FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

We are just saying that if FCPS was,serious about actually fixing the Lewis problem, a magnet school for languages, humanities, IB, new arrivals/esol, trades, non traditional students, etc would be a better, more effective, less diruptive and more popular way to fix the problem long term, than the virtue signaling ineffective bandaid of rezoning and moving kids around based on their demographics to try to mask low performance at Lewis.

Problem is this really isn't credible.

It's not clear how much of a market there would be for the school you're describing generally, and at that location in particular. So not clearly "more effective."

If you turn Lewis into a magnet, you have to start by reassigning about 1900 kids (1600 at Lewis and 300 pupil placed) to new high schools, which could have ripple effects on boundaries. So not clearly "less disruptive."

This reshuffling might be more popular among those who do not want to attend or be redistricted to Lewis, but not with others, and magnet schools breed never-ending controversy over access and admissions. So not clearly "more popular."

More feasible is completely ridding Lewis of IB; adding a full menu of AP courses; ensuring that its course electives are comparable with those available at other schools; de-emphasizing the lightweight "leadership" program; and overhauling the Lewis administration to assign some of FCPS's top staff there. Give that five years and then make a decision whether to redistrict kids there or close it entirely.

So essentially push this out until your kids aren't impacted.
Some of you are so transparent.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:Parents shouldn’t be involved. That’s how you get these absurd little cutouts and gerrymanders. Let the consultants draw the maps.

Yeah, let the out of state no bid consultants who have never done anything like this before who advertised themselves as being broadband consultants do the work. They are much more qualified to determine the fate of FCPS students than parents.

In a sea of dumb SJW ideas…

The consultants are only here for cover. Reid a the school board have made their decisions. Parents are only being given lip service. How many times does this same shell game have to be played before Fairfax county voters and parents catch on?

Since you’re so omniscient, fill us in on these already-made decisions.

Happy to lay it out for you. The twin pillars of Reid's equity at all cost and board members self interest will result in the following. Boundaries that move high performing students to low performing schools based on the friend groups of board members, resulting in boundaries that would make heavily gerrymandered congressional districts look sane. The parents of those high performing kids will move to non-public alternatives and school performance across FCPS will plummet. School vouchers enter the VA landscape, Reid retires with a big nest egg and board members move on to other political offices. Everyone wins, except for FCPS students and parents.

Nope. People can't just afford "non public alternatives ". Sure some of fcps can, but many of the young fed/mil/contractors/single parent incomes are NOT making g private school money.
It's so irritating when people throw this out as an easy alternative or an inevitable outcome.

As the public schools continue to flounder voucher programs will take hold in all states. Catholic school enrollment will expand and other "church" based schools will emerge. Many of the "young fed/mil/contractors/single parents" will make the move to these schools, finding a way to cover the costs that vouchers don't. Sure some will be left out and they will join the poor and LMC in suffering at what is left of the public school system. This is the path the Reid and the school board are taking every one down, like it or not, see it or not.

"Finding a way to cover the costs"
How completely out of touch. I'd like to find a way to cover the costs for a lot of things, but money doesn't just magically appear.

- signed, dual income military/federal family

DP. Many of these religious private schools are surprisingly affordable. In many ways it beats the alternative, even if religion isn’t your thing.

I’d rather they didn’t tank the entire school system with redistricting, but here we are.

As someone who just moved my kids to one of those surprisingly affordable religious schools:

1) Admission at the best is already incredibly competitive, with waitlists 100s of kids long. Yes the smaller/lesser reputation religious schools saw their admissions numbers start dropping again around 2022 (after a pandemic spike), but the better ones are still going strong.

2) Some of the religious schools - not all - will require you to actually be of the same religion yourself to be admitted. And if they still have waitlists, they can afford to be picky on this one.

I think the people who are S.O.L. on this rezoning issue are far left people who created this mess thinking it wouldn't affect them, and who despise religion so they won't even consider sending their kids to one of the parochial Catholic or Christian schools.

They are the ones for whom there are no affordable options, and are complaining that there are not enough non public spots for them to switch to, because they eliminated all the good affordable options via their disdain for religious schools.

It is the people who created this mess who don't have enough secular private affordable options to switch to.

The people who did not create this mess will mostly be able to find better places for their kids to attend.

Way to make this an "us" versus "them" thing. How do we, as parents, collectively work together for the good of our kids and the future? You so smugly say that some people dont want religious schools. Yes, some of the more common ones are Catholic and there are many non-Catholics, whether religious or not, that would not want that. Freedom of religion...or from religion, whatever your fancy.
This totally reads like a person that considers themselves religious/aligned to a religion, yet wants to be nasty to other people that are different.

Not trying to hit a nerve. Just pointing out the overlap between those who championed the far left school board, and those who have self eliminated most if not all of the affordable private school options by ruling out Catholic and Christian schools.

The far left created the mess that we have and now is realizing they have no safety net. Maybe this will finally get them to join the rest of us moderates to stand up against the nonsense of their school board so we can continue to have viable public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents shouldn’t be involved. That’s how you get these absurd little cutouts and gerrymanders. Let the consultants draw the maps.

Yeah, let the out of state no bid consultants who have never done anything like this before who advertised themselves as being broadband consultants do the work. They are much more qualified to determine the fate of FCPS students than parents.

In a sea of dumb SJW ideas…

The consultants are only here for cover. Reid a the school board have made their decisions. Parents are only being given lip service. How many times does this same shell game have to be played before Fairfax county voters and parents catch on?

Since you’re so omniscient, fill us in on these already-made decisions.

Happy to lay it out for you. The twin pillars of Reid's equity at all cost and board members self interest will result in the following. Boundaries that move high performing students to low performing schools based on the friend groups of board members, resulting in boundaries that would make heavily gerrymandered congressional districts look sane. The parents of those high performing kids will move to non-public alternatives and school performance across FCPS will plummet. School vouchers enter the VA landscape, Reid retires with a big nest egg and board members move on to other political offices. Everyone wins, except for FCPS students and parents.

Nope. People can't just afford "non public alternatives ". Sure some of fcps can, but many of the young fed/mil/contractors/single parent incomes are NOT making g private school money.
It's so irritating when people throw this out as an easy alternative or an inevitable outcome.

As the public schools continue to flounder voucher programs will take hold in all states. Catholic school enrollment will expand and other "church" based schools will emerge. Many of the "young fed/mil/contractors/single parents" will make the move to these schools, finding a way to cover the costs that vouchers don't. Sure some will be left out and they will join the poor and LMC in suffering at what is left of the public school system. This is the path the Reid and the school board are taking every one down, like it or not, see it or not.

"Finding a way to cover the costs"
How completely out of touch. I'd like to find a way to cover the costs for a lot of things, but money doesn't just magically appear.

- signed, dual income military/federal family

DP. Many of these religious private schools are surprisingly affordable. In many ways it beats the alternative, even if religion isn’t your thing.

I’d rather they didn’t tank the entire school system with redistricting, but here we are.

As someone who just moved my kids to one of those surprisingly affordable religious schools:

1) Admission at the best is already incredibly competitive, with waitlists 100s of kids long. Yes the smaller/lesser reputation religious schools saw their admissions numbers start dropping again around 2022 (after a pandemic spike), but the better ones are still going strong.

2) Some of the religious schools - not all - will require you to actually be of the same religion yourself to be admitted. And if they still have waitlists, they can afford to be picky on this one.

I think the people who are S.O.L. on this rezoning issue are far left people who created this mess thinking it wouldn't affect them, and who despise religion so they won't even consider sending their kids to one of the parochial Catholic or Christian schools.

They are the ones for whom there are no affordable options, and are complaining that there are not enough non public spots for them to switch to, because they eliminated all the good affordable options via their disdain for religious schools.

It is the people who created this mess who don't have enough secular private affordable options to switch to.

The people who did not create this mess will mostly be able to find better places for their kids to attend.

193,113 people voted for any at-large school board member (if you voted for 3 it's triple counted, so really you probably third this to get about 40K total people). 6,936 voted for Braddock District. 8,694 for Hunter Mill. 9,464 for Dranesville. 4,808 for Franconia. 4,426 for Mason. 7,413 for Mt. Vernon. 6,424 for Providence. 9,187 for Springfield. 7,019 for Sully.

Most people who will be impacted by this mess merely caused it by not voting in our local elections.
-faithful voter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

We are just saying that if FCPS was,serious about actually fixing the Lewis problem, a magnet school for languages, humanities, IB, new arrivals/esol, trades, non traditional students, etc would be a better, more effective, less diruptive and more popular way to fix the problem long term, than the virtue signaling ineffective bandaid of rezoning and moving kids around based on their demographics to try to mask low performance at Lewis.

Problem is this really isn't credible.

It's not clear how much of a market there would be for the school you're describing generally, and at that location in particular. So not clearly "more effective."

If you turn Lewis into a magnet, you have to start by reassigning about 1900 kids (1600 at Lewis and 300 pupil placed) to new high schools, which could have ripple effects on boundaries. So not clearly "less disruptive."

This reshuffling might be more popular among those who do not want to attend or be redistricted to Lewis, but not with others, and magnet schools breed never-ending controversy over access and admissions. So not clearly "more popular."

More feasible is completely ridding Lewis of IB; adding a full menu of AP courses; ensuring that its course electives are comparable with those available at other schools; de-emphasizing the lightweight "leadership" program; and overhauling the Lewis administration to assign some of FCPS's top staff there. Give that five years and then make a decision whether to redistrict kids there or close it entirely.

So essentially push this out until your kids aren't impacted.
Some of you are so transparent.

I recently spoke with an empty nester from one of the schools potentially in the rezoning mix who is VERY pro rezoning and politically involved.

They parrot many of the rezoning for equity talking points in this thread, along with some doozies about neighboring schools that were simply untrue internet gossip, probably from this site or reddit.

What it seemed to boil down to, in spite of the mask of "equity" was that they want rezoning so their neighborhood is more desireable so their property value goes up. They also agreed that unless the core problems are visibly fixed at their high school, rezoning won't work, and that rezoning won't fix those issues. But they still wanted rezoning, with no grandfathering, even if it is doomed to fail, and even if it disrupted many kids and destroyed the property values of other people. I got the impression that they don't want a solution. They want rezoning out of spite.

I hope my impression is wrong. Spite is a terrible reason to disrupt people's lives.

[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:Parents shouldn’t be involved. That’s how you get these absurd little cutouts and gerrymanders. Let the consultants draw the maps.

Yeah, let the out of state no bid consultants who have never done anything like this before who advertised themselves as being broadband consultants do the work. They are much more qualified to determine the fate of FCPS students than parents.

In a sea of dumb SJW ideas…

The consultants are only here for cover. Reid a the school board have made their decisions. Parents are only being given lip service. How many times does this same shell game have to be played before Fairfax county voters and parents catch on?

Since you’re so omniscient, fill us in on these already-made decisions.

Happy to lay it out for you. The twin pillars of Reid's equity at all cost and board members self interest will result in the following. Boundaries that move high performing students to low performing schools based on the friend groups of board members, resulting in boundaries that would make heavily gerrymandered congressional districts look sane. The parents of those high performing kids will move to non-public alternatives and school performance across FCPS will plummet. School vouchers enter the VA landscape, Reid retires with a big nest egg and board members move on to other political offices. Everyone wins, except for FCPS students and parents.

Nope. People can't just afford "non public alternatives ". Sure some of fcps can, but many of the young fed/mil/contractors/single parent incomes are NOT making g private school money.
It's so irritating when people throw this out as an easy alternative or an inevitable outcome.

As the public schools continue to flounder voucher programs will take hold in all states. Catholic school enrollment will expand and other "church" based schools will emerge. Many of the "young fed/mil/contractors/single parents" will make the move to these schools, finding a way to cover the costs that vouchers don't. Sure some will be left out and they will join the poor and LMC in suffering at what is left of the public school system. This is the path the Reid and the school board are taking every one down, like it or not, see it or not.

"Finding a way to cover the costs"
How completely out of touch. I'd like to find a way to cover the costs for a lot of things, but money doesn't just magically appear.

- signed, dual income military/federal family

DP. Many of these religious private schools are surprisingly affordable. In many ways it beats the alternative, even if religion isn’t your thing.

I’d rather they didn’t tank the entire school system with redistricting, but here we are.

As someone who just moved my kids to one of those surprisingly affordable religious schools:

1) Admission at the best is already incredibly competitive, with waitlists 100s of kids long. Yes the smaller/lesser reputation religious schools saw their admissions numbers start dropping again around 2022 (after a pandemic spike), but the better ones are still going strong.

2) Some of the religious schools - not all - will require you to actually be of the same religion yourself to be admitted. And if they still have waitlists, they can afford to be picky on this one.

I think the people who are S.O.L. on this rezoning issue are far left people who created this mess thinking it wouldn't affect them, and who despise religion so they won't even consider sending their kids to one of the parochial Catholic or Christian schools.

They are the ones for whom there are no affordable options, and are complaining that there are not enough non public spots for them to switch to, because they eliminated all the good affordable options via their disdain for religious schools.

It is the people who created this mess who don't have enough secular private affordable options to switch to.

The people who did not create this mess will mostly be able to find better places for their kids to attend.

193,113 people voted for any at-large school board member (if you voted for 3 it's triple counted, so really you probably third this to get about 40K total people). 6,936 voted for Braddock District. 8,694 for Hunter Mill. 9,464 for Dranesville. 4,808 for Franconia. 4,426 for Mason. 7,413 for Mt. Vernon. 6,424 for Providence. 9,187 for Springfield. 7,019 for Sully.

Most people who will be impacted by this mess merely caused it by not voting in our local elections.
-faithful voter

Very good point about the turn out.

With that low of turn out, odds are the ones voting are the most passionate fringes and not the moderates. Unfortunately, the passionate fringe on the left significantly overrides the passionate fringe on the right in Fairfax Counth.

Moderates, the next school board election is 2027. Mark your calenders and turn out in force.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

We are just saying that if FCPS was,serious about actually fixing the Lewis problem, a magnet school for languages, humanities, IB, new arrivals/esol, trades, non traditional students, etc would be a better, more effective, less diruptive and more popular way to fix the problem long term, than the virtue signaling ineffective bandaid of rezoning and moving kids around based on their demographics to try to mask low performance at Lewis.

Problem is this really isn't credible.

It's not clear how much of a market there would be for the school you're describing generally, and at that location in particular. So not clearly "more effective."

If you turn Lewis into a magnet, you have to start by reassigning about 1900 kids (1600 at Lewis and 300 pupil placed) to new high schools, which could have ripple effects on boundaries. So not clearly "less disruptive."

This reshuffling might be more popular among those who do not want to attend or be redistricted to Lewis, but not with others, and magnet schools breed never-ending controversy over access and admissions. So not clearly "more popular."

More feasible is completely ridding Lewis of IB; adding a full menu of AP courses; ensuring that its course electives are comparable with those available at other schools; de-emphasizing the lightweight "leadership" program; and overhauling the Lewis administration to assign some of FCPS's top staff there. Give that five years and then make a decision whether to redistrict kids there or close it entirely.

So essentially push this out until your kids aren't impacted.
Some of you are so transparent.

It’s actually a sustained commitment to Lewis as opposed to something pie-in-the-sky that’s not going to happen and would be more disruptive.

Lewis isn’t really that different than Annandale and Mount Vernon. Are we supposed to turn them into magnets as well? At a time when reducing transportation times and costs is supposedly a priority?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

I think by magnet school people mean academic year governor's school (like TJ or Maggie Walker). I can't see VDOE approving a second one of those in Fairfax County. I could see them adding one in a neighboring county, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

We are just saying that if FCPS was,serious about actually fixing the Lewis problem, a magnet school for languages, humanities, IB, new arrivals/esol, trades, non traditional students, etc would be a better, more effective, less diruptive and more popular way to fix the problem long term, than the virtue signaling ineffective bandaid of rezoning and moving kids around based on their demographics to try to mask low performance at Lewis.

Problem is this really isn't credible.

It's not clear how much of a market there would be for the school you're describing generally, and at that location in particular. So not clearly "more effective."

If you turn Lewis into a magnet, you have to start by reassigning about 1900 kids (1600 at Lewis and 300 pupil placed) to new high schools, which could have ripple effects on boundaries. So not clearly "less disruptive."

This reshuffling might be more popular among those who do not want to attend or be redistricted to Lewis, but not with others, and magnet schools breed never-ending controversy over access and admissions. So not clearly "more popular."

More feasible is completely ridding Lewis of IB; adding a full menu of AP courses; ensuring that its course electives are comparable with those available at other schools; de-emphasizing the lightweight "leadership" program; and overhauling the Lewis administration to assign some of FCPS's top staff there. Give that five years and then make a decision whether to redistrict kids there or close it entirely.

So essentially push this out until your kids aren't impacted.
Some of you are so transparent.

I recently spoke with an empty nester from one of the schools potentially in the rezoning mix who is VERY pro rezoning and politically involved.

They parrot many of the rezoning for equity talking points in this thread, along with some doozies about neighboring schools that were simply untrue internet gossip, probably from this site or reddit.

What it seemed to boil down to, in spite of the mask of "equity" was that they want rezoning so their neighborhood is more desireable so their property value goes up. They also agreed that unless the core problems are visibly fixed at their high school, rezoning won't work, and that rezoning won't fix those issues. But they still wanted rezoning, with no grandfathering, even if it is doomed to fail, and even if it disrupted many kids and destroyed the property values of other people. I got the impression that they don't want a solution. They want rezoning out of spite.

I hope my impression is wrong. Spite is a terrible reason to disrupt people's lives.

DP. I base my info solely on my neighborhood, but I blame people like this for most of the mess we have. People who think that blue policies are great, who remember FCPS as it was 10-20 years ago, and who don't have kids in the system to be personally impacted by it. The people I see at my polling place year in and year out are more likely to fit this bill than be moderates with kids in the system.

Now the moderates with kids in the system could try...voting every so often I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

It would help if you folks were clear about whether you mean a magnet school or an academy program. They aren’t the same thing.

The main problem with Lewis isn’t the lack of an academy program, but the fact that the core academics there are perceived as ill-suited to the student body (IB) and weak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

Chantilly and Edison are Academies, not schools for kids who are not at Chantilly and Edison. Attending the Academy classes is disruptive to a students schedule at their home school.

I know kids who would be well served by the Academies but choose not to go because it is a pain for their scheduling and more work since they lose time in their schedule for a bus ride. Kids wanting to attend the Academies should be allowed to attend those HS, the current system is only good for the kids at the school housing the Academy. Everyone else has to try and force a schedule to fit and lose classes so they can take the classes they want.

Take the under enrolled schools and turn them into Academies that kids can apply to attend as their school. FCPS could use a Fine Arts school, a real votech school, and a second STEM school, there is more then enough demand for all three and there are under enrolled schools with the space to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

Chantilly and Edison are Academies, not schools for kids who are not at Chantilly and Edison. Attending the Academy classes is disruptive to a students schedule at their home school.

I know kids who would be well served by the Academies but choose not to go because it is a pain for their scheduling and more work since they lose time in their schedule for a bus ride. Kids wanting to attend the Academies should be allowed to attend those HS, the current system is only good for the kids at the school housing the Academy. Everyone else has to try and force a schedule to fit and lose classes so they can take the classes they want.

Take the under enrolled schools and turn them into Academies that kids can apply to attend as their school. FCPS could use a Fine Arts school, a real votech school, and a second STEM school, there is more then enough demand for all three and there are under enrolled schools with the space to make it happen.

What are you even talking about. Edison takes applications from those outside the school for their academy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

We are just saying that if FCPS was,serious about actually fixing the Lewis problem, a magnet school for languages, humanities, IB, new arrivals/esol, trades, non traditional students, etc would be a better, more effective, less diruptive and more popular way to fix the problem long term, than the virtue signaling ineffective bandaid of rezoning and moving kids around based on their demographics to try to mask low performance at Lewis.

Problem is this really isn't credible.

It's not clear how much of a market there would be for the school you're describing generally, and at that location in particular. So not clearly "more effective."

If you turn Lewis into a magnet, you have to start by reassigning about 1900 kids (1600 at Lewis and 300 pupil placed) to new high schools, which could have ripple effects on boundaries. So not clearly "less disruptive."

This reshuffling might be more popular among those who do not want to attend or be redistricted to Lewis, but not with others, and magnet schools breed never-ending controversy over access and admissions. So not clearly "more popular."

More feasible is completely ridding Lewis of IB; adding a full menu of AP courses; ensuring that its course electives are comparable with those available at other schools; de-emphasizing the lightweight "leadership" program; and overhauling the Lewis administration to assign some of FCPS's top staff there. Give that five years and then make a decision whether to redistrict kids there or close it entirely.

So essentially push this out until your kids aren't impacted.
Some of you are so transparent.

I recently spoke with an empty nester from one of the schools potentially in the rezoning mix who is VERY pro rezoning and politically involved.

They parrot many of the rezoning for equity talking points in this thread, along with some doozies about neighboring schools that were simply untrue internet gossip, probably from this site or reddit.

What it seemed to boil down to, in spite of the mask of "equity" was that they want rezoning so their neighborhood is more desireable so their property value goes up. They also agreed that unless the core problems are visibly fixed at their high school, rezoning won't work, and that rezoning won't fix those issues. But they still wanted rezoning, with no grandfathering, even if it is doomed to fail, and even if it disrupted many kids and destroyed the property values of other people. I got the impression that they don't want a solution. They want rezoning out of spite.

I hope my impression is wrong. Spite is a terrible reason to disrupt people's lives.

You are basing your entire opinion on what some random person's alleged motives are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

Chantilly and Edison are Academies, not schools for kids who are not at Chantilly and Edison. Attending the Academy classes is disruptive to a students schedule at their home school.

I know kids who would be well served by the Academies but choose not to go because it is a pain for their scheduling and more work since they lose time in their schedule for a bus ride. Kids wanting to attend the Academies should be allowed to attend those HS, the current system is only good for the kids at the school housing the Academy. Everyone else has to try and force a schedule to fit and lose classes so they can take the classes they want.

Take the under enrolled schools and turn them into Academies that kids can apply to attend as their school. FCPS could use a Fine Arts school, a real votech school, and a second STEM school, there is more then enough demand for all three and there are under enrolled schools with the space to make it happen.

What are you even talking about. Edison takes applications from those outside the school for their academy.

They meant while outside students could attend the academies, they couldn’t pupil place to those schools. They’re losing class time by traveling between schools mid-day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a second magnet school was in the cards, don't you think we would have heard about this by now? Seems like it would be a natural topic for feedback at these regional meetings.

But there's been no suggestion that FCPS wants to convert another high school to a magnet program. If one of their priorities is equitable access to programming, they already have to play mental gymnastics to pretend kids at the other high/secondary schools have the same opportunities as students at TJ. They'd only magnify this problem with yet another magnet program with courses not available at other schools. There would be a fresh round of scrutiny over who gets admitted, and whether the admissions are truly "merit-based," etc. Yes, Richmond has Maggie Walker, but it doesn't have a TJ. Opening another magnet in FCPS is pretty much the exact opposite of the direction in which Reid and the School Board are taking FCPS.

Second? FCPS technically has three STEM academies already, including TJ. Chantilly HS is designated by VDOE as the "Governor’s STEM Academy at Chantilly High School." Edison HS houses the Global STEM Challenges Academy aligned with the National Academy of Engineering. Lewis could easily be chosen to stand up some other academy.

Chantilly and Edison are Academies, not schools for kids who are not at Chantilly and Edison. Attending the Academy classes is disruptive to a students schedule at their home school.

I know kids who would be well served by the Academies but choose not to go because it is a pain for their scheduling and more work since they lose time in their schedule for a bus ride. Kids wanting to attend the Academies should be allowed to attend those HS, the current system is only good for the kids at the school housing the Academy. Everyone else has to try and force a schedule to fit and lose classes so they can take the classes they want.

Take the under enrolled schools and turn them into Academies that kids can apply to attend as their school. FCPS could use a Fine Arts school, a real votech school, and a second STEM school, there is more then enough demand for all three and there are under enrolled schools with the space to make it happen.

What are you even talking about. Edison takes applications from those outside the school for their academy.

They meant while outside students could attend the academies, they couldn’t pupil place to those schools. They’re losing class time by traveling between schools mid-day.

You can pupil place full-time to a school with an academy program if you are so inclined and the school has space. It is a basis for pupil placement just like AP, IB, or a foreign language sequence.

I think people just want Lewis turned into a magnet school so they don’t have to send their kids there. Disruption for others so they can avoid a school they live near.