King Abdullah Academy Closing: FCPS Buy for HS?
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Anonymous
This. Make King Ab HS an IB magnet school so anyone wants IB goes there and all the rest go back to AP. They won’t do it fast enough, but they would be best path forward. |
Anonymous
This needs a new thread |
Anonymous
No. The best path forward is to give the surrounding community the high school that has been promised for years. The school is convenient and available. It will be demographically balanced. |
Anonymous
If you take Great Falls out of the picture you still have McLean overcrowded for a decade, already recently redistricted, and sitting with the smallest capacity of any HS in the county, even though only Marshall has more enrollment growth potential. The party line has been there’s no money for an expansion and they should just suck it up and expect more boundary changes with Langley, Falls Church, and Marshall. But now they are prepared to build a new school in western Fairfax when they could have said the moment has passed and people there should just accept getting redistricted without any new high school. And they are also saying the KAA acquisition frees up about $280M in money that otherwise would have eventually been spent on the western HS. I don’t know that McLean jumps the queue, because there are still some renovations left in the queue. As it turns out, however, almost all of those renovations are of schools in western Fairfax. It wouldn’t be crazy to say that, if western Fairfax is getting a new HS, some of the ES in western Fairfax are going to see their renovations deferred and McLean (in eastern Fairfax) is going to jump the queue ahead of them. But I don’t see that happening. More likely, they could just agree that some of the money budgeted for a western HS will get spent on McLean later. Either way, Great Falls would be an indirect beneficiary, not the primary beneficiary. Or, maybe they just hate both McLean and Great Falls so much that they invest nothing in McLean, keep moving kids to Langley, and eventually trigger a Langley-to-Herndon move. It’s not like Robyn Lady cares much about either McLean or Langley. But an approach of caviar for the folks near Carson, crumbs for McLean, and uncertainty for Great Falls is something that would result in continued sniping, yet could be avoided with some deft planning and messaging. |
Anonymous
Like I said earlier today, at some point the school board has to decide whether they want UMC families in FCPS. If they continue to be hostile to these families, then they’ll just continue to drive them out of the district to the detriment of the entire community. |
Anonymous
| When people writing here that a western Hs been promised for years, what schools has it been promised for? I see people posting of who might move where but is there a starting premise of why:for whom western high school is needed? That’s still unclear to me even reading through these threads. |
Anonymous
| How does the is impact boundary rewrites or just something new in mix? |
Anonymous
The area near the site of the KAA was moved from Oakton to Westfield when Westfield opened in 2000, and then part of Floris got moved from Westfield to South Lakes in 2008. People complained about getting redistricted so frequently and promises were made that the Oak Hill/Floris area would one day get its own school. The annual Capital Improvement Programs then began referring every year to a future western HS. But then the most logical site got transferred to the Saudis and FCPS started expanding schools to add capacity. That made a new western HS seem increasingly unlikely but they never took it out of their annual CIPs. They just kept bumping the date out further. Now the site has not only become available again, but it’s become available with an already constructed school on the premises. That’s why they are saying it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. |
Anonymous
The School Board is having a work session tomorrow afternoon on the status of the boundary review. The impact of the KAA deal will surely come up. |
Anonymous
Isn't there a scenario in which the growth in Tysons requires both--that McLean does get expanded, and some McLean kids move to Langley and trigger a Langley-to-Herndon move? I don't think this is a caviar and crumbs issue fueled by hate for McLean and Great Falls. Growth is hard to predict. Sure, Tysons believes they will expand majorly, and clearly are to a large degree. Exactly how much more growth will happen, and how many public school students that will add to FCPS is less clear. |
Anonymous
You can look at both sides of the equation. Looking back McLean has been overcrowded for the past decade, and looking forward Marshall and McLean are the two high schools that the county has consistently said could see the most additional growth from potential development, much of which isn’t yet reflected in FCPS’s official forecasts. If you want to take the position that we’re cash-strapped and the only sensible approach is to change boundaries to avail of capacity wherever located, then fine, but in that case we should also be looking at ways to move kids in western Fairfax into Herndon and not acquiring the KAA, even at what may seem like a bargain price. Conversely, if we’re getting a bargain with the KAA deal and that frees up money down the road for a McLean expansion then it also seems prudent to start planning accordingly. I don’t know at what point continued McLean/Langley boundary changes would tip part of Great Falls into Herndon. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s fairly obvious that keeping more McLean kids at Longfellow/McLean eases the potential pressure on Langley (and, even more so, on Cooper). |
Anonymous
Herndon High is not near the area of KAA. The only school that would likely be close to Herndon High would be Coates. I don't see the School Board sending Coates to Herndon. Get rid of IB at South Lakes. Problem solved. |
Anonymous
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It would be great if they could modify the boundary planning to include this so it could take effect in fall 2026 as originally planned. I'd suggest just starting with 9th graders while they make any modifications. Then kids are grandfathered too. Though perhaps time is running short at this point for that. |
Anonymous
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And KAA families are heartbroken. over a thousand of them in fact. keep in mind there is evidence of this being an entirely underhanded deal. saudi money is not tax payer money. but the way that fcps went about this with your taxpayer dollars in a sneaky way is concerning. there was no transparency. even the latest ffx article says this. it was sneaky and id be concerned what else they did or might do with this property with your tax payer dollars.
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Anonymous
KAA is about 6.5 miles from HHS, which is less than a lot of kids travel now to Oakton and Langley. They may have had reservations about sending Coates to Herndon but Thru proposed to pull low-income kids out of Fort Hunt and send them to Hybla Valley and to move kids at a Title I school from McLean to Falls Church, so who knows. It’s moot if Coates ends up at the new school. People have been suggesting that FCPS eliminate IB at various schools for years and the only thing that’s ever happened is that they’ve added some AP courses at Lewis. I understand the suggestion that it would reduce pupil placements out of Herndon, but good luck convincing them to eliminate it at South Lakes. |