FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school board shall build a wall, a glorious and beautiful wall, around each school district. That wall should be tall and unchanging. The law will be that no one shall move from one walled school district to another. (Unless ye be interested in the Hayfield football team, then you may slip between walls, but ONLY to the Hayfield district.)

The children on one side of their wall shall never interact with children on the other side, for to mix children from one district to another could enact such damages upon them the like of which we've never seen. Such horrors! No, they must remain with their own peoples, within the safety of their own walled school district. We shall not pay heed to long bus rides, or oddly shaped borders. If there be squished conditions within a school or bare empty school hallways, it matters not. The walls shall never change.

To all, I tell ye, the walls of the school disctricts shall stand proudly for a thousand years, all for the glory of FCPS. And once the wall is built, the parents shall find other things to complain about to the school board, for that is the way.

So it shall be written in the Book of FCPS. So it shall be done.

I’d be happy if they just expanded the walls when there was an obvious need to do so, rather than exiling the children from their kingdoms at the whim of the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I can't believe my baby may have two switch schools and because I have closely curated their lives (just like my insta and TikTok, omg!!!), this will ruin everything.

You loaded up on the snark but said nothing about how these boundary changes are necessary or would make anything better for anyone.

It suggests you like reshuffling people just to piss them off, which isn't a great look for you, much less the School Board.

It makes every school heavy with ELL and lowers SES for some and raises for others. Obvs.

Obvs that isn’t going to help any individual students. Not at the high school level anyway. Those kids are already tracked into ell or IB or AP programs. So why switch the high schoolers?

The only reason is to improve metrics.

Maybe it's because there are parents who hate that their high schoolers are on the bus for almost an hour to get to and from school when there are at least two other high schools that are only 10 minutes away that they could be going to? You think this is all about politics but it's not, there are real children impacted by this, and we are not concerned about if our kids can stay with their friends, we're concerned that our kids will be able to have an hour and a half of their lives back every day.

The only place I can think of where this is even remotely the case is Langley/Herndon with the kids at the far western edge of the county. But is Herndon closed to pupil placements right now? Couldn’t you just place there for a shorter commute?

+1. Also, parents knew full well the commute to schools when we bought houses. Thanks for trying to be paternalistic for our kids, but you know who is better equipped to make those decisions than anonymous internet poster who thinks knows what’s best for my child? Me and the other affected parents.

I’d give your argument a little credibility if you lived in the potentially affected school districts, but of course you don’t.

+ a million
You nailed it. The people complaining about "long bus rides" and "children being impacted" don't even have kids at the schools in question! It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic. "Paternalistic" is exactly the right word. Also, "busy bodies" and "arrogant."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I can't believe my baby may have two switch schools and because I have closely curated their lives (just like my insta and TikTok, omg!!!), this will ruin everything.

I don’t understand this comment, but it is patently absurd for anyone to think that this won’t have significant consequences for the impacted kids.

Only people with no friends or social IQ will struggle to understand those consequences.

Sometimes things are more important than your childrens' highly curated social lives. I don't know about your kids, but mine have friends that go to other schools. If they had to switch junior year, yes it absolutely would SUCK but (a) they wouldn't be the only ones and (b) they have friends at these other schools that they see every week and I have no doubt they'd continue to see their other friends, too.

Weird that you keeping calling friendships “curated.” Pretty telling.

Anyway, so glad to hear that your kids have friend at different schools. Mine do too, but the bulk are at the school’s they are at, since they are who my kids see most. Maybe the difference is what qualifies as a “friend” for your kids?

PP is big on pushing the narrative that they are prepared to sacrifice if it’s in the greater good, but hasn’t otherwise explained what good would actually come out of boundary changes at a time when FCPS enrollment is stable and even slightly down. Still waiting to hear what problem(s) she actually thinks exists, and where, and how disruptive boundary changes are going to solve it. At some point it becomes a solution in search of a problem.

DP than the person you are responding to but, unless you work for Gatehouse, you yourself have absolutely no idea where all the problem areas are and likely zero experience implementing county-wide boundary changes. That’s why we are waiting for the professionals to propose appropriate solutions.

You seem to continue to want to debate about the merits of even conducting the review, but we are past that stage.

This is just shilling for the School Board. Nothing specific here at all - just an unsupported claim that there are problems that only a third-party consultant can remedy.

+1
"Problems exist!" And I love the poster who insists "parents are upset at having their kids on the bus for long rides." No, no they're not. The only people making this claim are those who are resentful and want to make sure other people's kids have to switch to a much less desirable school. It's so incredibly transparent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know if the school you are currently zoned for would change? The next high school over from us is absolutely horrible. We bought our house because of the schools. If we we rezoned we would have to move. This is terrible.

When it's all said and done, the currently bad schools will likely be far improved with the new influx and wouldn't necessitate moving. Just something to consider long-term.

Yes, just move some UMC kids into failing schools and voila! That school will overnight become a bastion of excellence! How about FCPS works on fixing its failing schools without dragging other people into their mess?
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax voters have brought this upon themselves over the years by voting for liberal policies at the local, state, and federal level. The poverty in the county was not generated from within the borders of this country. Not that I blame immigrants from coming here or think they are bad people, but they bring huge educational challenges (among other things). The biggest problem has been the pace at which they have arrived. Twenty years ago, the F/R level in Fairfax was half of what it is now. At some HS it exceeds 60%. Raising the F/R lunch rate so far and quickly has consequences.

Vote accordingly going forward.

+100
Good advice, but this crew will never change the way they vote. It's the very definition of insanity, and I'm so relieved my kids are almost done with FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was really hoping that the boundary study would be in conjunction with removal of AAP Centers, which are completely unnecessary.

Preach. Talk about something that should be long gone by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High performing high schools will not guarantee your kid will be a high performer. There will always be outliers. Kids that focus on academics, find their crowd even in low performing schools. It is up to us, as parents to instill the good work ethics, and to make sure our kids are spending time with a good crowd.

My kid went to a low performing school. She found a crowd focused on athletics and academics and did just fine. I volunteered regurlarly, met parents and made sure my kid was on the right track. Now she is at a top 25 university, along with a few of her high school friends.

I wish home values were not tied so closely to school districts. Those websites that give schools grades, do not fully reflect the gains that are happening in these schools. Schools with high ELL numbers, will obviously have lower scores, but that does not mean your native English speaker cannot excel.

100% agree with this. Every child we know that is from a high SES family but at a school that gets low Great Schools or Niche ratings is doing GREAT in school. The high schoolers are excelling in Honors and AP classes (even the ones who didn't go AAP), the few that are in college got into great universities and are doing well there.

If you're upset about your child's cohort that says more about you (and your racism and classism) than it does the school and how well it is teaching students that are willing to work hard.

Some of the most idiotic and clueless posts on this thread. Wow.

[Anonymous]

No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

It's insane to argue that there shouldn't even be a review because your kid may be negatively affected by it. Guess what, some kids will be better off, others will be worse off, but on balance the changes should benefit most. That's called public policy. If you have doubts or worries about the process being fair or balanced, then you should get off your couch and volunteer to be on the review committee or advocate some other way. Lazy armchair advocacy won't get you anywhere. But it's just so much easier to be a victim, isn't it? The immediate gratification of shouting at someone on an anonymous board is so so sweet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

It's insane to argue that there shouldn't even be a review because your kid may be negatively affected by it. Guess what, some kids will be better off, others will be worse off, but on balance the changes should benefit most. That's called public policy. If you have doubts or worries about the process being fair or balanced, then you should get off your couch and volunteer to be on the review committee or advocate some other way. Lazy armchair advocacy won't get you anywhere. But it's just so much easier to be a victim, isn't it? The immediate gratification of shouting at someone on an anonymous board is so so sweet.

Please give specifics on how some kids currently failing will be better off? Because it sounds like the school board really just wants the averages to go up without actually helping kids in need.
-dp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

It's insane to argue that there shouldn't even be a review because your kid may be negatively affected by it. Guess what, some kids will be better off, others will be worse off, but on balance the changes should benefit most. That's called public policy. If you have doubts or worries about the process being fair or balanced, then you should get off your couch and volunteer to be on the review committee or advocate some other way. Lazy armchair advocacy won't get you anywhere. But it's just so much easier to be a victim, isn't it? The immediate gratification of shouting at someone on an anonymous board is so so sweet.

Tell us, which school do your kids attend? What kind of hardships are they experiencing that make you eager to rezone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

It's insane to argue that there shouldn't even be a review because your kid may be negatively affected by it. Guess what, some kids will be better off, others will be worse off, but on balance the changes should benefit most. That's called public policy. If you have doubts or worries about the process being fair or balanced, then you should get off your couch and volunteer to be on the review committee or advocate some other way. Lazy armchair advocacy won't get you anywhere. But it's just so much easier to be a victim, isn't it? The immediate gratification of shouting at someone on an anonymous board is so so sweet.

What’s easier is homeschooling and/or going private from the get go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No wonder why Gen Z kids are notoriously entitled and selfish. They're raised by parents like the ones commenting on this thread.

Agree. It is beyond entitled and selfish to demand you know what's best for other people's kids.

+1. She loves telling us what’s best for our kids.

It's insane to argue that there shouldn't even be a review because your kid may be negatively affected by it. Guess what, some kids will be better off, others will be worse off, but on balance the changes should benefit most. That's called public policy. If you have doubts or worries about the process being fair or balanced, then you should get off your couch and volunteer to be on the review committee or advocate some other way. Lazy armchair advocacy won't get you anywhere. But it's just so much easier to be a victim, isn't it? The immediate gratification of shouting at someone on an anonymous board is so so sweet.

Please give specifics on how some kids currently failing will be better off? Because it sounds like the school board really just wants the averages to go up without actually helping kids in need.
-dp

DP. Some students may be better off if their school can offer more advanced classes or more instances of those classes.