Boundary Review Meetings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why on earth do we need a huge preschool space at a high school?

So Merin can claim there just isn’t space to redistrict kids from South Lakes.

It’s Meren and she’s one of the only School Board members asking the right questions these days.

Yeah, her idea to put a pre-school at a high school is totally the normal thing to do. Don't you remember all those 4 year olds running around the place back when you went to high school?

Mount Vernon High School has a pre-school program, "Little Majors." It is an early childhood careers program for high school students to learn about careers in early childhood education. The students run the preschool under the direction of a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. They've had the program for years - at least 20 years. I live right by the high school and I remember hearing about the program in our neighborhood newsletter when my oldest was preschool aged. The preschoolers only go to the program a couple of days a week for a couple of hours so it is not daycare.

MV also has a partnership with at least Riverside elementary school - the elementary school is right across the street from the high school. There's an education course where the high school students go to Riverside and work in the classrooms with elemetary school students. Again, they've been doing this for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did meeting go tonight? Takeaways?

One big takeaway is that they seem to be planning to reduce transfers and are managing that process differently next school year. It may be harder for a student to transfer out for language, for example, because they will make alternative options available.

My takeaways:

--Lewis parents (like myself) are very upset that this boundary process did nothing to actually move more students to Lewis.
--We are upset that they would even consider moving more kids out of Lewis (Rolling Valley). But it seems that this came to a surprise at Dr. Reid so I'm hopeful this will be fixed in scenero 5.
--We need to be supportive of cracking down on reasons for kids to leave Lewis
--Our parents and community are wonderful and Lewis is a great school, but we need more students

Why would you want to make it harder for students to leave?

Also interested why you'd want note students in? Expanding the size of teams and clubs?

Because 300 kids pupil place out of Lewis every year which is the reason why it’s under enrolled. Better to bring them back to their home school with AP and language classes then to try to force hundreds of other kids from different neighborhoods to move into Lewis to replace them. If you don’t close the pupil place loopholes those kids will pupil place out too. That’s why we have to start there.

They need to do both. Slowing pupil placement won't fully solve the problem.

.

NP and I agree! Slow transfers AND add students.

If the 300 lewis zoned kids remained at Lewis, the school would be at full capacity with no room for any additional students.

Start with the families that bought houses zoned for Lewis before experimenting on moving kids who live in schools zones from other neighborhoods.

So, you’re advocating that there be no transfers from any school and not just from Lewis, right? Or are you singling out Lewis? IMO, I say don’t allow any transfers for any reason other than SpecialEd. It will make planning easier. Singling out Lewis is indefensible.

Well, the discussion was about Lewis.

Sure, stop school transfers everywhere

One of the SB members did say in the discussion on start times that 30% of bus routes are for transfer students, which feels like a really big number. Feels like if they dropped IB that would solve a lot at the HS level and if they do follow through with AAP centers at every middle school that will help.

I wonder how that’s calculated. Our base school is an AAP center. Our school bus picks up both transfer and in bound students because our neighborhood is split between two elementary schools. Is that route counted as a transfer bus, even though majority of the riders are base students?

I thought AAP accounted for <20% of K-8, and at the middle school level, more than half the schools are already AAP centers. I’m all for AAP in every middle school, but I don’t think it’s the long pole in the tent for that 30% figure.

[Anonymous]

If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

If kids always attended the closest school Langley would only have about 1000 kids. But they expanded it to almost 2400.

Oakton’s enrollment would also be a fraction of its current enrollment if it only served kids living closest to Oakton. But they expanded it to almost 2650.

We are long past the point where you always get assigned to the closest school. And the current WSHS boundaries are a lot more compact than most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did meeting go tonight? Takeaways?

One big takeaway is that they seem to be planning to reduce transfers and are managing that process differently next school year. It may be harder for a student to transfer out for language, for example, because they will make alternative options available.

My takeaways:

--Lewis parents (like myself) are very upset that this boundary process did nothing to actually move more students to Lewis.
--We are upset that they would even consider moving more kids out of Lewis (Rolling Valley). But it seems that this came to a surprise at Dr. Reid so I'm hopeful this will be fixed in scenero 5.
--We need to be supportive of cracking down on reasons for kids to leave Lewis
--Our parents and community are wonderful and Lewis is a great school, but we need more students

Why would you want to make it harder for students to leave?

Also interested why you'd want note students in? Expanding the size of teams and clubs?

Because 300 kids pupil place out of Lewis every year which is the reason why it’s under enrolled. Better to bring them back to their home school with AP and language classes then to try to force hundreds of other kids from different neighborhoods to move into Lewis to replace them. If you don’t close the pupil place loopholes those kids will pupil place out too. That’s why we have to start there.

They need to do both. Slowing pupil placement won't fully solve the problem.

.

NP and I agree! Slow transfers AND add students.

If the 300 lewis zoned kids remained at Lewis, the school would be at full capacity with no room for any additional students.

Start with the families that bought houses zoned for Lewis before experimenting on moving kids who live in schools zones from other neighborhoods.

So, you’re advocating that there be no transfers from any school and not just from Lewis, right? Or are you singling out Lewis? IMO, I say don’t allow any transfers for any reason other than SpecialEd. It will make planning easier. Singling out Lewis is indefensible.

Well, the discussion was about Lewis.

Sure, stop school transfers everywhere

One of the SB members did say in the discussion on start times that 30% of bus routes are for transfer students, which feels like a really big number. Feels like if they dropped IB that would solve a lot at the HS level and if they do follow through with AAP centers at every middle school that will help.

I wonder how that’s calculated. Our base school is an AAP center. Our school bus picks up both transfer and in bound students because our neighborhood is split between two elementary schools. Is that route counted as a transfer bus, even though majority of the riders are base students?

I thought AAP accounted for <20% of K-8, and at the middle school level, more than half the schools are already AAP centers. I’m all for AAP in every middle school, but I don’t think it’s the long pole in the tent for that 30% figure.

Transportation outside of your “assigned” school could be a lot of things - TJ, the alternative schools, AAP, special education program transfers, preschool kids going to the closest open preschool program … and a lot of those buses are not even close to full so it does put a lot of busses on the road. Increasing program availability (MS AAP, more preschool programs, more of the specialized autism classrooms etc.) would decrease the number of busses on the road but would probably increase the facilities budget or create the use of more modulars/trailers. If 100 MS AAP transfers come back to their base school that could easily put a school over capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

You're rude---not a sermon, just a thought

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

At whose expense? Almost ALL of WSHS's boundary is within a 2 mile radius of the school. That's why no one feels they should be the ones to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

At whose expense? Almost ALL of WSHS's boundary is within a 2 mile radius of the school. That's why no one feels they should be the ones to go.

Daventry was never built for WSHS. Move them back to Lewis and problem is solved. Lewis gets more students, WSGS numbers decrease. Why was that not in the table.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

When did they say they were going to start from scratch? I’m calling BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

+1. That was the point of the comprehensive review and I was supportive. The boundaries are flawed from one off changes that didn’t look at the ripple effects. But scenario 4 is just changes based on the loudest voices - a real problem with “community engagement.” It doesn’t address Policy 8130 priorities. I sure hope most of 4 goes in the trash and doesn’t end up in 5.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

When did they say they were going to start from scratch? I’m calling BS.

Some board members said a lot of grandiose things at the start of this process. However, enough board members pushed back about grandfathering that the scope quickly shrank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

+1. That was the point of the comprehensive review and I was supportive. The boundaries are flawed from one off changes that didn’t look at the ripple effects. But scenario 4 is just changes based on the loudest voices - a real problem with “community engagement.” It doesn’t address Policy 8130 priorities. I sure hope most of 4 goes in the trash and doesn’t end up in 5.

Again, when did they say they were starting from scratch? You lose a lot of credibility when you lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they were going to redo boundaries, they should have started from scratch. Example - given travel distance, ALL of Sangster should go to WSHS, instead of the small attendance island being shifted to Braddock.
Sangster kids are traveling up to half hour to get to Braddock, whereas WSHS is much closer.

Blah, blah, blah. The start from scratch idea is such a non starter on so many levels, no where close to a serious comment.

It’s what FCPS originally said it planned to do. Then they got cold feet and we ended up with this largely pointless reshuffling.

When did they say they were going to start from scratch? I’m calling BS.

Some board members said a lot of grandiose things at the start of this process. However, enough board members pushed back about grandfathering that the scope quickly shrank.

Nice try. I’ll ask again, when did they say they were starting from scratch? I’m pretty certain you are straight up sour grape lying.