSchools rating will shoot up after higher SOL scores. That's really all it takes, since most families moving into FCPS tend to only look at GreatSchools ratings to assess schools.
The equity score would crash because the better students would still preform better. Nothing would change for the Lewis students other than the presence of better students
Lewis currently has a "2" equity score on GreatSchools. Not a lot of crashing left to do there.
The equity rating is an absurd and meaningless rating. Using it in defense of anything immediately discredits any argument you make. Langley's equity rating is a 9/10. They have 2% ELL, 3% FARMs, 1.6% Black, and 7% Hispanic population. How on earth is Langley deserving of a 9/10 equity rating?
I agree. It was cited in support of not doing anything that might add students from higher-income families to Lewis (because it might reduce Lewis's already low equity rating).
The idea behind an equity rating may have been noble, but it just rewards schools with minimal economic diversity. Anyway, to the extent people pay attention to GS, they look at the overall rating, not the equity rating.
Anonymous wrote:September 2022 FCPS HS enrollments vs. current or planned permanent capacity:
Severely Over-Crowded:
Centreville 133.1%
Chantilly 129.8%
McLean 122.1%
Modestly Over-Crowded to Modestly Under-Enrolled:
West Springfield 105.8%
Woodson 105.6%
Edison 105.2%
Marshall 102.6%
Oakton 102.1%
Robinson 99.9%
Fairfax 97.6%
Annandale 96.4%
Hayfield 96.0%
Westfield 93.8%
Herndon 93.6%
Justice 93.3%
Lake Braddock 92.7%
South Lakes 92.5%
West Potomac 90.8%
South County 90.3%
Significantly Under-Enrolled:
Langley 89.2%
Madison 85.1%
Falls Church 84.1%
TJ 82.5%
Mount Vernon 79.6%
Lewis 78.8%
At some point, FCPS will announce expansion plans for Centreville as part of its upcoming renovation. Chantilly and McLean remain overcrowded with either no solution offered (Chantilly/Stella Pekarsky) or a weak solution put in place that isn't adequately addressing the problem (McLean/Tholen). At the other end of the enrollment spectrum, Mount Vernon remains over 20% under-capacity, yet FCPS just expanded nearby West Potomac to 3000 seats, and Lewis has under 1700 students this fall while West Springfield now has over 2500 kids.
McLean HS needs not to accept students who live in Falls Church. That will solve the overcrowding problem.
Anonymous wrote:The equity rating is an absurd and meaningless rating. Using it in defense of anything immediately discredits any argument you make. Langley's equity rating is a 9/10. They have 2% ELL, 3% FARMs, 1.6% Black, and 7% Hispanic population. How on earth is Langley deserving of a 9/10 equity rating?
People just conveniently leave out Asians @Langley HS to push the woke agenda.
This one simple change could solve so many issues, including the over crowding at McLean.
I thought TJ got rid of the rigid academic requirements two years ago. That should allow black and hispanics to attend TJ, right? Why is TJ still under enrollment?
Anonymous wrote:September 2022 FCPS HS enrollments vs. current or planned permanent capacity:
Severely Over-Crowded:
Centreville 133.1%
Chantilly 129.8%
McLean 122.1%
Modestly Over-Crowded to Modestly Under-Enrolled:
West Springfield 105.8%
Woodson 105.6%
Edison 105.2%
Marshall 102.6%
Oakton 102.1%
Robinson 99.9%
Fairfax 97.6%
Annandale 96.4%
Hayfield 96.0%
Westfield 93.8%
Herndon 93.6%
Justice 93.3%
Lake Braddock 92.7%
South Lakes 92.5%
West Potomac 90.8%
South County 90.3%
Significantly Under-Enrolled:
Langley 89.2%
Madison 85.1%
Falls Church 84.1%
TJ 82.5%
Mount Vernon 79.6%
Lewis 78.8%
At some point, FCPS will announce expansion plans for Centreville as part of its upcoming renovation. Chantilly and McLean remain overcrowded with either no solution offered (Chantilly/Stella Pekarsky) or a weak solution put in place that isn't adequately addressing the problem (McLean/Tholen). At the other end of the enrollment spectrum, Mount Vernon remains over 20% under-capacity, yet FCPS just expanded nearby West Potomac to 3000 seats, and Lewis has under 1700 students this fall while West Springfield now has over 2500 kids.
McLean HS needs not to accept students who live in Falls Church. That will solve the overcrowding problem.
It's not like you apply. There are boundaries. Right now FCPS has a high school for roughly every 46,000 residents. McLean has about 50,000 residents, which isn't enough to support two FCPS high schools. So Langley has all of Great Falls, and parts of McLean, Vienna, Reston and Herndon. McLean now has parts of McLean and Falls Church.
However, McLean has 2433 kids this fall and Falls Church has 2103. FCPS being FCPS, they are expanding Falls Church to 2500 seats and leaving McLean with 1993. Since Marshall and McLean are going to be getting more kids from Tysons, there's going to be a push to move the part of Timber Lane (currently a McLean/Falls Church split feeder) that feeds into McLean to Falls Church once Falls Church's renovation is finished. It will reduce the diversity at McLean. Parents at McLean have pleaded for a permanent addition for years and have been ignored. So now it's going to be FCPS left to explain why they are either leaving McLean overcrowded or reducing its diversity.
This one simple change could solve so many issues, including the over crowding at McLean.
So you have more kids whose base school is McLean taking Academy courses at TJ during the day, but then you also have more kids at McLean as their base school for non-Academy classes. Seems kind of like a wash, no?
They should just build a damn addition there like they did at Madison and are doing at Justice. Take the money that Frisch laid claim to for Dunn Loring ES, use it for additions at McLean and Chantilly instead, and you'd solve two problems (overcrowding at McLean and Chantilly) and avoid a third (the future redistricting to justify Dunn Loring).
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