FCPS High School Poverty and Enrollment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Pipe dreams . FFX county would never do this.

I'd hoped Youngkin would do something at the state level to address these issues but he probably would prefer FFX county face the consequences of their votes.

Zoning is a county issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Do you really want that much government control over your life?

Enforcing fire code violations is a problem? Which other safety laws would you like to ignore ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Pipe dreams . FFX county would never do this.

I'd hoped Youngkin would do something at the state level to address these issues but he probably would prefer FFX county face the consequences of their votes.

Zoning is a county issue.

Zoning is not the issue. Occupancy laws maintained by the state are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Do you really want that much government control over your life?

Enforcing fire code violations is a problem? Which other safety laws would you like to ignore ?

You didn't say fire codes -- you said "had laws" which implies you want laws that do not yet exist (otherwise you would have just said "enforced laws").

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Do you really want that much government control over your life?

Enforcing fire code violations is a problem? Which other safety laws would you like to ignore ?

You didn't say fire codes -- you said "had laws" which implies you want laws that do not yet exist (otherwise you would have just said "enforced laws").

Read it again. It says "had laws that were enforced"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are are also white, Asian and Black kids at Lewis, and Hispanic kids at West Springfield. Balancing the enrollments at the two schools is overdue, despite the suggestion of the WS poster that Lewis’s unique function is to serve Hispanic ESOL kids.

If getting rid of IB makes Lewis more palatable get rid of IB there.

Balancing the enrollment will not help the struggling students.

Not every student at Lewis is struggling and they deserve equal opportunities to their peers at other schools. And concentrating poverty in certain schools hurts the struggling students as well, as FCPS already knows.

The poverty concentrates itself. It is not up to other neighborhoods to bail it out.

It kind of is. Maybe not on the microscale you're thinking of because your concerns are about your kid interacting with poor kids. But the larger picture is that we should strive and want to build a better Fairfax County for everyone. I don't think we should, in general, allow the free-falling decay of certain areas a mile away. How does that bode well for our future?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are are also white, Asian and Black kids at Lewis, and Hispanic kids at West Springfield. Balancing the enrollments at the two schools is overdue, despite the suggestion of the WS poster that Lewis’s unique function is to serve Hispanic ESOL kids.

If getting rid of IB makes Lewis more palatable get rid of IB there.

Balancing the enrollment will not help the struggling students.

Not every student at Lewis is struggling and they deserve equal opportunities to their peers at other schools. And concentrating poverty in certain schools hurts the struggling students as well, as FCPS already knows.

The poverty concentrates itself. It is not up to other neighborhoods to bail it out.

It kind of is. Maybe not on the microscale you're thinking of because your concerns are about your kid interacting with poor kids. But the larger picture is that we should strive and want to build a better Fairfax County for everyone. I don't think we should, in general, allow the free-falling decay of certain areas a mile away. How does that bode well for our future?

I would say we already do bail it out. Instead of dividing up our district into smaller districts that would inevitably be the haves vs. the have nots, having one large county pool it's resources is helping - even at these schools with lower enrollment. In fact, I would argue that Lewis and Mt. Vernon are WAY better off than if they had the population they had plus only got their boundary's tax dollars.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

Of course there is a significant increase in Hispanic students. The border has been wide open for the past three years and these students are coming to live amongst their families who are already settled in the Lewis feeder neighborhoods.

Imagine how much lower enrollment at Lewis would be if FFX county had laws that were enforced about how many people could live per square foot of home.

Pipe dreams . FFX county would never do this.

I'd hoped Youngkin would do something at the state level to address these issues but he probably would prefer FFX county face the consequences of their votes.

Zoning is a county power, not a state or federal power.

Civics 101.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you see how the vicious downward spiral happens?

It happens--not because of boundary adjustments--but because of changing demographics across the county.

With 30% FARMS, you are going to have different needs. It is up to FCPS to meet those needs--not cover them up with boundary changes.

Sounds to me like a West Springfield poster afraid there could be boundary changes. Or another school in a similar situation. You got yours, screw what happens to everyone else. That seems to be the general attitude in this county.

I don’t know how you have one school with under 1700 kids next to another wealthier, renovated school with almost 2700 kids. It seems like a blatant civil rights violation. Shame on this school board.

It is not a civil right violation. What a ridiculous statement.

West Springfield has very tiny boundaries compared to most fcps.

It has a large enrollement because tons of older families sold to young families who sought out WSHS zoned houses, around 2012-2016, resulting in a huge glut of elementary kids in a very concentrated area. These kids are now in high school

In many of the WSHS feeder neighborhoods, the number of students from the classes of 2024, 2025 and 2026 are HUGE and have been for many years. In one street in our neighborhood, there are 11 class of 2024 students. This is repeated over and over in the area. Those classes, plus a couple of years below that to a lesser degree hit that sweet spot of neighborhood turnover from empty nesters selling + low interest rates.

The current elementary grades in our neighborhood have far fewer students than the classes of 24, 25 and 26. Then it seems the kinder, 1st and 2nd grade classes have a lot of kids, again from another cluster of empty nesters selling during the 2% interest window.

The bloated enrollment is temporary and is a natural ebb and flow.

Besides military families really seek out this high school for a shared community culture. Switching a neighborhood or two to Lewis will not change this as those families will just avoid the Lewis neighborhoods.

I do think WSHS and any capacity school should do an enrollment audit at open house, requiring a utility bill showing residency in order to pick up a student schedule. Any student without proof of residency should return to their assigned school.

Here are the 2022-2023 FCPS stats showing what I am talking about and why this bump in enrollment at FCPS is just a temporaray issue, mostly due to class of 2026.

2022-2023 school year:

Class of 2021: 578 students
Class of 2022: 665 students
Class of 2023: 642 students

Class of 2024: 648 students
Class of 2025: 651 students
Class of 2026: 719 students (down from its pre-lockdown peak of almost 750 students)
Class of 2027: 601 students

Class of 2028: 570 students

There is a roughly 70 students difference between the rising sophomore class and the 11th/12th grade classes.

There is nearly a 150 student difference between the rising sophomore class and the current 8th grade class.

The rising 11th and 12th grades at WSHS are both around 75 more students than the typical grade for that school and the rising 9th grade class is 30 students more than the typical class at WSHS.

After that, the grades start to normalize back to normal historical enrollment numbers for WSHS.

Once class of 2026 graduates, WSHS will be back aeound 2200/2300 students, which is below capacity.

It is ridiculous to disrupt so many families and students by rezoning when this is a temporary issue caused by one extraordinarily large class.

And I have a class of 2031 WSHS kids whose class in elementary school is TINY! Not sure if that's true across the board in the WSHS feeder elementaries, but it is at ours.

We've seen a lot of the houses in our Rolling Valley/Irving/WSHS neighborhood sold to older couples trying to be buy grandkids or older childless couples from Arlington who wanted a bigger house and nice outdoor space during covid. The houses in our neighborhoods are starting to price out the types of families who bought here a decade ago.

By and large, WSHS families are not "DC suburbs wealthy". We are full of military single income families, government workers, dual teacher families, etc.

The FCPS Capital Improvement Program document shows West Springfield enrollment as follows:

2023-2024 --- 2704
2024-2025 --- 2713
2025-2026 --- 2746
2026-2027 --- 2711
2027-2028 --- 2721

While FCPS planning isn't always great, I don't think enrollment at West Springfield is going to drop to 2200/2300 after the 2026 class graduates. Not only will some kids come back from Lake Braddock, but lots of families who have their kids in Catholic school up through 8th grade move them to public - either for money reasons or for opportunities that may be available at public schools that aren't available at all private schools.

If you total the fcps attendance numbers for the grades of 4th, 5th and 6th at all feeder elementary schools, it comes to roughly 500 students per grade.

None of those future grades have anything remotely close to the 719 students of class of 2026, or even the 650-ish students in the classes of 2024, 2025, and 2027.

[Anonymous]

Current WSHS enrollment is 2704.

Predicted enrollment for next year shows as 2713.

But if you look at the grade by grade dashboard numbers:

Class of 2025: 651 students
Class of 2026: 719 students
Class of 2027: 601 students

Class of 2028: 570 students (8th grade at Irving)


The total students for 2024-25 comes to 2541 students.l, almost 200 fewer students than those numbers project.

There are not 200 AAP and military kids transferring to WSHS each year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Current WSHS enrollment is 2704.

Predicted enrollment for next year shows as 2713.

But if you look at the grade by grade dashboard numbers:

Class of 2025: 651 students
Class of 2026: 719 students
Class of 2027: 601 students

Class of 2028: 570 students (8th grade at Irving)


The total students for 2024-25 comes to 2541 students.l, almost 200 fewer students than those numbers project.

There are not 200 AAP and military kids transferring to WSHS each year.

Just telling you what the CIP says. And while not perfect, they do have a method to their madness. Rising 9th grade picks up students coming out of schools that run through 8th grade, particularly Catholic families that move to public. Heck, even Lewis 9th grade numbers are higher than Key 8th grade numbers.

Could the county numbers be off? Certainly. But you won't know until early October.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

There is a certain irony in the only high school in Fairfax that is named after black American (a civil rights leader no less) is now the poorest and most segregated high school in Fairfax.

Worst of all is that we've heard crickets from Keys-Gamarra. She truly had absolutely zero vision for the academy concept other than stamping her name alongside late Congressman Lewis.

Had she put in effort as an "at-large" representative to build the visibility of the program throughout the regions, perhaps with a rigorous focus on liberal arts and government studies akin to Maggie Walker Governor's School as other Board members suggested, then it would have the potential to be a useful academy for the County. Instead, she disappeared as soon as the notion passed.

KKG is a lazy dilettante. She was happy to push the idea of an academy as long as she did none of the work, and by the time it’s obvious it was much ado about nothing she’ll hold another office. But that program will do nothing to improve Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are are also white, Asian and Black kids at Lewis, and Hispanic kids at West Springfield. Balancing the enrollments at the two schools is overdue, despite the suggestion of the WS poster that Lewis’s unique function is to serve Hispanic ESOL kids.

If getting rid of IB makes Lewis more palatable get rid of IB there.

Balancing the enrollment will not help the struggling students.

Not every student at Lewis is struggling and they deserve equal opportunities to their peers at other schools. And concentrating poverty in certain schools hurts the struggling students as well, as FCPS already knows.

The poverty concentrates itself. It is not up to other neighborhoods to bail it out.

It kind of is. Maybe not on the microscale you're thinking of because your concerns are about your kid interacting with poor kids. But the larger picture is that we should strive and want to build a better Fairfax County for everyone. I don't think we should, in general, allow the free-falling decay of certain areas a mile away. How does that bode well for our future?

1. You are assuming something that is very wrong. FWIW, I don't live in West Springfield district and my kids interact with plenty of poor kids. However, I would be very upset if my children were cherry picked to go "save" other kids. That is your suggestion.

2. You are suggesting that we move people around on a chess board to suit your view of the world.

I can only assume that you are a Lewis parent who is upset with Lewis. So, you have a choice. Move or act to make things better at Lewis. Are you the one who is upset because there was no baseball team at Lewis? Not a very good reason to go and grab other people's kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting: in the two years since Lee was renamed to Lewis, the demographics at Lewis have changed quite a bit. Not only have the percentages changed, but the numbers of changed.

There are fewer Black, white and Asian kids there now than two years ago. There is a significant increase (more than 100) of Hispanic students.

Maybe, the coming social justice academy is not as appealing as our SB thought it would be.

There is a certain irony in the only high school in Fairfax that is named after black American (a civil rights leader no less) is now the poorest and most segregated high school in Fairfax.

Worst of all is that we've heard crickets from Keys-Gamarra. She truly had absolutely zero vision for the academy concept other than stamping her name alongside late Congressman Lewis.

Had she put in effort as an "at-large" representative to build the visibility of the program throughout the regions, perhaps with a rigorous focus on liberal arts and government studies akin to Maggie Walker Governor's School as other Board members suggested, then it would have the potential to be a useful academy for the County. Instead, she disappeared as soon as the notion passed.

KKG is a lazy dilettante. She was happy to push the idea of an academy as long as she did none of the work, and by the time it’s obvious it was much ado about nothing she’ll hold another office. But that program will do nothing to improve Lewis.

We all knew this at the time it was proposed. But in the age of George Floyd and the death of John Lewis, she wanted to make a statement. It was a dumb idea that never matched the school population.

[Anonymous]

I don't think the CIP predictions are ever very accurate.