FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

I respectfully disagree. I think if you allow grandfathering of students, you then allow people who - for example, might have one year left in a school to finish out rather than to cause a disruption in their lives and then over time course correct attendance at schools.
For those that are opposed to it overall, the argument seems to be property value. For those that think grandfathering is a good compromise, I think we are most concerned about supporting effective change but also protecting current studetns from too much disruption in their education, sports, extracurriculars, etc.

I'm all for grandfathering of students at the final years of a particular school. However, no sibling transfer requests should be honored. 12th grade, 8th, 6th/5th.

FCPS also needs to be transparent with the current transfers. How many are sibling transfers? How many are hardship with child care? Emotional issues?

Horrible.

Just horrible.

All high school students should be grandfathered. Period.

Family units (siblings) should be given the option to remain at the current school at all levels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

Virginia DOE has a spreadsheet showing AP, IB and DE participation by school.

The lower performing schools have very dismal IB participation, especially Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Seniors graduating with an IB degree is in the very low single digits for those schools, with a less than 50% degree rate for the low number of seniors who actually pursue an IB degree. The rates are very dismal.

For example, VA dept of education shows that in 2022-23, Lewis had 6 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 3 students achieving it. Mount Vernon had 15 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 4 students achieving it.

Annandale and Justice are quite a bit better, sitting at 29/44 for Annandale and 38/84 for Justice.

The other IB schools listed on the VA DOE site, have much high participation and achievement rates.

South Lakes 42 out of 54
Edison 42 out of 59
Marshall 78 out of 82
Robinson 93 out of 131

Looking at those numbers, perhaps FCPS should remove IB from Lewis and Mount Vernon, make Edison the IB magnet for the area since they are doing well with it, and move the Edison academy classes to Lewis, instead of rezoning.

If Mt Vernon can only get 15 kids to attempt IB, what would AP even look like there. Would there even be demand for a full slate of AP offerings, or would you just get a couple of offerings every year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

I respectfully disagree. I think if you allow grandfathering of students, you then allow people who - for example, might have one year left in a school to finish out rather than to cause a disruption in their lives and then over time course correct attendance at schools.
For those that are opposed to it overall, the argument seems to be property value. For those that think grandfathering is a good compromise, I think we are most concerned about supporting effective change but also protecting current studetns from too much disruption in their education, sports, extracurriculars, etc.

I'm all for grandfathering of students at the final years of a particular school. However, no sibling transfer requests should be honored. 12th grade, 8th, 6th/5th.

FCPS also needs to be transparent with the current transfers. How many are sibling transfers? How many are hardship with child care? Emotional issues?

Grandfathering has been far more generous than this for decades. You want high school kids reassigned to new schools mid-stream as rising sophomores and juniors? That is not going to fly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

If the proposed changes are widespread enough, grandfathering won’t even be feasible. If they had committed to grandfathering in advance that would put an effective ceiling on the number of kids they could move based on transportation constraints.

This School Board is a perfect storm of very radical and extremely stupid. When the sh*t really hits the fan next year they will get quite a wake-up call. If you’ve seen how inept Michelle Reid looked addressing the Hayfield debacle, rest assured that was just the warm-up act.

Oh yeah, I continue to think that the transportation costs go way up (not down) with even limited grandfathering.

I would never argue against grandfathering as that would be selfishly looking to screw over other people’s kids. But I do think that the school board may limit grandfathering so that they can claim transportation savings. Either that, or they just cook the transportation books (wouldn’t put that past them either).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

Are you just now checking in?

Parents fought against changing 8130 to the new policy that elevates equity as the primary driver of rezoning and moved rezoning from as needed to address capacity as requested by principals, to mandated every 5 years with no grandfathering.

The school board ignored the will of their constituents.

That battle was lost.

So now we are moving on to maintaining neighborhood schools, prioritizing shortest commutes, grandfathering all high school students and protecting sibling units.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

I respectfully disagree. I think if you allow grandfathering of students, you then allow people who - for example, might have one year left in a school to finish out rather than to cause a disruption in their lives and then over time course correct attendance at schools.
For those that are opposed to it overall, the argument seems to be property value. For those that think grandfathering is a good compromise, I think we are most concerned about supporting effective change but also protecting current studetns from too much disruption in their education, sports, extracurriculars, etc.

I'm all for grandfathering of students at the final years of a particular school. However, no sibling transfer requests should be honored. 12th grade, 8th, 6th/5th.

FCPS also needs to be transparent with the current transfers. How many are sibling transfers? How many are hardship with child care? Emotional issues?

Tell us you are selfish without telling us you are selfish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

Virginia DOE has a spreadsheet showing AP, IB and DE participation by school.

The lower performing schools have very dismal IB participation, especially Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Seniors graduating with an IB degree is in the very low single digits for those schools, with a less than 50% degree rate for the low number of seniors who actually pursue an IB degree. The rates are very dismal.

For example, VA dept of education shows that in 2022-23, Lewis had 6 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 3 students achieving it. Mount Vernon had 15 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 4 students achieving it.

Annandale and Justice are quite a bit better, sitting at 29/44 for Annandale and 38/84 for Justice.

The other IB schools listed on the VA DOE site, have much high participation and achievement rates.

South Lakes 42 out of 54
Edison 42 out of 59
Marshall 78 out of 82
Robinson 93 out of 131

Looking at those numbers, perhaps FCPS should remove IB from Lewis and Mount Vernon, make Edison the IB magnet for the area since they are doing well with it, and move the Edison academy classes to Lewis, instead of rezoning.

If Mt Vernon can only get 15 kids to attempt IB, what would AP even look like there. Would there even be demand for a full slate of AP offerings, or would you just get a couple of offerings every year

The lowest performing AP schools are Falls Church and Hayfield and they look a hell of a lot better than Mount Vernon looks with IB. It’s worth a try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

If the proposed changes are widespread enough, grandfathering won’t even be feasible. If they had committed to grandfathering in advance that would put an effective ceiling on the number of kids they could move based on transportation constraints.

This School Board is a perfect storm of very radical and extremely stupid. When the sh*t really hits the fan next year they will get quite a wake-up call. If you’ve seen how inept Michelle Reid looked addressing the Hayfield debacle, rest assured that was just the warm-up act.

Lets say that you have a high achieving kid rezoned from WSHS to Lewis. Lets say they to calc BC, AP chem, AP english comp, AP US, and AP bio as a junior. That's a hard schedule, but not uncommon among top students. What does that student take as a senior? They're ineligible for an IB diploma. The math won't align, IB science and english are two part sequences and they haven't taken the first part. Does the board really expect that kid to take a full schedule of inappropriate classes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

Are you just now checking in?

Parents fought against changing 8130 to the new policy that elevates equity as the primary driver of rezoning and moved rezoning from as needed to address capacity as requested by principals, to mandated every 5 years with no grandfathering.

The school board ignored the will of their constituents.

That battle was lost.

So now we are moving on to maintaining neighborhood schools, prioritizing shortest commutes, grandfathering all high school students and protecting sibling units.

That battle is not lost until the final vote on maps. I agree that the school board is completely tone deaf and is ignoring its constituents, but their playbook is exactly what you are advocating for- pitting community members against each other. You don’t need to play their game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

Virginia DOE has a spreadsheet showing AP, IB and DE participation by school.

The lower performing schools have very dismal IB participation, especially Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Seniors graduating with an IB degree is in the very low single digits for those schools, with a less than 50% degree rate for the low number of seniors who actually pursue an IB degree. The rates are very dismal.

For example, VA dept of education shows that in 2022-23, Lewis had 6 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 3 students achieving it. Mount Vernon had 15 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 4 students achieving it.

Annandale and Justice are quite a bit better, sitting at 29/44 for Annandale and 38/84 for Justice.

The other IB schools listed on the VA DOE site, have much high participation and achievement rates.

South Lakes 42 out of 54
Edison 42 out of 59
Marshall 78 out of 82
Robinson 93 out of 131

Looking at those numbers, perhaps FCPS should remove IB from Lewis and Mount Vernon, make Edison the IB magnet for the area since they are doing well with it, and move the Edison academy classes to Lewis, instead of rezoning.

If Mt Vernon can only get 15 kids to attempt IB, what would AP even look like there. Would there even be demand for a full slate of AP offerings, or would you just get a couple of offerings every year

Based on the numbers for both schools (MV ans Lewis) on FCPS school profiles, there are a lot more kids who dabble in IB classes, even passing some exams, but don't pursue the full program.

Their pass rates for IB are ok. But the pass rates on the AP classes those schools offer are abysmal.

If most of their students are either transferring to other schools for AP, or dabbling in IB classes with only low single digits of kids earning the IB degree, it is a tremendous waste of money to have IB at Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Ditching IB at those 2 schools should be step one of rezoning and should happen at the end of this year.

IB is simply throwing away money at this point.

You can't argue the numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe the comprehensive review is necessary or wanted by community members. That said, I think that people who are trying to save their own kids at the expense of others by arguing for boundary changes and grandfathering are engaged in a morally bankrupt attempt to throw other Fcps students under the bus.

If you want your kids to be grandfathered, then you should be opposed to the comprehensive review altogether.

If the proposed changes are widespread enough, grandfathering won’t even be feasible. If they had committed to grandfathering in advance that would put an effective ceiling on the number of kids they could move based on transportation constraints.

This School Board is a perfect storm of very radical and extremely stupid. When the sh*t really hits the fan next year they will get quite a wake-up call. If you’ve seen how inept Michelle Reid looked addressing the Hayfield debacle, rest assured that was just the warm-up act.

Lets say that you have a high achieving kid rezoned from WSHS to Lewis. Lets say they to calc BC, AP chem, AP english comp, AP US, and AP bio as a junior. That's a hard schedule, but not uncommon among top students. What does that student take as a senior? They're ineligible for an IB diploma. The math won't align, IB science and english are two part sequences and they haven't taken the first part. Does the board really expect that kid to take a full schedule of inappropriate classes?

Not to mention the top students are likely heading into AP foreign language, often AP German.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

Virginia DOE has a spreadsheet showing AP, IB and DE participation by school.

The lower performing schools have very dismal IB participation, especially Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Seniors graduating with an IB degree is in the very low single digits for those schools, with a less than 50% degree rate for the low number of seniors who actually pursue an IB degree. The rates are very dismal.

For example, VA dept of education shows that in 2022-23, Lewis had 6 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 3 students achieving it. Mount Vernon had 15 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 4 students achieving it.

Annandale and Justice are quite a bit better, sitting at 29/44 for Annandale and 38/84 for Justice.

The other IB schools listed on the VA DOE site, have much high participation and achievement rates.

South Lakes 42 out of 54
Edison 42 out of 59
Marshall 78 out of 82
Robinson 93 out of 131

Looking at those numbers, perhaps FCPS should remove IB from Lewis and Mount Vernon, make Edison the IB magnet for the area since they are doing well with it, and move the Edison academy classes to Lewis, instead of rezoning.

If Mt Vernon can only get 15 kids to attempt IB, what would AP even look like there. Would there even be demand for a full slate of AP offerings, or would you just get a couple of offerings every year

Based on the numbers for both schools (MV ans Lewis) on FCPS school profiles, there are a lot more kids who dabble in IB classes, even passing some exams, but don't pursue the full program.

Their pass rates for IB are ok. But the pass rates on the AP classes those schools offer are abysmal.

If most of their students are either transferring to other schools for AP, or dabbling in IB classes with only low single digits of kids earning the IB degree, it is a tremendous waste of money to have IB at Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Ditching IB at those 2 schools should be step one of rezoning and should happen at the end of this year.

IB is simply throwing away money at this point.

You can't argue the numbers.

Ditching IB saves money, but it's doubtful that either will end up offering an AP curriculum that remotely compares to better schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

Virginia DOE has a spreadsheet showing AP, IB and DE participation by school.

The lower performing schools have very dismal IB participation, especially Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Seniors graduating with an IB degree is in the very low single digits for those schools, with a less than 50% degree rate for the low number of seniors who actually pursue an IB degree. The rates are very dismal.

For example, VA dept of education shows that in 2022-23, Lewis had 6 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 3 students achieving it. Mount Vernon had 15 seniors attempt an IB degree, and only 4 students achieving it.

Annandale and Justice are quite a bit better, sitting at 29/44 for Annandale and 38/84 for Justice.

The other IB schools listed on the VA DOE site, have much high participation and achievement rates.

South Lakes 42 out of 54
Edison 42 out of 59
Marshall 78 out of 82
Robinson 93 out of 131

Looking at those numbers, perhaps FCPS should remove IB from Lewis and Mount Vernon, make Edison the IB magnet for the area since they are doing well with it, and move the Edison academy classes to Lewis, instead of rezoning.

If Mt Vernon can only get 15 kids to attempt IB, what would AP even look like there. Would there even be demand for a full slate of AP offerings, or would you just get a couple of offerings every year

Based on the numbers for both schools (MV ans Lewis) on FCPS school profiles, there are a lot more kids who dabble in IB classes, even passing some exams, but don't pursue the full program.

Their pass rates for IB are ok. But the pass rates on the AP classes those schools offer are abysmal.

If most of their students are either transferring to other schools for AP, or dabbling in IB classes with only low single digits of kids earning the IB degree, it is a tremendous waste of money to have IB at Lewis and Mount Vernon.

Ditching IB at those 2 schools should be step one of rezoning and should happen at the end of this year.

IB is simply throwing away money at this point.

You can't argue the numbers.

This School Board is completely incapable of making any sensible decisions on its own. They’d need to hire yet another consulting firm and have more useless advisory committees before they could ever decide to get rid of a failing IB program. The incompetence is real.

[Anonymous]

All this talk about getting rid of IB or AAP Centers are relevant conversations that the school board should be having. Unfortunately, they are just trying to pass the buck to Thru, who is way out of its depth here. Thru will be paralyzed with the competing interests among the school board members wrt program changes. Instead they’ll just tinker with the borders rather than trying to efficiently tackle some of the programmatic disparities that cause the underlying issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where is the link for CURRENT pupil placements and the IB/AP transfers?

It is nowhere and does not exist for the public. FCPS has the transfer dashboards, no spreadsheet, no listing per academy program [not transfers or square footage used by each academy program per site]. https://www.fcps.edu/facilities-planning-future/facilities-and-membership-dashboards
Click on transfer dashboard which does not break out IB, AP. AP Langley gets 12 AP Westfield, 10 AP Herndon, 29 IB South Lakes? Language snce fCPS doesnt have an academy class anywhere for Russian? You have to click on each to get the number and enter it which I did for the post. Edison is really odd:
1st Edison - miscellaneous 109
student transfer reg 60 [does this include IB???]
2nd Edison-lists schools transferring in includes:
IB Lewis 54 [others from Lewis: West Sprngfield 1 meaning <10, TJ 39]
IB Annandale 14
IB mt Vernon 12 [199 to AP Hayfield, 36 to AP West Potomac]

Other major oddness is the CIP and square footage. Academies! Where is all that stuff at Chantilly and Marshall? Circus tent in parking lot?