Boundary Review Meetings

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

The intent of scenario 4 was to remove the split feeder at Wolftrap/Westbriar. My guess is that they’ll retain the original Marshall/Madison boundaries, and they’ll send Madison kids that were previously assigned to Kilmer to Thoreau to relieve Kilmer.

Did anyone talk about the fact the Thoreau three way split was not addressed at all? The Thoreau/Marshall kids should have priority into Madison over Kilmer/Marshall kids at Wolftrap.

Reid was fairly clear that she did not expect to change the proposal to send all of Wolftrap to Madison. It came up repeatedly last night and the Wolftrap families wanted reassurances that, if the Madison families at Westbriar proposed to move to Marshall stayed at Madison, they would still get to move to Madison. She provided those assurances and said she'd gotten together with the principals of both Madison and Marshall to go over the numbers.

Of course the School Board could decide to retain the current Marshall/Madison boundaries, but she'll have a lot of upset families if that's where they land. There was no discussion of what they plan to do with the attendance island left at Westbriar-Kilmer-Marshall under Scenario 4, and they decide they aren't going to leave it as a stranded island out in western Vienna that could lead them to revisit Marshall, Madison, or other (potentially Langley or South Lakes) boundaries.

The three-way split at Thoreau was not discussed last night, as far as I'm aware. There was a portion of the meeting where Reid took Q&A from people who attended in person and Gordon took Q&A from people attending virtually.

Did they look at the middle school numbers at all? Because the Kilmer and Thoreau split feeders will likely have to continue under the scenario described, but now even more imbalanced.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Are the other Sangster families offended, puzzled or amused by the whole the Sangster kids who go to Lake Braddock aren't our community argument?

There is definitely talk in surrounding communities about that angle, not about the kids at Irving but the families without kids at Irving.

One LB parent spoke up 2 meetings ago about that argument, and she did seem a bit offended and a little befuddled.

Why would you consider kids who went to school with your kid for 6+ years to be part of your community? One kid spoke at the Irving meeting about how he desperately didn't want to lose all of the new friends he's met (in one quarter of school) this year at Irving and pleaded to stay there instead of being sent to LBSS, where his former Sangster classmates of seven years went.

You are talking about and mocking a child. What you failed to mention is that he said he has a sibling at WSHS, so of course that school would feel more like his community than LB.

Sangster is located within the WSHS boundary. It is inside the neighborhood of Orange Hunt Estates. Those of us who live there understand that we are assigned to Sangster as the elementary school because we are walkers. We would have to be bused to Orange Hunt Elementary. The Sangster/Orange Hunt boundary is at the point 1 mile from the school. So that is why we identify as living in West Springfield and see Irving/West Springfield as our child’s school. The first iteration of the boundary scenarios did not “fix” our split feeder because Sangster is located within the WSHS boundary. And we don’t want our split feeder fixed.

There are better solutions to overcrowding at WSHS. Shifting children living on West Springfield/Lewis boundary to Lewis, which has room. Moving German immersion (Did you know Orange Hunt is over capacity too thanks to transfers in for German immersion???) to White Oaks and Lake Braddock pyramid, which have room.

But really let’s wait and see. West Springfield is full of government civilians. Let’s see what happens with Trump and his downsizing of the government workforce. Families are going to have to leave for other employment opportunities.

The Orange Hunt community will be pi$$ed if Sangster parents get their German immersion program moved out of their school just so the Sangster island can avoid Lake Braddock.

The vast majority of German immersion students actually live in bounds for Orange Hunt. A large number of them have German heritage or were stationed in Germany with bilingual kids, and bought their houses zoned for Orange Hunt so they didn't have to risk the lottery.

Ask those Orange Hunt families if they want to give up their German immersion program so Sangster doesn't have to go to Lake Braddock. You are going to get a resounding no.

Slides from this summer show 122 transfer into Orange Hunt (German Immersion, there are no special education programs there) making it overcrowded. Shift that whole program to White Oaks and the overcrowding problem is solved. White Oaks close to Orange Hunt anyway. Also, let’s be real. Language immersion is for pole whose kids can’t get into AAP to feel special. And then you don’t have to move the Sangster/Irving/West Springfield kids out of the neighborhood schools.

Our section of the Sangster zone is separated from the rest of Lake Braddock by Fairfax County Parkway and Lee Chapel. It is separated from the rest of West Springfield by NOTHING. It’s literally the same street (Cottontail Ct.). A neighborhood pool is not a natural boundary, but a 4-lane highway is.

Sangster itself is located in ORANGE HUNT ESTATES. It is located in the WSHS boundary.

Also, moving Sangster and shifting families to White Oaks (and Cherry Run apparently) does not solve the overcrowding issue at WSHS. And creates new overcrowding at LB on the HS side. It’s not a solution. It’s sacrificing some children so no one has to move to Lewis. But Dr. Reid said on Monday night that Lewis has capacity - the most of any HS. So any solution that does not move some children to Lewis is not a really solution.

But I think first we need a WSHS boundary audit. Everyone show up with your deed and your lease. Let’s check them all and see what we find. They need to demand actual paperwork from every family. Show me that you own it and currently pay the utilities.

So much for Sangster families not throwing other WSHS neighborhoods under the bus. Look out Daventry and Hunt Valley, the Sangster/Orange Hunt mommies want your kids sent to Lewis. Don’t believe the posters who say they aren’t actively working to get your kids moved.

No one is politically dumb enough to propose moving a WSHS neighborhood to/back into Lewis at this stage in the game.

The Sangster parents appear to be pushing this exact thing.

Daventry and Hunt Valley need to get engaged and start submitting comments supporting Map 4

Your fear mongering is more than transparent. Sangster parents have been thoughtful and respectful through the process (one rouge poster, or perhaps a troll claiming to be a Sangster parent) does not represent their organized beliefs. I believe strongly that the organized group has thoughtfully navigated their advocacy to be inclusive, not exclusive. It's not useful to debate things in this forum, but I'm disappointed in you as a poster for continuing to help perpetuate this false narrative.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What are the main takeaways from the McLean Madison meeting tonight? I heard several hundred people attended between in person and online!

It was fairly calm.

Ratio of Madison comments to McLean comments felt like 3:1.

Lots of Westbriar parents zoned to Madison objecting to getting moved to Marshall under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Wolftrap parents zoned to Marshall favoring getting moved to Madison under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Timber Lane parents north of 29 expressing appreciation that Scenario 4 keeps them at Longfellow/McLean. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

A few Fairhill ES parents advocating to get moved from Falls Church to Madison or Oakton. Reid was non-committal because the parents couldn’t say how many kids were involved.

A fair number of Lemon Road parents zoned for McLean and Marshall spoke in favor of retaining the split feeder, which Scenario 4 does. They are a bit unsettled because there are some Lemon Road parents in Pimmit Hills lobbying to get moved from Marshall to McLean by eliminating the split feeder, which in turn has prompted some other parents at Lemon Road to argue that, if the split feeder is to be eliminated, FCPS should move the McLean families at Lemon Road to Marshall, rather than vice versa. The parents speaking tonight want to keep the current split feeder.

No comments at all that I can recall from anyone in the Spring Hill island, so it seems fair to assume they’re happy to move from McLean to Langley.

The most interesting part of the meeting may have been when Meren, who was there, seemed to chastise Reid about Reid’s answer to a question about whether current 8th graders would have a choice between their current high school and the high school to which they may be rezoned.

Lots of comments about whether split feeders are bad or ok, and it came across as rather contrived and dependent on how it impacted the schools that people want their kids to attend. Reid said they are looking at split feeders on a case-by-case basis now, depending on the feedback provided, and backing away from a one-size-fits-all approach.

I was surprised Meren didn’t seem aware of the transfer/pupil placement process. She seemed clueless and uninformed while Reid correctly informed the father of his options for his son. Didn’t give me much confidence in Meren.

Meren posted a video on her Facebook page last night basically throwing Reid under the bus, saying that the school board supervises Reid and that Reid was operating outside of her lane by saying information that had not been authorized or agreed upon by the board.

Good for Meren.

I was at the WSHS meeting.

Brac map 4 is probably the best map they could have created for WSHS. Even though I think no one should be moved into WSHS, if I were honest, I would have to say that even tho RV part makes sense.

But as the night went on, Reid started to overtly imply that if they complained loudly enough on the boundary map tool, that Sangster would get to stay at WSHS and they might need to revisit map 3. (Creating a split feeder at Hunt Valley?)

For every complaint and point that speakers made, Reid just smiled, nodded affirmatively, and implied that she agreed with the poster. Every single time.

She is the figurehead of FCPS and is paid $400,000 each year by us the taxpayers to do the hard thing.

We are 2 years into this process and on our 4th map revision.

At this point, Dr. Reid should have had hard factual answers to parents questions that have been asked for 2 years straight, not "I just looked at the transfer data into WSHS yesterday becsuse I knew someone would ask."

At this point in the process, she should have stood up like a leader in front of the very civil and respectful WSHS parents, and told them what FCPS told the BRAC committee reps, which is " Unfortunately, someone is going to get rezoned out of WSHS. If the Brac committee does not come up with enough students to meet our satisfaction, then the schoolboard and superintendent will pick who gets rezoned." Then stand up for the BRAC committee and tell those parents that the BRAC committee tried to pick the smallest number of houses to be rezoned to meet their mandate, and tried to find neighborhoods that could go to the most equivalent high school (Lake Braddock) with the biggest community connection to WSHS and the students getting moved, with the best transportation options.

Stand by the BRAC committee.

The Springfield BRAC members created the best possible map for WSHS with Map 4. Any one who knows the area, knows the schools, and knows the communities involved knows this, if they were perfectly honest, as long as the Irving 8th graders get the same grandfathering as the LB secondary school 8th graders get.

Show some leadership and support the volunteers who have managed to pull off an impossible tasking in a way that gives the best possible outcome for ALL of the WSHS students, including the Sangster split feeder, even if it will be a big disappointment to them. By next year, when all the Sangster 6th graders move to Lake Braddock together for midfle school, and with the Sangster elementary classes going forward, this will be just a blip in their memory, other than people wondering why they fought this at all.

If Reid caved this immediately to the very, very civil WSHS parents, what on earth is she doing when she faces parents who are riled up?

All of this is so accurate. I went to the meeting too and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more upset I got about the way these parents talked about LBSS, the rest of Sangster, and the other families they live near (even if you can’t walk to their house). I would like to hear from the actual elementary kids at Sangster, and hear how they feel about splitting from most of their cohort. My child would have been incredibly upset if the HV split had gone through, because she doesn’t care about going to Irving, but she would have cared deeply about her best buddies being moved to a different school after 6. She had a hard time making friends and the few she has are south of 286 (yep, we are friends across a natural boundary!).

If they could grandfather all middle schoolers, this should be a no-brainer. I still don’t like the RV move (think moving it all to Lewis made more sense but not going to throw them under the bus and understand why they wouldn’t want to do that) since it offsets the gains from the LBSS shifts. But I don’t get the outrage. The time difference is so small as to be negligible (45 hours a year?!). LBSS and WSHS are really two schools in one community. We are friends with people from both school pyramids and do activities in both addresses (in fact some maps call our West Springfield address Burke!). It’s a losing argument.

If you were at the meeting, you obviously only heard what you wanted to hear. Not one Sangster parent said a bad word about LB. It was said multiple times that we think LB is a good school. The only parent that spoke poorly of LB was not a Sangster parent. Also, stop spreading lies by saying Sangster parents were talking bad about the rest of Sangster and their neighbors.

And funny how you think that because something would upset your child, it must mean it would upset everyone’s child. You know what’s best for your family and everyone else’s family too, right?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What are the main takeaways from the McLean Madison meeting tonight? I heard several hundred people attended between in person and online!

It was fairly calm.

Ratio of Madison comments to McLean comments felt like 3:1.

Lots of Westbriar parents zoned to Madison objecting to getting moved to Marshall under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Wolftrap parents zoned to Marshall favoring getting moved to Madison under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Timber Lane parents north of 29 expressing appreciation that Scenario 4 keeps them at Longfellow/McLean. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

A few Fairhill ES parents advocating to get moved from Falls Church to Madison or Oakton. Reid was non-committal because the parents couldn’t say how many kids were involved.

A fair number of Lemon Road parents zoned for McLean and Marshall spoke in favor of retaining the split feeder, which Scenario 4 does. They are a bit unsettled because there are some Lemon Road parents in Pimmit Hills lobbying to get moved from Marshall to McLean by eliminating the split feeder, which in turn has prompted some other parents at Lemon Road to argue that, if the split feeder is to be eliminated, FCPS should move the McLean families at Lemon Road to Marshall, rather than vice versa. The parents speaking tonight want to keep the current split feeder.

No comments at all that I can recall from anyone in the Spring Hill island, so it seems fair to assume they’re happy to move from McLean to Langley.

The most interesting part of the meeting may have been when Meren, who was there, seemed to chastise Reid about Reid’s answer to a question about whether current 8th graders would have a choice between their current high school and the high school to which they may be rezoned.

Lots of comments about whether split feeders are bad or ok, and it came across as rather contrived and dependent on how it impacted the schools that people want their kids to attend. Reid said they are looking at split feeders on a case-by-case basis now, depending on the feedback provided, and backing away from a one-size-fits-all approach.

I was surprised Meren didn’t seem aware of the transfer/pupil placement process. She seemed clueless and uninformed while Reid correctly informed the father of his options for his son. Didn’t give me much confidence in Meren.

Meren posted a video on her Facebook page last night basically throwing Reid under the bus, saying that the school board supervises Reid and that Reid was operating outside of her lane by saying information that had not been authorized or agreed upon by the board.

Good for Meren.

I was at the WSHS meeting.

Brac map 4 is probably the best map they could have created for WSHS. Even though I think no one should be moved into WSHS, if I were honest, I would have to say that even tho RV part makes sense.

But as the night went on, Reid started to overtly imply that if they complained loudly enough on the boundary map tool, that Sangster would get to stay at WSHS and they might need to revisit map 3. (Creating a split feeder at Hunt Valley?)

For every complaint and point that speakers made, Reid just smiled, nodded affirmatively, and implied that she agreed with the poster. Every single time.

She is the figurehead of FCPS and is paid $400,000 each year by us the taxpayers to do the hard thing.

We are 2 years into this process and on our 4th map revision.

At this point, Dr. Reid should have had hard factual answers to parents questions that have been asked for 2 years straight, not "I just looked at the transfer data into WSHS yesterday becsuse I knew someone would ask."

At this point in the process, she should have stood up like a leader in front of the very civil and respectful WSHS parents, and told them what FCPS told the BRAC committee reps, which is " Unfortunately, someone is going to get rezoned out of WSHS. If the Brac committee does not come up with enough students to meet our satisfaction, then the schoolboard and superintendent will pick who gets rezoned." Then stand up for the BRAC committee and tell those parents that the BRAC committee tried to pick the smallest number of houses to be rezoned to meet their mandate, and tried to find neighborhoods that could go to the most equivalent high school (Lake Braddock) with the biggest community connection to WSHS and the students getting moved, with the best transportation options.

Stand by the BRAC committee.

The Springfield BRAC members created the best possible map for WSHS with Map 4. Any one who knows the area, knows the schools, and knows the communities involved knows this, if they were perfectly honest, as long as the Irving 8th graders get the same grandfathering as the LB secondary school 8th graders get.

Show some leadership and support the volunteers who have managed to pull off an impossible tasking in a way that gives the best possible outcome for ALL of the WSHS students, including the Sangster split feeder, even if it will be a big disappointment to them. By next year, when all the Sangster 6th graders move to Lake Braddock together for midfle school, and with the Sangster elementary classes going forward, this will be just a blip in their memory, other than people wondering why they fought this at all.

If Reid caved this immediately to the very, very civil WSHS parents, what on earth is she doing when she faces parents who are riled up?

All of this is so accurate. I went to the meeting too and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more upset I got about the way these parents talked about LBSS, the rest of Sangster, and the other families they live near (even if you can’t walk to their house). I would like to hear from the actual elementary kids at Sangster, and hear how they feel about splitting from most of their cohort. My child would have been incredibly upset if the HV split had gone through, because she doesn’t care about going to Irving, but she would have cared deeply about her best buddies being moved to a different school after 6. She had a hard time making friends and the few she has are south of 286 (yep, we are friends across a natural boundary!).

If they could grandfather all middle schoolers, this should be a no-brainer. I still don’t like the RV move (think moving it all to Lewis made more sense but not going to throw them under the bus and understand why they wouldn’t want to do that) since it offsets the gains from the LBSS shifts. But I don’t get the outrage. The time difference is so small as to be negligible (45 hours a year?!). LBSS and WSHS are really two schools in one community. We are friends with people from both school pyramids and do activities in both addresses (in fact some maps call our West Springfield address Burke!). It’s a losing argument.

Do you know the boundaries of Rolling Valley? There is no way you could move that school all to Lewis. It literally carves out the whole center of the circle that is the WSHS boundary. Kids who go to Rolling Valley literally live in WSHS's backyard.
But I agree with using scenario 3 for Rolling Valley (not for Hunt Valley) that takes the split feeder kids out of Rolling Valley and moves them to Saratoga where they would move on to Key and Lewis as they always have, but now with a real cohort of kids.

Yes I know the area. The boundary looks weird as it is now anyway, so I guess the new plan “looks better” on a map. If you moved all of RV to Lewis, then you have WSES who is geographically closer to Lewis going to WSHS while their further away neighbors go to Lewis (which is why I always thought the HV to Lewis discussion months/years ago was stupid!). My main issue with RV is moving more kids into WSHS. I don’t think it will be only “20” kids and WSHS/Irving will remain over capacity and we will still be a target for redistricting. I am so tired of all of this. It has been very stressful for the communities involved.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

We were talking about the comments at the Madison/McLean meeting last night. There were a lot of Wolftrap parents saying they favored the elimination of the split feeder, which sends them all to Madison. There was one parent asking whether his kid could attend Marshall if they are rezoned to Madison.

I don't doubt there are other Wolftrap families happy with Marshall, but they weren't speaking up last night to leave the boundary unchanged.

They can join Lemon Road’s pouting party who were told in Scenarios 1-3 that their split feeder would be resolved. Keeping Wolftrap at Marshall resolves the attendance island at the MS and HS level, and while Madison might have some capacity, Thoreau would be at 107% with nearly 750 students per grade.

They could still decide to reassign the Westbriar island to either Colvin Run or Sunrise Valley. Moving all of Wolftrap to Madison turned that island, which previously had just been an ES island, into an ES/MS/HS island. It's one thing to leave a current island alone. It's another thing to create a new island, or make an existing island worse by turning it into an island for not just the ES, but also the MS and/or HS.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

The intent of scenario 4 was to remove the split feeder at Wolftrap/Westbriar. My guess is that they’ll retain the original Marshall/Madison boundaries, and they’ll send Madison kids that were previously assigned to Kilmer to Thoreau to relieve Kilmer.

Did anyone talk about the fact the Thoreau three way split was not addressed at all? The Thoreau/Marshall kids should have priority into Madison over Kilmer/Marshall kids at Wolftrap.

Reid was fairly clear that she did not expect to change the proposal to send all of Wolftrap to Madison. It came up repeatedly last night and the Wolftrap families wanted reassurances that, if the Madison families at Westbriar proposed to move to Marshall stayed at Madison, they would still get to move to Madison. She provided those assurances and said she'd gotten together with the principals of both Madison and Marshall to go over the numbers.

Of course the School Board could decide to retain the current Marshall/Madison boundaries, but she'll have a lot of upset families if that's where they land. There was no discussion of what they plan to do with the attendance island left at Westbriar-Kilmer-Marshall under Scenario 4, and they decide they aren't going to leave it as a stranded island out in western Vienna that could lead them to revisit Marshall, Madison, or other (potentially Langley or South Lakes) boundaries.

The three-way split at Thoreau was not discussed last night, as far as I'm aware. There was a portion of the meeting where Reid took Q&A from people who attended in person and Gordon took Q&A from people attending virtually.

Did they look at the middle school numbers at all? Because the Kilmer and Thoreau split feeders will likely have to continue under the scenario described, but now even more imbalanced.

They referred periodically last night to the fact that Kilmer is currently very overcrowded. They don't seem to paying much attention to how crowded Thoreau may end up.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

We were talking about the comments at the Madison/McLean meeting last night. There were a lot of Wolftrap parents saying they favored the elimination of the split feeder, which sends them all to Madison. There was one parent asking whether his kid could attend Marshall if they are rezoned to Madison.

I don't doubt there are other Wolftrap families happy with Marshall, but they weren't speaking up last night to leave the boundary unchanged.

They can join Lemon Road’s pouting party who were told in Scenarios 1-3 that their split feeder would be resolved. Keeping Wolftrap at Marshall resolves the attendance island at the MS and HS level, and while Madison might have some capacity, Thoreau would be at 107% with nearly 750 students per grade.

They could still decide to reassign the Westbriar island to either Colvin Run or Sunrise Valley. Moving all of Wolftrap to Madison turned that island, which previously had just been an ES island, into an ES/MS/HS island. It's one thing to leave a current island alone. It's another thing to create a new island, or make an existing island worse by turning it into an island for not just the ES, but also the MS and/or HS.

The problem isn’t just the island. It’s Thoreau MS, which they’re treating like a limitless catch all. It already has a program capacity bigger than most middle schools. Under scenario 4, they move Wolftrap, a piece of Vienna ES, and Fairfax Acres into Thoreau. That puts the school at 104%. If they were to move the Westbriar/Madison kids to Thoreau to close the Kilmer split feeder, it would be approximately 1482. That’s 741 middle schoolers per grade.

The alternative is to continue to send all of Westbriar to Kilmer as shown in Scenario 4, that’s about 23 kids per grade going to Madison while the rest of Kilmer goes to Marshall. A 4% split. Meanwhile you still have 5-7% of Thoureau going to Marshall.

So some opportunistic UMC people get what they want at Wolftrap while nothing in the Marshall pyramid is fixed. It’s just a dumping ground for split feeders.

[Anonymous]

Proposed map 4, has an odd cut out of Nestlewood Dr and Rounding Run Circle well into proposed new boundary for new school. Looks like homes to left and right of those streets assigned to new school but those streets stay at Oakton? Why? Do vocal parents live there that don’t want to move and were accommodated or why the odd cut out? I thought I had read part of reason FCPS was doing new boundaries was to have entire neighborhoods going to same schools, no?

https://www.fcps.edu/system/files/forms/2025-10/optiond.pdf

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What are the main takeaways from the McLean Madison meeting tonight? I heard several hundred people attended between in person and online!

It was fairly calm.

Ratio of Madison comments to McLean comments felt like 3:1.

Lots of Westbriar parents zoned to Madison objecting to getting moved to Marshall under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Wolftrap parents zoned to Marshall favoring getting moved to Madison under Scenario 4. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

Lots of Timber Lane parents north of 29 expressing appreciation that Scenario 4 keeps them at Longfellow/McLean. Sounds like they’ll get their wish.

A few Fairhill ES parents advocating to get moved from Falls Church to Madison or Oakton. Reid was non-committal because the parents couldn’t say how many kids were involved.

A fair number of Lemon Road parents zoned for McLean and Marshall spoke in favor of retaining the split feeder, which Scenario 4 does. They are a bit unsettled because there are some Lemon Road parents in Pimmit Hills lobbying to get moved from Marshall to McLean by eliminating the split feeder, which in turn has prompted some other parents at Lemon Road to argue that, if the split feeder is to be eliminated, FCPS should move the McLean families at Lemon Road to Marshall, rather than vice versa. The parents speaking tonight want to keep the current split feeder.

No comments at all that I can recall from anyone in the Spring Hill island, so it seems fair to assume they’re happy to move from McLean to Langley.

The most interesting part of the meeting may have been when Meren, who was there, seemed to chastise Reid about Reid’s answer to a question about whether current 8th graders would have a choice between their current high school and the high school to which they may be rezoned.

Lots of comments about whether split feeders are bad or ok, and it came across as rather contrived and dependent on how it impacted the schools that people want their kids to attend. Reid said they are looking at split feeders on a case-by-case basis now, depending on the feedback provided, and backing away from a one-size-fits-all approach.

I was surprised Meren didn’t seem aware of the transfer/pupil placement process. She seemed clueless and uninformed while Reid correctly informed the father of his options for his son. Didn’t give me much confidence in Meren.

Meren posted a video on her Facebook page last night basically throwing Reid under the bus, saying that the school board supervises Reid and that Reid was operating outside of her lane by saying information that had not been authorized or agreed upon by the board.

Good for Meren.

I was at the WSHS meeting.

Brac map 4 is probably the best map they could have created for WSHS. Even though I think no one should be moved into WSHS, if I were honest, I would have to say that even tho RV part makes sense.

But as the night went on, Reid started to overtly imply that if they complained loudly enough on the boundary map tool, that Sangster would get to stay at WSHS and they might need to revisit map 3. (Creating a split feeder at Hunt Valley?)

For every complaint and point that speakers made, Reid just smiled, nodded affirmatively, and implied that she agreed with the poster. Every single time.

She is the figurehead of FCPS and is paid $400,000 each year by us the taxpayers to do the hard thing.

We are 2 years into this process and on our 4th map revision.

At this point, Dr. Reid should have had hard factual answers to parents questions that have been asked for 2 years straight, not "I just looked at the transfer data into WSHS yesterday becsuse I knew someone would ask."

At this point in the process, she should have stood up like a leader in front of the very civil and respectful WSHS parents, and told them what FCPS told the BRAC committee reps, which is " Unfortunately, someone is going to get rezoned out of WSHS. If the Brac committee does not come up with enough students to meet our satisfaction, then the schoolboard and superintendent will pick who gets rezoned." Then stand up for the BRAC committee and tell those parents that the BRAC committee tried to pick the smallest number of houses to be rezoned to meet their mandate, and tried to find neighborhoods that could go to the most equivalent high school (Lake Braddock) with the biggest community connection to WSHS and the students getting moved, with the best transportation options.

Stand by the BRAC committee.

The Springfield BRAC members created the best possible map for WSHS with Map 4. Any one who knows the area, knows the schools, and knows the communities involved knows this, if they were perfectly honest, as long as the Irving 8th graders get the same grandfathering as the LB secondary school 8th graders get.

Show some leadership and support the volunteers who have managed to pull off an impossible tasking in a way that gives the best possible outcome for ALL of the WSHS students, including the Sangster split feeder, even if it will be a big disappointment to them. By next year, when all the Sangster 6th graders move to Lake Braddock together for midfle school, and with the Sangster elementary classes going forward, this will be just a blip in their memory, other than people wondering why they fought this at all.

If Reid caved this immediately to the very, very civil WSHS parents, what on earth is she doing when she faces parents who are riled up?

All of this is so accurate. I went to the meeting too and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more upset I got about the way these parents talked about LBSS, the rest of Sangster, and the other families they live near (even if you can’t walk to their house). I would like to hear from the actual elementary kids at Sangster, and hear how they feel about splitting from most of their cohort. My child would have been incredibly upset if the HV split had gone through, because she doesn’t care about going to Irving, but she would have cared deeply about her best buddies being moved to a different school after 6. She had a hard time making friends and the few she has are south of 286 (yep, we are friends across a natural boundary!).

If they could grandfather all middle schoolers, this should be a no-brainer. I still don’t like the RV move (think moving it all to Lewis made more sense but not going to throw them under the bus and understand why they wouldn’t want to do that) since it offsets the gains from the LBSS shifts. But I don’t get the outrage. The time difference is so small as to be negligible (45 hours a year?!). LBSS and WSHS are really two schools in one community. We are friends with people from both school pyramids and do activities in both addresses (in fact some maps call our West Springfield address Burke!). It’s a losing argument.

Do you know the boundaries of Rolling Valley? There is no way you could move that school all to Lewis. It literally carves out the whole center of the circle that is the WSHS boundary. Kids who go to Rolling Valley literally live in WSHS's backyard.
But I agree with using scenario 3 for Rolling Valley (not for Hunt Valley) that takes the split feeder kids out of Rolling Valley and moves them to Saratoga where they would move on to Key and Lewis as they always have, but now with a real cohort of kids.

She was talking about the Rolling Valley parts affected by Map 3 and 4, not Rolling Valley proper that currently attends WSHS

[Anonymous]

At the meeting last night, there were also a number of parents who spoke up (apparently also with a petition) to be moved from Fall Church HS to Madison. It seemed to be a big stretch but if Reid kowtows, that would put Madison over capacity by a lot

[Anonymous]

They were sooooo stupid to mandate a county wide boundary rezoning every 5 years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the meeting last night, there were also a number of parents who spoke up (apparently also with a petition) to be moved from Fall Church HS to Madison. It seemed to be a big stretch but if Reid kowtows, that would put Madison over capacity by a lot

Unless things have dramatically changed over the years--it will not be up to Reid or staff, final decision is the School Board.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

The intent of scenario 4 was to remove the split feeder at Wolftrap/Westbriar. My guess is that they’ll retain the original Marshall/Madison boundaries, and they’ll send Madison kids that were previously assigned to Kilmer to Thoreau to relieve Kilmer.

Did anyone talk about the fact the Thoreau three way split was not addressed at all? The Thoreau/Marshall kids should have priority into Madison over Kilmer/Marshall kids at Wolftrap.

Reid was fairly clear that she did not expect to change the proposal to send all of Wolftrap to Madison. It came up repeatedly last night and the Wolftrap families wanted reassurances that, if the Madison families at Westbriar proposed to move to Marshall stayed at Madison, they would still get to move to Madison. She provided those assurances and said she'd gotten together with the principals of both Madison and Marshall to go over the numbers.

Of course the School Board could decide to retain the current Marshall/Madison boundaries, but she'll have a lot of upset families if that's where they land. There was no discussion of what they plan to do with the attendance island left at Westbriar-Kilmer-Marshall under Scenario 4, and they decide they aren't going to leave it as a stranded island out in western Vienna that could lead them to revisit Marshall, Madison, or other (potentially Langley or South Lakes) boundaries.

The three-way split at Thoreau was not discussed last night, as far as I'm aware. There was a portion of the meeting where Reid took Q&A from people who attended in person and Gordon took Q&A from people attending virtually.

Did they look at the middle school numbers at all? Because the Kilmer and Thoreau split feeders will likely have to continue under the scenario described, but now even more imbalanced.

They referred periodically last night to the fact that Kilmer is currently very overcrowded. They don't seem to paying much attention to how crowded Thoreau may end up.

This was actually brought up at the “meetlet” a few weeks ago. A parent that was being reassigned to Thoreau wanted to know if they’d be prepared for the capacity influx, and Reid brushed it off that they have to pivot all the time. I’m not sure she realizes their plan is to dump 200 new students into an already large middle school. Thoreau will be the largest middle school behind Lake Braddock and Glasgow (a 3 year middle school.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the meeting last night, there were also a number of parents who spoke up (apparently also with a petition) to be moved from Fall Church HS to Madison. It seemed to be a big stretch but if Reid kowtows, that would put Madison over capacity by a lot

They are unlikely to get any traction. Fairhill ES has been at Jackson/Falls Church a long time. Some have Vienna addresses but most live in Fairfax. And moving them would wreak havoc with enrollment numbers for all the schools involved.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone across the board is happy with scenario 4 except a small contingent of folks from NE Vienna, Wolf Trap Elementary, and Lemon Rd elementary.

Wrong - Wolftrap elementary families by far favor scenario 4

That was certainly my impression.

For parents with kids currently at Wolftrap attending the meeting than yes but for parents with kids attending or having attended Marshall with Wolftrap as their elementary school than no. The second group would much rather stay with the Wolfrap / Kilmer / Marshall boundary.

We were talking about the comments at the Madison/McLean meeting last night. There were a lot of Wolftrap parents saying they favored the elimination of the split feeder, which sends them all to Madison. There was one parent asking whether his kid could attend Marshall if they are rezoned to Madison.

I don't doubt there are other Wolftrap families happy with Marshall, but they weren't speaking up last night to leave the boundary unchanged.

They can join Lemon Road’s pouting party who were told in Scenarios 1-3 that their split feeder would be resolved. Keeping Wolftrap at Marshall resolves the attendance island at the MS and HS level, and while Madison might have some capacity, Thoreau would be at 107% with nearly 750 students per grade.

They could still decide to reassign the Westbriar island to either Colvin Run or Sunrise Valley. Moving all of Wolftrap to Madison turned that island, which previously had just been an ES island, into an ES/MS/HS island. It's one thing to leave a current island alone. It's another thing to create a new island, or make an existing island worse by turning it into an island for not just the ES, but also the MS and/or HS.

The problem isn’t just the island. It’s Thoreau MS, which they’re treating like a limitless catch all. It already has a program capacity bigger than most middle schools. Under scenario 4, they move Wolftrap, a piece of Vienna ES, and Fairfax Acres into Thoreau. That puts the school at 104%. If they were to move the Westbriar/Madison kids to Thoreau to close the Kilmer split feeder, it would be approximately 1482. That’s 741 middle schoolers per grade.

The alternative is to continue to send all of Westbriar to Kilmer as shown in Scenario 4, that’s about 23 kids per grade going to Madison while the rest of Kilmer goes to Marshall. A 4% split. Meanwhile you still have 5-7% of Thoureau going to Marshall.

So some opportunistic UMC people get what they want at Wolftrap while nothing in the Marshall pyramid is fixed. It’s just a dumping ground for split feeders.

I thought the proposal to make Westbriar a 100% feeder to Kilmer/Marshall made perfect sense, apart from figuring out what to do with the island.