Where should the county move the Kent Gardens kids?
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Anonymous
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The staff recommendation has been posted:
- Boundary study to include Chesterbrook, Churchill Road, Franklin Sherman, Kent Gardens, and Spring Hill - Recommends excluding Haycock, Lemon Road, and Westgate - Revisit AAP assignments for Churchill Road and Haycock - Vague reference to possible MS/HS boundary changes for any schools that are split feeders (that would potentially mean Franklin Sherman and Spring Hill) |
Anonymous
Why? We love the LI program my kid is in. It has been great for him. If anything, the program should be expanded so that more kids have an opportunity to participate. It is not for every kid but for kids but it is a great program for the kids who are ready for it. There is a lot of research that shows that learning another language at a young age can help establish different pathways in the brain that help with learning and development. I am tired of people who think that anything that is different that their kid isn't in needs to be removed from the system. Many kids need gen ed but there are kids who do better in programs that challenge them (like LI or AAP). We are in a huge school district with lots of kids. Some need help through SPED programs. Some need to be pushed and challenged. Some need ESOL. There is nothing wrong with that. |
Anonymous
Well said. |
Anonymous
YES! I grew up in that little triangle that goes from FSES to Cooper. The change happened when I was in 6th grade. So suddenly, in the middle of our school year, we went from most of my FS class going to Cooper to only 4 of us going to Cooper and it's been like this ever since (nearly 40 years). The only advantage for the kids who head to Cooper is that they actually get a fresh start in Middle School. But overall, it's really weird. |
Anonymous
If you move the Langley area of FS to Churchill Road, you’d then have an FS island zoned to McLean east of Kirby Road. That area could easily move to Chesterbrook, which is both closer and expected to have capacity. The key would be to move enough KG kids to FS to maintain or increase the FS enrollment even with the FS moves to Churchill Road and Chesterbrook, but I think the numbers could work. I know people at KG love the school and no one likes other people making decisions for them. But this seems like a possibility to clean up some boundaries and provide KG with some meaningful relief. |
Anonymous
Churchill is hardly an AAP center since both Spring Hill and Kent Gardens both have AAP. Churchill now only has one AAP class in third grade. Both SH and KG are much larger schools that essentially stopped sending kids to Churchill and kept their AAP kids. I think this is what FCPS wants? Doesn’t help KG overcrowding. |
Anonymous
Maybe they’ll flip the AAP assignments so the AAP center option for FS is Churchill Road and the option for KG is Haycock. FS sends more kids to Haycock than KG does to CR so maybe flipping the center options would add more AAP kids to CR. [I’m not necessarily advocating for this, but the staff language would clearly allow for that possibility.] |
Anonymous
That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. My kids attend Churchill. Some classes have 20 and others are pushing 30 depending on the grade. It feels like there are fewer kids in the younger grades. |
Anonymous
Yes, this would make sense, considering the proximity of FS to Churchill. |
Anonymous
| They should include Haycock. Given that Haycock is almost at 100% they could adjust boundaries with Haycock/Chesterbrook. It just didn't get enough votes? This is beyond stupid. Do they have any professionals? |
Anonymous
They are not silos. I have met bi-lingual ESOL students who qualify for AAP and Special Education. |
Anonymous
It wasn’t a matter of Board votes. Staff recommended keeping Haycock out of a boundary study, except with respect to possibly AAP assignments (so example they could make Haycock the AAP center option for KG and send Franklin Sherman AAP kids to Churchill Road instead). The Board will vote on the scope of the boundary study next month. You can take it up with Elaine Tholen before then if you want. But the goal is to address overcrowding at KG, not the Haycock/Chesterbrook boundaries. |
Anonymous
I know this and there's a huge chunk of students that live across Kirby that are zoned for KG instead of Haycock. If their objection to moving those kids out of KG is because Haycock might be closer to 100%, that's not OK. They can open the Haycock/Chesterbrook boundary in that case. It does really seem to me that reasonable and rational boundaries weren't taken into consideration for the selection of schools. Parents voted for FS and Chesterbrook, bc they want their kids there. Do you see any other reasoning in the presentation for how staff selected schools to include? here's a link to the presentation: https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/CT5UU77DB47B/$file/Kent%20Gardens%20ES%20School%20Board%20Scope%20Presentation.pdf |
Anonymous
I did not mean to give the impression that they were, my kid is in LI and has an IEP and is in AAP. My point was more that parents whose kids are not in LI or AAP seem to be more likely to say to end those programs because they are specialized and not see the larger benefit they provide to kids who need a different type of challenge. I hear it at various events, a parent whose kid isn’t in any specialized program (SPED, ESOL, LIV, LI) complaining that their child gets nothing special while the other kids get X,Y, or Z. Many times parents did not try the LI program, we live in the boundary, so they don’t know if their child would have done well in it or they moved in too late to join. The child didn’t qualify for LIII, Advanced Math, or LIV, and the child doesn’t need an IEP. |
Anonymous
Of course they wouldn't want to go to lemon road or westgage but that's where they should go, we'll see how this plays out will the woke school board support diversity and put kent gardens in westgate and lemon road which has capacity or bow to the parents trying to move their kids to the better sherman and chesterbrook schools. |