FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

It looks like in the course of proposing to "fix" the attendance islands at Longfellow/McLean, and the current situation where Graham Road ES is located its current boundaries, they would potentially, among other things:

* Move the "Tysons island" from Longfellow/McLean to Cooper/Langley (which would eliminate the current split feeder at Spring Hill);

* Move part of Shrevewood (Falls Hill) from Kilmer/Marshall to Longfellow/McLean, and turn Shrevewood into a new split feeder;

* Move part of Shrevewood to Timber Lane and part of Timber Lane to Graham Road; and

* Move part of Jackson to Longfellow, while keeping those kids at Falls Church, thereby turning Longfellow into a new split feeder.

It's a lot of changes for comparatively little benefit and some new split feeders. They end up with a lot of boundaries that look highly gerrymandered but without attendance islands.

They also show, as part of the domino effect of "fixing" the Graham Road situation, moving the Madison kids at Kilmer over to Thoreau. That's probably fine with Madison parents but doubt they would have anticipated it as a outgrowth of dealing with Graham Road ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It looks like in the course of proposing to "fix" the attendance islands at Longfellow/McLean, and the current situation where Graham Road ES is located its current boundaries, they would potentially, among other things:

* Move the "Tysons island" from Longfellow/McLean to Cooper/Langley (which would eliminate the current split feeder at Spring Hill);

* Move part of Shrevewood (Falls Hill) from Kilmer/Marshall to Longfellow/McLean, and turn Shrevewood into a new split feeder;

* Move part of Shrevewood to Timber Lane and part of Timber Lane to Graham Road; and

* Move part of Jackson to Longfellow, while keeping those kids at Falls Church, thereby turning Longfellow into a new split feeder.

It's a lot of changes for comparatively little benefit and some new split feeders. They end up with a lot of boundaries that look highly gerrymandered but without attendance islands.

They also show, as part of the domino effect of "fixing" the Graham Road situation, moving the Madison kids at Kilmer over to Thoreau. That's probably fine with Madison parents but doubt they would have anticipated it as a outgrowth of dealing with Graham Road ES.

One correction - they would be moving part of Timber Lane to Shrevewood, not moving part of Shrevewood to Timber Lane.

[Anonymous]

The Longfellow/mclean boundary looks clearer to me and solves capacity and keeps neighborhood together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Longfellow/mclean boundary looks clearer to me and solves capacity and keeps neighborhood together.

I think the Falls Hill folks would be fairly surprised at the apparent proposal to move them out of Kilmer/Marshall and turn Shrevewood into a split feeder.

And for all the talk of paying attention to major highways like Route 7 and 29, they'd be crossing Route 29 and going all the way down to Route 50 to send kids now at Jackson to Longfellow.

[Anonymous]

They would create a new split feeder at Longfellow that would be about 95% to McLean and 5% to Falls Church. Maybe they solve that on 4/25.

[Anonymous]

I am on the BRAC and I was at the meeting on Friday night. We were asked to sit with our regions. We only looked at the attendance islands for our region, so I have no idea what the other regions discussed. We were asked to "critique" the proposed boundary changes. I felt like our group had a very thoughtful discussion and took our role very seriously. We wrote questions and concerns about each of the islands in our region and the proposed new boundaries. I will say we absolutely 100% disagreed with one of the proposed new boundaries. Hopefully, Reid and the school board will take our feedback into consideration when making their final decisions.

[Anonymous]

The Flint Hill move makes the map look tidier, but it doesn’t actually solve anything.

[Anonymous]

It bothers me that this seems fairly sloppy and that the maps are hard to read.

When I look at what they are proposing for Longfellow/McLean, it doesn't look crazy at first, but it looks like they'd be creating new split feeders at Longfellow MS and Shrevewood ES, and the charts don't seem accurate. If I look at Slides 29 and 30, it looks like they are planning to move part of Jackson to Longfellow, but leave that area at Falls Church without moving it to McLean. Slide 29 shows an area moved from Jackson to Longfellow, but it doesn't indicate the numerical impact on Jackson, so it's unclear if the purported impact on Longfellow takes the Jackson move into account or not.

Also, if I look at Slide 33, it looks like they be moving part of Kilmer (near Tysons) to Longfellow and then part of Longfellow that's currently in the Timber Lane island to Kilmer. But then Slide 30 appears to indicate that the area moved to Kilmer would stay at McLean, so would they be creating a very lopsided split feeder at Kilmer as well?

I'm sure people familiar with the various areas would find other glitches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am on the BRAC and I was at the meeting on Friday night. We were asked to sit with our regions. We only looked at the attendance islands for our region, so I have no idea what the other regions discussed. We were asked to "critique" the proposed boundary changes. I felt like our group had a very thoughtful discussion and took our role very seriously. We wrote questions and concerns about each of the islands in our region and the proposed new boundaries. I will say we absolutely 100% disagreed with one of the proposed new boundaries. Hopefully, Reid and the school board will take our feedback into consideration when making their final decisions.

Question: what if the "losing school" and the "gaining school" are in two different regions?

Did you only discuss the schools in your region or others, as well?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It looks like in the course of proposing to "fix" the attendance islands at Longfellow/McLean, and the current situation where Graham Road ES is located its current boundaries, they would potentially, among other things:

* Move the "Tysons island" from Longfellow/McLean to Cooper/Langley (which would eliminate the current split feeder at Spring Hill);

* Move part of Shrevewood (Falls Hill) from Kilmer/Marshall to Longfellow/McLean, and turn Shrevewood into a new split feeder;

* Move part of Shrevewood to Timber Lane and part of Timber Lane to Graham Road; and

* Move part of Jackson to Longfellow, while keeping those kids at Falls Church, thereby turning Longfellow into a new split feeder.

It's a lot of changes for comparatively little benefit and some new split feeders. They end up with a lot of boundaries that look highly gerrymandered but without attendance islands.

They also show, as part of the domino effect of "fixing" the Graham Road situation, moving the Madison kids at Kilmer over to Thoreau. That's probably fine with Madison parents but doubt they would have anticipated it as a outgrowth of dealing with Graham Road ES.

The other bizzare part of Timber Lane/Graham Road is that the Pine Spring island fix leaves part of the area between 29 and 50 as a Timber Lane/Longfellow/Falls Church pyramid.

[Anonymous]

What part of greater Fort Hunt area would be moved from Sandburg/WestPo to Whitman/MVHS?

Is that Hollin Hall? It's the neighborhood right around Whitman but can't see which one on the map....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It looks like in the course of proposing to "fix" the attendance islands at Longfellow/McLean, and the current situation where Graham Road ES is located its current boundaries, they would potentially, among other things:

* Move the "Tysons island" from Longfellow/McLean to Cooper/Langley (which would eliminate the current split feeder at Spring Hill);

* Move part of Shrevewood (Falls Hill) from Kilmer/Marshall to Longfellow/McLean, and turn Shrevewood into a new split feeder;

* Move part of Shrevewood to Timber Lane and part of Timber Lane to Graham Road; and

* Move part of Jackson to Longfellow, while keeping those kids at Falls Church, thereby turning Longfellow into a new split feeder.

It's a lot of changes for comparatively little benefit and some new split feeders. They end up with a lot of boundaries that look highly gerrymandered but without attendance islands.

They also show, as part of the domino effect of "fixing" the Graham Road situation, moving the Madison kids at Kilmer over to Thoreau. That's probably fine with Madison parents but doubt they would have anticipated it as a outgrowth of dealing with Graham Road ES.

The other bizzare part of Timber Lane/Graham Road is that the Pine Spring island fix leaves part of the area between 29 and 50 as a Timber Lane/Longfellow/Falls Church pyramid.

Yeah, I tried to point that out, but maybe it didn't come across clearly.

I understand they were trying to fix the fact that Graham Road sits in an area currently zoned to Timber Lane and Pine Spring has an attendance island. So they came up with a scenario to change the boundaries of those schools, and some other schools, including Shrevewood and Westlawn. Then they considered whether they could make Timber Lane a 100% feeder to Longfellow/McLean. Longfellow has extra capacity and McLean does not, so the proposed solution was to have "new" Timber Lane feed 100% to Longfellow (it's currently a fairly even split feeder to Longfellow/McLean and Jackson/Falls Church), but then still split to McLean and Falls Church. That would create a situation where maybe only 5% of Longfellow would go to Falls Church and the rest would still go to McLean - the exact type of situation, in other words, that they have separately called out as a "split feeder" problem and plan to focus on at the next meeting. They might be better off just leaving Timber Lane as a split feeder, since it would be a fairly even split even under the new proposal if the kids south of 29 still went to Jackson/Falls Church.

In any event, it all raises a question as to whether the next meeting will just focus on the existing split feeders that are lopsided, or also consider the ones that they may be looking to create now.

[Anonymous]

Is making Langley over capacity the first step to moving Forestville back to HHS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What part of greater Fort Hunt area would be moved from Sandburg/WestPo to Whitman/MVHS?

Is that Hollin Hall? It's the neighborhood right around Whitman but can't see which one on the map....

They flagged the areas near Whitman off Sherwood Hall Lane and Parkers Lane now at Sandburg/West Po. Looks like it would include some areas in Hollin Hills. It would turn Hollin Meadows ES into a split feeder.

[Anonymous]

Have there been any discussions about student transfers for high school? Seems like the numbers in the slides assume that transfers are held constant.

This would not be case with many of these changes.