Boundary Review Meetings

[Anonymous]

They posted some materials for the 10/23 School Board meeting. Dr. Reid is officially recommending KAA to be a comprehensive neighborhood high school. No sign of any maps posted yet though. https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

[Anonymous]

Also notes that the school will over AP

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain why McLean HD goes around Pimmit Hills? It makes no sense as it puts it on an island, while under scenario 4 there is a McLean island to the east of the Marshall HS district.

Part of Pimmit Hills walks to Marshall. Technically, if assigned, part of Pimmit Hills would walk to McLean. Instead of splitting the neighborhood, everyone is sent to Marshall. McLean doesn’t have the capacity to take the whole neighborhood, even if they dropped the Timber Lane island.

Under Scenarios 1-3 part of Pimmit Hills was supposed to go to McLean HS, so clearly they understand that a portion can walk to McLean. It seems very odd to do a complete 180.

Actually the portion that could walk to McLean has never been recommended for McLean HS. It’s a portion of Westgate that’s across Magarity from the Commons of McLean. The McLean assigned portion of Westgate are walkers. If they understood that portion, they’d have split the neighborhood by Griffith Rd. Then the Lemon Road and Westgate splits would have been more evenly split, and they’d pick up McLean walkers without losing Marshall ones.

That was my thought. Use Griffin and Peabody as they offer a nice cut off area for McLean. It eliminates the peninsula area of Pimmit Hills(which is surrounded by McLean boundary) and I do not think would add a lot of students.

Based on the Kent Garden study, it would move about 100 students from Marshall to McLean. McLean would be at 105% capacity with modulars. It would make Lemon Road about 40/60 McLean/Marshall split and Westgate a 35/65 split.

The only way I see them doing it (aside from pure apathy at appeasing any and all requests) is if Kilmer capacity can’t be resolved through Thoreau, which I don’t think is the case.

Assuming TOV gets their way and the Wolftrap/Westbriar swap is undone, Kilmer’s boundaries will essentially look like Marshall’s existing boundaries without the Stenwood cutout. That would put both Kilmer and Thoreau at around 103% each (if my math on the current Kilmer split is correct… Thru states 12% to Madison in their change log.) So they’d both be “in the clear” capacity wise.

I don’t see them pushing McLean to their capacity threshold (105%) to get Kilmer capacity under 100% but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Especially since Madison rejected modeling the Thoreau-Marshall students to Madison because they worried it would add too much capacity (it wouldn’t.)

Unless you're on the BRAC and have access to data not available to most, it seems like it would be hard to know the impact of this proposal with any certainty. The numbers for the SPAs in the Kent Gardens study were for K-6 enrollment, not the high school enrollments. You can pro-rate, but it's quite imprecise since there are KG families who may go private for high school or only start sending their kids to public school in high school. Also, Thru and the BRAC still appear to be working with September 2024 numbers and it's unclear they will update to use fall 2025 numbers.

The initial proposals for Marshall and McLean were so bad that I think they've been beating a retreat ever since. Insofar as Scenario 4 is concerned, Longfellow/McLean just lose the Spring Hill island in Tysons, and those families won't complain about moving to Cooper/Langley with the other 62% at Spring Hill. The Marshall boundaries still seem to be up in the air. The Madison parents in Vienna are fighting a move to Marshall, there's a group of Lemon Road parents pushing now to get moved from Marshall to McLean after other Lemon Road parents fought earlier to stay at Marshall and not move to McLean, and Scenario 4 leaves the Westbriar island even more isolated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They posted some materials for the 10/23 School Board meeting. Dr. Reid is officially recommending KAA to be a comprehensive neighborhood high school. No sign of any maps posted yet though. https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

Corrected link - https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They posted some materials for the 10/23 School Board meeting. Dr. Reid is officially recommending KAA to be a comprehensive neighborhood high school. No sign of any maps posted yet though. https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

Corrected link - https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

Thanks. No surprises, really.

May the Floris Falcons Flourish.

[Anonymous]

I don't know the western part of the county as well as the southeastern, but when South County opened the ensuing boundary changes left Lee (Lewis) with a high-poverty population. Is there a risk that this could happen to a school like Westfield?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the western part of the county as well as the southeastern, but when South County opened the ensuing boundary changes left Lee (Lewis) with a high-poverty population. Is there a risk that this could happen to a school like Westfield?

Doubtful. A couple of the schools likely to go to KAA are not affluent.
.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My BRAC members do not respond , how do I get my voice heard ?

Our school board rep, Mateo Dunne - came to our school and did a detailed presentation on the proposed changes to our school and how to make our voices heard. He did this within days of the maps being released and also encouraged us to submit comments via the map tool and attend the boundary review meeting at Hayfield tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They posted some materials for the 10/23 School Board meeting. Dr. Reid is officially recommending KAA to be a comprehensive neighborhood high school. No sign of any maps posted yet though. https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

Corrected link - https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/DMJUHX7C2FBC/$file/10.23.25%20Western%20High%20School%20Programming%20(2).pdf

Thanks. No surprises, really.

May the Floris Falcons Flourish.

Clueless Reid originally wanted a magnet school, but I guess she finally read the room.

When will they release the new map?

I’m fine with the Floris Falcons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the western part of the county as well as the southeastern, but when South County opened the ensuing boundary changes left Lee (Lewis) with a high-poverty population. Is there a risk that this could happen to a school like Westfield?

Westfield currently has nine feeder schools. Four are straight feeders, and five are split feeders.

Schools most likely to move to KAA are bolded. If these schools move to KAA, then they'll need to backfill Westfield and it could end up with a higher percentage of lower-income kids.

FARMS percentages at Westfield and Westfield feeders last year:

Coates 53.8 (current split with Herndon)
London Towne 47.2
Bull Run 43.1 (current split with Centreville)
Virginia Run 37.5
Deer Park 34.3
WESTFIELD 31.3
McNair Upper 29.4
Cub Run 22.9 (current split with Chantilly)
Floris 13.7 (current split with South Lakes)
Oak Hill 9.2 (current split with Chantilly)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain why McLean HD goes around Pimmit Hills? It makes no sense as it puts it on an island, while under scenario 4 there is a McLean island to the east of the Marshall HS district.

Part of Pimmit Hills walks to Marshall. Technically, if assigned, part of Pimmit Hills would walk to McLean. Instead of splitting the neighborhood, everyone is sent to Marshall. McLean doesn’t have the capacity to take the whole neighborhood, even if they dropped the Timber Lane island.

Under Scenarios 1-3 part of Pimmit Hills was supposed to go to McLean HS, so clearly they understand that a portion can walk to McLean. It seems very odd to do a complete 180.

Actually the portion that could walk to McLean has never been recommended for McLean HS. It’s a portion of Westgate that’s across Magarity from the Commons of McLean. The McLean assigned portion of Westgate are walkers. If they understood that portion, they’d have split the neighborhood by Griffith Rd. Then the Lemon Road and Westgate splits would have been more evenly split, and they’d pick up McLean walkers without losing Marshall ones.

That was my thought. Use Griffin and Peabody as they offer a nice cut off area for McLean. It eliminates the peninsula area of Pimmit Hills(which is surrounded by McLean boundary) and I do not think would add a lot of students.

Based on the Kent Garden study, it would move about 100 students from Marshall to McLean. McLean would be at 105% capacity with modulars. It would make Lemon Road about 40/60 McLean/Marshall split and Westgate a 35/65 split.

The only way I see them doing it (aside from pure apathy at appeasing any and all requests) is if Kilmer capacity can’t be resolved through Thoreau, which I don’t think is the case.

Assuming TOV gets their way and the Wolftrap/Westbriar swap is undone, Kilmer’s boundaries will essentially look like Marshall’s existing boundaries without the Stenwood cutout. That would put both Kilmer and Thoreau at around 103% each (if my math on the current Kilmer split is correct… Thru states 12% to Madison in their change log.) So they’d both be “in the clear” capacity wise.

I don’t see them pushing McLean to their capacity threshold (105%) to get Kilmer capacity under 100% but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Especially since Madison rejected modeling the Thoreau-Marshall students to Madison because they worried it would add too much capacity (it wouldn’t.)

Unless you're on the BRAC and have access to data not available to most, it seems like it would be hard to know the impact of this proposal with any certainty. The numbers for the SPAs in the Kent Gardens study were for K-6 enrollment, not the high school enrollments. You can pro-rate, but it's quite imprecise since there are KG families who may go private for high school or only start sending their kids to public school in high school. Also, Thru and the BRAC still appear to be working with September 2024 numbers and it's unclear they will update to use fall 2025 numbers.

The initial proposals for Marshall and McLean were so bad that I think they've been beating a retreat ever since. Insofar as Scenario 4 is concerned, Longfellow/McLean just lose the Spring Hill island in Tysons, and those families won't complain about moving to Cooper/Langley with the other 62% at Spring Hill. The Marshall boundaries still seem to be up in the air. The Madison parents in Vienna are fighting a move to Marshall, there's a group of Lemon Road parents pushing now to get moved from Marshall to McLean after other Lemon Road parents fought earlier to stay at Marshall and not move to McLean, and Scenario 4 leaves the Westbriar island even more isolated.

That group of Lemon Road parents is taking it a step further and aggressively lobbying to push the LR families in the townhomes and apartments next to Marshall out of Lemon Road, under the flimsy guise of eliminating a split feeder… conveniently omitting the fact that as an AAP center, LR will remain a split feeder.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the western part of the county as well as the southeastern, but when South County opened the ensuing boundary changes left Lee (Lewis) with a high-poverty population. Is there a risk that this could happen to a school like Westfield?

Westfield currently has nine feeder schools. Four are straight feeders, and five are split feeders.

Schools most likely to move to KAA are bolded. If these schools move to KAA, then they'll need to backfill Westfield and it could end up with a higher percentage of lower-income kids.

FARMS percentages at Westfield and Westfield feeders last year:

Coates 53.8 (current split with Herndon)
London Towne 47.2
Bull Run 43.1 (current split with Centreville)
Virginia Run 37.5
Deer Park 34.3
WESTFIELD 31.3
McNair Upper 29.4
Cub Run 22.9 (current split with Chantilly)
Floris 13.7 (current split with South Lakes)
Oak Hill 9.2 (current split with Chantilly)

I don’t think Westfield gets many kids from Floris or Oak Hill currently. The biggest feeders for Westfield are Coates, McNair, London Towne, Virginia Run, Deer Park, and Cub Run.

[Anonymous]

Looking at the new maps I could see Lees Corner and most of Bull Run moving to Westfield.

[Anonymous]

If the South Lakes Floris portion ends up getting moved to KAA I do think that will have an impact on South Lakes…those are the same neighborhoods that boosted South Lakes during the 2008 boundary change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain why McLean HD goes around Pimmit Hills? It makes no sense as it puts it on an island, while under scenario 4 there is a McLean island to the east of the Marshall HS district.

Part of Pimmit Hills walks to Marshall. Technically, if assigned, part of Pimmit Hills would walk to McLean. Instead of splitting the neighborhood, everyone is sent to Marshall. McLean doesn’t have the capacity to take the whole neighborhood, even if they dropped the Timber Lane island.

Under Scenarios 1-3 part of Pimmit Hills was supposed to go to McLean HS, so clearly they understand that a portion can walk to McLean. It seems very odd to do a complete 180.

Actually the portion that could walk to McLean has never been recommended for McLean HS. It’s a portion of Westgate that’s across Magarity from the Commons of McLean. The McLean assigned portion of Westgate are walkers. If they understood that portion, they’d have split the neighborhood by Griffith Rd. Then the Lemon Road and Westgate splits would have been more evenly split, and they’d pick up McLean walkers without losing Marshall ones.

That was my thought. Use Griffin and Peabody as they offer a nice cut off area for McLean. It eliminates the peninsula area of Pimmit Hills(which is surrounded by McLean boundary) and I do not think would add a lot of students.

Based on the Kent Garden study, it would move about 100 students from Marshall to McLean. McLean would be at 105% capacity with modulars. It would make Lemon Road about 40/60 McLean/Marshall split and Westgate a 35/65 split.

The only way I see them doing it (aside from pure apathy at appeasing any and all requests) is if Kilmer capacity can’t be resolved through Thoreau, which I don’t think is the case.

Assuming TOV gets their way and the Wolftrap/Westbriar swap is undone, Kilmer’s boundaries will essentially look like Marshall’s existing boundaries without the Stenwood cutout. That would put both Kilmer and Thoreau at around 103% each (if my math on the current Kilmer split is correct… Thru states 12% to Madison in their change log.) So they’d both be “in the clear” capacity wise.

I don’t see them pushing McLean to their capacity threshold (105%) to get Kilmer capacity under 100% but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Especially since Madison rejected modeling the Thoreau-Marshall students to Madison because they worried it would add too much capacity (it wouldn’t.)

Unless you're on the BRAC and have access to data not available to most, it seems like it would be hard to know the impact of this proposal with any certainty. The numbers for the SPAs in the Kent Gardens study were for K-6 enrollment, not the high school enrollments. You can pro-rate, but it's quite imprecise since there are KG families who may go private for high school or only start sending their kids to public school in high school. Also, Thru and the BRAC still appear to be working with September 2024 numbers and it's unclear they will update to use fall 2025 numbers.

The initial proposals for Marshall and McLean were so bad that I think they've been beating a retreat ever since. Insofar as Scenario 4 is concerned, Longfellow/McLean just lose the Spring Hill island in Tysons, and those families won't complain about moving to Cooper/Langley with the other 62% at Spring Hill. The Marshall boundaries still seem to be up in the air. The Madison parents in Vienna are fighting a move to Marshall, there's a group of Lemon Road parents pushing now to get moved from Marshall to McLean after other Lemon Road parents fought earlier to stay at Marshall and not move to McLean, and Scenario 4 leaves the Westbriar island even more isolated.

That group of Lemon Road parents is taking it a step further and aggressively lobbying to push the LR families in the townhomes and apartments next to Marshall out of Lemon Road, under the flimsy guise of eliminating a split feeder… conveniently omitting the fact that as an AAP center, LR will remain a split feeder.

They’re being pretty short sighted. I would like to think that most Lemon Road families don’t want the townhouses and apartments across RT-7 reassigned. The Pimmit Hills families just want to go to McLean. They’re arguing for the split feeder to be eliminated, when they should be advocating for a more even split. The current strategy is either going to move other people’s kids to Freedom Hill or get the Idylwood neighborhood moved to Marshall, and then they’ll scream their heads off about getting moved. It’s a pretty pointless exercise that would be undone by draft 6 and hurt a lot of feelings in the process.