FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

And then you would have to move from those schools to other schools.

The domino effects would be awful.

The smartest thing is for FCPS to take advantage of Lewis' low enrollment an schedule a 4 year renovation for the school. They could do it without trailers.

While renovating, close the IB program and stand up a fully functional AP program, even if that means class sizes of 10 students for the more advanced APs, just like private schools.

Take advantage of the tiny AP class sizes to push the students to get the AP pass rates up from their current 10% rate to a more palatable pass rate comparable to a Hayfield or South County. Or shoot for the stars and aim for something in the 60 to 70% pass rate. With tiny AP classes, that is attainable in 4 years.

Then, in 4 years, Lewis is now an AP school with a beautiful new campus comparable to all of their neighboring schools, and respectable AP pass rates so parents are no longer afraid to send their kids to Lewis.

With all the development in the area, Lewis could in 4 years go from a pariah school to one that is acceptable, or even desirable.

But that would take effort and smart planning by FCPS, which seems to be in short supply.

It is easier to rezone to mask the issues, even if the rezoning perpetuates the issues and makes Lewis even more undesirable from the bad press of the rezoning fight and the transient local population blacklisting the newly rezoned Lewis neighborhoods.

IOW, don’t re-boundary my kids to Lewis and don’t re-boundary Lewis kids to my kids’ school because Lewis kids are “pariahs” (to use your word).

Stop putting words in other people's mouths

No one said the Lewis kids are pariahs. Geez.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Re: grandfathering, the school board did seem sometime split on the issue, but they ultimately voted down a grandfathering amendment/ requirement so that they could have flexibility in how they implement the boundary changes. Grandfathering goes directly against the transportation cost savings that they are using as a pretext for some changes. And before you say, “well I can just drive my kids,” ask yourself how “equitable” that is and whether Sandy Anderson would ever allow it.

I suspect they will pivot towards saying the cost savings have less to do with transportation costs and more to do with capital expenditures they can avoid if they forego additions at crowded schools like Chantilly and McLean.

I don’t think so. Transportation costs are the County’s largest discretionary expense at $200-210 million. It is the only opportunity for significant savings in the FCPS budget that doesn’t rely on eliminating teachers and teachers assistants (which FCPS will also have to do with the looming fiscal cliff). There is easily the potential to save $20 to $40 million per year in transportation. In contrast, gutting Gatehouse would save $2 to $4 million. Which FCPS will likely also do before cutting a lot of teachers.

Capital expenditures are still necessary to keep schools safe / structurally sound but higher interest rates/ borrowing rates and out-of-control renovation costs have brought an end to new massive renovations + expansions for the foreseeable future.

How? It’s not an “easy” savings opportunity if it entails boundary changes with no HS grandfathering, which will piss people off towards FCPS and the county government in a way that no current elected officials likely have ever experienced before. You can’t overstate how strongly people would feel about this.

I almost want to see them propose it just so they can see what it looks like to have their heads handed to them on a platter.

But maybe they dial it back and just deal with ES boundaries, which would not raise the same hackles, but also would change fewer boundaries and transportation routes.

No one is talking about no high school grandfathering. The % of the population that will be affected is a fraction of the total population and some will be positively affected. It will not be enough to flip the school board red, even if people remember it in 3 1/2 years.

Well, they adopted a policy that gives them discretion not to grandfather any students, and they maximize these purportedly large potential transportation savings by not grandfathering any students, including high school kids.

As to the political fall-out, they won’t start implementing this until the fall of 2026 - a mere one year before the 2027 School Board elections. It will still be very fresh in people’s minds and will shape those elections, as even those not affected this coming round will wonder about subsequent boundary changes. And those affected negatively will be far more vocal about it, and likely to vote in what is otherwise an off-year election.

The majority of Fairfax County voters don’t care. This area will be blue forever. Just accept and move on.

Not sure if that comment comes from a place of confidence or despair, but significant boundary changes in FCPS with limited or no grandfathering has no precedent in recent history and would rock the political landscape in Fairfax. It would be the local political elites - all Democrats - extending a giant middle finger to Fairfax families. Just wait and see (although ultimately I don’t think they will pull that trigger).

Our family normally votes blue, but voted red for the school board based on talks of redistributing. If the red school board candidates can keep away from talking about bathrooms, pronouns, and banning books they would have a lot better of a chance of winning local elections.

Serious question - is redistricting more of a "blue" thing than a "red" thing? I understand people throw around the equity word, that gets associated with blue more.....but in reality is there a divide among party lines here?
I dont think there is. I think people from both parties come on here against it, and of those that support it, they are in both political camps and swayed more by what district they live in.

I don’t think it is divided along political lines. I feel like it is divided along neighborhood lines. The neighborhoods that seem to be most vulnerable to being redistricted are the ones that are most against it (which is entirely predictable). I see people who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum working together. There is one, maybe it’s two or three, very active anti democratic poster who posts here quite a bit on numerous threads and I think that distorts the discussion here.

Yeah, I agree. I get the sense it's more about what pyramid you are in and if you're happy with your school or not. As you said, predictably- those that bought in neighborhoods for their current schools and are happy with them would be more opposed to any changes.
I do think some folks are trying to fan political flames here for whatever reasons people do that nowadays.

Until this year, I voted reliably blue. Because of this redistricting push I’m now reliably red. I hate how far left the school board has gone on this, and my only recourse is to always vote against the party that allows it.

I don’t think it is a fair to assume every (or any) Republican candidate would oppose redistricting. They would certainly oppose it on any equity grounds but they would be just as likely, if not more so, to support it in the name of efficiency or cost cutting. Past Republican candidates have claimed that FCPS is bloated and inefficient and has too many educational programs. Past Republican candidates have opposed many of the renovations and expansions that so many here love. Republican candidates are unlikely to support tax increases to maintain the status quo is light of budget challenges.

There are no compelling reasons to change boundaries comprehensively at this point. Based on the actions of democrats on the school board over the last decade, it’s clear this is their social experiment to try to level the playing field at all schools, using kids as pawns - mental health be damned. For anyone paying attention it’s clearly an equity venture.

I also have never heard that republicans have said they want to break up Great Falls just because. I can’t say the same for some of the democrats on the current school board. I’ve never heard of such disdain for constituents. The Dems on the school board hate certain residents in the county - really eye opening.

In sum, republicans are far from perfect, but the Dems act like certain citizens are the enemy. That’s why I will never vote for one again.

FFS the results of the study will answer that question. There will have to be justification and rationale for why some boundaries change. Can you all simmer down and wait until the results are before you start claiming it's comprehensive changes. You know comprehensive review doesn't= comprehensive changes. Perhaps you will not like what ends up happening because your afraid of change. Can everyone agree that certain boundaries exist the way they do today because of past bad decisions. Should we never correct anything because change is bad?

No. We disagree with you.

Moving Daventry to WSHS ten years ago and closing a ridiculous split feeder was a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Returning the Gambrill neighborhoods back to their original neighborhood high school 20 years ago, WSHS where they had been zoned since the schools opened in the 1960s, and closing the split feeder was also a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Both of those rezoning actions corrected "past bad decisions" by FCPS, closing split feeders, making boundaries more compact and maintaining neighborhood connections and continuity.

What you see as a "bad decisions" are actually wise planning that respects constituents, puts students first and efficient and responsible stewardship of taxpayer money.

If that compact WSHS boundary is adjusted, then the only changes should be moving the Sangster split feeder and Keene Mill attendance islands to Lake Braddock, so FCPS can close the Rolling Valley split feeder, sending the small remaining cluster of RV streets back to WSHS.

Equity rezoning is a bad decision.

Rezoning every 5 years and destroying stability for students and homeowners is a bad decision.

Gerrymandering boundaries for equity and destroying neighborhood schools is a bad decision.

Making boundaries more compact and seemless, like what happened in the Daventry and Gambrill examples above, were smart zoning decisions that should be the model county wide.

I agree with the original poster. In your response, you were mostly focused on the Springfield area - but fairfax is huge and there have been a lot of weird decisions and boundaries implemented. Wshs pyramid is relatively compact.

So going after “weird” boundaries is more important than addressing a situation where a school with 2800 students is next to one with 1600? Hmm.

Yes? Unusual split feeders and attendance islands decrease a neighborhood’s sense of community with the schools. This has been noted as part of the boundary review committee’s work. There’s not much they can do about long term population trends leading to uneven growth (or even loss) in certain areas. But they can fix the maps where 90% of the population of whatever ES goes to the same MS and HS and 10% goes somewhere else entirely.

You’re conflating attendance islands with split feeders. Only a subset of the attendance islands involve the type of 90-10% split you describe. Some attendance islands are also much closer to the assigned schools than certain neighborhoods in a contiguous catchment area are to the assigned schools, so the sense of community is just fine.

I’m not conflating anything. One of the stated goals is reducing split feeders and attendance islands. None of the stated goals is “shoring up enrollment at smaller schools.” 🤷‍♀️

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Re: grandfathering, the school board did seem sometime split on the issue, but they ultimately voted down a grandfathering amendment/ requirement so that they could have flexibility in how they implement the boundary changes. Grandfathering goes directly against the transportation cost savings that they are using as a pretext for some changes. And before you say, “well I can just drive my kids,” ask yourself how “equitable” that is and whether Sandy Anderson would ever allow it.

I suspect they will pivot towards saying the cost savings have less to do with transportation costs and more to do with capital expenditures they can avoid if they forego additions at crowded schools like Chantilly and McLean.

I don’t think so. Transportation costs are the County’s largest discretionary expense at $200-210 million. It is the only opportunity for significant savings in the FCPS budget that doesn’t rely on eliminating teachers and teachers assistants (which FCPS will also have to do with the looming fiscal cliff). There is easily the potential to save $20 to $40 million per year in transportation. In contrast, gutting Gatehouse would save $2 to $4 million. Which FCPS will likely also do before cutting a lot of teachers.

Capital expenditures are still necessary to keep schools safe / structurally sound but higher interest rates/ borrowing rates and out-of-control renovation costs have brought an end to new massive renovations + expansions for the foreseeable future.

How? It’s not an “easy” savings opportunity if it entails boundary changes with no HS grandfathering, which will piss people off towards FCPS and the county government in a way that no current elected officials likely have ever experienced before. You can’t overstate how strongly people would feel about this.

I almost want to see them propose it just so they can see what it looks like to have their heads handed to them on a platter.

But maybe they dial it back and just deal with ES boundaries, which would not raise the same hackles, but also would change fewer boundaries and transportation routes.

No one is talking about no high school grandfathering. The % of the population that will be affected is a fraction of the total population and some will be positively affected. It will not be enough to flip the school board red, even if people remember it in 3 1/2 years.

Well, they adopted a policy that gives them discretion not to grandfather any students, and they maximize these purportedly large potential transportation savings by not grandfathering any students, including high school kids.

As to the political fall-out, they won’t start implementing this until the fall of 2026 - a mere one year before the 2027 School Board elections. It will still be very fresh in people’s minds and will shape those elections, as even those not affected this coming round will wonder about subsequent boundary changes. And those affected negatively will be far more vocal about it, and likely to vote in what is otherwise an off-year election.

The majority of Fairfax County voters don’t care. This area will be blue forever. Just accept and move on.

Not sure if that comment comes from a place of confidence or despair, but significant boundary changes in FCPS with limited or no grandfathering has no precedent in recent history and would rock the political landscape in Fairfax. It would be the local political elites - all Democrats - extending a giant middle finger to Fairfax families. Just wait and see (although ultimately I don’t think they will pull that trigger).

Our family normally votes blue, but voted red for the school board based on talks of redistributing. If the red school board candidates can keep away from talking about bathrooms, pronouns, and banning books they would have a lot better of a chance of winning local elections.

Serious question - is redistricting more of a "blue" thing than a "red" thing? I understand people throw around the equity word, that gets associated with blue more.....but in reality is there a divide among party lines here?
I dont think there is. I think people from both parties come on here against it, and of those that support it, they are in both political camps and swayed more by what district they live in.

I don’t think it is divided along political lines. I feel like it is divided along neighborhood lines. The neighborhoods that seem to be most vulnerable to being redistricted are the ones that are most against it (which is entirely predictable). I see people who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum working together. There is one, maybe it’s two or three, very active anti democratic poster who posts here quite a bit on numerous threads and I think that distorts the discussion here.

Yeah, I agree. I get the sense it's more about what pyramid you are in and if you're happy with your school or not. As you said, predictably- those that bought in neighborhoods for their current schools and are happy with them would be more opposed to any changes.
I do think some folks are trying to fan political flames here for whatever reasons people do that nowadays.

Until this year, I voted reliably blue. Because of this redistricting push I’m now reliably red. I hate how far left the school board has gone on this, and my only recourse is to always vote against the party that allows it.

I don’t think it is a fair to assume every (or any) Republican candidate would oppose redistricting. They would certainly oppose it on any equity grounds but they would be just as likely, if not more so, to support it in the name of efficiency or cost cutting. Past Republican candidates have claimed that FCPS is bloated and inefficient and has too many educational programs. Past Republican candidates have opposed many of the renovations and expansions that so many here love. Republican candidates are unlikely to support tax increases to maintain the status quo is light of budget challenges.

There are no compelling reasons to change boundaries comprehensively at this point. Based on the actions of democrats on the school board over the last decade, it’s clear this is their social experiment to try to level the playing field at all schools, using kids as pawns - mental health be damned. For anyone paying attention it’s clearly an equity venture.

I also have never heard that republicans have said they want to break up Great Falls just because. I can’t say the same for some of the democrats on the current school board. I’ve never heard of such disdain for constituents. The Dems on the school board hate certain residents in the county - really eye opening.

In sum, republicans are far from perfect, but the Dems act like certain citizens are the enemy. That’s why I will never vote for one again.

FFS the results of the study will answer that question. There will have to be justification and rationale for why some boundaries change. Can you all simmer down and wait until the results are before you start claiming it's comprehensive changes. You know comprehensive review doesn't= comprehensive changes. Perhaps you will not like what ends up happening because your afraid of change. Can everyone agree that certain boundaries exist the way they do today because of past bad decisions. Should we never correct anything because change is bad?

No. We disagree with you.

Moving Daventry to WSHS ten years ago and closing a ridiculous split feeder was a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Returning the Gambrill neighborhoods back to their original neighborhood high school 20 years ago, WSHS where they had been zoned since the schools opened in the 1960s, and closing the split feeder was also a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Both of those rezoning actions corrected "past bad decisions" by FCPS, closing split feeders, making boundaries more compact and maintaining neighborhood connections and continuity.

What you see as a "bad decisions" are actually wise planning that respects constituents, puts students first and efficient and responsible stewardship of taxpayer money.

If that compact WSHS boundary is adjusted, then the only changes should be moving the Sangster split feeder and Keene Mill attendance islands to Lake Braddock, so FCPS can close the Rolling Valley split feeder, sending the small remaining cluster of RV streets back to WSHS.

Equity rezoning is a bad decision.

Rezoning every 5 years and destroying stability for students and homeowners is a bad decision.

Gerrymandering boundaries for equity and destroying neighborhood schools is a bad decision.

Making boundaries more compact and seemless, like what happened in the Daventry and Gambrill examples above, were smart zoning decisions that should be the model county wide.

I agree with the original poster. In your response, you were mostly focused on the Springfield area - but fairfax is huge and there have been a lot of weird decisions and boundaries implemented. Wshs pyramid is relatively compact.

So going after “weird” boundaries is more important than addressing a situation where a school with 2800 students is next to one with 1600? Hmm.

Yes? Unusual split feeders and attendance islands decrease a neighborhood’s sense of community with the schools. This has been noted as part of the boundary review committee’s work. There’s not much they can do about long term population trends leading to uneven growth (or even loss) in certain areas. But they can fix the maps where 90% of the population of whatever ES goes to the same MS and HS and 10% goes somewhere else entirely.

You’re conflating attendance islands with split feeders. Only a subset of the attendance islands involve the type of 90-10% split you describe. Some attendance islands are also much closer to the assigned schools than certain neighborhoods in a contiguous catchment area are to the assigned schools, so the sense of community is just fine.

I’m not conflating anything. One of the stated goals is reducing split feeders and attendance islands. None of the stated goals is “shoring up enrollment at smaller schools.” 🤷‍♀️

Oh, sweet child. How happy you are to deflect attention to others and think they’ll just leave Lewis’s enrollment to dwindle.

One of the four stated goals is “balancing available capacity.” West Springfield is projected to be overcrowded in 2028-29 at 117% and Lewis is projected to be at 74%. See Tables 10 and 14 in the latest CIP.

All the “compactness” in the world won’t spare you if they set their sights on you.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

And then you would have to move from those schools to other schools.

The domino effects would be awful.

The smartest thing is for FCPS to take advantage of Lewis' low enrollment an schedule a 4 year renovation for the school. They could do it without trailers.

While renovating, close the IB program and stand up a fully functional AP program, even if that means class sizes of 10 students for the more advanced APs, just like private schools.

Take advantage of the tiny AP class sizes to push the students to get the AP pass rates up from their current 10% rate to a more palatable pass rate comparable to a Hayfield or South County. Or shoot for the stars and aim for something in the 60 to 70% pass rate. With tiny AP classes, that is attainable in 4 years.

Then, in 4 years, Lewis is now an AP school with a beautiful new campus comparable to all of their neighboring schools, and respectable AP pass rates so parents are no longer afraid to send their kids to Lewis.

With all the development in the area, Lewis could in 4 years go from a pariah school to one that is acceptable, or even desirable.

But that would take effort and smart planning by FCPS, which seems to be in short supply.

It is easier to rezone to mask the issues, even if the rezoning perpetuates the issues and makes Lewis even more undesirable from the bad press of the rezoning fight and the transient local population blacklisting the newly rezoned Lewis neighborhoods.

IOW, don’t re-boundary my kids to Lewis and don’t re-boundary Lewis kids to my kids’ school because Lewis kids are “pariahs” (to use your word).

Stop putting words in other people's mouths

No one said the Lewis kids are pariahs. Geez.

Read the above (that’s hidden but was quoted): “With all the development in the area, Lewis could in 4 years go from a pariah school to one that is acceptable, or even desirable.”

People are not “afraid to send their kids to Lewis” because of the physical condition of the building… that poster was referring to the kids themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

And then you would have to move from those schools to other schools.

The domino effects would be awful.

The smartest thing is for FCPS to take advantage of Lewis' low enrollment an schedule a 4 year renovation for the school. They could do it without trailers.

While renovating, close the IB program and stand up a fully functional AP program, even if that means class sizes of 10 students for the more advanced APs, just like private schools.

Take advantage of the tiny AP class sizes to push the students to get the AP pass rates up from their current 10% rate to a more palatable pass rate comparable to a Hayfield or South County. Or shoot for the stars and aim for something in the 60 to 70% pass rate. With tiny AP classes, that is attainable in 4 years.

Then, in 4 years, Lewis is now an AP school with a beautiful new campus comparable to all of their neighboring schools, and respectable AP pass rates so parents are no longer afraid to send their kids to Lewis.

With all the development in the area, Lewis could in 4 years go from a pariah school to one that is acceptable, or even desirable.

But that would take effort and smart planning by FCPS, which seems to be in short supply.

It is easier to rezone to mask the issues, even if the rezoning perpetuates the issues and makes Lewis even more undesirable from the bad press of the rezoning fight and the transient local population blacklisting the newly rezoned Lewis neighborhoods.

Annandale and McLean are older and should be renovated before Lewis.

Renovate all 3.

But Lewis is unique in that its current enrollment means a renovation could be completed without having to bring in trailers.

FCPS should take advantage of this enrollment and move them up in the queue.

A school should be neither penalized nor rewarded for being under-enrolled. Renovate in the order of age/last renovation, which means (1) Annandale, (2) McLean, and then (3) Lewis. If anything, there's less wear and tear on an older school with a smaller enrollment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

WSHS, Edison, and West Po are all full.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

WSHS, Edison, and West Po are all full.

If they were so inclined, they can move kids into a school that is currently full, and then move kids out of those schools to yet other schools. That's why people refer to domino or ripple effects.

But I don't see them closing either Lewis or Mount Vernon. It seems to be a suggestion from people zoned for one of those schools who think FCPS should close them unless there are boundary changes to add kids.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Re: grandfathering, the school board did seem sometime split on the issue, but they ultimately voted down a grandfathering amendment/ requirement so that they could have flexibility in how they implement the boundary changes. Grandfathering goes directly against the transportation cost savings that they are using as a pretext for some changes. And before you say, “well I can just drive my kids,” ask yourself how “equitable” that is and whether Sandy Anderson would ever allow it.

I suspect they will pivot towards saying the cost savings have less to do with transportation costs and more to do with capital expenditures they can avoid if they forego additions at crowded schools like Chantilly and McLean.

I don’t think so. Transportation costs are the County’s largest discretionary expense at $200-210 million. It is the only opportunity for significant savings in the FCPS budget that doesn’t rely on eliminating teachers and teachers assistants (which FCPS will also have to do with the looming fiscal cliff). There is easily the potential to save $20 to $40 million per year in transportation. In contrast, gutting Gatehouse would save $2 to $4 million. Which FCPS will likely also do before cutting a lot of teachers.

Capital expenditures are still necessary to keep schools safe / structurally sound but higher interest rates/ borrowing rates and out-of-control renovation costs have brought an end to new massive renovations + expansions for the foreseeable future.

How? It’s not an “easy” savings opportunity if it entails boundary changes with no HS grandfathering, which will piss people off towards FCPS and the county government in a way that no current elected officials likely have ever experienced before. You can’t overstate how strongly people would feel about this.

I almost want to see them propose it just so they can see what it looks like to have their heads handed to them on a platter.

But maybe they dial it back and just deal with ES boundaries, which would not raise the same hackles, but also would change fewer boundaries and transportation routes.

No one is talking about no high school grandfathering. The % of the population that will be affected is a fraction of the total population and some will be positively affected. It will not be enough to flip the school board red, even if people remember it in 3 1/2 years.

Well, they adopted a policy that gives them discretion not to grandfather any students, and they maximize these purportedly large potential transportation savings by not grandfathering any students, including high school kids.

As to the political fall-out, they won’t start implementing this until the fall of 2026 - a mere one year before the 2027 School Board elections. It will still be very fresh in people’s minds and will shape those elections, as even those not affected this coming round will wonder about subsequent boundary changes. And those affected negatively will be far more vocal about it, and likely to vote in what is otherwise an off-year election.

The majority of Fairfax County voters don’t care. This area will be blue forever. Just accept and move on.

Not sure if that comment comes from a place of confidence or despair, but significant boundary changes in FCPS with limited or no grandfathering has no precedent in recent history and would rock the political landscape in Fairfax. It would be the local political elites - all Democrats - extending a giant middle finger to Fairfax families. Just wait and see (although ultimately I don’t think they will pull that trigger).

Our family normally votes blue, but voted red for the school board based on talks of redistributing. If the red school board candidates can keep away from talking about bathrooms, pronouns, and banning books they would have a lot better of a chance of winning local elections.

Serious question - is redistricting more of a "blue" thing than a "red" thing? I understand people throw around the equity word, that gets associated with blue more.....but in reality is there a divide among party lines here?
I dont think there is. I think people from both parties come on here against it, and of those that support it, they are in both political camps and swayed more by what district they live in.

I don’t think it is divided along political lines. I feel like it is divided along neighborhood lines. The neighborhoods that seem to be most vulnerable to being redistricted are the ones that are most against it (which is entirely predictable). I see people who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum working together. There is one, maybe it’s two or three, very active anti democratic poster who posts here quite a bit on numerous threads and I think that distorts the discussion here.

Yeah, I agree. I get the sense it's more about what pyramid you are in and if you're happy with your school or not. As you said, predictably- those that bought in neighborhoods for their current schools and are happy with them would be more opposed to any changes.
I do think some folks are trying to fan political flames here for whatever reasons people do that nowadays.

Until this year, I voted reliably blue. Because of this redistricting push I’m now reliably red. I hate how far left the school board has gone on this, and my only recourse is to always vote against the party that allows it.

I don’t think it is a fair to assume every (or any) Republican candidate would oppose redistricting. They would certainly oppose it on any equity grounds but they would be just as likely, if not more so, to support it in the name of efficiency or cost cutting. Past Republican candidates have claimed that FCPS is bloated and inefficient and has too many educational programs. Past Republican candidates have opposed many of the renovations and expansions that so many here love. Republican candidates are unlikely to support tax increases to maintain the status quo is light of budget challenges.

There are no compelling reasons to change boundaries comprehensively at this point. Based on the actions of democrats on the school board over the last decade, it’s clear this is their social experiment to try to level the playing field at all schools, using kids as pawns - mental health be damned. For anyone paying attention it’s clearly an equity venture.

I also have never heard that republicans have said they want to break up Great Falls just because. I can’t say the same for some of the democrats on the current school board. I’ve never heard of such disdain for constituents. The Dems on the school board hate certain residents in the county - really eye opening.

In sum, republicans are far from perfect, but the Dems act like certain citizens are the enemy. That’s why I will never vote for one again.

FFS the results of the study will answer that question. There will have to be justification and rationale for why some boundaries change. Can you all simmer down and wait until the results are before you start claiming it's comprehensive changes. You know comprehensive review doesn't= comprehensive changes. Perhaps you will not like what ends up happening because your afraid of change. Can everyone agree that certain boundaries exist the way they do today because of past bad decisions. Should we never correct anything because change is bad?

No. We disagree with you.

Moving Daventry to WSHS ten years ago and closing a ridiculous split feeder was a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Returning the Gambrill neighborhoods back to their original neighborhood high school 20 years ago, WSHS where they had been zoned since the schools opened in the 1960s, and closing the split feeder was also a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Both of those rezoning actions corrected "past bad decisions" by FCPS, closing split feeders, making boundaries more compact and maintaining neighborhood connections and continuity.

What you see as a "bad decisions" are actually wise planning that respects constituents, puts students first and efficient and responsible stewardship of taxpayer money.

If that compact WSHS boundary is adjusted, then the only changes should be moving the Sangster split feeder and Keene Mill attendance islands to Lake Braddock, so FCPS can close the Rolling Valley split feeder, sending the small remaining cluster of RV streets back to WSHS.

Equity rezoning is a bad decision.

Rezoning every 5 years and destroying stability for students and homeowners is a bad decision.

Gerrymandering boundaries for equity and destroying neighborhood schools is a bad decision.

Making boundaries more compact and seemless, like what happened in the Daventry and Gambrill examples above, were smart zoning decisions that should be the model county wide.

I agree with the original poster. In your response, you were mostly focused on the Springfield area - but fairfax is huge and there have been a lot of weird decisions and boundaries implemented. Wshs pyramid is relatively compact.

So going after “weird” boundaries is more important than addressing a situation where a school with 2800 students is next to one with 1600? Hmm.

Yes? Unusual split feeders and attendance islands decrease a neighborhood’s sense of community with the schools. This has been noted as part of the boundary review committee’s work. There’s not much they can do about long term population trends leading to uneven growth (or even loss) in certain areas. But they can fix the maps where 90% of the population of whatever ES goes to the same MS and HS and 10% goes somewhere else entirely.

You’re conflating attendance islands with split feeders. Only a subset of the attendance islands involve the type of 90-10% split you describe. Some attendance islands are also much closer to the assigned schools than certain neighborhoods in a contiguous catchment area are to the assigned schools, so the sense of community is just fine.

I’m not conflating anything. One of the stated goals is reducing split feeders and attendance islands. None of the stated goals is “shoring up enrollment at smaller schools.” 🤷‍♀️

Oh, sweet child. How happy you are to deflect attention to others and think they’ll just leave Lewis’s enrollment to dwindle.

One of the four stated goals is “balancing available capacity.” West Springfield is projected to be overcrowded in 2028-29 at 117% and Lewis is projected to be at 74%. See Tables 10 and 14 in the latest CIP.

All the “compactness” in the world won’t spare you if they set their sights on you.

Stop the sweet child. I've posted on thsi thread and am not a sweet child. In fact I'm rather impartial except for facts. FCPS loaded desirable programs at Edison and West Potomac and left Lewis and Mount Vernon with undesirable IB. Taxpayers are left footing the bill for IB which is more expensive than AP. More students go from IB Lewis to IB Edison than from Lewis to any single AP HS.

FCPS chooses to make this process more difficult by not providing transfer data per reason per school in/out. Lewis facts:
program cap 1886
membership 1632 [87%] + IB Edison transfers [54] 89%
utilization 87% - can add 122 to 93%

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Anonymous wrote:Re: grandfathering, the school board did seem sometime split on the issue, but they ultimately voted down a grandfathering amendment/ requirement so that they could have flexibility in how they implement the boundary changes. Grandfathering goes directly against the transportation cost savings that they are using as a pretext for some changes. And before you say, “well I can just drive my kids,” ask yourself how “equitable” that is and whether Sandy Anderson would ever allow it.

I suspect they will pivot towards saying the cost savings have less to do with transportation costs and more to do with capital expenditures they can avoid if they forego additions at crowded schools like Chantilly and McLean.

I don’t think so. Transportation costs are the County’s largest discretionary expense at $200-210 million. It is the only opportunity for significant savings in the FCPS budget that doesn’t rely on eliminating teachers and teachers assistants (which FCPS will also have to do with the looming fiscal cliff). There is easily the potential to save $20 to $40 million per year in transportation. In contrast, gutting Gatehouse would save $2 to $4 million. Which FCPS will likely also do before cutting a lot of teachers.

Capital expenditures are still necessary to keep schools safe / structurally sound but higher interest rates/ borrowing rates and out-of-control renovation costs have brought an end to new massive renovations + expansions for the foreseeable future.

How? It’s not an “easy” savings opportunity if it entails boundary changes with no HS grandfathering, which will piss people off towards FCPS and the county government in a way that no current elected officials likely have ever experienced before. You can’t overstate how strongly people would feel about this.

I almost want to see them propose it just so they can see what it looks like to have their heads handed to them on a platter.

But maybe they dial it back and just deal with ES boundaries, which would not raise the same hackles, but also would change fewer boundaries and transportation routes.

No one is talking about no high school grandfathering. The % of the population that will be affected is a fraction of the total population and some will be positively affected. It will not be enough to flip the school board red, even if people remember it in 3 1/2 years.

Well, they adopted a policy that gives them discretion not to grandfather any students, and they maximize these purportedly large potential transportation savings by not grandfathering any students, including high school kids.

As to the political fall-out, they won’t start implementing this until the fall of 2026 - a mere one year before the 2027 School Board elections. It will still be very fresh in people’s minds and will shape those elections, as even those not affected this coming round will wonder about subsequent boundary changes. And those affected negatively will be far more vocal about it, and likely to vote in what is otherwise an off-year election.

The majority of Fairfax County voters don’t care. This area will be blue forever. Just accept and move on.

Not sure if that comment comes from a place of confidence or despair, but significant boundary changes in FCPS with limited or no grandfathering has no precedent in recent history and would rock the political landscape in Fairfax. It would be the local political elites - all Democrats - extending a giant middle finger to Fairfax families. Just wait and see (although ultimately I don’t think they will pull that trigger).

Our family normally votes blue, but voted red for the school board based on talks of redistributing. If the red school board candidates can keep away from talking about bathrooms, pronouns, and banning books they would have a lot better of a chance of winning local elections.

Serious question - is redistricting more of a "blue" thing than a "red" thing? I understand people throw around the equity word, that gets associated with blue more.....but in reality is there a divide among party lines here?
I dont think there is. I think people from both parties come on here against it, and of those that support it, they are in both political camps and swayed more by what district they live in.

I don’t think it is divided along political lines. I feel like it is divided along neighborhood lines. The neighborhoods that seem to be most vulnerable to being redistricted are the ones that are most against it (which is entirely predictable). I see people who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum working together. There is one, maybe it’s two or three, very active anti democratic poster who posts here quite a bit on numerous threads and I think that distorts the discussion here.

Yeah, I agree. I get the sense it's more about what pyramid you are in and if you're happy with your school or not. As you said, predictably- those that bought in neighborhoods for their current schools and are happy with them would be more opposed to any changes.
I do think some folks are trying to fan political flames here for whatever reasons people do that nowadays.

Until this year, I voted reliably blue. Because of this redistricting push I’m now reliably red. I hate how far left the school board has gone on this, and my only recourse is to always vote against the party that allows it.

I don’t think it is a fair to assume every (or any) Republican candidate would oppose redistricting. They would certainly oppose it on any equity grounds but they would be just as likely, if not more so, to support it in the name of efficiency or cost cutting. Past Republican candidates have claimed that FCPS is bloated and inefficient and has too many educational programs. Past Republican candidates have opposed many of the renovations and expansions that so many here love. Republican candidates are unlikely to support tax increases to maintain the status quo is light of budget challenges.

There are no compelling reasons to change boundaries comprehensively at this point. Based on the actions of democrats on the school board over the last decade, it’s clear this is their social experiment to try to level the playing field at all schools, using kids as pawns - mental health be damned. For anyone paying attention it’s clearly an equity venture.

I also have never heard that republicans have said they want to break up Great Falls just because. I can’t say the same for some of the democrats on the current school board. I’ve never heard of such disdain for constituents. The Dems on the school board hate certain residents in the county - really eye opening.

In sum, republicans are far from perfect, but the Dems act like certain citizens are the enemy. That’s why I will never vote for one again.

FFS the results of the study will answer that question. There will have to be justification and rationale for why some boundaries change. Can you all simmer down and wait until the results are before you start claiming it's comprehensive changes. You know comprehensive review doesn't= comprehensive changes. Perhaps you will not like what ends up happening because your afraid of change. Can everyone agree that certain boundaries exist the way they do today because of past bad decisions. Should we never correct anything because change is bad?

No. We disagree with you.

Moving Daventry to WSHS ten years ago and closing a ridiculous split feeder was a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Returning the Gambrill neighborhoods back to their original neighborhood high school 20 years ago, WSHS where they had been zoned since the schools opened in the 1960s, and closing the split feeder was also a wise decision correcting a stupid decision.

Both of those rezoning actions corrected "past bad decisions" by FCPS, closing split feeders, making boundaries more compact and maintaining neighborhood connections and continuity.

What you see as a "bad decisions" are actually wise planning that respects constituents, puts students first and efficient and responsible stewardship of taxpayer money.

If that compact WSHS boundary is adjusted, then the only changes should be moving the Sangster split feeder and Keene Mill attendance islands to Lake Braddock, so FCPS can close the Rolling Valley split feeder, sending the small remaining cluster of RV streets back to WSHS.

Equity rezoning is a bad decision.

Rezoning every 5 years and destroying stability for students and homeowners is a bad decision.

Gerrymandering boundaries for equity and destroying neighborhood schools is a bad decision.

Making boundaries more compact and seemless, like what happened in the Daventry and Gambrill examples above, were smart zoning decisions that should be the model county wide.

I agree with the original poster. In your response, you were mostly focused on the Springfield area - but fairfax is huge and there have been a lot of weird decisions and boundaries implemented. Wshs pyramid is relatively compact.

So going after “weird” boundaries is more important than addressing a situation where a school with 2800 students is next to one with 1600? Hmm.

Yes? Unusual split feeders and attendance islands decrease a neighborhood’s sense of community with the schools. This has been noted as part of the boundary review committee’s work. There’s not much they can do about long term population trends leading to uneven growth (or even loss) in certain areas. But they can fix the maps where 90% of the population of whatever ES goes to the same MS and HS and 10% goes somewhere else entirely.

You’re conflating attendance islands with split feeders. Only a subset of the attendance islands involve the type of 90-10% split you describe. Some attendance islands are also much closer to the assigned schools than certain neighborhoods in a contiguous catchment area are to the assigned schools, so the sense of community is just fine.

I’m not conflating anything. One of the stated goals is reducing split feeders and attendance islands. None of the stated goals is “shoring up enrollment at smaller schools.” 🤷‍♀️

Oh, sweet child. How happy you are to deflect attention to others and think they’ll just leave Lewis’s enrollment to dwindle.

One of the four stated goals is “balancing available capacity.” West Springfield is projected to be overcrowded in 2028-29 at 117% and Lewis is projected to be at 74%. See Tables 10 and 14 in the latest CIP.

All the “compactness” in the world won’t spare you if they set their sights on you.

Stop the sweet child. I've posted on thsi thread and am not a sweet child. In fact I'm rather impartial except for facts. FCPS loaded desirable programs at Edison and West Potomac and left Lewis and Mount Vernon with undesirable IB. Taxpayers are left footing the bill for IB which is more expensive than AP. More students go from IB Lewis to IB Edison than from Lewis to any single AP HS.

FCPS chooses to make this process more difficult by not providing transfer data per reason per school in/out. Lewis facts:
program cap 1886
membership 1632 [87%] + IB Edison transfers [54] 89%
utilization 87% - can add 122 to 93%

Lewis and Edison are both IB, so Lewis kids transferring to Edison aren't doing so for IB. Maybe they transfer for the Edison Academy.

You didn't explain the source of your 122 number, so we're left guessing as to who these kids represent.

Of course if FCPS got rid of IB or otherwise limited the ability of kids to pupil place Lewis would have more kids. However, FCPS hasn't done that, and right now they are projecting Lewis at 1423 in SY 2028-29. That is about the number of kids South Lakes had back in 2007 when they redistricted kids into that school.

One way or another they need a plan for that school.

[Anonymous]

Some Lewis kids transfer to Edison for the same reason Robinson kids transfer to Lake Braddock - they went to an AAP center in the other pyramid (Key kids at Twain, Robinson kids at Lake Braddock) and then want to stay with that cohort.

AAP reform is also part of the puzzle. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that a lot of kids will want to preserve friendships forged in middle school.

[Anonymous]

No more AAP in middle. Keeps kids at base middle schools and limits bussing needs. Start there before boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No more AAP in middle. Keeps kids at base middle schools and limits bussing needs. Start there before boundaries.

+1 this seems like the biggest boondoggle when middle school honors classes are available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No more AAP in middle. Keeps kids at base middle schools and limits bussing needs. Start there before boundaries.

+1. And if they don’t address this before boundaries aren’t they basically locking themselves into the current AAP Center model for another five years, at a time when there is a lot of interest in revisiting that model?

This is what happens when you have a School Board led by party hacks like Karl Frisch rather than people who really focus on education.

[Anonymous]

Herndon kids should attend Herndon High School. Not Langley.

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Anonymous wrote:Curious if people would be in favor of closing Lewis and sending half of Lewis to WSHS, 1/4 to Hayfield and 1/4 to Edison? And closing MVHS and sending all kids to West Po and sending some amount of West Po to Edison. Just close the underenrolled “bad” schools and shoehorn kids into “good” schools. Because it’s clear that Lewis and MVHS cannot recover their reputations enough in this climate.

No.

Your suggestion makes no sense given capacity of surrounding schools.

You would need to add Annandale, Hayfield, South County and Lake Braddock to the mix, and remove WSHS based on capacity.

And then you would have to move from those schools to other schools.

The domino effects would be awful.

The smartest thing is for FCPS to take advantage of Lewis' low enrollment an schedule a 4 year renovation for the school. They could do it without trailers.

While renovating, close the IB program and stand up a fully functional AP program, even if that means class sizes of 10 students for the more advanced APs, just like private schools.

Take advantage of the tiny AP class sizes to push the students to get the AP pass rates up from their current 10% rate to a more palatable pass rate comparable to a Hayfield or South County. Or shoot for the stars and aim for something in the 60 to 70% pass rate. With tiny AP classes, that is attainable in 4 years.

Then, in 4 years, Lewis is now an AP school with a beautiful new campus comparable to all of their neighboring schools, and respectable AP pass rates so parents are no longer afraid to send their kids to Lewis.

With all the development in the area, Lewis could in 4 years go from a pariah school to one that is acceptable, or even desirable.

But that would take effort and smart planning by FCPS, which seems to be in short supply.

It is easier to rezone to mask the issues, even if the rezoning perpetuates the issues and makes Lewis even more undesirable from the bad press of the rezoning fight and the transient local population blacklisting the newly rezoned Lewis neighborhoods.

Annandale and McLean are older and should be renovated before Lewis.

Renovate all 3.

But Lewis is unique in that its current enrollment means a renovation could be completed without having to bring in trailers.

FCPS should take advantage of this enrollment and move them up in the queue.

A school should be neither penalized nor rewarded for being under-enrolled. Renovate in the order of age/last renovation, which means (1) Annandale, (2) McLean, and then (3) Lewis. If anything, there's less wear and tear on an older school with a smaller enrollment.

That makes sense. It would just mean moving up their renovations by about 15-20 years under the original timeline. That’s reasonable, given the state of their facilities and the really cheap renovations they got twenty years ago. The whole renovation queue is being completely revamped.