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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
FCPS comprehensive boundary review
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Anonymous
Bingo. Even if they were going to railroad them they should have put someone on FairFACTS Matters on the committee, just to acknowledge a wider range of input. This is the typical FCPS clown car - it’s a combination of “pay to play” and “praise to play.” |
Anonymous
So basically you should learn to read. |
Anonymous
Well stated, that’s why everything FCPS does is a train wreck. But so few people either see the pattern or care, so get the popcorn ready for this slow motion train wreck. |
Anonymous
It might not have been you, but several times I have posted something that the anti boundary change posters deem pro-boundary change I am accused of being a shill and once a school board member. |
Anonymous
If the shoe fits? Just don’t post trying to minimize their goals and agenda. Minimizing the aims of the boundary review only serves the school board’s purpose and stifles dissent. |
Anonymous
It's simplistic to reduce people to being "anti-boundary change and "pro-boundary change." If there are people who want boundary changes, and they don't involve shuffling other people's kids around, I don't think anyone objects. For example, if there's an attendance island or split feeder, a strong majority of those in the island or split feeder want to be redistricted, and they can be reassigned without moving other kids to different schools or gutting a school, it's hard to see anyone having reservations. On the other hand, there are people champing at the bit to move other people's kids, and some of them are the SB loyalists who get appointed to committee after committee. To use an adjective that's come up on this thread before, that's just gross. |
Anonymous
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Loudoun has 10 high schools with a lower enrollment than Lewis (Broad Run, Dominion, Heritage, Loudoun County, Loudoun Valley, Park View, Rock Ridge, Stone Bridge, Tuscarora, and Woodgrove) and only 7 with a larger enrollment (Briar Woods, Freedom, Independence, John Champe, Lightridge, Potomac Falls, and Riverside).
Why is it treated as such a crisis that Lewis has about 1650 kids? |
Anonymous
Most posters this thread ascribe an agenda and intentions to FCPS administration that are a complete fiction. Totally made up. For example, according to some here, the boundary review has something to do DEI. Complete nonsense. FCPS has over FORTY THOUSAND EMPLOYEES and roughly 20 (and soon closer to 10 after reassignments) have DEI related work as a primary job duty. To my knowledge, only one has anything at all to do with the boundary review, and they are one voice among dozens of others. The reality is that gatehouse and at least some of the board are trying to get out ahead of a looming fiscal cliff. That’s what all this is about. Saving money and cutting costs while ensuring accreditation of schools (at the minimal cost necessary) will be the driving force for all boundary review decisions, no matter what FCPS or the board says. The public doesn’t want to hear that they aren’t paying enough in taxes or that programs have to be cut to save money. So FCPS administration will provide a dozen other excuses for why the changes are needed and somehow beneficial (e.g., reducing travel times). Before the election, DEI was thought to be an acceptable public justification to achieve these objectives, so FCPS administration talked it up and assigned a small number of employees to those efforts; now it isn’t, so DEI has been scrubbed from the talking points and those employees are being reassigned. If your current school boundary assignment minimizes the costs to FCPS, then you have nothing to worry about. If your neighborhood’s assigned district isn’t viewed as cost effective or it is ripe for cost savings, then you will likely be reassigned. Data and models will be selected and optimized to produce the most cost efficient boundaries for FCPS, and school academic programs will be adjusted (added or removed) in line with those goals, although FCPS will ascribe different reasons to it in public messaging (e.g., reducing travel times, providing for consistency in program offerings across different schools). |
Anonymous
Can you give me an example? |
Anonymous
You don't have to be a dedicated DEI employee in FCPS to know what the SB wants and to advance that agenda. In addition, FCPS has retained a third-party consultant, Thru Consultant, which is taking its marching orders from Reid and the far-left School Board, and they'll get further validation from the party activists whom FCPS has hand-picked to serve on the Boundary Review Advisory Committee. If there was truly a looming financial cliff, then FCPS would be making that case just as it did back when Karen Garza was superintendent and pleading loudly and in public for more money (for those with short memories, you can search for the #SaveFCPS campaign Garza orchestrated, with the support of current Board members like Melanie Meren). They aren't. They ask for, and receive, a ton of money, annually. In addition, they have a capital budget that is separate from the operating budget, which they've mismanaged for years, often ignoring overcrowding where it is most acute while budgeting millions for projects such as the over-the-top expansion of West Potomac HS to 3000 students, the completely ridiculous Dunn Loring ES project in Vienna ($80M and running), and unnecessary expansions of elementary schools merely because they happen to be in a stale renovation queue developed OVER 15 YEARS AGO. The party line is that the current boundary study is being conducted in the name of "efficiency." This was the idea of folks like Karl Frisch and FCPS legal counsel, who know that Virginia law expressly provides that school boards in Virginia can adjust school boundaries whenever doing so "will contribute to the efficiency of the school division." So they'll claim that a host of things will contribute to the "efficiency" of FCPS ("efficiency" is not otherwise defined), when it's really just the means to change certain boundaries that the left-wing activists have been salivating to change for the better part of a decade to stick it to successful schools like Langley and West Springfield. In essence, they want to advance their social agenda, and balance their books on the backs of the people who play by the rules and pay most of the taxes, by claiming it's all being done in the name of "efficiency." Many of us see through this, and aren't going to let them get off the hook so easily. |
Anonymous
What. A. Joke. You pretend that the school board isn’t focused on equity. I implore anyone inclined to believe you to go look at the composition of the Boundary Review Advisory Committee. The committee is heavily littered with special interest equity groups and includes the chief equity officer as a member. If the school board isn’t equity focused why are they so heavy with those selections? The transportation cost savings are mythical. Any grandfathering will swamp those savings. How about centreville expansion, why are we still doing that at hundreds of millions of dollars? Because there are no appreciable farms gains by moving those kids instead. Why did we expand HHS at hundreds of millions of dollars when enrollment is where it is? Why are certain school board members confiding to other people that they want to stick it to a certain zip code? Why aren’t they looking at expensive unused programs like IB? Five years ago, the school board explicitly focused on equity with the redistricting push, then the Supreme Court ruled against similarly focused programs and now you want us to believe that they are doing the exact same thing but conveniently they picked and are focused on cost savings? Gtfoh, shill. |
Anonymous
Because it is relatively small by FCPS measures AND poor AND high ESL. That combination makes it hard to support advanced classes. I haven't looked at those smaller Loudoun schools. Do any of them have the same combination as Lewis? |
Anonymous
They do not listen to Advisory boards. They are a way to get activists off their back and blow off some steam. I doubt they will start listening to them now. |
Anonymous
Yes. |
Anonymous
In general you are right, but boundaries are more controversial and this whole process is an elaborate charade where the SB gets a third-party consultant to “recommend” and a hand-picked advisory committee to “support” changes that the SB and Reid already want to make. They want to minimize personal accountability so, in this case, it’s important to them to claim they are merely ratifying changes proposed and endorsed by others. |