Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
This. It is not a "shiny toy." It is an opportunity to correct a terrible decision made ten years ago--likely with federal political pressure.
Note that you are the one pushing the "vast conspiracy" theory here.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
Oh, please. It was Pat Herrity who led the charge against putting the Saudi school in Burke. That is why it ended up at the KAA site in the first place. Without, ANY notice to the local community.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Ok, Pat Herrity *snark*
Oh, Please. It was Pat Herrity who reacted to the residents of Burke protesting the Saudi school being built there. And, then, suddenly--without any notice to the local community--FCPS gave/sold the KAA site to the Saudis.
So, maybe, we can all thank Pat Herrity for this school. It should have been built by FCPS by now.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Ok, Pat Herrity *snark*
Oh, Please. It was Pat Herrity who reacted to the residents of Burke protesting the Saudi school being built there. And, then, suddenly--without any notice to the local community--FCPS gave/sold the KAA site to the Saudis.
So, maybe, we can all thank Pat Herrity for this school. It should have been built by FCPS by now.
If it had been built years ago and before so much capacity was added to Herndon, perhaps. Now it’s just going to create a lot of surplus capacity at schools that were built to be big or later expanded.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Ok, Pat Herrity *snark*
Oh, Please. It was Pat Herrity who reacted to the residents of Burke protesting the Saudi school being built there. And, then, suddenly--without any notice to the local community--FCPS gave/sold the KAA site to the Saudis.
So, maybe, we can all thank Pat Herrity for this school. It should have been built by FCPS by now.
If it had been built years ago and before so much capacity was added to Herndon, perhaps. Now it’s just going to create a lot of surplus capacity at schools that were built to be big or later expanded.
The only school in the area with capacity is Herndon. South Lakes is close to capacity. Oakton is close to capacity. Westfield is close to capacity; it might be over but under the 105% to be considered unacceptable. Chantilly and Centerville are overcapacity. Soth Lakes was expanded and is close to capacity. Centerville was supposed to be expanded to deal with the capacity issue but there have been permit issues.
KAA will be at or close to capacity as soon as it is fully opened. Centerville and Chantill will be close to capacity. I am not sure what Westfield will look like. South Lakes might see a small decline in it's capacity but not that much. The Floris cohort that might move is small, the Fox Mill cohort that might move is bigger than the Floris but not by that much. I think I have seen projections that if both groups move, SLHS drops by about 600 students.
KAA is very much needed in the area. With the new townhouses, homes, and apartments coming into the area, SLHS and Herndon will probably fill up. I know that there are concerns about Oakton going over capacity and Crossfield students being moved to SLHS if they don't move to KAA when the school opens because of possible capacity issues at Oakton.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Ok, Pat Herrity *snark*
Oh, Please. It was Pat Herrity who reacted to the residents of Burke protesting the Saudi school being built there. And, then, suddenly--without any notice to the local community--FCPS gave/sold the KAA site to the Saudis.
So, maybe, we can all thank Pat Herrity for this school. It should have been built by FCPS by now.
If it had been built years ago and before so much capacity was added to Herndon, perhaps. Now it’s just going to create a lot of surplus capacity at schools that were built to be big or later expanded.
The only school in the area with capacity is Herndon. South Lakes is close to capacity. Oakton is close to capacity. Westfield is close to capacity; it might be over but under the 105% to be considered unacceptable. Chantilly and Centerville are overcapacity. Soth Lakes was expanded and is close to capacity. Centerville was supposed to be expanded to deal with the capacity issue but there have been permit issues.
KAA will be at or close to capacity as soon as it is fully opened. Centerville and Chantill will be close to capacity. I am not sure what Westfield will look like. South Lakes might see a small decline in it's capacity but not that much. The Floris cohort that might move is small, the Fox Mill cohort that might move is bigger than the Floris but not by that much. I think I have seen projections that if both groups move, SLHS drops by about 600 students.
KAA is very much needed in the area. With the new townhouses, homes, and apartments coming into the area, SLHS and Herndon will probably fill up. I know that there are concerns about Oakton going over capacity and Crossfield students being moved to SLHS if they don't move to KAA when the school opens because of possible capacity issues at Oakton.
The 4 draft maps of KAA show the capacities before and after it opens. How anyone can be so obtuse about this is beyond me.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
Ok, Pat Herrity *snark*
Oh, Please. It was Pat Herrity who reacted to the residents of Burke protesting the Saudi school being built there. And, then, suddenly--without any notice to the local community--FCPS gave/sold the KAA site to the Saudis.
So, maybe, we can all thank Pat Herrity for this school. It should have been built by FCPS by now.
If it had been built years ago and before so much capacity was added to Herndon, perhaps. Now it’s just going to create a lot of surplus capacity at schools that were built to be big or later expanded.
The only school in the area with capacity is Herndon. South Lakes is close to capacity. Oakton is close to capacity. Westfield is close to capacity; it might be over but under the 105% to be considered unacceptable. Chantilly and Centerville are overcapacity. Soth Lakes was expanded and is close to capacity. Centerville was supposed to be expanded to deal with the capacity issue but there have been permit issues.
KAA will be at or close to capacity as soon as it is fully opened. Centerville and Chantill will be close to capacity. I am not sure what Westfield will look like. South Lakes might see a small decline in it's capacity but not that much. The Floris cohort that might move is small, the Fox Mill cohort that might move is bigger than the Floris but not by that much. I think I have seen projections that if both groups move, SLHS drops by about 600 students.
KAA is very much needed in the area. With the new townhouses, homes, and apartments coming into the area, SLHS and Herndon will probably fill up. I know that there are concerns about Oakton going over capacity and Crossfield students being moved to SLHS if they don't move to KAA when the school opens because of possible capacity issues at Oakton.
The 4 draft maps of KAA show the capacities before and after it opens. How anyone can be so obtuse about this is beyond me.
It's going to be funny at the 2030 review when the same people screaming "excess capacity" now will be arguing that the western schools don't have any capacity to add any new students, and that all the boundaries should stay exactly as they area.
Anonymous wrote:And those so worried about Westfield losing too many should look at all the new construction close to Westfield.
40 are listed today of new construction--and more to come.
There's more construction taking place and in the pipeline zoned to Marshall and McLean than Westfield.
Maybe, send some to that extra space at Langley and Madison.
Scenario 4 proposes to do just that. The question is why they aren't proposing to send anyone to Herndon, which has more surplus capacity than either Langley or Madison, before they splurge on a new western HS.
Anonymous wrote:And those so worried about Westfield losing too many should look at all the new construction close to Westfield.
40 are listed today of new construction--and more to come.
There's more construction taking place and in the pipeline zoned to Marshall and McLean than Westfield.
Maybe, send some to that extra space at Langley and Madison.
Scenario 4 proposes to do just that. The question is why they aren't proposing to send anyone to Herndon, which has more surplus capacity than either Langley or Madison, before they splurge on a new western HS.
The only students close enough to send to Herndon are Forestville, and Langley doesn't need relief (yet). There is no way to shift enough kids from Centreville, Chantilly, and Westfield to fill those seats at Herndon. Centreville has 22 trailers and modulars, Chantilly has 23, and Westfield has 13. This area has needed a new school for years. Herndon couldn't fill the need even if transportation there wasn't an issue.
Anonymous wrote:That 27-28 change will also include removing AAP Centers at the middle school level and instead having AAP at all middle schools. Someone finally realized all these projects need to be combined into one comprehensive effort.
I think they are going ahead with it.
Looks like they are bowing to Great Falls on Western school. Very sad.
With the cancellation of next week’s programming vote, you might be right
What is going on with GF and the new HS?
There have long been people in Great Falls who've tried to throw roadblocks in the way of a new, traditional HS in western Fairfax, but it's unlikely that has much to do with the recent delays in moving forward with a decision about the programming for the western HS or the boundaries for the new school. They've got to work through permitting and construction issues before a new public HS could open, even with only 9th and 10th graders, and the biggest complainers about the potential boundaries for the new school have been people now at Oakton, not people in GF.
They could open as is with 9 and 10. The school was built to hold that many kids and they can certainly adapt. Just look what they do at the overcrowded schools.
Great Falls thinks these kids are insurance for them. That has been clear ever since the purchase.
i think the problem with opening is they didn’t file the right permitting (2232?). besides a few vocal great falls residents on next door the rest of the town does not have an opinion either way on the western high school. it does not affect us.
+1. So sad that there is one poster here who posts negative posts about great falls at least a dozen times a day, even when it is not relevant.
I think she dated someone from Great falls and got dumped.
No other group actively organized against this school. But, you know that.
You mean that non-great falls group that wanted it to be a magnet? That’s literally the only one I know that organized anything. Others just questioned the lack of plan and cost.
But you know that.
And, you know who was the base of FairFacts. They wanted to stop the school. Period. A magnet is not the same as a school with boundaries.
But, hopefully, this is not over.
I don’t understand what you mean by “base of fairfacts”? I haven’t seen any position from fairfacts matters on the school, but I may have missed it.
fair facts matters has not spoken out against the school. the only posts i have seen have asked for transparency on the purchase (what is the plan for the school, what other capital projects are being deferred etc). fcps still doesn’t seem to know the plan months after they purchased it
THIS ^^
That is speaking out against the school. And, some of the people who screamed the most on Nextdoor were very much on FairFacts. One lives two miles from Herndon High School.
asking for transparency is talking against the school? i don’t think so. any logical person no matter where the school was purchased would ask questions if FCPS didn’t even announce the purchase for over 2 months after it closed. and now a month after that they still have no idea on programming, boundaries etc. No one is saying the school isn’t needed in that area. But it seemed very impulsive and they didn’t even do the right permitting to get it open for 2026-2027.
+1
And can you imagine the outcry from people like the PP had a transaction like this occurred in, say, the Langley/McLean area?? We'd never hear the end of it.
If they’d followed any FCPS processes, there’d be data centers built there before FCPS ever held a board meeting to consider a purchase.
This.
Anyone who has ever purchased a house knows that you do not advertise what you are offering to other people searching for houses--or even which house you are going to make an offer.
Possibly. As long as you acknowledge the outcry that would absolutely be happening had this school purchase taken place in a different area of the county.
We don't all think like you. Some of us (myself included) aren't zoned for the new school or one of its donor feeders and are still happy FCPS is doing something about the overcrowding. All the surrounding counties have built new schools in the past 20 years, but we just kept expanding ours into giant monstrosities with strange borders that had lost all sense of a "community school."
PP can’t fathom that not everyone is as selfish as they are. People like PP also love to use the term virtue signaling because they can’t understand that there are people out there who can see past their own nose.
DP. When you've stopped patting yourself on the back, let us know if you have the same empathy for those whose school renovations will be deferred for years because FCPS will now be allocating so much of its capital budget to a western HS that the last CIP didn't contemplate building any earlier than 2034.
How much empathy did you have when the 2016 CIP had it scheduled to be built (for $120 million) in the FY21-25 time frame before the county gave the land to the Saudis? It was deferred for years until the land unexpectedly came available again, and now it's just one year behind the original schedule. Seems about right to me.
Of course, you ignore the money that was invested in additions to schools like Herndon, Oakton, and Madison since 2016. That money was available because a new western HS wasn’t being built, but now you are happy to have your cake and eat it, too, while schools elsewhere in the county are overlooked.
If there was any compelling need for a new HS, they would prioritize the boundaries for the school and we wouldn’t be hearing about how attendance at Western will be optional for years to come. It’s just an expensive toy the dimwits running FCPS decided they just had to have.
Madison and Oakton aren’t “western” high schools. Nice try. Oakton partially services 1 elementary school that’s considered western because the lines are gerrymandered and kids are relegated to 45 minute bus rides.
You’ve also conveniently left out severe overcrowding at chantilly and centreville that needs to be fixed and the KAA purchase will bring immediate relief.
Langley, Madison, and Oakton all serve kids living in the western part of the county and many are very happy with this arrangement. And of course once again you ignore the large expansion of Herndon.
But some people really don't want to send their kids to their assigned schools, particularly Westfield and South Lakes, so they are very happy to see overdue renovations at other schools delayed so that they can have an option other families are denied.
Oink, oink.
Madison does not serve the western parts unless you consider the vale area to be western. I don’t but whatever floats your boat.
Langley lines are absurd and will very likely be changed in the next boundary review because, as the anti-KAA people keep saying, Herndon has empty seats.
Oakton? It’s a mini version of Langley lines…absurdly drawn because of a lack of a western alternative.
No, sweetheart, the lines are drawn as they are because Madison, Oakton, Fairfax, and Woodson are so close to one another, so they have boundaries that extend to the west. Given Langley's location, its boundaries have to extend to the west as well. It can't take kids from Arlington.
And each of Madison, Oakton, Woodson, and Langley has been expanded in the not-too-distant past.
You want a slew of schools that taxpayers footed the bill to expand to end up at 85% capacity or less so you can avoid Westfield and South Lakes. Meanwhile other renovation projects get put on hold.
Absurd, and several School Board members will hear about it if they are stupid enough to run for re-election.
The extended boundaries were generated when cows outnumbered people in western Fairfax. There aren't many cows out here anymore. Rather than continuing to build MOWL-sized HSes where the population is (and LCPS does) FCPS threw away the KAA land, began building larger HSes (Westfield/South County), and adding 500+ per HS as each legacy HS came up for renovation. Why? They couldn't project school sizes to save their lives (resulting in a series of "emergency" expansions) and they didn't care what the result would be long term; it was cheaper in the short run.
That's a criticism, not a justification for deferring other renovation projects and screwing other communities because a few School Board members got googly eyed about KAA before they'd figured out how many HS kids it can handle or what type of programming it should offer.
It can handle 2,000 kids and will be a traditional high school. Next?
Not now it can't.
It can with minimal adjustments.
define minimal. head of facilities said between 30-50 million and i don’t think that included athletic fields
Whatever estimate they provide now will likely turn out to be woefully short of the actual cost.
Source? The estimate they provided was drastically inflated to "protect" FCPS, he said as much as he was giving it. The actual estimate was 4.2 million for each building plus 20 million for the main building - and "possibly less if it is a traditional school." So $28.2 million inflated to $30-50 million to protect FCPS.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with past CIPs knows their cost estimates almost always end up understating actual costs. The only ones being “protected” here are School Board members and staff who’ve already made a series of misleading statements about the “savings” associated with purchasing KAA.
It’s a huge savings and anyone with a simple understanding of basic math can draw that conclusion. Recycling Pat herrity’s misleading numbers isn’t going to get you very far.
That’s amusing, since they had no intention of ever building this school. They just kept bumping the start date further out and expanding other schools to meet any need for additional seats.
The “huge savings” are a total fiction and the only question is how much they pretend to inflate them.
Riiiiiight. The vast conspiracy to put a fake site on the CIP for over a decade all so they could justify buying KAA. For people who claim FCPS can’t plan their way out of a paper bag, you’re crediting them with some master level of 4D chess playing right here.
You’re making it overly complicated. They kept bumping the start date for a new western HS further out - the start date was always a decade away - because they didn’t have to courage to outright kill it.
But they also had no intention of building it, and they really only pay attention to what’s in the CIP for the next five years. Anything beyond that is basically a placeholder.
Meanwhile they were meeting the needs in western Fairfax by expanding multiple schools and planning for the Centreville renovation.
KAA is a shiny toy that caught their attention, but its purchase was due to an impulse, not a plan; the cost will be greater than initially disclosed; and there will be no “savings,” only a reallocation of capital resources from other projects. That’s fine with you, of course, but not such a great deal for others.
The start date was bumped because there was no building because there was no land available to build on.
You are in fact the one spinning a vast conspiracy here when the simplest expiration is staring you in the face.
I haven't said anything was a conspiracy. They built additions and planned more - costs many millions of dollars - because they didn't have a better alternative and now they are going to create lots of excess capacity in one part of the county and defer other projects because they got stars in their eyes.
They don't plan; they react, and in this case they reacted to what they decided was a "bargain" before knowing how much it would ultimately cost them or what other renovation projects would be put on the back burner. And now they are proclaiming phantom "savings" based on an ever-changing estimate of a school they never would have built.
NP, the great news is that our population will continue to grow and all of those additions will be put to good use over the next 10-15 years (witness: Oakton which was just renovated and already full ahead of schedule).
Anonymous wrote:And those so worried about Westfield losing too many should look at all the new construction close to Westfield.
40 are listed today of new construction--and more to come.
There's more construction taking place and in the pipeline zoned to Marshall and McLean than Westfield.
Maybe, send some to that extra space at Langley and Madison.
Scenario 4 proposes to do just that. The question is why they aren't proposing to send anyone to Herndon, which has more surplus capacity than either Langley or Madison, before they splurge on a new western HS.
The only students close enough to send to Herndon are Forestville, and Langley doesn't need relief (yet). There is no way to shift enough kids from Centreville, Chantilly, and Westfield to fill those seats at Herndon. Centreville has 22 trailers and modulars, Chantilly has 23, and Westfield has 13. This area has needed a new school for years. Herndon couldn't fill the need even if transportation there wasn't an issue.
The PP you are responding to wants to send Coates and McNair to Herndon.
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