Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
The voters thought the maga types would institute book burnings, make mandatory bible readings, and force teachers to ask whether their students were “illegals.” (see e.g. Oklahoma) given that alternative, this outcome is palatable.
Yeah, no. You are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and ultimately your type is destroying FCPS in more realistic ways like the lowering of expectations and poor curriculum choices (like IB).
IB has been available for over 25 years. I know that the IB program was a concern when South Lakes was dealing with redistricting 25 years ago. IB is not a new issue and there is no good reason to expect the current school board to deal with IB when it was established a while back. Ideally, IB schools would have IB and AP and students would opt-in to IB but the schools are not going to do that because the IB classes would probably die.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
The voters thought the maga types would institute book burnings, make mandatory bible readings, and force teachers to ask whether their students were “illegals.” (see e.g. Oklahoma) given that alternative, this outcome is palatable.
Yeah, no. You are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and ultimately your type is destroying FCPS in more realistic ways like the lowering of expectations and poor curriculum choices (like IB).
DP. I’m in the camp where I think both the current administration and the FCPS school board are destructive and detrimental to constituents.
Wish there were a middle ground we could tread, for instance support public school while not pushing for equal and mediocre outcomes.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
The voters thought the maga types would institute book burnings, make mandatory bible readings, and force teachers to ask whether their students were “illegals.” (see e.g. Oklahoma) given that alternative, this outcome is palatable.
Yeah, no. You are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and ultimately your type is destroying FCPS in more realistic ways like the lowering of expectations and poor curriculum choices (like IB).
IB has been available for over 25 years. I know that the IB program was a concern when South Lakes was dealing with redistricting 25 years ago. IB is not a new issue and there is no good reason to expect the current school board to deal with IB when it was established a while back. Ideally, IB schools would have IB and AP and students would opt-in to IB but the schools are not going to do that because the IB classes would probably die.
Well, no.
One of the big failures in this boundary review is the nostalgia for the county-wide boundary reviews of the past but failure to recognize that all high schools had AP and not IB when those reviews occurred.
Next to no one wants to be redistricted from an AP school into an IB school.
They should have taken a hard look at FCPS’s abysmal track record with IB before they started the current review. If they’d committed to having AP at every school they’d have encountered less opposition to the boundary review and could have said with a straight face that kids would have similar academic opportunities at every HS. They can’t say that when they propose to do things like send kids at AP Madison to IB Marshall.
The Democrats have been in charge of FCPS for many years. The fact that they don't give IB a serious review and consider serious changes or even dropping it all together are completely on them. The same can be said about many other issues impacting FCPS.
Potentially not putting certain books in SCHOOL libraries is very different from burning books. But liberal hyperbole wins the day as normal here in Fairfax. So we end up crazier and crazier school board members. Many people who can are bailing on FCPS. I can't blame them.
A few years ago, they published budget questions from the school board. Frequently, questions were asked about the budget differences between the two. It was significant.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
I would have happily voted for a reasonable Republican candidate. But I could not vote for people who wanted to ban books or said outrageous things about autistic kids. Find qualified candidates and I will vote for them.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
I would have happily voted for a reasonable Republican candidate. But I could not vote for people who wanted to ban books or said outrageous things about autistic kids. Find qualified candidates and I will vote for them.
Keeping a graphic novel that depicts sexual activity out of a school library is not "banning books." No one is keeping the book from being published or sold--or even out of public libraries. It is just keeping it out of a school library. Would you take the R restriction off of adult movies?
I don't know about anyone saying outrageous things about autistic kids. Who did that?
Anonymous wrote:A few years ago, they published budget questions from the school board. Frequently, questions were asked about the budget differences between the two. It was significant.
They quit showing those numbers.
No, they didn’t “quit showing those numbers.”
They are all posted online for anyone who wants to see them.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
I would have happily voted for a reasonable Republican candidate. But I could not vote for people who wanted to ban books or said outrageous things about autistic kids. Find qualified candidates and I will vote for them.
Keeping a graphic novel that depicts sexual activity out of a school library is not "banning books." No one is keeping the book from being published or sold--or even out of public libraries. It is just keeping it out of a school library. Would you take the R restriction off of adult movies?
I don't know about anyone saying outrageous things about autistic kids. Who did that?
Either in the last election or the one before that the Republicans put up a gentleman who was pontificating about how autistic/ADHD kids don't need accomodations and just need to work harder. I am a mom of a (thankfully) high-functioning autistic kid son I know that for the BS that it is.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
I would have happily voted for a reasonable Republican candidate. But I could not vote for people who wanted to ban books or said outrageous things about autistic kids. Find qualified candidates and I will vote for them.
Keeping a graphic novel that depicts sexual activity out of a school library is not "banning books." No one is keeping the book from being published or sold--or even out of public libraries. It is just keeping it out of a school library. Would you take the R restriction off of adult movies?
I don't know about anyone saying outrageous things about autistic kids. Who did that?
Either in the last election or the one before that the Republicans put up a gentleman who was pontificating about how autistic/ADHD kids don't need accomodations and just need to work harder. I am a mom of a (thankfully) high-functioning autistic kid son I know that for the BS that it is.
Well, we have current school board members who think boys can be girls.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Not nearly as powerful as Trump. As long as Trump is in power, people will vote D or for candidates aligned with D as a perceived way of pushing back on what his administration is doing.
Trump was not 8n power when this school board was elected.
No, but his influence on the Republican Party remained strong even during Biden’s term and the Republican backed SB candidates were MAGA types. As long as that’s the case people will vote for the opposite.
Question: do you think the MAGA types would have been doing this comprehensive boundary study? Do you think they would have hired Reid?
I would have happily voted for a reasonable Republican candidate. But I could not vote for people who wanted to ban books or said outrageous things about autistic kids. Find qualified candidates and I will vote for them.
Keeping a graphic novel that depicts sexual activity out of a school library is not "banning books." No one is keeping the book from being published or sold--or even out of public libraries. It is just keeping it out of a school library. Would you take the R restriction off of adult movies?
I don't know about anyone saying outrageous things about autistic kids. Who did that?
There was a guy that was caught on mic during a town hall making fun of a special ed child who was performing.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Our resident DC Urban Grandpa from Great Falls (Forestville ES) is back to protect his property values.
Anonymous wrote:We voted these clowns in. The very clowns who decided to jam us with an unnecessary comprehensive boundary study resulting in thousands of our kids suffering mental health trauma being forced to move schools, with the only justification that we hadn’t done it in 40 years (which is misleading in and of itself).
We all need to remember how they gave little thought to how to implement these changes and have really set the county back and wasted so much of FCPS employee time and resources on an unnecessary course with only negative outcomes. They could have actually tried to improve the school experience, but instead just wasted their time for years at this point shuffling our kids around like pawns.
Screw them.
The kids are moving with all of their classmates from ES, they know kids at the new school through that grouping. They probably know other kids at the new school through activities. They will be fine. Kids move every year for family reasons, jobs, changing houses, and the like. The vast majority are just fine. Moving with a hundred or so kids that you know from ES is not traumatic. And kids in their HSs right now won’t have to move.
I suspect that the kids who will struggle are the kids of parents who are flipping out. Or that the kids who are moved and have a normal teenage hiccup will lead to parents blaming redistricting.
I agree with the underlined part.
An interesting side note, every year, including this one, there are multiple discussions on our town Facebook page over whether AAP kids should attend the center middle school at the bext school over (very similar except it is a 7th-12th secondary school) or remain at the Local Level 4 middle school and continue to our neighborhood high school.
There are always dozens and dozens of parents posting how it is soooo easy socially to transition between the secondary AAP program and the stand alone middle school/high school, because the kids all know lots of kids at both schools (true even for non AAP kids at both schools) and because there is so much overlap between all 3 schools through community events, sports, scouts, performing arts, etc.
The same statements are made every year when this topic comes up. I completely agree that the school communities do overlap quite a bit, especially through sports and activities. The kids at the middle school, secondary and high school all know mamy kids from each pyramid.
But the neighborhood that is getting rezoned to that secondary school is flipping out and claiming the opposite is true, as the main argument against their split feeder being eliminated.
It is kind of interesting to see those completely opposite arguments playing out online simultaneously.
Sounds like you’re fine with other kids getting moved from West Springfield to Lake Braddock, so long as they aren’t your kids. This is the consistent theme - other kids can cope, but leave mine alone.
Every year the AAP question comes up. And every year, the overwhelming response is that either option is great because the kids have tons of friends at each of the 3 schools, and there is so much social and community overlap between the schools.
These discussions have been going on with the exact same comments since AAP was added to Irving over 10 years ago. The discussion is always the same each year, that the schools are very close socially so attending either school or both schools is really easy socially.
It is just interesting to see that annual Irving/WSHS/LBSS discussion occur under the context of the rezoning fight, when the main arguments against rezoning to Lake Braddock with most of their classmates and friends, are the complete opposite to the common knowledge and experiences expressed each year in the community at large and the annual online middle school AAP discussions.
Even if you are completely against rezoning, it is impossible not to see rhe irony of these two very contradictory positions, occuring simultaneously under the shadow of rezoning.
It's a different calculus when you're talking about effectively forcing some kids already in high school to switch schools. Do you really not see that? Or are they useful sacrificial lambs across the county, as long as you're not redistricted to Lewis?
They are not forcing kids to move if they have started HS.
Learn to read. They are effectively forcing kids whose families can't arrange for their transportation (and there are more of these families than they acknowledge) to switch schools starting next fall. Including HS kids.
Most if not all of the kids in that WSHS/LB neighborhood have their own cars or friends with cars, or a parent who can transport them.
It is a fairly affluent area
My son is a ninth grader who may be rezoned. His father and I both work full-time jobs that require us to be in the office 5 days a week. He does not drive, nor do I plan on getting him a car. None of his friends drive because they are in ninth grade and will be taking the bus. He wants to stay at his current school, with his current friends, and stay in his current sports teams. We are a real family who will be impacted by this. Please keep your 'opinions' about who is affluent enough to make this work to yourself.
We are in the same boat. I assume many families are. You can call the WSHS neighborhood “affluent”, but many are two income households who are most likely military, federal govt, teachers, etc.
Almost no seniors ride the busses to WSHS. They either drive, or ride with friends.
Not at WSHS, but I believe this to be true. But, "almost no seniors" is not "no seniors." And, WSHS does not have a large impoverished population and its boundaries are not that large.
The only seniors am aware of who rode the bus at WSHS are the ones whose parents are punishing them by taking away the keys for things like getting a speeding ticket or some other big infraction.
All the others drive, walk, or ride with friends.
And, you know all the seniors?
Of course she doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t want to jeopardize grandfathering for her own kids, who’ll apparently have no problem arranging for transportation. Screw those less fortunate.
Agreed (well maybe not on the first part because I don't know that posters situation)
I think the big point here is that the school board and administration should have come to the table with potential solutions for kids...as opposed to saying 'the rich kids will take care of the poor ones'. None of boundary process has been thought out, and none of this has been done in truly fair and equitable way, based on facts.
+1. Neighbors are fighting each other completely unnecessarily. Everyone is trying to protect what they believe is right for their families, and the process from start to finish was filled with misinformation, distorting of facts, a sham community feedback process, and now no solutions for effected children.
They should have looked at the schools that were overcrowded and the capacity around them and redrawn te boundaries only for those schools. The solution is that everyone moves, except for rising Juniors and Seniors in HS. It is painful but it is a large group moving at once and it is done.
The process is made worse by adding in IB schools when families don’t want IB and the counties unwillingness to add AP at every school. If enough kids want IB, they will sign up for the classes. If not, then get rid of the program.
No one wants to move, it will be more problematic for some kids then others. It should not be a problem for any rising Freshman because they don’t have ties to the school and have not started making progress at school. They will be joining a new community with every other 9th grader and will be fine. The ones who are not have parents that are strangely invested in a particular HS.
That doesn't quite work for children at middle schools moving to secondary schools. Your arguments always seem to start out fine until you start making assumptions about actual students.
My assumption is that the vast majority of kids will be fine if they move schools regardless of the grade because kids move on a regular basis and the majority of the ones who move are fine. Yes, it sucks but the vast majority of kids find new friends, get involved in programs that they like, and do well in school. They go on to college or into a trade that they like. They are successful human beings.
Moving with your entire grade at the same time is not trauma inducing except for a small percentage with specific mental/emotional issues. Parents are arguing that moving is going to cause a massive mental health crisis for the kids changing schools when kids move all the time and are fine. You are moving with kids you know, as a group into a school. The schools know the kids are coming and will be prepared to help them adapt.
I get that people don’t like change, very few people do. Humans are resilient. The kids who struggle with this are going to be kids with diagnosable mental health conditions and kids whose parents are making this into some massive awful change.
I sincerely hope that FCPS f’s with your kids at some point, just so I can repost the crap you just wrote and address it to your family
You are a bad person.
My kid is moving. He will be fine.
You hope. But boy, if not, it’ll be just desserts for the person who doesn’t care about other kids.
Or who has more faith in kids resiliency and thinks that they will be fine at the schools that they move to then you do.
If the kid has active parents then they will have a strong chance of succeeding at any school in FCPS.
If this is how you think, you should want FCPS drawing boundaries for the new Western HS now, and making attendance at that school for rising 9th to 11th graders mandatory.
None of this opt-in, opt-out nonsense with boundaries announced in mid-2026. After all, the kids would all be newcomers to Western, so they should be the most accepting of the new assignment.
Instead, we get options up the wazoo for these families in western Fairfax, while kids getting redistricted elsewhere to existing schools where they may arrive as outsiders aren't even assured transportation to their current schools.
My name suggestion for the school was “draw the Boundaries and then Name the School” High School. The boundaries should be set first then worry about redistricting the rest of the county. the school board mucked that up badly.
As for the partial opening, that is what they did for South County and Westfield. You bring in 9th and 10th graders and add from there. They should draw the boundaries and have the 9th and 10th graders attend. What do you want me to do about that? I have emailed my school board rep and the superintendent and I have attended meetings. I have had as much success there as everyone else.
You act like this is a personal attack on you. It’s not. Schools are overcrowded and kids need to be moved to other schools. Change is hard but calling people names and wishing ill on them because they don’t share your opinion is not a good look. I am sorry that your house is in an area that is going to be moved. Your kid will do better with the move if you make it less of an issue and focus on why they will succeed at whatever school they attend.
What’s actually odder is how you seem to think everyone is looking to you as some authoritative expert to decide what is or isn’t acceptable.
We’re all entitled to our opinions and, whether you like it or not, many of us are not happy with the hypocrisy of a School Board that’s ready to drop over $200 million on a new high school with what increasingly appears to have been minimal due diligence, while telling others who’ll derive no benefit from that school that money is tight and they can’t possibly find $10 million or so to provide transportation to their current schools if they are among those unlucky enough to be redistricted (because they weren’t as powerful and noisy as others).
We will not forget what Reid and this School Board are doing to FCPS.
DP. You probably already know this, but the “we” you are referring to who are so mad right now probably isn’t nearly a big enough group of people for anything to meaningfully change in terms of who is running FCPS.
DP. The furious “we” are going to be a real political problem for current school board members running again in 2027.
Nope. You're wrong.
Pride cometh before the fall. Last election, nobody knew what they were up to, now, there will be 8,000 students and their families to spread the gospel of the school board members who didn’t care about them or their mental health.
Add to that the increased taxes to make up for the budget shortfall caused in part by the now constant threat of reshuffling that the school board is on record not caring about.
I’ve been immersed in political strategy for several decades now, and this is the stuff that matters. It is powerful fodder for their opponents.
Our resident DC Urban Grandpa from Great Falls (Forestville ES) is back to protect his property values.
Nah. They turned Robyn Lady to their side--remember she switched from being thrilled that the new school would give the much needed relief to Chantilly before she met with Great Falls. The next week, she said that the new school should be a magnet.
So, she will carry Dranesville once again.
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