FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tonight’s meeting was an absolute farce. They had Dr Reid say about 5 minutes of remarks and then the guy from Thru pretty much regurgitated the slides that were already posted. Seemed like he had hadn’t prepped at all, fumbled through his slides and then the demo of the interactive map.

They then had the in person and virtual groups split into breakout groups to discuss how they felt about the proposals for 45 mins. There was no one from the BRAC or FCPS in any of the groups to facilitate the conversation. My virtual group didn’t talk at all.

Then for the final 15 mins they brought everyone back together and you were able to submit questions via an app that others could vote up. None of the questions were answered by Dr Reid or Thru.

This clearly feels like an effort for Dr Reid to claim she solicited received community feedback but didn’t actually listen to it. As alumni of FCPS schools, I am very disappointed with the state of affairs.

Sounds like community members who took their time to attend with the hopes of meaningful participation and substantative opportunities for feedback were pigeonholed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised (but not really) that they didn't do anything with Greenbriar East. Dr. Reid specifically mentioned that school in regards to why we're even doing this whole exercise at one of the very first board meetings on the topic last year.

What meeting did she mention it? What changes did she say she was going to make? What changes do you want to see?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised (but not really) that they didn't do anything with Greenbriar East. Dr. Reid specifically mentioned that school in regards to why we're even doing this whole exercise at one of the very first board meetings on the topic last year.

What meeting did she mention it? What changes did she say she was going to make? What changes do you want to see?

I recall she made a comment about that school had gained something like 70 kids throughout the school year and she thought it was outrageous. It was at a meeting during the summer and I believe the very first one about boundary changes as I haven't listened to any others.

I used to live in an area zoned to there before I had kids but have since moved elsewhere so I don't really care. I thought her comment indicated they might move some kids from GBE to GBW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tonight’s meeting was an absolute farce. They had Dr Reid say about 5 minutes of remarks and then the guy from Thru pretty much regurgitated the slides that were already posted. Seemed like he had hadn’t prepped at all, fumbled through his slides and then the demo of the interactive map.

They then had the in person and virtual groups split into breakout groups to discuss how they felt about the proposals for 45 mins. There was no one from the BRAC or FCPS in any of the groups to facilitate the conversation. My virtual group didn’t talk at all.

Then for the final 15 mins they brought everyone back together and you were able to submit questions via an app that others could vote up. None of the questions were answered by Dr Reid or Thru.

This clearly feels like an effort for Dr Reid to claim she solicited received community feedback but didn’t actually listen to it. As alumni of FCPS schools, I am very disappointed with the state of affairs.

Thanks for the report? A couple of questions:

Was Thru soliciting comments on the proposals in the slides or the proposals in the interactive maps? They are not the same.

Do you think there was any advantage to attending a session in person as opposed to virtually, or vice versa?

It was free form questions that you could type in, so you could ask about what was proposed or the interactive maps. The interactive maps didn’t really show anything different than what was shared in the BRAC slides.

I attended virtually and my wife attended in person. It didn’t really seem to make a difference how you attended. Honestly all you really need to do is show up for the last 15 minutes to submit questions and vote up the ones you care about. They kept the voting open for an hour after the meeting ended (9PM)

Thanks for responding.

The proposals in the interactive maps are different from the BRAC slides for some pyramids, including Marshall, McLean, Madison, and Falls Church. But maybe you’re in a different pyramid so that didn’t jump out to you?

The pigeonhole submission form allows you to enter any question/feedback you want.

I would suggest joining a future meeting and providing your feedback to them that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As of now, the top 5 voted feedback on Pigeonhole from the community meeting tonight. Pretty clear that the community is opposed to boundary changes:

Actually listen to the brac and feedback. Proposals were designed by consultants who don’t know our communities and neighborhoods. Moving lines for numbers is easy, but keeping communities together should be prioritized.

Grandfather students so they can stay with old schools, if they want.

I would suggest you look at actual neighborhood boundaries so as not to separate children in the same housing community.

I would not make changes at this time

You should talk to the actual impacted communities individually to understand unique considerations of the individual neighborhoods and why these changes are so problematic and don’t meet the stated goals of policy

Lest this be lost in the noise, I think these most popular comments from last night are very telling of where the community is at right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised (but not really) that they didn't do anything with Greenbriar East. Dr. Reid specifically mentioned that school in regards to why we're even doing this whole exercise at one of the very first board meetings on the topic last year.

What meeting did she mention it? What changes did she say she was going to make? What changes do you want to see?

I recall she made a comment about that school had gained something like 70 kids throughout the school year and she thought it was outrageous. It was at a meeting during the summer and I believe the very first one about boundary changes as I haven't listened to any others.

I used to live in an area zoned to there before I had kids but have since moved elsewhere so I don't really care. I thought her comment indicated they might move some kids from GBE to GBW.

The big jump in enrollment at Greenbriar East was over the course of the 2023-24 school year. The enrollment has been stable this school year and it's not above capacity, so not surprised they left it alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised (but not really) that they didn't do anything with Greenbriar East. Dr. Reid specifically mentioned that school in regards to why we're even doing this whole exercise at one of the very first board meetings on the topic last year.

What meeting did she mention it? What changes did she say she was going to make? What changes do you want to see?

I recall she made a comment about that school had gained something like 70 kids throughout the school year and she thought it was outrageous. It was at a meeting during the summer and I believe the very first one about boundary changes as I haven't listened to any others.

I used to live in an area zoned to there before I had kids but have since moved elsewhere so I don't really care. I thought her comment indicated they might move some kids from GBE to GBW.

The big jump in enrollment at Greenbriar East was over the course of the 2023-24 school year. The enrollment has been stable this school year and it's not above capacity, so not surprised they left it alone.

I remember the original “leaked maps” had the Fairfax HS zoned portion of GBE shifting to Oakton HS. Did Dixit ever mention this move to GBE families?

[Anonymous]

Wonder what the Timber Lane families north of 29 are feeling right now. I think a lot of people bought in those SFH neighborhoods around West St. because there was a path to McLean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are moving some of Shrevewood that currently goes to Kilmer to Longfellow (creating a change) and taking out neighborhood that timber lane to Longfellow. Unclear what problem they are solving by changing more kids schools and friends. And creating a small Shrevewood split feeder.

We’re in that area and Longfellow is closer to us than Kilmer so we’d be fine with that change.

Marshall is closer than McLean but Shreve just turns into Haycock on the other side of Route 7 and it’s fairly easy to get to McLean on Shreve/Haycock and then Westmoreland.

Do you have kids in Shrevewood? It's a tight knit community that has already been torn apart with a LLIV/AAP change. Not sure it can handle this change on top of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wonder what the Timber Lane families north of 29 are feeling right now. I think a lot of people bought in those SFH neighborhoods around West St. because there was a path to McLean.

100%

[Anonymous]

We live in that neighborhood - kids went to timber lane, Longfellow and now at McLean. This is about keeping my kids at same hs and with friends, just like it is for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wonder what the Timber Lane families north of 29 are feeling right now. I think a lot of people bought in those SFH neighborhoods around West St. because there was a path to McLean.

That was always a weird section to be zoned to McLean. Crossing Route 7 can add a lot of time. The folks who bought there should have known a change would be possible but were willing to take that risk in exchange for the benefit of lower cost housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As of now, the top 5 voted feedback on Pigeonhole from the community meeting tonight. Pretty clear that the community is opposed to boundary changes:

Actually listen to the brac and feedback. Proposals were designed by consultants who don’t know our communities and neighborhoods. Moving lines for numbers is easy, but keeping communities together should be prioritized.

Grandfather students so they can stay with old schools, if they want.

I would suggest you look at actual neighborhood boundaries so as not to separate children in the same housing community.

I would not make changes at this time

You should talk to the actual impacted communities individually to understand unique considerations of the individual neighborhoods and why these changes are so problematic and don’t meet the stated goals of policy

Lest this be lost in the noise, I think these most popular comments from last night are very telling of where the community is at right now.

Agreed. I attended the meeting last night on zoom, too, and had a similar experience on the person who posted on the last page. They didn’t answer any questions and just threw online participants into a zoom room for 45 minutes without even the questions we were supposed to talk about with each other. It was a waste. No opportunity to ask questions except at the end when they did their voting thing. It was VERY clear from all of the comments submitted for voting that this does not have support in the community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are moving some of Shrevewood that currently goes to Kilmer to Longfellow (creating a change) and taking out neighborhood that timber lane to Longfellow. Unclear what problem they are solving by changing more kids schools and friends. And creating a small Shrevewood split feeder.

We’re in that area and Longfellow is closer to us than Kilmer so we’d be fine with that change.

Marshall is closer than McLean but Shreve just turns into Haycock on the other side of Route 7 and it’s fairly easy to get to McLean on Shreve/Haycock and then Westmoreland.

Do you have kids in Shrevewood? It's a tight knit community that has already been torn apart with a LLIV/AAP change. Not sure it can handle this change on top of that.

We’re in the Shrevewood boundary but kid in ES is now at Lemon Road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The capacity projections since significantly different from what were in the slides, I'm guessing from compounding impacts of different scenarios but it sounds like there are some changes that are being proposed that was not previewed during the scenarios?

Yes.

For example, they are rezoning a Sangster/Lake Braddock neighborhood to Newington Forest and South County (just a handful of students, around a dozen for middle school and 20-something for high school) and replacing them by rezoning a small Silverbrook/SoCo neighborhood to Sangster/LB.

The Silverbrook neighborhood was not included in the original rezoning maps, so those folks are in for a surprise.

In both cases it is just one small neighborhood of a few streets, so FCPS is going to disrupt a couple dozen kids by taking them away from all their friends, to essentially just flip them to schools that are not really closer than their original schools.

It is pretty $hitty to disrupt families like this, if you ask me, especially when there is zero benefit, not even an overcrowding issue at any of the schools involved, and no measurable transportation savings as both neighborhoods are bus neighborhoods at about the same distance.

This kind of stuff is maddening. It goes against what they said they would do, which was minimize impact to the community. We’re party of the Hunt Valley area that becomes a new split feeder and gets moved to South County middle school, which then goes up to 104 percent capacity. It doesn’t make any sense.

Are they releasing these draft maps in this way to justify more drastic changes in the actual maps that get released this summer? I don’t trust this process at all.