Bren Mar Park to Key/Lewis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they move BMP to Key/Lewis then Holmes ends up seriously under capacity. They just trade the problem at Lewis for a new problem at Holmes.

They should either be moving kids from Irving/West Springfield to Key/Lewis or leaving the boundaries alone and looking for other ways to improve Key/Lewis, such as adding AAP to Key and replacing IB at Lewis with AP.

Moving some edge boundary kids from WS to Lewis isn’t going to yield the number of students needed to really bump up enrollment at Lewis. It will be the opposite of Daventry. They thought they were closing a small split feeder since there were very few HS students living there. In reality, when the area was moved from Lewis to WSHS, the number of HS students ballooned because people were no longer seeking pupil placements, moving right before high school started, or lying about their address. What looked like maybe 20-30 students on paper ended up being many more.

If you move some Keene Mill or West Springfield border neighborhoods, people will just start moving when they hit middle or high school age. You’ll think you’re getting maybe 75-100 high school students (which really is not a lot compared to the numbers at a whole elementary school …) but they’d be lucky to end up with 25 when all is said and done.

This is the exact logic employed to justify moving another group of people to Lewis who don’t want to go there: “they won’t have the same options as we have, so you’ll get more bodies if you move BMP rather than us.”

Never mind that WSHS is the most overcrowded HS in the county and moving BMP would leave Holmes seriously under-capacity.

Our empress has no clothes.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth. People zoned for West Springfield now have more options than Lewis if they are moved. They are going to disappear from the system. We’ve already seen the opposite happen. I don’t think Bren Mar Park should move either unless it’s to Annandale. But IF the goal is just getting more bodies into Lewis, Bren Mar Park is the low hanging fruit.

It's a cop-out to pretend under-enrollment at Lewis is the only issue. If they are going to change boundaries, they should be looking to solve both sides of the equation: under-enrollment at Lewis and overcrowding at West Springfield.

Moving BMP (the "low hanging fruit") to Lewis only addresses one side of the equation, and it aggravates an existing problem, which is the low enrollment at Holmes.

Why is Michelle Reid so stunningly incompetent at addressing these issues?

Also add the Franconia school board rep to the list of incompetent people. What exactly has she done to help the situation?

Why do they default to boundary changes that redistrict people who do not want to be moved to Lewis, when there are obvious things that can be done in the Lewis pyramid to increase enrollment such as making Key an AAP center and replacing IB with AP at Lewis?

Ricardy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning need to put their heads together and come up with something that isn't a band aid that leaves BMP families feeling like "low hanging fruit" and doesn't trash Holmes MS.

I think the school has such low enrollment that they need to do both things at the same time.

The BMP PTA rep at last nights meeting requested that the school board study specific SPAs in the WSHS and Edison pyramids that directly border Lewis being moved into Lewis before doing anything with BMP

They could have done this. But they didn't during the last boundary review. And now they've promised they won't move kids for 5 years unless there's some sort of emergency and I don't think Lewis qualifies as that. I understand the frustrations but they need to focus on making Lewis a more attractive school for more kids. Then maybe you won't have so many in-boundary kids getting pupil placed to other schools.

[Anonymous]

The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Lewis families were informed about the meeting. The Lewis community has been begging for more communities to be zoned into the school.

And please, no comments about eliminating IB and adding more programs. It's been said and done, so thank you.

What Lewis needs is more kids. What happens when there's not enough students to enroll in a class? The class gets cancelled. That means the more specialized classes end up not being offered because the population's not large enough to support that niche subject.

Then parents move into other school districts, because they want the more course offerings, and Lewis shrinks even more.

The school needs a healthy, growing population.

Either the school board grow a freaking backbone and move kids into Lewis, or they just admit that they don't want to invest in the school and shut the damn school down. They don't seem concerned about student population or overcrowded schools, so let's just let the other high schools absorb the population.

WSHS has had classes cancelled and they have tons of students.

Music Theory, for example, was cancelled several years because the number of students registered did not meet the staffing ratios.

Advanced robotics was combined with a lower level class due to low enrollment. The entire latin program was cancelled. Theater 3 and 4 are often combined due to not meeting the staffing ratios. German combines upper levels to meet staffing ratios. The list goes on and on. WSHS is one of the fullest schools in the county, and every year they cancel or combine classes due to low enrollment.

Lewis should offer smaller classes, or combine levels into one class, such as a level 3/4/AP class (one of my kid's German classes one year.)

Such a tone deaf comment

Why do you say that?

Did you miss the part that said Lewis should be allowed to run smaller classes? If they only have 12-15 students capable of calculu, run a 12-15 student class. If they only have 10 or so, in a specialty elective, combine levels amd do a 3/4 class or a 1/2 class.

Lewis is bigger than most private high schools. They can find ways to offer a robust selection of courses

The original comment was saying WSHS can’t offer music theory and advanced robotics.

Meanwhile Lewis is so small they didn’t even have a baseball (or was it softball?) team.

What other advanced courses is Lewis not offering because it is so small. I’m sure it’s more popular courses than music theory.

There are many public high schools a third the size of Lewis with baseball teams. The claim that Lewis can’t field a team doesn’t pass the laugh test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they move BMP to Key/Lewis then Holmes ends up seriously under capacity. They just trade the problem at Lewis for a new problem at Holmes.

They should either be moving kids from Irving/West Springfield to Key/Lewis or leaving the boundaries alone and looking for other ways to improve Key/Lewis, such as adding AAP to Key and replacing IB at Lewis with AP.

Moving some edge boundary kids from WS to Lewis isn’t going to yield the number of students needed to really bump up enrollment at Lewis. It will be the opposite of Daventry. They thought they were closing a small split feeder since there were very few HS students living there. In reality, when the area was moved from Lewis to WSHS, the number of HS students ballooned because people were no longer seeking pupil placements, moving right before high school started, or lying about their address. What looked like maybe 20-30 students on paper ended up being many more.

If you move some Keene Mill or West Springfield border neighborhoods, people will just start moving when they hit middle or high school age. You’ll think you’re getting maybe 75-100 high school students (which really is not a lot compared to the numbers at a whole elementary school …) but they’d be lucky to end up with 25 when all is said and done.

This is the exact logic employed to justify moving another group of people to Lewis who don’t want to go there: “they won’t have the same options as we have, so you’ll get more bodies if you move BMP rather than us.”

Never mind that WSHS is the most overcrowded HS in the county and moving BMP would leave Holmes seriously under-capacity.

Our empress has no clothes.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth. People zoned for West Springfield now have more options than Lewis if they are moved. They are going to disappear from the system. We’ve already seen the opposite happen. I don’t think Bren Mar Park should move either unless it’s to Annandale. But IF the goal is just getting more bodies into Lewis, Bren Mar Park is the low hanging fruit.

It's a cop-out to pretend under-enrollment at Lewis is the only issue. If they are going to change boundaries, they should be looking to solve both sides of the equation: under-enrollment at Lewis and overcrowding at West Springfield.

Moving BMP (the "low hanging fruit") to Lewis only addresses one side of the equation, and it aggravates an existing problem, which is the low enrollment at Holmes.

Why is Michelle Reid so stunningly incompetent at addressing these issues?

Also add the Franconia school board rep to the list of incompetent people. What exactly has she done to help the situation?

Why do they default to boundary changes that redistrict people who do not want to be moved to Lewis, when there are obvious things that can be done in the Lewis pyramid to increase enrollment such as making Key an AAP center and replacing IB with AP at Lewis?

Ricardy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning need to put their heads together and come up with something that isn't a band aid that leaves BMP families feeling like "low hanging fruit" and doesn't trash Holmes MS.

The bad thing is that in the end neither boundary changes or programming changes (IB to AP) will be made to help Lewis and it will continue to shrink and offer even fewer options. Boundary changes will be defeated by community push back. But the million dollar question remains why they won't let go of IB at Lewis. It really confounds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

Edison is adding a lot of housing to its district. WSHS has zero growth. If you think long term it makes more sense to pull from the Edison area. But we have already debated this a lot and the board just keeps leaving IB at Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they move BMP to Key/Lewis then Holmes ends up seriously under capacity. They just trade the problem at Lewis for a new problem at Holmes.

They should either be moving kids from Irving/West Springfield to Key/Lewis or leaving the boundaries alone and looking for other ways to improve Key/Lewis, such as adding AAP to Key and replacing IB at Lewis with AP.

Moving some edge boundary kids from WS to Lewis isn’t going to yield the number of students needed to really bump up enrollment at Lewis. It will be the opposite of Daventry. They thought they were closing a small split feeder since there were very few HS students living there. In reality, when the area was moved from Lewis to WSHS, the number of HS students ballooned because people were no longer seeking pupil placements, moving right before high school started, or lying about their address. What looked like maybe 20-30 students on paper ended up being many more.

If you move some Keene Mill or West Springfield border neighborhoods, people will just start moving when they hit middle or high school age. You’ll think you’re getting maybe 75-100 high school students (which really is not a lot compared to the numbers at a whole elementary school …) but they’d be lucky to end up with 25 when all is said and done.

This is the exact logic employed to justify moving another group of people to Lewis who don’t want to go there: “they won’t have the same options as we have, so you’ll get more bodies if you move BMP rather than us.”

Never mind that WSHS is the most overcrowded HS in the county and moving BMP would leave Holmes seriously under-capacity.

Our empress has no clothes.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth. People zoned for West Springfield now have more options than Lewis if they are moved. They are going to disappear from the system. We’ve already seen the opposite happen. I don’t think Bren Mar Park should move either unless it’s to Annandale. But IF the goal is just getting more bodies into Lewis, Bren Mar Park is the low hanging fruit.

It's a cop-out to pretend under-enrollment at Lewis is the only issue. If they are going to change boundaries, they should be looking to solve both sides of the equation: under-enrollment at Lewis and overcrowding at West Springfield.

Moving BMP (the "low hanging fruit") to Lewis only addresses one side of the equation, and it aggravates an existing problem, which is the low enrollment at Holmes.

Why is Michelle Reid so stunningly incompetent at addressing these issues?

Also add the Franconia school board rep to the list of incompetent people. What exactly has she done to help the situation?

Why do they default to boundary changes that redistrict people who do not want to be moved to Lewis, when there are obvious things that can be done in the Lewis pyramid to increase enrollment such as making Key an AAP center and replacing IB with AP at Lewis?

Ricardy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning need to put their heads together and come up with something that isn't a band aid that leaves BMP families feeling like "low hanging fruit" and doesn't trash Holmes MS.

I think the school has such low enrollment that they need to do both things at the same time.

The BMP PTA rep at last nights meeting requested that the school board study specific SPAs in the WSHS and Edison pyramids that directly border Lewis being moved into Lewis before doing anything with BMP

They could have done this. But they didn't during the last boundary review. And now they've promised they won't move kids for 5 years unless there's some sort of emergency and I don't think Lewis qualifies as that. I understand the frustrations but they need to focus on making Lewis a more attractive school for more kids. Then maybe you won't have so many in-boundary kids getting pupil placed to other schools.

I thought the policy mentioned not moving the same students for 5 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they move BMP to Key/Lewis then Holmes ends up seriously under capacity. They just trade the problem at Lewis for a new problem at Holmes.

They should either be moving kids from Irving/West Springfield to Key/Lewis or leaving the boundaries alone and looking for other ways to improve Key/Lewis, such as adding AAP to Key and replacing IB at Lewis with AP.

Moving some edge boundary kids from WS to Lewis isn’t going to yield the number of students needed to really bump up enrollment at Lewis. It will be the opposite of Daventry. They thought they were closing a small split feeder since there were very few HS students living there. In reality, when the area was moved from Lewis to WSHS, the number of HS students ballooned because people were no longer seeking pupil placements, moving right before high school started, or lying about their address. What looked like maybe 20-30 students on paper ended up being many more.

If you move some Keene Mill or West Springfield border neighborhoods, people will just start moving when they hit middle or high school age. You’ll think you’re getting maybe 75-100 high school students (which really is not a lot compared to the numbers at a whole elementary school …) but they’d be lucky to end up with 25 when all is said and done.

This is the exact logic employed to justify moving another group of people to Lewis who don’t want to go there: “they won’t have the same options as we have, so you’ll get more bodies if you move BMP rather than us.”

Never mind that WSHS is the most overcrowded HS in the county and moving BMP would leave Holmes seriously under-capacity.

Our empress has no clothes.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth. People zoned for West Springfield now have more options than Lewis if they are moved. They are going to disappear from the system. We’ve already seen the opposite happen. I don’t think Bren Mar Park should move either unless it’s to Annandale. But IF the goal is just getting more bodies into Lewis, Bren Mar Park is the low hanging fruit.

It's a cop-out to pretend under-enrollment at Lewis is the only issue. If they are going to change boundaries, they should be looking to solve both sides of the equation: under-enrollment at Lewis and overcrowding at West Springfield.

Moving BMP (the "low hanging fruit") to Lewis only addresses one side of the equation, and it aggravates an existing problem, which is the low enrollment at Holmes.

Why is Michelle Reid so stunningly incompetent at addressing these issues?

Also add the Franconia school board rep to the list of incompetent people. What exactly has she done to help the situation?

Why do they default to boundary changes that redistrict people who do not want to be moved to Lewis, when there are obvious things that can be done in the Lewis pyramid to increase enrollment such as making Key an AAP center and replacing IB with AP at Lewis?

Ricardy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning need to put their heads together and come up with something that isn't a band aid that leaves BMP families feeling like "low hanging fruit" and doesn't trash Holmes MS.

I think the school has such low enrollment that they need to do both things at the same time.

The BMP PTA rep at last nights meeting requested that the school board study specific SPAs in the WSHS and Edison pyramids that directly border Lewis being moved into Lewis before doing anything with BMP

They could have done this. But they didn't during the last boundary review. And now they've promised they won't move kids for 5 years unless there's some sort of emergency and I don't think Lewis qualifies as that. I understand the frustrations but they need to focus on making Lewis a more attractive school for more kids. Then maybe you won't have so many in-boundary kids getting pupil placed to other schools.

I don't think that’s true. They have their January 2027 list, but then they also have another list of flagged sites that includes WSHS capacity. I don’t see it specified anywhere if those reviews are for the next 5 year cycle or if they’d be slated for mid-cycle, like these Jan 2027 examples.

Now, would they actually move any of WSHS? No. But they’ll pretend they’re considering it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

Edison is adding a lot of housing to its district. WSHS has zero growth. If you think long term it makes more sense to pull from the Edison area. But we have already debated this a lot and the board just keeps leaving IB at Lewis.

Well, moving Bren Mar Park out of Edison also frees up space at Edison, which could really use the room for the extra housing that’s going to go in there. They’ve already broken ground on a large new neighborhood of larger townhomes (the kind that will attract families, not 1-2 bedroom rental apartments) right down Van Dorn from Edison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

The first step should be a residency check at WSHS. Parents have been asking. There are kids from other high schools attending WSHS who don't fall in the transfer categories, including from Lewis but also from far away schools. Many of them moved away in elementary school or are using other addresses.

If they are going to rezone students to fill Lewis, the first step needs to be eliminating IB at Lewis, and the second step must be residency checks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Lewis families were informed about the meeting. The Lewis community has been begging for more communities to be zoned into the school.

And please, no comments about eliminating IB and adding more programs. It's been said and done, so thank you.

What Lewis needs is more kids. What happens when there's not enough students to enroll in a class? The class gets cancelled. That means the more specialized classes end up not being offered because the population's not large enough to support that niche subject.

Then parents move into other school districts, because they want the more course offerings, and Lewis shrinks even more.

The school needs a healthy, growing population.

Either the school board grow a freaking backbone and move kids into Lewis, or they just admit that they don't want to invest in the school and shut the damn school down. They don't seem concerned about student population or overcrowded schools, so let's just let the other high schools absorb the population.

WSHS has had classes cancelled and they have tons of students.

Music Theory, for example, was cancelled several years because the number of students registered did not meet the staffing ratios.

Advanced robotics was combined with a lower level class due to low enrollment. The entire latin program was cancelled. Theater 3 and 4 are often combined due to not meeting the staffing ratios. German combines upper levels to meet staffing ratios. The list goes on and on. WSHS is one of the fullest schools in the county, and every year they cancel or combine classes due to low enrollment.

Lewis should offer smaller classes, or combine levels into one class, such as a level 3/4/AP class (one of my kid's German classes one year.)

Such a tone deaf comment

Why do you say that?

Did you miss the part that said Lewis should be allowed to run smaller classes? If they only have 12-15 students capable of calculu, run a 12-15 student class. If they only have 10 or so, in a specialty elective, combine levels amd do a 3/4 class or a 1/2 class.

Lewis is bigger than most private high schools. They can find ways to offer a robust selection of courses

The original comment was saying WSHS can’t offer music theory and advanced robotics.

Meanwhile Lewis is so small they didn’t even have a baseball (or was it softball?) team.

What other advanced courses is Lewis not offering because it is so small. I’m sure it’s more popular courses than music theory.

There are many public high schools a third the size of Lewis with baseball teams. The claim that Lewis can’t field a team doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Lewis has a large and strong little league feeder pfogram, the Central Springfield Little League. The local middle and high school Babe Ruth league also has lots of Lewis kids.

Lewis should have plenty of zoned kids to field both a varsity and JV team.

I suspect that if FCPS did a full high school residdncy check in that entire area, they would quickly discover what happened to all the Lewis zoned baseball players. If I were to bet, my money would be on Lake Braddock and Edison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Lewis families were informed about the meeting. The Lewis community has been begging for more communities to be zoned into the school.

And please, no comments about eliminating IB and adding more programs. It's been said and done, so thank you.

What Lewis needs is more kids. What happens when there's not enough students to enroll in a class? The class gets cancelled. That means the more specialized classes end up not being offered because the population's not large enough to support that niche subject.

Then parents move into other school districts, because they want the more course offerings, and Lewis shrinks even more.

The school needs a healthy, growing population.

Either the school board grow a freaking backbone and move kids into Lewis, or they just admit that they don't want to invest in the school and shut the damn school down. They don't seem concerned about student population or overcrowded schools, so let's just let the other high schools absorb the population.

WSHS has had classes cancelled and they have tons of students.

Music Theory, for example, was cancelled several years because the number of students registered did not meet the staffing ratios.

Advanced robotics was combined with a lower level class due to low enrollment. The entire latin program was cancelled. Theater 3 and 4 are often combined due to not meeting the staffing ratios. German combines upper levels to meet staffing ratios. The list goes on and on. WSHS is one of the fullest schools in the county, and every year they cancel or combine classes due to low enrollment.

Lewis should offer smaller classes, or combine levels into one class, such as a level 3/4/AP class (one of my kid's German classes one year.)

Such a tone deaf comment

Why do you say that?

Did you miss the part that said Lewis should be allowed to run smaller classes? If they only have 12-15 students capable of calculu, run a 12-15 student class. If they only have 10 or so, in a specialty elective, combine levels amd do a 3/4 class or a 1/2 class.

Lewis is bigger than most private high schools. They can find ways to offer a robust selection of courses

The original comment was saying WSHS can’t offer music theory and advanced robotics.

Meanwhile Lewis is so small they didn’t even have a baseball (or was it softball?) team.

What other advanced courses is Lewis not offering because it is so small. I’m sure it’s more popular courses than music theory.

There are many public high schools a third the size of Lewis with baseball teams. The claim that Lewis can’t field a team doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Lewis has a large and strong little league feeder pfogram, the Central Springfield Little League. The local middle and high school Babe Ruth league also has lots of Lewis kids.

Lewis should have plenty of zoned kids to field both a varsity and JV team.

I suspect that if FCPS did a full high school residdncy check in that entire area, they would quickly discover what happened to all the Lewis zoned baseball players. If I were to bet, my money would be on Lake Braddock and Edison.

And Edison also gets a not insignificant number of kids coming from Maryland … that’s not the same district, or even the same state!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

Edison is adding a lot of housing to its district. WSHS has zero growth. If you think long term it makes more sense to pull from the Edison area. But we have already debated this a lot and the board just keeps leaving IB at Lewis.

Well, moving Bren Mar Park out of Edison also frees up space at Edison, which could really use the room for the extra housing that’s going to go in there. They’ve already broken ground on a large new neighborhood of larger townhomes (the kind that will attract families, not 1-2 bedroom rental apartments) right down Van Dorn from Edison.

Sounds like the Bren Mar Park parents are starting to worry about the current overcrowding at West Springfield almost as much as the West Springfield parents are worried about the potential future overcrowding at Edison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

Edison is adding a lot of housing to its district. WSHS has zero growth. If you think long term it makes more sense to pull from the Edison area. But we have already debated this a lot and the board just keeps leaving IB at Lewis.

Well, moving Bren Mar Park out of Edison also frees up space at Edison, which could really use the room for the extra housing that’s going to go in there. They’ve already broken ground on a large new neighborhood of larger townhomes (the kind that will attract families, not 1-2 bedroom rental apartments) right down Van Dorn from Edison.

Sounds like the Bren Mar Park parents are starting to worry about the current overcrowding at West Springfield almost as much as the West Springfield parents are worried about the potential future overcrowding at Edison.

I doubt the Edison is rven on the radar of WSHS families

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they move BMP to Key/Lewis then Holmes ends up seriously under capacity. They just trade the problem at Lewis for a new problem at Holmes.

They should either be moving kids from Irving/West Springfield to Key/Lewis or leaving the boundaries alone and looking for other ways to improve Key/Lewis, such as adding AAP to Key and replacing IB at Lewis with AP.

Moving some edge boundary kids from WS to Lewis isn’t going to yield the number of students needed to really bump up enrollment at Lewis. It will be the opposite of Daventry. They thought they were closing a small split feeder since there were very few HS students living there. In reality, when the area was moved from Lewis to WSHS, the number of HS students ballooned because people were no longer seeking pupil placements, moving right before high school started, or lying about their address. What looked like maybe 20-30 students on paper ended up being many more.

If you move some Keene Mill or West Springfield border neighborhoods, people will just start moving when they hit middle or high school age. You’ll think you’re getting maybe 75-100 high school students (which really is not a lot compared to the numbers at a whole elementary school …) but they’d be lucky to end up with 25 when all is said and done.

This is the exact logic employed to justify moving another group of people to Lewis who don’t want to go there: “they won’t have the same options as we have, so you’ll get more bodies if you move BMP rather than us.”

Never mind that WSHS is the most overcrowded HS in the county and moving BMP would leave Holmes seriously under-capacity.

Our empress has no clothes.

I’m sorry but it’s the truth. People zoned for West Springfield now have more options than Lewis if they are moved. They are going to disappear from the system. We’ve already seen the opposite happen. I don’t think Bren Mar Park should move either unless it’s to Annandale. But IF the goal is just getting more bodies into Lewis, Bren Mar Park is the low hanging fruit.

It's a cop-out to pretend under-enrollment at Lewis is the only issue. If they are going to change boundaries, they should be looking to solve both sides of the equation: under-enrollment at Lewis and overcrowding at West Springfield.

Moving BMP (the "low hanging fruit") to Lewis only addresses one side of the equation, and it aggravates an existing problem, which is the low enrollment at Holmes.

Why is Michelle Reid so stunningly incompetent at addressing these issues?

Also add the Franconia school board rep to the list of incompetent people. What exactly has she done to help the situation?

Why do they default to boundary changes that redistrict people who do not want to be moved to Lewis, when there are obvious things that can be done in the Lewis pyramid to increase enrollment such as making Key an AAP center and replacing IB with AP at Lewis?

Ricardy Anderson and Marcia St. John-Cunning need to put their heads together and come up with something that isn't a band aid that leaves BMP families feeling like "low hanging fruit" and doesn't trash Holmes MS.

I think the school has such low enrollment that they need to do both things at the same time.

The BMP PTA rep at last nights meeting requested that the school board study specific SPAs in the WSHS and Edison pyramids that directly border Lewis being moved into Lewis before doing anything with BMP

They could have done this. But they didn't during the last boundary review. And now they've promised they won't move kids for 5 years unless there's some sort of emergency and I don't think Lewis qualifies as that. I understand the frustrations but they need to focus on making Lewis a more attractive school for more kids. Then maybe you won't have so many in-boundary kids getting pupil placed to other schools.

I don't think that’s true. They have their January 2027 list, but then they also have another list of flagged sites that includes WSHS capacity. I don’t see it specified anywhere if those reviews are for the next 5 year cycle or if they’d be slated for mid-cycle, like these Jan 2027 examples.

Now, would they actually move any of WSHS? No. But they’ll pretend they’re considering it.

Have you been following the rezoning over the past few years?

The flag on WSHS capacity is not about moving WSHS homes to Lewis

WSHS is flagged for moving Rolling Valley town houses (around 300 of them, inside the parkway) FROM Lewis INTO West Springfield.

They were unable to do this rezoning more students from Lewis to WSHS in the spring because there was immense pushback from both Lewis and WSHS families against moving houses out of Lewis to WSHS, so FCPS tabled it to sneak it through on the off year while fewer people are paying attention.

The other area involving WSHS they are studying now is the Keene Mill attendance island.

There is a big neighborhood of townhouses off the north end of Huntsman Rd, around 300 of them, that is zoned for Keene Mill. They pass through Cardinal Forest, Orange Hunt and Rolling Valley zones to get to Keene Mill, even though White Oaks elementary is in their back yard and almost walkable if you cut through the neighborhood.

They were slated to get rezoned to White Oaks and Lake Braddock, both fantastic options that are equivalent schools to Keene Mill>Irving>WSHS. For some reason they fought it, and managed to get it tabled until this off cycle rezoning.

Both town house communities are roughly the same size.

The Keene Mill island would get a much closer elementary and middle school, a slightly farther high school, and an equal quality school track that overlaps with sports, activities and communities.

The Rolling Valley split feeder would get a huge upgrade in quality, a much closer/easier commute, schools that are tied to their community thtough sports, scouts. Social events, etc, and the elimination of a tiny illogical split feeder.

If I were able to wager on this, I would put money on the 300-ish Keene Mill island townhouses going to White Oaks and Lake Braddock, and the 300-ish Rolling Valley split feeder townhouses going to Irving and West Springfield to close that split feeder.

If you look at it objectively, it makes the most sense long term except for the loss of students at Lewis

The only wild card is that FCPS shows much fewer than 10 kids per grade from that neighborhood attending Lewis. In reality, the number of high school students from that neighborhood is many times more than that. The 20 or so Lewis students that FCPS is using in its calculation will be 50 plus high schoolers once they are rezoned from Lewis to WSHS, just like Daventry.

Fcps needs to give Lewis some tlc, get rid of IB, and run small advanced classes like a private school. Even if their AP calculus or chemistry or AP language only has 6 qualifying kids, run the class and advertise the school's small class sizes. Treat Lewis like a small private school and parents will keep their kids there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The emergency could be the overcrowding at WSHS.

They need to remove IB from Lewis, make it all AP, and then redistrict. Then the kids that are pupil placing out need to stay and more kids move in. There will be a school within a school but a larger cohort of AP students that will make Lewis more attractive. But FCPS really seems stuck on IB, I can't figure out why. It isn't working at pretty much any HS in the County.

If people want to move to private they can move to private. I think it will be a smaller number then folks here think it will be.

Edison is adding a lot of housing to its district. WSHS has zero growth. If you think long term it makes more sense to pull from the Edison area. But we have already debated this a lot and the board just keeps leaving IB at Lewis.

Well, moving Bren Mar Park out of Edison also frees up space at Edison, which could really use the room for the extra housing that’s going to go in there. They’ve already broken ground on a large new neighborhood of larger townhomes (the kind that will attract families, not 1-2 bedroom rental apartments) right down Van Dorn from Edison.

Sounds like the Bren Mar Park parents are starting to worry about the current overcrowding at West Springfield almost as much as the West Springfield parents are worried about the potential future overcrowding at Edison.

I doubt the Edison is rven on the radar of WSHS families

Total BS. West Springfield has been offering up BMP to Lewis for many months because they are so very concerned about Edison getting 2/3 as overcrowded some day as West Springfield has been for years.