FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

Too many “lawnmower” parents here.

Some here argue they will move their kids to private if rezoned. Will their kids be ok? They will be torn from their communities. They will have to create new relationships with teachers. They will have longer commutes. That seems quite disruptive, along with the $30K plus tuition.

Why don't the parents who want rezoning worry about their own kids, instead of lobbying for other people's kids to get moved around to "fix" schools in other neighborhoods?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:According to the website, materials will be posted the following business day so tomorrow (Tuesday) probably late afternoon

It's going to get VERY interesting if they propose to move people out of Chantilly and West Springfield but leave Langley untouched. Once again FCPS will have talked a good game about equity, and then turned around and screwed the middle class while favoring the wealthiest.

West Springfield is currently at 112% capacity and expected to go to 120% capacity by 2029-2030.

Chantilly is currently at 125% capacity if you don’t include modulars and expected to be at 118% capacity without modulars by 2029-2030.

Langley is currently at 94% capacity and expected to be at 96% capacity by 2029-2030.

How is there even a comparison? It makes sense to lower the numbers of students at over capacity schools. It doesn’t make sense to unnecessarily rezone kids from an under capacity school.

Sure it does, if kids live closer to a school that has even more extra capacity. Why should others pay to bus your kids longer distances than necessary? Also, your numbers for Langley don't include the additional kids from closer-in Tysons they're going to move to Langley.

And why should we bother moving kids out of "over capacity" schools - and capacity should take the modular seats that cost millions to install into account - now if those schools are expected to see declines in enrollment?

But let's see what they come up with today. If they propose to move kids out of Chantilly and West Springfield, with their compact boundaries, while leaving Langley with its far-flung boundaries untouched, it will be a political disaster for the Democrats in Sully and Springfield.

“Political disaster”? Literal LOL.

Sully and Springfield are already the two most conservative magisterial districts in Fairfax. Goodbye, Dixit and Anderson if they screw the middle class while giving the Langley rich another pass.

As someone who lives in WSHS area and whose kid could get moved, my anger about all this will not be impacted by what they do to Langley. I will be angry either way.

Not me. We live close to our current schools and they may rezone us anyway, so if they are going to continue busing Langley kids 10 miles while upending our kids lives in furtherance of unclear goals I will be doubly pissed.

Well, I think you’ve just outed yourself as a big ol hypocrite. It’s gotta be tough having that much cognitive dissonance.

Nothing hypocritical about it at all. If county-wide boundary changes are really needed like they're claiming they should go all in and not just look for soft targets while letting the rich people who'd make the biggest stink off the hook again.

Class warfare on your neighbors. Stay classy, hypocrite.

You don't know what hypocrisy means. I want the same thing for you as FCPS appears to want for me, and they have discretion to do so under their policy since cutting down on transportation times and costs gets just as much prominence as addressing a capacity deficit.

Plus you have money to hire the lawyers to challenge them. Not all of us do.

They know that, and that's why you get left out of boundary studies while others are not so fortunate.

To recap your view is if something bad has to happen to me i hope it happens to everyone else too (specifically Langley). You can use the transportation cost reasons all you want but that was debunked over and over. The cost to save 2-9 minutes each way for a few buses isn’t adding up to any amount of savings.

The problem with how big Herndon was built out it does not match capacity of Herndon MS. There is not space to move an entire elementary into that pyramid. Especially since it appears they are moving part of the very over crowded Coates to Herndon ES which feeds into Herndon Ms and Herndon HS

Or, stated differently, if some are to benefit from the advantages of county-wide redistricting, it would be unfair to deprive Langley families of that same opportunity.

In the case of students in western Great Falls, the shorter commutes to Herndon and potential transportation savings were never "debunked" simply because you chose to downplay them ad nauseam on this thread. You're confusing the frequency of your objections with the quality of your argument.

The mismatch of MS capacity with HS capacity isn't unique to Herndon. Even so, HMS is also projected to be well under capacity through 2029. And moving Coates kids who already are zoned to HMS/HHS to HES doesn't impact the enrollment at HMS or HHS. It only changes the ES assignment.

Look forward to your continuing to advocate on behalf of everyone who'd rather stay put. After all, if you can successfully advocate on Langley's behalf here, advocating on behalf of the rest of us who actually live close to our current schools ought to be a slam dunk.

You’re responding to a different poster. You also sound like a pretty awful person.

Oh, so you wouldn't advocate on anyone else's behalf but your own, but you take issues with others expecting Langley to be subject to the same scrutiny as other areas? Got it.

Well, if you can’t read well enough to understand my earlier post where I said I will continue to advocate for no boundary changes for anyone, then you are a lost cause. I couldn’t have stated it more clearly.

Good luck living your petty life.

Different poster here. I'm in WSHS area and our area appreciates your support.

Speak for yourself, not for our area.

Let me guess, you are the BRAC member who is on record being for boundary changes for others, but not for her own kids.

Nope. Once again, you people are not grasping that many support overdue boundary changes.

+1. New poster here.

Be careful what you wish for. Turns out that the school board is about to go nuclear with the boundaries.

Let’s see how well this ages. A few weeks ago the flood of “there will be a pause announced after spring break” posts did not age well.

Sure. Let’s put a pin in this. Make sure to follow up whether you are right or wrong, and I’ll do the same. Deal?

Now we just gotta wait for those night worm BRAC members to wake up.

Fair enough. How would define nuclear? It’s only fair to have an objective measure of whether the prediction (or informed hint) bore out.

Unanticipated boundary moves on a scale larger than many anticipated with tens of thousands of kids’ mental health being collateral damage. And in areas many felt were safe from boundary changes.

As someone who experienced a FCPS boundary change years ago, I don’t think there was any major damage to my mental health. Freshman year at a high school I hadn’t planned or wanted to attend sucked. Most of the kids knew each other from middle school but I only knew kids from my elementary school, and some of them had attended a different middle school. I felt like an outsider crashing a party without an invitation. But things did improve the next year. Getting involved in some activities was key.

Not saying they should change boundaries without a compelling reason, just that the rhetoric is overblown. A boundary change is inconvenient and disruptive, and parents can have some unhappy kids on their hands for a while, but it’s not going to send them off to a psych ward.

Well, by all means let’s extrapolate your rose-colored experience from years ago and jump to conclusions about how boundary changes would affect any kid in the county.

I didn’t think this was a rose-colored version of events. Although I did fine academically, socially I felt adrift for my entire freshman year and I think some others in my situation felt similarly.

I think you’re confirming, though that a boundary change might be more earth-shattering for some parents whose ideas of status are wrapped up with their kids attending a particular school than it ultimately would be for the kids.

How old are your kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

Too many “lawnmower” parents here.

Some here argue they will move their kids to private if rezoned. Will their kids be ok? They will be torn from their communities. They will have to create new relationships with teachers. They will have longer commutes. That seems quite disruptive, along with the $30K plus tuition.

Correct, that's why we would prefer to send them to their local *quality* high school. However, if the alternative is sending my kid to a failing school plus all the costs listed above, the benefits of a quality private school will outweigh the costs. Are you a simpleton?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

Not “resiliancy.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

Too many “lawnmower” parents here.

Some here argue they will move their kids to private if rezoned. Will their kids be ok? They will be torn from their communities. They will have to create new relationships with teachers. They will have longer commutes. That seems quite disruptive, along with the $30K plus tuition.

Why don't the parents who want rezoning worry about their own kids, instead of lobbying for other people's kids to get moved around to "fix" schools in other neighborhoods?

The members of the anti-boundary change club are the ones arguing about how their kids’ mental health will suffer if forced to move schools. Just saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

Somewhat humorous that you made a similar typo in your unnecessary effort to point out PP's typo.

[Anonymous]

Putting the ATT site housing into Fairfax is stupid. It's about 3 miles via roads and 66 has to be crossed. Oakton is 1.8 miles which could even be a doable walk especially if they make some fixes on Blake. It's also practically across the street from Oakton ES which currently has more capacity than Providence ES. Providence will be undergoing renovation int he next couple years but it's only to add 4 classrooms. Two would replace trailers. It's more to upgrade to a more modern school design and fix worn out stuff as the oldest parts of the school are from the 50s. The City of Fairfax is going to push back on the county overcrowding City Schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

Somewhat humorous that you made a similar typo in your unnecessary effort to point out PP's typo.

My inclination to spell correctly is strong, as is my occasional impulse to point out typos in posts from people who purport to care deeply about academic quality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only are they OK with that long commute for their kids, many bought their homes in that area hoping they would continue to be zoned for Langley, despite the 13 mile drive. It is a sacrifice they are willing to make in order to avoid sending their kids to (gasp!) Herndon.

But, but … the Forestville kids are not socializing with their community and are being bussed far away. You’d think they’d want their kids to stay close to their community and not be sent to far off Langley.

What is your definition of community? The Forestville kids from Herndon participate mostly in Great Falls-based sports/activities, not Herndon-based. I know this because we live in (a non-Forestville part of) Great Falls. To the extent community is relevant, their community mostly centers on Great Falls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Putting the ATT site housing into Fairfax is stupid. It's about 3 miles via roads and 66 has to be crossed. Oakton is 1.8 miles which could even be a doable walk especially if they make some fixes on Blake. It's also practically across the street from Oakton ES which currently has more capacity than Providence ES. Providence will be undergoing renovation int he next couple years but it's only to add 4 classrooms. Two would replace trailers. It's more to upgrade to a more modern school design and fix worn out stuff as the oldest parts of the school are from the 50s. The City of Fairfax is going to push back on the county overcrowding City Schools.

Maybe. Take the county kids out of the Fairfax City-owned schools and the average test scores plummet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Putting the ATT site housing into Fairfax is stupid. It's about 3 miles via roads and 66 has to be crossed. Oakton is 1.8 miles which could even be a doable walk especially if they make some fixes on Blake. It's also practically across the street from Oakton ES which currently has more capacity than Providence ES. Providence will be undergoing renovation int he next couple years but it's only to add 4 classrooms. Two would replace trailers. It's more to upgrade to a more modern school design and fix worn out stuff as the oldest parts of the school are from the 50s. The City of Fairfax is going to push back on the county overcrowding City Schools.

Got some money invested in that new development, do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

Somewhat humorous that you made a similar typo in your unnecessary effort to point out PP's typo.

My inclination to spell correctly is strong, as is my occasional impulse to point out typos in posts from people who purport to care deeply about academic quality.

Typos on a random internet message board do not correlate to one's views on academic quality or rigor. I also used to care about typos. I now realize that they don't matter for things like internet postings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last few posts sound like the school board rep who argued that FCPS should not grandfather high school students because they need to be taught "resiliancy"

She (Robyn Lady) has since said she supports grandfathering high school kids.

Also, it’s “resiliency,” not “resiliency,” and it is a good skill for kids to develop before they go off to college. Obviously there are other ways to learn resiliency besides being subjected to a boundary change.

Somewhat humorous that you made a similar typo in your unnecessary effort to point out PP's typo.

My inclination to spell correctly is strong, as is my occasional impulse to point out typos in posts from people who purport to care deeply about academic quality.

Typos on a random internet message board do not correlate to one's views on academic quality or rigor. I also used to care about typos. I now realize that they don't matter for things like internet postings.

Now if you could only unclench about your kid possibly getting redistricted out of Langley…

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the website, materials will be posted the following business day so tomorrow (Tuesday) probably late afternoon

It's going to get VERY interesting if they propose to move people out of Chantilly and West Springfield but leave Langley untouched. Once again FCPS will have talked a good game about equity, and then turned around and screwed the middle class while favoring the wealthiest.

West Springfield is currently at 112% capacity and expected to go to 120% capacity by 2029-2030.

Chantilly is currently at 125% capacity if you don’t include modulars and expected to be at 118% capacity without modulars by 2029-2030.

Langley is currently at 94% capacity and expected to be at 96% capacity by 2029-2030.

How is there even a comparison? It makes sense to lower the numbers of students at over capacity schools. It doesn’t make sense to unnecessarily rezone kids from an under capacity school.

Sure it does, if kids live closer to a school that has even more extra capacity. Why should others pay to bus your kids longer distances than necessary? Also, your numbers for Langley don't include the additional kids from closer-in Tysons they're going to move to Langley.

And why should we bother moving kids out of "over capacity" schools - and capacity should take the modular seats that cost millions to install into account - now if those schools are expected to see declines in enrollment?

But let's see what they come up with today. If they propose to move kids out of Chantilly and West Springfield, with their compact boundaries, while leaving Langley with its far-flung boundaries untouched, it will be a political disaster for the Democrats in Sully and Springfield.

“Political disaster”? Literal LOL.

Sully and Springfield are already the two most conservative magisterial districts in Fairfax. Goodbye, Dixit and Anderson if they screw the middle class while giving the Langley rich another pass.

As someone who lives in WSHS area and whose kid could get moved, my anger about all this will not be impacted by what they do to Langley. I will be angry either way.

Not me. We live close to our current schools and they may rezone us anyway, so if they are going to continue busing Langley kids 10 miles while upending our kids lives in furtherance of unclear goals I will be doubly pissed.

Well, I think you’ve just outed yourself as a big ol hypocrite. It’s gotta be tough having that much cognitive dissonance.

Nothing hypocritical about it at all. If county-wide boundary changes are really needed like they're claiming they should go all in and not just look for soft targets while letting the rich people who'd make the biggest stink off the hook again.

Class warfare on your neighbors. Stay classy, hypocrite.

You don't know what hypocrisy means. I want the same thing for you as FCPS appears to want for me, and they have discretion to do so under their policy since cutting down on transportation times and costs gets just as much prominence as addressing a capacity deficit.

Plus you have money to hire the lawyers to challenge them. Not all of us do.

They know that, and that's why you get left out of boundary studies while others are not so fortunate.

To recap your view is if something bad has to happen to me i hope it happens to everyone else too (specifically Langley). You can use the transportation cost reasons all you want but that was debunked over and over. The cost to save 2-9 minutes each way for a few buses isn’t adding up to any amount of savings.

The problem with how big Herndon was built out it does not match capacity of Herndon MS. There is not space to move an entire elementary into that pyramid. Especially since it appears they are moving part of the very over crowded Coates to Herndon ES which feeds into Herndon Ms and Herndon HS

Or, stated differently, if some are to benefit from the advantages of county-wide redistricting, it would be unfair to deprive Langley families of that same opportunity.

In the case of students in western Great Falls, the shorter commutes to Herndon and potential transportation savings were never "debunked" simply because you chose to downplay them ad nauseam on this thread. You're confusing the frequency of your objections with the quality of your argument.

The mismatch of MS capacity with HS capacity isn't unique to Herndon. Even so, HMS is also projected to be well under capacity through 2029. And moving Coates kids who already are zoned to HMS/HHS to HES doesn't impact the enrollment at HMS or HHS. It only changes the ES assignment.

Look forward to your continuing to advocate on behalf of everyone who'd rather stay put. After all, if you can successfully advocate on Langley's behalf here, advocating on behalf of the rest of us who actually live close to our current schools ought to be a slam dunk.

You’re responding to a different poster. You also sound like a pretty awful person.

Oh, so you wouldn't advocate on anyone else's behalf but your own, but you take issues with others expecting Langley to be subject to the same scrutiny as other areas? Got it.

Well, if you can’t read well enough to understand my earlier post where I said I will continue to advocate for no boundary changes for anyone, then you are a lost cause. I couldn’t have stated it more clearly.

Good luck living your petty life.

Different poster here. I'm in WSHS area and our area appreciates your support.

Speak for yourself, not for our area.

Let me guess, you are the BRAC member who is on record being for boundary changes for others, but not for her own kids.

Nope. Once again, you people are not grasping that many support overdue boundary changes.

+1. New poster here.

Be careful what you wish for. Turns out that the school board is about to go nuclear with the boundaries.

Let’s see how well this ages. A few weeks ago the flood of “there will be a pause announced after spring break” posts did not age well.

Sure. Let’s put a pin in this. Make sure to follow up whether you are right or wrong, and I’ll do the same. Deal?

Now we just gotta wait for those night worm BRAC members to wake up.

Fair enough. How would define nuclear? It’s only fair to have an objective measure of whether the prediction (or informed hint) bore out.

Unanticipated boundary moves on a scale larger than many anticipated with tens of thousands of kids’ mental health being collateral damage. And in areas many felt were safe from boundary changes.

As someone who experienced a FCPS boundary change years ago, I don’t think there was any major damage to my mental health. Freshman year at a high school I hadn’t planned or wanted to attend sucked. Most of the kids knew each other from middle school but I only knew kids from my elementary school, and some of them had attended a different middle school. I felt like an outsider crashing a party without an invitation. But things did improve the next year. Getting involved in some activities was key.

Not saying they should change boundaries without a compelling reason, just that the rhetoric is overblown. A boundary change is inconvenient and disruptive, and parents can have some unhappy kids on their hands for a while, but it’s not going to send them off to a psych ward.

But you got to do all 4 years at the new HS. People are concerned that their kids may have to move DURING HS. Maybe even having to move from a HS with AP classes to a HS without them, or that doesn’t have as many or the ones they wanted to take. They need to address the issue of letting kids finish out HS at the same school. What if you had to start over during your important sophomore or junior year of HS, and get to know new teachers and counselors within a matter of months in order to get recommendations that would have been easy to get at your old school? Thats the kind of thing people are concerned about. Also the age range of students who would be affected by a boundary change are also kids who had over a whole year of schooling disrupted due to Covid closures.

I am in a group of women where we are all ages (20-90’s). We started talking about moving high school mid stream and about a quarter of the women experienced this. I thought that was a high number, but moving kids around during high school has been happening since the inception of high schools and it happened much more frequently than here. Some moved because of growth, some moved because schools were closing due to dropping enrollment, some moved because of parents moving, some moved because of boundary changes. It is just something that happens. I think people are blowing things out of proportion here. Yes, it will take some adjustment, but it hardly the doom and gloom that several posters are predicting. Life happens. This area is already fairly transient and the schools know how to help new students adapt and thrive in their new school. If this is the worst thing that could happen to your child, that is fantastic because it means they have had an extremely unscathed life and are one of the most luck people on the planet.

Unless you were st some military brats reunion, there is no way that what you are saying is accurate.

The vast majority of high school srudents have never experienced a rezoning, unless it was to back fill a brand new high school, which is not even remotely close to whst the school board is doing.

I thought the same thing. The irony is that if any of you really know military people, you would know that many military choose to retire or go to a new assignment "unaccompanied" when their kids are in high school.
I know many military who have chosen this route.
So, just imagine your family chooses this and then your kid gets moved anyway!