FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People seem to think that these maps are the final ones. They're not. Now that Thru has held the dog-and-pony show, the staff at gatehouse is going to do what they do best - the thing they were going to do anyway, but first they had to pretend to involve the community. We'll see new and potentially radically different maps, but probably it will be right before the school board votes to approve them.

Past behavior justifies the cynicism but they’ve been quite explicit about their process, and that it would entail two more rounds of community meetings before final changes are adopted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People seem to think that these maps are the final ones. They're not. Now that Thru has held the dog-and-pony show, the staff at gatehouse is going to do what they do best - the thing they were going to do anyway, but first they had to pretend to involve the community. We'll see new and potentially radically different maps, but probably it will be right before the school board votes to approve them.

I always figured if they were going to make controversial moves that they’d have to own it as soon as they release maps. Not that some parents/families have a sense of being in the clear, the fury would be multiples more.

While these aren’t guaranteed to be the final maps, id be surprised to see the school board propose radically different maps, when the community, BRAC, thru, and the superintendent are all on board with as minimal disruption as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is really interesting. I assume that Whitman and Sandburg are so geographically close to each other because Sandburg was Fort Hunt HS long ago before it closed. Did Whitman feed both MVHS and Fort Hunt HS?

[Anonymous]

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.

I recall reading about this at the time. I taught Title I kids who lived in extreme poverty and I know how important it is to have support from the community.
This is a very sad story. To take something that was showing success and was everything a school should hope to be. There are things more important than a sparkling new building.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can they point to anything they’ve proposed that would actually help ensure equitable access to programs or minimize travel time for students?

All they’ve really done is punch down and propose to make some random changes to replace one ugly map with another ugly map. I mean, look at the proposed new Chantilly boundaries - they look absurd.

They clearly don’t have the courage to do what they originally set out to do and should just call the whole thing off.

It’s clear that they’ve considered those factors. There is a difference between having considered those factors vs. having considered them with the lens that you want to apply them.

NP.


Only one lens matters here:

Equity.

Everything else discussed will be ignored; the meetings and discussions are merely to provide a fig-leaf covering what the SB and Reid ordered Thru to come up with originally: equity, diversity, and inclusion.

But that’s not what these maps are doing. It’s a bunch of tinkering around the edges for little benefit in most cases. I can imagine what a full “equity” nuke of the maps would look like (to an extent - there’s not much you can do with how the poverty areas are concentrated in our county) and it doesn’t look like what they came up with.

We’ll never know if a full “equity” redrawing of the boundaries really was on the table. Was it planned and then scrapped due to public outcry, or due to the changing of presidential administrations putting a lot of diversity-related programs under a microscope? I personally think there was probably some advocates for a “nuclear option” on boundaries, but overall that wasn’t supported by the school board and important stakeholders in transportation and facilities who advocated for smaller changes due to logistical reasons. Sizemore and Anderson seemed asleep at the wheel at the WS PTSA virtual meeting and not even aware of the maps that were already released to the public.

Hunt Valley parents are completely disappointed with Anderson after her lackluster, disinterested performance at the WSHS PTA meeting last night.

I think it’s part of their act to appear ignorant right now. That way they can take credit if they “find out along with everyone else” what Thru has proposed and blame Thru and Reid if people object strongly.

But it also sounds like Anderson made some comments about Rolling Valley that were affirmatively misleading - that they’d rezone the Lewis part of RV to West Springfield HS rather than rezone it to Saratoga and keep it at Lewis. There’s no excuse for that.

She said what about Rolling Valley? Was that something she was going to suggest/fight for or was she just misunderstanding the map. I thought it was pretty clear. She's the one who keeps insisting some neighborhoods are going to have to leave WSHS to address capacity - why would she say they were going to add some, and from Lewis of all places??

There are going to be a lot of furious constituents if Hunt Valley gets zoned out of WSHS under the guise of overcrowding, and Anderson moves Rolling Valley Lewis students into their place.

That’s not going to happen, the Rolling Valley split feeder was resolved in one of the earlier maps by sending those neighborhoods to Saratoga so they stay at a Lewis-feeding school throughout.

The SB members clearly had no idea in advance what was going on with these maps and the proposals and they all seemed surprised that we, the public, even cared so much. Mateo Dunne was yammering about fixing the split feeder at Gunston by sending them all to South County, but the majority of the area lives quite close to Gunston ES and thus is much closer to Hayfield. Not every split feeder can be resolved.

Yes, but Anderson supposedly had a recrnt meeting with Rolling Valley parents after Truu pegged the the Lewis zoned families to get rezoned to Saratoga.

The things she said, about it being 10% of RV students that get sent to Lewis, then that if the Lewis RV kids get moved to West Springfield there is no space to grandfather current WSHS students sounds suspiciously like

A) She is repeating Rolling Valley family talking points from her meeting with them. What she said are exactly the arguments I eould make if I were a Rolling Valley family zoned for Lewis and was arguing the case to be kept at Rolling Valley and moved to Irving/WSHS, instead of being kept at Key and Lewis and rezoned yo Saratoga

And

B) I think she is either working behind the scenes for Rolling Valley parents and let the plans of replacing Irving/WSHS zoned Hunt Valley kids with Key/Lewis zoned Rolling Valley kids

OR

C) I seriously considering this plan to disallow WSHS/Irving Hunt Valley kids from grandfathering so she can make Key/Lewis to WSHS work for the Rolling Valley families, and accidentally let her inner debate come out of her mouth when asked about grandfathering, because she came to the meeting last night unprepared, and it is easier to spill the beans when you are not prepared.

Hunt Valley families need to get an in person meeting with Sandy Anderson to get her support for not moving anyone into WSHS, so there is space to grandfather current WSHS and Irving families.

I 100% think the no grandfathering because Rolling Valley kids will have those spots was a slip of the tongue about an in progress plan Andersin is considering pushing for WSHS.

Sorry for the typos! What a mess of phone keyboard mistakes!

So you think she’s trying to keep the RV split feeder at RV/Irving/WSHS and sacrificing HV south of the parkway to South County to do so?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can they point to anything they’ve proposed that would actually help ensure equitable access to programs or minimize travel time for students?

All they’ve really done is punch down and propose to make some random changes to replace one ugly map with another ugly map. I mean, look at the proposed new Chantilly boundaries - they look absurd.

They clearly don’t have the courage to do what they originally set out to do and should just call the whole thing off.

It’s clear that they’ve considered those factors. There is a difference between having considered those factors vs. having considered them with the lens that you want to apply them.

NP.


Only one lens matters here:

Equity.

Everything else discussed will be ignored; the meetings and discussions are merely to provide a fig-leaf covering what the SB and Reid ordered Thru to come up with originally: equity, diversity, and inclusion.

But that’s not what these maps are doing. It’s a bunch of tinkering around the edges for little benefit in most cases. I can imagine what a full “equity” nuke of the maps would look like (to an extent - there’s not much you can do with how the poverty areas are concentrated in our county) and it doesn’t look like what they came up with.

We’ll never know if a full “equity” redrawing of the boundaries really was on the table. Was it planned and then scrapped due to public outcry, or due to the changing of presidential administrations putting a lot of diversity-related programs under a microscope? I personally think there was probably some advocates for a “nuclear option” on boundaries, but overall that wasn’t supported by the school board and important stakeholders in transportation and facilities who advocated for smaller changes due to logistical reasons. Sizemore and Anderson seemed asleep at the wheel at the WS PTSA virtual meeting and not even aware of the maps that were already released to the public.

Hunt Valley parents are completely disappointed with Anderson after her lackluster, disinterested performance at the WSHS PTA meeting last night.

I think it’s part of their act to appear ignorant right now. That way they can take credit if they “find out along with everyone else” what Thru has proposed and blame Thru and Reid if people object strongly.

But it also sounds like Anderson made some comments about Rolling Valley that were affirmatively misleading - that they’d rezone the Lewis part of RV to West Springfield HS rather than rezone it to Saratoga and keep it at Lewis. There’s no excuse for that.

She said what about Rolling Valley? Was that something she was going to suggest/fight for or was she just misunderstanding the map. I thought it was pretty clear. She's the one who keeps insisting some neighborhoods are going to have to leave WSHS to address capacity - why would she say they were going to add some, and from Lewis of all places??

There are going to be a lot of furious constituents if Hunt Valley gets zoned out of WSHS under the guise of overcrowding, and Anderson moves Rolling Valley Lewis students into their place.

That’s not going to happen, the Rolling Valley split feeder was resolved in one of the earlier maps by sending those neighborhoods to Saratoga so they stay at a Lewis-feeding school throughout.

The SB members clearly had no idea in advance what was going on with these maps and the proposals and they all seemed surprised that we, the public, even cared so much. Mateo Dunne was yammering about fixing the split feeder at Gunston by sending them all to South County, but the majority of the area lives quite close to Gunston ES and thus is much closer to Hayfield. Not every split feeder can be resolved.

Yes, but Anderson supposedly had a recrnt meeting with Rolling Valley parents after Truu pegged the the Lewis zoned families to get rezoned to Saratoga.

The things she said, about it being 10% of RV students that get sent to Lewis, then that if the Lewis RV kids get moved to West Springfield there is no space to grandfather current WSHS students sounds suspiciously like

A) She is repeating Rolling Valley family talking points from her meeting with them. What she said are exactly the arguments I eould make if I were a Rolling Valley family zoned for Lewis and was arguing the case to be kept at Rolling Valley and moved to Irving/WSHS, instead of being kept at Key and Lewis and rezoned yo Saratoga

And

B) I think she is either working behind the scenes for Rolling Valley parents and let the plans of replacing Irving/WSHS zoned Hunt Valley kids with Key/Lewis zoned Rolling Valley kids

OR

C) I seriously considering this plan to disallow WSHS/Irving Hunt Valley kids from grandfathering so she can make Key/Lewis to WSHS work for the Rolling Valley families, and accidentally let her inner debate come out of her mouth when asked about grandfathering, because she came to the meeting last night unprepared, and it is easier to spill the beans when you are not prepared.

Hunt Valley families need to get an in person meeting with Sandy Anderson to get her support for not moving anyone into WSHS, so there is space to grandfather current WSHS and Irving families.

I 100% think the no grandfathering because Rolling Valley kids will have those spots was a slip of the tongue about an in progress plan Andersin is considering pushing for WSHS.

Sorry this is confusing. So what you’re saying is the Hunt Valley families get sacrificed and there is no grandfathering for anyone at WSHS so they can move Rolling Valley families in and out of Lewis? Can’t the
RV families just pupil place out like the other 300 families at Lewis who currently do it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is really interesting. I assume that Whitman and Sandburg are so geographically close to each other because Sandburg was Fort Hunt HS long ago before it closed. Did Whitman feed both MVHS and Fort Hunt HS?

In the early 80s there were 3 high schools and 3 middle schools in the Mount Vernon/Ft Hunt area:
Ft Hunt High School, Groveton High School and Mount Vernon High School.
Stephen Foster was Ft Hunt’s middle school - it was in the building that is currently Whitman MS. Bryant Middle School was Groveton’s middle school. That building is now Bryant Alternative High school. Whitman was housed in the original Mount Vernon High School building - that building is located on Rt 1 and was built in the 1930s. When they merged the schools, a decision was made to move Whitman out of bounds and sell/give the original MVHS building to Fairfax County government. For several years, the Islamic Saudi Academy used the building as its high school. It is currently being renovated to house some government and community organizations.

Ft hunt High School became Sandburg Middle School. And West Potomac High School was located in Groveton’s building.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know where you can get stats on split feeder percentages? Specifically I’m looking for the numbers for the Oak View to Frost/Robinson split feeder that they didn’t touch

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is really interesting. I assume that Whitman and Sandburg are so geographically close to each other because Sandburg was Fort Hunt HS long ago before it closed. Did Whitman feed both MVHS and Fort Hunt HS?

Not sure - there were intermediate schools that closed around the time Fort Hunt and Groveton merged to form West Potomac and Fort Hunt became Sandburg. I believe at some point the current Whitman MS used to be called Foster Intermediate and did feed to Fort Hunt, while another building that had been called Whitman may have fed to MVHS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know where you can get stats on split feeder percentages? Specifically I’m looking for the numbers for the Oak View to Frost/Robinson split feeder that they didn’t touch

This question comes up fairly often. The short answer is that current information isn’t readily available and they’ll ask you to pay a lot of money (several hundred dollars) if you submit a FOIA request for information about all split feeders. If you only submit a FOIA request about Oak View, though, they won’t charge you much.

In Oak View’s case, though, it looks like a fairly even split as between Frost/Woodson and Robinson. If most kids feed to Robinson, but more than 25% feed to Frost/Woodson, they wouldn’t touch it.

[Anonymous]

So no changes affecting Lewis? At all?

Guess well have to pupil place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So no changes affecting Lewis? At all?

Guess well have to pupil place.

No objection to you pupil placing, but doesn’t make a lick of sense that the decision would have hinged on whether they brought students into your school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So no changes affecting Lewis? At all?

Guess well have to pupil place.

This says it all. There have been parents throughout this boundary review process who only care about the potential for it to dilute their school's lower income, lower performing demographics. They don't care about solving the problems at the school they are zoned for, and they certainly don't care about impacts to kids who are rezoned.

When you see posts supporting the boundary review, keep in mind that it's primarily parents like this.

[Anonymous]

I’m guessing a good chunk of the school board members are quietly ecstatic that the changes weren’t as wide spread as initially anticipated.

Their lives will be a lot easier the next couple years without having to deal with the constant complaints from constituents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So no changes affecting Lewis? At all?

Guess well have to pupil place.

This says it all. There have been parents throughout this boundary review process who only care about the potential for it to dilute their school's lower income, lower performing demographics. They don't care about solving the problems at the school they are zoned for, and they certainly don't care about impacts to kids who are rezoned.

When you see posts supporting the boundary review, keep in mind that it's primarily parents like this.

Hahah you mean, a parent advocating for the best possible outcomes for their children. Yep, that’s me!