Forum Index
»
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Mythical Western HS
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
But … apartment dwelling families!!!! |
Anonymous
Langley doesn't have an issue with reassigning apartments to Langley so much as an issue with reassigning closer-in areas that are still growing to the school. That's what struck fear into the hearts of the GFCA several years ago, because their main concern is Langley reaching full capacity or getting overcrowded with kids who live closer to Langley than Great Falls is, and thereby prompting FCPS to consider moving part of Great Falls back to Herndon. They will spend large amounts of time and money to make sure that doesn't happen. And they will also lobby to kill any western high school unless it's far enough away from the western part of the Langley boundary and the Herndon boundary that its opening won't reopen the Langley/Herndon boundaries. The good news for them is that they got Elaine Tholen to be their puppet over the last 3+ years; FCPS keeps coming up with reasons why building a new western high school would be difficult (such as finding enough land); and the expansions to Madison and Falls Church provide a potential solution to future or continued overcrowding at Marshall and McLean that don't involve Langley. |
Anonymous
| I think they could have put a new high school at Willow Springs Elementary instead of building baseball fields. Would have helped Centreville and Chantilly high schools. |
Anonymous
But Willow Springs goes to Fairfax City schools (JohnsonMS/Fairfax HS) now, right? Seems like a lot would have to be untangled. |
Anonymous
I think you could easily have those kids attend schools in the Woodson pyramid. Like other neighborhoods in that area. |
Anonymous
Why would our SB do something that makes sense? Perfect location. |
Anonymous
It’s not a perfect location. The issue with Willow Springs has always been that it’s quite close to Centreville but is assigned to Fairfax. Who is going to go to a new school built there and who will get moved to Fairfax if that school is left with only three ES feeders (it won’t be kids now at Centreville or Chantilly). In terms of actually spacing out the schools it seems like building at Bull Run would be a lot easier, if they can deal with the congestion. |
Anonymous
Find a 20 acre tract in Great Falls, build a medium-sized high and middle school complex (~1300 and ~650 students respectively) without all the sports fields. Send all the Colvin Run/Great Falls/Forestville ES kids there, freeing up space at Cooper/Langley for Tysons growth. If kids at Great Falls High want to play sports, they can catch a bus to Langley after school for practice. Problem solved. There are several candidate parcels in Great Falls, some already county owned like the Hickory Run School Site and adjoining park. Great Falls residents will be happy, and 1300 seats will be freed up at Langley, which can be filled with kids from insanely-overcrowded McLean HS, freeing up room there for for Tysons expansion. |
Anonymous
"What do you consider "insanely overcrowded?" |
Anonymous
How can you build a facility of any size like this in Great Falls? Are these 1950 kids going to catch a bus to Langley to take a poo as well? Anyway, I don’t see Great Falls residents happy to send their kids to a high school without practice fields or other amenities that would be the runt of FCPS. It wouldn’t even be a Class 6 school for VHSL purposes. |
Anonymous
| Much easier to allocate the funds needed to renovate and expand McLean at the existing site than buy a parcel in Great Falls and build a new satellite school. Also does nothing to address the capacity issues at Centerville/Chantilly/Herndon etc that the Western HS was supposed to help address. |
Anonymous
DP. If you look at the just approved CIP they have McLean currently at 122% capacity and projected to increase to 125% within the next five years, excluding the cheap trailers and modular. That could go up as more housing that isn’t yet factored into the projections gets built in Tysons and West Falls Church (the projections only take housing under construction into account, and exclude housing that has been approved or is the subject of pending applications but is not yet under construction). The only high schools with greater overcrowding now are Centreville and Chantilly, each currently at 131% excluding trailers and modulars. They plan to expand Centreville to 3000 kids but have not announced any specific plans with respect to Chantilly (other than holding out the possibility of a new western HS at some point in the distant future). There isn’t a ton of new housing on the horizon in either the Centreville or Chantilly districts, as with the McLean district, but Westfield could add hundreds more kids if all the new housing contemplated near the new Silver Line stations in Herndon gets built. It’s a shame we got to this point, and speaks to the School Board’s neglect and failure to exercise meaningful oversight over Jeff Platenberg when he was heading Facilities. It virtually ensures FCPS will continue to be reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to planning for many years into the future. |
Anonymous
| McLean HS needs a renovation, but not sure that is the solution for Chantilly/Centerville. I know these HS are overcrowded, but it seems like families with young kids are still flocking to buy into these pyramids - they must assume (incorrectly) that the SB will fix this long term. I read somewhere that children per household is very very high in McLean - if that continues, especially as the older residents there die off/go to assisted living, overcrowding will always be a problem. |
Anonymous
The dynamic and issues in the two areas are a bit different. Centreville and Chantilly are two seriously overcrowded schools in areas that aren’t currently expected to see a ton of additional growth, but the question is whether having schools with 3000 or more kids is a desirable model and whether the expected growth in nearby areas (Herndon and Reston) could lead to unexpected spillover effects if, say, people moved out of the South Lakes and Westfield districts into the Centreville and Chantilly districts. The assumption behind a new western HS seems historically to have been that 3000-student schools were too big and that another school would both relieve the severe overcrowding at several schools and get the overall enrollments closer in line with the county averages. But FCPS’s commitment to making that happen has always seemed shaky at best. Even as they’ve hired a consultant to look at potential sites, or develop other options, it feels a bit like they are just going through the motions, especially since this is an election year. But they haven’t backed off the plans to expand Centreville to 3000 seats during its upcoming renovation. McLean has an enrollment that’s only slightly above average (@2450 kids), so it’s smaller than Centreville and Chantilly, but it has a very small physical plant (under 2000 permanent seats) and there’s been a lot of growth due to (1) older single-family homes getting torn down and replaced with bigger houses purchased by families with kids and (2) hundreds, if not thousands, of new apartments and townhouses getting built in Tysons and now planned for West Falls Church. The community has asked for an addition for a decade, and by 2014 FCPS had developed plans for one, but Jeff Platenberg then decided to expand other schools instead. Although there was a limited boundary change with Langley in 2021, it was a band-aid. The community continues to ask for an addition, but my guess is that FCPS will wait until the Falls Church HS renovation is finished and then move the part of Timber Lane ES that attends McLean to Falls Church. That will not be uncontroversial, since it will pull much of the current SES diversity out of McLean, but the new Tysons/WFC apartments will also continue to increase the diversity at the school and by then FCPS will have left itself without other options. |
Anonymous
The schools are good and the community is diverse. Chantilly and Centreville have been overcrowded for decades-that's why Westfield was built. I don't think the people at Chantilly are as concerned about the overcrowding because the school seems to know how to deal with it and it is a compact area..There are lots of "niches" for kids with various activities. I cannot speak for Centreville. |