FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP. They might have more experience than that poster, but I agree that the yield projections are grossly off across the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP. They might have more experience than that poster, but I agree that the yield projections are grossly off across the county.

If you look at historical accuracy, they haven't been too bad although the pre-Covid projections not surprisingly ended up over-projecting enrollments in the years most affected by Covid.

If you're just saying their projections for the future are grossly off, then the burden is on you to explain how or why. Just claiming that multi-family housing is going to produce hundreds of new students won't cut it because they do have a historical basis to project lower yields from such units.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP, they may, but at least as of a few years ago they had some ridiculous rules about needing to use the same formula for student yield for every development across the county, which is how situations like Coates occur. I don't know where those rules are made/imposed (SB vs. Supt. vs. staff) but such rules are totally shooting themselves in the foot by not being able to project accurately.

16 HS implies 4 per year, so that would be basically 72 total kids (0-17 yo), or an average of one child per 5.5 apartments. However, it's also possible they're projecting a percentage of them would transfer to other other schools, so potentially more HS kids in the complex, but only 16 actually attending Lewis based on past trends? Don't know, just speculating as to another possible reason why that number would seem so off from likely realities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP, they may, but at least as of a few years ago they had some ridiculous rules about needing to use the same formula for student yield for every development across the county, which is how situations like Coates occur. I don't know where those rules are made/imposed (SB vs. Supt. vs. staff) but such rules are totally shooting themselves in the foot by not being able to project accurately.

16 HS implies 4 per year, so that would be basically 72 total kids (0-17 yo), or an average of one child per 5.5 apartments. However, it's also possible they're projecting a percentage of them would transfer to other other schools, so potentially more HS kids in the complex, but only 16 actually attending Lewis based on past trends? Don't know, just speculating as to another possible reason why that number would seem so off from likely realities.

They project different yields from (1) single-family houses, (2) attached houses (townhouses), (3) low-rise apartments, and (4) high-rise apartments. At some point they looked at how the yields in those categories varied in different areas (can't recall if it was by magisterial district or region/cluster or school pyramid), but I don't know if they ever implemented that. Depending on how robust the data was, using different formulas for different pyramids could actually lead to greater errors if past yields weren't repeated.

As for Coates, I thought the issue was that it had a big influx of Afghan refugees in certain rental complexes after the Taliban gained control, so not sure how FCPS models for that in advance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

+1 I was just coming to post something similar. That poster is letting their fear of being rezoned to Lewis turn into some pretty unhinged arguments pulled from thin air.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP. They might have more experience than that poster, but I agree that the yield projections are grossly off across the county.

If you look at historical accuracy, they haven't been too bad although the pre-Covid projections not surprisingly ended up over-projecting enrollments in the years most affected by Covid.

If you're just saying their projections for the future are grossly off, then the burden is on you to explain how or why. Just claiming that multi-family housing is going to produce hundreds of new students won't cut it because they do have a historical basis to project lower yields from such units.

Where are you getting the historical accuracy? From their county wide numbers? Laughable.

Look, fairfacts matters has the CIP data from last year, has looked extensively at it, and determined that only like 161 additional students are protected for developments each year. I’d bet as big a number as you’d like that that number is under what it should be, and here’s why it is off: they don’t count a development until it breaks ground.

The only way that is not an undercount is if it is impossible for a development to be finished in five years. And before you respond by saying that those developments aren’t certain, I concede that point, but the estimated yield can and should be multiplied by some discount factor to arrive at the best guess estimate. Right now, saying that these developments shouldn’t count toward yield just yields horrible projections, which benefits absolutely no one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

+1 I was just coming to post something similar. That poster is letting their fear of being rezoned to Lewis turn into some pretty unhinged arguments pulled from thin air.

I’m a different poster, but have the data to back up the pp’s arguments that the projections are way off, intentionally so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP, they may, but at least as of a few years ago they had some ridiculous rules about needing to use the same formula for student yield for every development across the county, which is how situations like Coates occur. I don't know where those rules are made/imposed (SB vs. Supt. vs. staff) but such rules are totally shooting themselves in the foot by not being able to project accurately.

16 HS implies 4 per year, so that would be basically 72 total kids (0-17 yo), or an average of one child per 5.5 apartments. However, it's also possible they're projecting a percentage of them would transfer to other other schools, so potentially more HS kids in the complex, but only 16 actually attending Lewis based on past trends? Don't know, just speculating as to another possible reason why that number would seem so off from likely realities.

They project different yields from (1) single-family houses, (2) attached houses (townhouses), (3) low-rise apartments, and (4) high-rise apartments. At some point they looked at how the yields in those categories varied in different areas (can't recall if it was by magisterial district or region/cluster or school pyramid), but I don't know if they ever implemented that. Depending on how robust the data was, using different formulas for different pyramids could actually lead to greater errors if past yields weren't repeated.

As for Coates, I thought the issue was that it had a big influx of Afghan refugees in certain rental complexes after the Taliban gained control, so not sure how FCPS models for that in advance.

I think the afghani situation is parklawn. There are some really shady things going on in Herndon when it comes to residency fraud, those numbers are all over the place.

We know how FCPS responds to residency fraud. Did nothing at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP. They might have more experience than that poster, but I agree that the yield projections are grossly off across the county.

If you look at historical accuracy, they haven't been too bad although the pre-Covid projections not surprisingly ended up over-projecting enrollments in the years most affected by Covid.

If you're just saying their projections for the future are grossly off, then the burden is on you to explain how or why. Just claiming that multi-family housing is going to produce hundreds of new students won't cut it because they do have a historical basis to project lower yields from such units.

Where are you getting the historical accuracy? From their county wide numbers? Laughable.

Look, fairfacts matters has the CIP data from last year, has looked extensively at it, and determined that only like 161 additional students are protected for developments each year. I’d bet as big a number as you’d like that that number is under what it should be, and here’s why it is off: they don’t count a development until it breaks ground.

The only way that is not an undercount is if it is impossible for a development to be finished in five years. And before you respond by saying that those developments aren’t certain, I concede that point, but the estimated yield can and should be multiplied by some discount factor to arrive at the best guess estimate. Right now, saying that these developments shouldn’t count toward yield just yields horrible projections, which benefits absolutely no one.

FairFACTS Matters makes a lot of claims about what its research has uncovered, but it hasn't been transparent with respect to its research or findings. They talk a lot about their conclusions, similar to what you've done here, but there's no way to evaluate the quality of their research.

I'm not even sure what it means to say "only 161 additional students are [projected] for developments each year." Right now the FCPS "Residential Development Applications Dashboard" indicates a potential yield of 1151 high school students from projects in the county (excluding the towns) under construction as of November 2024. FCPS says it includes projects under construction in its forecasts, but some of them could be under construction for some time, so who knows how that translates on an annual basis.

Also, the projections are updated annually, so if a project moves from "pending" or "approved" to "under construction," then it would get included in the projections once it's under construction. It may mean that some of the longer-term projections are less reliable, and their planning decisions aren't being informed by longer-term development, but they are mostly making capital decisions based on their 2008 renovation queue rather than enrollment forecasts anyway. That's the bigger issue - they've tied themselves largely to a queue developed over 15 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

+1 I was just coming to post something similar. That poster is letting their fear of being rezoned to Lewis turn into some pretty unhinged arguments pulled from thin air.

I’m a different poster, but have the data to back up the pp’s arguments that the projections are way off, intentionally so.

Ok they post it

[Anonymous]

*post it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

+1 I was just coming to post something similar. That poster is letting their fear of being rezoned to Lewis turn into some pretty unhinged arguments pulled from thin air.

I’m a different poster, but have the data to back up the pp’s arguments that the projections are way off, intentionally so.

Ok they post it

This is all FOIA data. If you’d like access to it, reach out to fairfacts matters. They have the data and would likely share it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

DP. They might have more experience than that poster, but I agree that the yield projections are grossly off across the county.

If you look at historical accuracy, they haven't been too bad although the pre-Covid projections not surprisingly ended up over-projecting enrollments in the years most affected by Covid.

If you're just saying their projections for the future are grossly off, then the burden is on you to explain how or why. Just claiming that multi-family housing is going to produce hundreds of new students won't cut it because they do have a historical basis to project lower yields from such units.

Where are you getting the historical accuracy? From their county wide numbers? Laughable.

Look, fairfacts matters has the CIP data from last year, has looked extensively at it, and determined that only like 161 additional students are protected for developments each year. I’d bet as big a number as you’d like that that number is under what it should be, and here’s why it is off: they don’t count a development until it breaks ground.

The only way that is not an undercount is if it is impossible for a development to be finished in five years. And before you respond by saying that those developments aren’t certain, I concede that point, but the estimated yield can and should be multiplied by some discount factor to arrive at the best guess estimate. Right now, saying that these developments shouldn’t count toward yield just yields horrible projections, which benefits absolutely no one.

FairFACTS Matters makes a lot of claims about what its research has uncovered, but it hasn't been transparent with respect to its research or findings. They talk a lot about their conclusions, similar to what you've done here, but there's no way to evaluate the quality of their research.

I'm not even sure what it means to say "only 161 additional students are [projected] for developments each year." Right now the FCPS "Residential Development Applications Dashboard" indicates a potential yield of 1151 high school students from projects in the county (excluding the towns) under construction as of November 2024. FCPS says it includes projects under construction in its forecasts, but some of them could be under construction for some time, so who knows how that translates on an annual basis.

Also, the projections are updated annually, so if a project moves from "pending" or "approved" to "under construction," then it would get included in the projections once it's under construction. It may mean that some of the longer-term projections are less reliable, and their planning decisions aren't being informed by longer-term development, but they are mostly making capital decisions based on their 2008 renovation queue rather than enrollment forecasts anyway. That's the bigger issue - they've tied themselves largely to a queue developed over 15 years ago.

Here’s a great example.

TRG. The Town of Herndon projects over 500 units coming online in 2028 and almost 500 in 2030. Combined that’s over a thousand anticipated residential units projected by the town of Herndon by 2030. You can verify that in the appendix of the town’s own PPT.

If FCPS is to be believed, it estimates ZERO students from that approved development. That is BONKERS. 1,000 residential units projected by the Herndon government to come online by 2030 and no students? That’s just horrendously bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's say only 1/4 of those roughly 400 units have teens in them.

That is 90 to 100 new students for Lewis next year.

Close the IB program and switching to AP brings roughly 200 more students back to Lewis.

Lewis could increase its enrollment by hundreds of students in one year, to 1700-1800 students, for the 2025-2026 school year using currently zoned Lewis students and new home builds, with no distuptive rezoning necessary.

What would be worst case scenario is FCPS doing a disruptive, unwanted rezoning to any of the 2 closest WSHS zoned neighborhoods, Keene Mill or Daventry, or the farthest zoned neighborhoods from Lewis, Hunt Valley, then have dozens or hundreds of kids move to those apartments, resulting in Lewis being full or over capacity next year before the rezoning starts but after it has been decided who goes.

FCPS needs to leave Lewis alone this year, fix the IB loophole, stop the AP transfers out of Lewis, then revisit rezoning on the 2030 cycle after they see the impact of the hundreds of new housing units being built in the Lewis zone.

They are projecting that Lewis will be at 1476 kids in 2029-30. That would appear to include 16 students from projects currently under construction. If all the other pending and approved projects in the pipeline zoned to Lewis were to come to fruition - a big if - that is only estimated to add an additional 73 students. Meanwhile they are projecting West Springfield will have over 3000 students by 2029-30. Historically, they have over-estimated the enrollments at Lewis and under-estimated the enrollments at West Springfield.

If they look at that and say "hey, that's OK," there is not a single high school boundary in FCPS they should be adjusting. Not one.

They are only projecting 16 high school students in a 400 unit apartment complex walkable to Lewis?

That is laughable.

It's actually 13 from the building with 460 units near the mall and another 3 from a new single-family development with 18 houses (Spring Village Drive).

I assume they have more experience with student yields than you do.

+1 I was just coming to post something similar. That poster is letting their fear of being rezoned to Lewis turn into some pretty unhinged arguments pulled from thin air.

I’m a different poster, but have the data to back up the pp’s arguments that the projections are way off, intentionally so.

Ok they post it

This is all FOIA data. If you’d like access to it, reach out to fairfacts matters. They have the data and would likely share it.

Yeah, no. I'm not doing that. I don't believe you and that's okay.
That apartment building is not yielding anywhere near 100 highschool students. That poster sounds unhinged. Even if the projections were off, the current numbers don't lie. Lewis is under and WSHS is over. Kids are moving no matter how much crap is thrown at the wall to see what sticks.