FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have the community feedback session times been posted?

They are supposed to start May 15 which is next week. I’m sure they’ll be posted (sneakily) this week

It’s hard to see how there could be any additional changes not already contained in these maps. If there were, those areas would be deprived of the ability to provide feedback on them.

Anyone have insight as to whether these are the changes being contemplated or whether others could sneak in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have the community feedback session times been posted?

They are supposed to start May 15 which is next week. I’m sure they’ll be posted (sneakily) this week

It’s hard to see how there could be any additional changes not already contained in these maps. If there were, those areas would be deprived of the ability to provide feedback on them.

Anyone have insight as to whether these are the changes being contemplated or whether others could sneak in?

I don’t think anything drastically net new would be redrawn. My home was not rezoned but I still plan to attend the meetings to ensure nothing goes further. I think it’s important for all community members to attend even if your neighborhood isn’t currently moving.

I attended the virtual meetings this winter and they were decently run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have the community feedback session times been posted?

They are supposed to start May 15 which is next week. I’m sure they’ll be posted (sneakily) this week

It’s hard to see how there could be any additional changes not already contained in these maps. If there were, those areas would be deprived of the ability to provide feedback on them.

Anyone have insight as to whether these are the changes being contemplated or whether others could sneak in?

If past is prologue, they could definitely sneak something in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The poster complaining that they aren’t doing enough when these changes are causing massive disruption across the county is delusional.

There is an all Dem school board that picked Reid and thru - all on her side. And she is still complaining about it because they didn’t F over a particular zip code. Truly petty stuff.

And we know this poster because she’s been going at it for years, obsessively trying to will her agenda to happen.

It is time for her to touch grass.

It's not massive disruption, PP. It may be hard for you and your family to adjust, but you will as will everyone else. These are actually relatively minor changes compared to what people were expecting. I'm sorry your child will have to move schools, I know that's really hard, but s/he'll survive, kids (even high schoolers) are so adaptive especially when they have loving and supportive parents, I hope you are one of those.

DP. I think what you’re missing is that minor changes can affect individual families as much as big changes, and perhaps even more if they see they’ve been treated as the low-hanging fruit whose preferences can be just ignored to give School Board members a “win.”

Some of these changes probably are sensible and may be well received. Many seem gratuitous and accomplish very little, and the lack of any compelling need for them will be even clearer in a few years when enrollments at many of the affected schools decline.

Thru appears to have provided very little value. What they’ve produced is mostly low-grade AI-type garbage.

Agree with second PP. Especially, when you see two streets in one contiguous neighborhood community being separated from their neighborhood friends and sent from a school that is less than three miles to a school that is eleven miles away.
For an estimated 34 students in a high school.

And, you say this is not a big disruption?

Yeah, this is what happens when a consultant company is looking at the picture from a SPA level, but neighborhoods are made of several SPAs and there are only 2 representatives giving feedback for your pyramid, and they don’t know the bounds of every neighborhood and the map they’re given has no roads, and the only notes are “we covered this last week” and not a comprehensive view of the proposed changes…

The community feedback is going to be brutal.

There also are SPAs that combine neighborhoods as defined by dev, complexes, location, legl description. Example- 2 SPA are realtively small and share a common non major road. Split by school assignment. Spring Hill island is massive and 1st on approach from the school is Foutians/Lincoln - .7 miles to Adaire [newer high rise across from metro]. That one was previously zoned commercial for a Route 7 car dealrship. https://www.fcps.edu/system/files/forms/2025-04/4-11-2025_superintendent_boundary_review_advisory_committee_presentation.pdf
sliide 30 should have Falls Church and Madison on the HS list with Langley, Marshall, Mclean. Falls Church and Madison got additions useable for 2026-27 school year yet appear nowhere.

FCPS/Thru has set the rules as 60% to 105% including modulars and non surplus trailers. Edison got a major reduction of 372 to Annandale [modular] under the Holmes split feeder stuff. Where did FCPS/Thru create new spltt feeders?

And never forget the Westgate walkers on a bus to Franklin Sherman. In the world according to Reid/Thru is Ravensworth also on a bus the walkers plan?

[Anonymous]

DP. I did some number crunching at the neighborhood high school (9-12) level, since people tend to focus most on the HS assignments. It appears that approximately 2.2% of high school students would be redistricted, so it's a low percentage overall. However, the impact by school varies.

Here are the schools that, assuming the recommendations in the three Thru presentations were adopted, would add students (and their adjusted April 2025 enrollments on that basis):

Annandale 372 (2468)
Langley 201 (2384)
South County 134 (2221)
Mount Vernon 133 (1960)
South Lakes 121 (2532)
Fairfax 87 (2460)
Westfield 87 (2784)
Hayfield 79 (2320)
Oakton 34 (2642)

Here are the schools that would lose students, with their adjusted enrollments:

Edison 372 (1901)
West Springfield 178 (2600)
McLean 142 (2268)
Chantilly 127 (2816)
Centreville 115 (2163)
West Potomac 140 (2456)
Woodson 87 (2329)
Marshall 59 (2124)
Lake Braddock 28 (2915)

Schools unaffected:

Falls Church (2070)
Herndon (2181)
Justice (2285)
Lewis (1623)
Madison (2077)
Robinson (2493)

No one was talking about Edison as a school crying out for capacity relief. The big drop would come from eliminating a current split feeder at Holmes MS and reassigning students from Bren Mar Park ES from Edison to Annandale. Several of the schools that would not be affected at all recently received or are receiving additions (Falls Church, Herndon, Justice, and Madison), but no reassignments to take advantage of their additional capacity were proposed.

Mostly, it seems kind of random to me, but wanted to see what the adjusted numbers would look like. I tried to read the presentations correctly, and the total number for the students being added to schools matches the total number for the students who'd be redistricted out of schools (1248). But it's possible there are errors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP. I did some number crunching at the neighborhood high school (9-12) level, since people tend to focus most on the HS assignments. It appears that approximately 2.2% of high school students would be redistricted, so it's a low percentage overall. However, the impact by school varies.

Here are the schools that, assuming the recommendations in the three Thru presentations were adopted, would add students (and their adjusted April 2025 enrollments on that basis):

Annandale 372 (2468)
Langley 201 (2384)
South County 134 (2221)
Mount Vernon 133 (1960)
South Lakes 121 (2532)
Fairfax 87 (2460)
Westfield 87 (2784)
Hayfield 79 (2320)
Oakton 34 (2642)

Here are the schools that would lose students, with their adjusted enrollments:

Edison 372 (1901)
West Springfield 178 (2600)
McLean 142 (2268)
Chantilly 127 (2816)
Centreville 115 (2163)
West Potomac 140 (2456)
Woodson 87 (2329)
Marshall 59 (2124)
Lake Braddock 28 (2915)

Schools unaffected:

Falls Church (2070)
Herndon (2181)
Justice (2285)
Lewis (1623)
Madison (2077)
Robinson (2493)

No one was talking about Edison as a school crying out for capacity relief. The big drop would come from eliminating a current split feeder at Holmes MS and reassigning students from Bren Mar Park ES from Edison to Annandale. Several of the schools that would not be affected at all recently received or are receiving additions (Falls Church, Herndon, Justice, and Madison), but no reassignments to take advantage of their additional capacity were proposed.

Mostly, it seems kind of random to me, but wanted to see what the adjusted numbers would look like. I tried to read the presentations correctly, and the total number for the students being added to schools matches the total number for the students who'd be redistricted out of schools (1248). But it's possible there are errors.

This is very helpful to see. Thank you for doing that.

[Anonymous]

It makes sense to me for a school to actually exist within its own school boundary. As for moving students out of overcapacity schools to undercapacity schools, that makes sense to me, too. Can someone explain why attendance islands should be eliminated? Why are they a bad thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It makes sense to me for a school to actually exist within its own school boundary. As for moving students out of overcapacity schools to undercapacity schools, that makes sense to me, too. Can someone explain why attendance islands should be eliminated? Why are they a bad thing?

Here's a little story about a "school existing within its own boundary."

There is a low-income townhouse community off Route 50 called Kingsley Commons. It was once adjacent to then-Graham Road ES at the corner of Route 50 and Graham Road. Students and their families could walk to the school, it served as a de facto community center, and for a number of years test scores at Graham Road exceeded those at many schools with higher-income students.

But, Graham Road was in an older building on a small plot of land. When it came time for a renovation, School Board members decided the community deserved a brand-new school, but the only available plot of land was on a site off Graham Road closer to Route 29, and no longer really within walking distance of Kingsley Commons. That site lay outside the boundaries of Graham Road in an area zoned to another school, Timber Lane.

So they built the new Graham Road within Timber Lane's boundaries, and it's a nice building. However, it's no longer within walking distance of Kingsley Commons,and test scores have declined since its construction.

Now another School Board has decided that Graham Road should reside within its own boundaries, so they are proposing to rejigger the boundaries. Graham Road would serve an area surrounding the new school, and the Kingsley Commons area would be reassigned to Timber Lane. But you know what? Timber Lane is further from Kingsley Commons than Graham Road is, so the commute of these students will be even longer.

In this scenario, does going to the trouble of changing the boundaries provide much of a benefit? The kids at Kingsley Commons no longer have a school they can walk to, nor would they enjoy a newer school. Instead, they'll be bused a longer distance to an older school that, assuming the changes are adopted, would have several hundred more students than Graham Road. So they may also end up getting less personal attention than they are getting at Graham Road as well.

A lot of times, these weird boundaries have a history and a reason. The likelihood that Thru Consulting knows anything about it is fairly slim. They are just doing the mechanical clean-up job they are getting paid $500K to do. You can also look at what they are doing to make sure Whitman MS resides within its own boundary, and it's a rather perfunctory exercise that expands the Whitman/Mount Vernon boundaries to achieve that goal. Does it avoid Whitman lying outside its attendance area? Yes. Would there also be 140 students currently in the West Potomac zone reassigned to Mount Vernon who might have preferred AP at West Potomac to IB at Mount Vernon? Yes.

[Anonymous]

The superintendent appears to be politically savvy going for changes that fix obvious problems, rather than a nuclear reset. It’s a really smart move heading into this year’s state wide elections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent appears to be politically savvy going for changes that fix obvious problems, rather than a nuclear reset. It’s a really smart move heading into this year’s state wide elections.

But they aren’t all problems. The overcrowding is not so bad that Irving that she needs to disrupt this group of students and families and turn HV into a split feeder.

[Anonymous]

Did I miss it or did no one get zone out of Langley? Everyone was freaking out about Forrestville getting sent to Herndon and all the little gerrymandered neighborhoods in Vienna, Reston and Herndon getting zoned out. Did none of that happen?

[Anonymous]

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my neighborhood untouched. It would be so disruptive for my rising junior to have to switch high schools. I feel so bad for all freshman right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The superintendent appears to be politically savvy going for changes that fix obvious problems, rather than a nuclear reset. It’s a really smart move heading into this year’s state wide elections.

But they aren’t all problems. The overcrowding is not so bad that Irving that she needs to disrupt this group of students and families and turn HV into a split feeder.

That’s just one example of a “fix” that falls squarely within the “juice not worth the squeeze” category.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my neighborhood untouched. It would be so disruptive for my rising junior to have to switch high schools. I feel so bad for all freshman right now.

My neighborhood wasn’t touched either, but I still want to attend the community meeting. I think the grandfathering that was covered in the boundary policy (rising seniors only) is awful for kids.

I am also concerned about what ‘next steps” will be and if they will come up with and if other wild scenarios will replace these maps. I will say I think this was vastly reduced because of community pushback (and perhaps the regime change on the federal level) and they were at least able to listen to community input.
So props to the school board for that! Hopefully they will continue to listen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did I miss it or did no one get zone out of Langley? Everyone was freaking out about Forrestville getting sent to Herndon and all the little gerrymandered neighborhoods in Vienna, Reston and Herndon getting zoned out. Did none of that happen?

None of that happened.