FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It worked for Langley and the FairFACTS families. Don't hate on Emerald Chase cause you can't play the game.

You guys were rude, ignorant and selfish.

And you took away the voice of people in that pyramid.

The Langley and Fairfacts did not do what you did to take away the voice of other schools in the district. In fact, the Fairfacts and Langley folks were generous and helpful to other neighborhoods across the county to help them organize to get their voices heard.

The Emerald Crest families were behaving like selfish jerks.

It's EMERALD CHASE, sad West Springfield lady. Sorry you don't understand how to organize.

Not a good look for your neighbohood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds kind of like what Mantua folks were doing in the earlier meetings.

Mantua!

Yes, sorry. I said Greenbrier, but it was Mantua. Apologies to Mantua.

Yes, sort of.

I was at the meeting where FCPS asked the Mantua families to not overwhelm the meeting so the people from that Region 4 could have their bouces heard.

The Mantua parents ended up being very respectful at that meeting, so the families from that region could make their vouces heard.

What Emerald Chase did tonight was far worse.

[Anonymous]

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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.

It would be sad if Shrevewood no longer served the very neighborhood that used to support it.

They haven’t proposed to move anyone out of Shrevewood.

The discussion got derailed a bit, but the conversation is about the Falls Hill neighborhood (or most of it) being assigned to Longfellow/McLean. So Shrevewood goes to a split feeder.

Shrevewood also gains some from Timber Lane, popping them back over 100% utilization. At least until Dunn Loring is ready.

I’d responded to a post that suggested kids would be moved out of Shrevewood. None of Thru’s proposals call for that, only for adding some kids now at Timber Lane to Shrevewood.

Agree like the new Shrevewood split looks uneven, but they could address that by moving the part of Lemon Road right next to Marshall to another Marshall feeder like Westgate or Freedom Hill and keeping them at GCM. Both have capacity. Then they could move more of Shrevewood off Idylwood Road to McLean so it’s a more even split.

I don’t think any group of any size at McLean or Marshall were pushing for changes so no problem w/me if they forget about ANY of these proposed changes. But if they start going down the path of addressing the Timber Lane island, the Graham Road situation (the school is outside its attendance area), the overcrowding at Kilmer, etc., they can make some tweaks that would make Shrevewood a more even split.

I’m surprised Marshall parents aren’t raising more concerns about the kids who’d move to Madison under the latest proposals, but it seems the biggest complaint is from some Shrevewood parents who don’t want more FARMS kids off Route 29. But if that’s the case you have to give FCPS an alternative as Timber Lane can’t keep all those kids with the additional kids it would be picking up south of Route 29 as part of the Graham Road-driven changes.

No the Shrevewood parents are pissed that it's now slated to become a split feeder - it's been a 100% feeder to Marshall for at least the past decade my kids attended. And that the way it's becoming a split feeder is to rip a neighborhood in half that attends (and can walk to) Shrevewood. And there are even crazier proposals related to Marshall - like moving the TH community adjacent to Marshall to McLean! If they were going to tackle Kilmer/Marshall overcrowding, why not look to the portion that is out past Wolf Trap rather than houses literally next door to Marshall!

If you look at Marshall currently, there are 7 split feeders feeding into Marshall: Cunningham Park, Lemon Road, Vienna, Westbriar, Westgate, Wolftrap, and Kilmer.

The latest Thru proposals try to reduce that number to 4: Cunningham Park, Shrevewood, Westbriar, and Wolftrap. I say "try" because they still have a split feeder at Westgate even though they purported to eliminate it. Even so, reducing 7 split feeders to 4-5 is progress if you think split feeders are bad.

They shouldn't move the TH community adjacent to Marshall that's zoned to Lemon Road to McLean, but they can reassign it to another Marshall feeder like Westgate or Freedom Hill so all of Lemon Road goes to McLean and then move more of Shrevewood to McLean.

Or they can do something else, or do nothing. If they moved the area near Wolf Trap out of Kilmer/Marshall, it would likely go to Thoreau/Madison. If they did this and made the other changes they've proposed, they'd be leaving Longfellow well under capacity and would need to find another area to move there. As I said before, they are trying to deal with several things, including the Timber Lane island, the Graham Road situation, the Kilmer overcrowding, and the additional capacity now available at Falls Church and Madison at the same time.

Shrevewood is NOT a split feeder now and they proposing turning it into a split feeder. Nobody wants half of our neighborhood to go to Marshall and the other half to go to McLean. It's incredibly stupid and unfair to the kids who have grown up together most of them have known each other since birth, see each other every day at the pool, etc, now you're tearing them apart for some of their most formative years in high school? It's horrible. #TeamMarshall

I understand that. But it would become a split feeder as part of a set of related changes that would reduce the number of Marshall feeders that are split feeders. So it's a net gain from that perspective.

You have your views, and I respect them, but I've already seen at least poster say they'd welcome the reassignment. Some may prefer AP at McLean. It looks like Kilmer needs relief and reducing the base enrollment at Marshall would mean that a bunch of motivated kids from the surrounding AP schools (Langley, McLean, Madison, and Falls Church) who want IB could attend Marshall, which used to get a lot of transfers for IB but has largely been closed to pupil placements in recent years.

That was me. It’s fine with us if we move to Longfellow and McLean or stay at Kilmer and Marshall. Kid is just in elementary now but I’m sure friends at other split feeders like Lemon Road can stay friends.

I would be fine with ALL of Shrevewood moving to Longfellow McLean or even the entire neighborhood moving to Longfellow McLean, but the arbitrary cut off in the middle of a really close knit neighborhood is insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It worked for Langley and the FairFACTS families. Don't hate on Emerald Chase cause you can't play the game.

You guys were rude, ignorant and selfish.

And you took away the voice of people in that pyramid.

The Langley and Fairfacts did not do what you did to take away the voice of other schools in the district. In fact, the Fairfacts and Langley folks were generous and helpful to other neighborhoods across the county to help them organize to get their voices heard.

The Emerald Crest families were behaving like selfish jerks.

It's EMERALD CHASE, sad West Springfield lady. Sorry you don't understand how to organize.

How would you feel if all of the rest of the area decides to organize to flood the rest of the meetings with posts saying that rezoning Emerald Chase to Westfield is the best rezoning choice FCPS could make?

DP. I think now they will. Anyone can go to any meeting online and only the loudest will get their way. Langley proved that. Next meeting will be interesting, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:All the feedback on pigeonhole from community meeting tonight is basically: don’t move my kids.

I have no idea where Emerald Chase is but that community’s ability to game the system to get their responses to dominate the system is next level.

Yes, they are.

Tonight's meeting was for a pyramid on the other side of the county, and the Emerald Crest flooded the system with hundreds of upvotes so their posts dominated the feedback.

They had more upvotes than affected families.

Did they use bots?

One of the elementary schools, I think one of the Greenbrier, tried this on the first round of meetings, and FCPS told them to stop so other pyramids could give feedback. Greenbrier actually listened, and were very respectful of the other schools.

But the South Lakes Emerald neighborhood is just taking over.

It is really, really rude to do this to the other parts of the county that want to make their voices heard.

After seeing how they took over the meeting tonight at Robinson through some sort of bot or out of state families and friends giving feedback from a facebook request, I almost hope that Emerald neighborhood gets rezoned to where they don't want to go.

They were rude and selfish.

Is that the area that would get moved from Westfield to South Lakes or somewhere else?

They were from somewhere in Reston according to their posts with hundreds of upvotes.

The meeting tonight was for the Region 4 schools.

Hunt Valley is the largest group getting rezoned, but there are several tiny neighborhoods where FCPS is trading a few streets from Silverbrook with a few streets from Sangster, a truly stupid rezoning if you know the area and the traffic patterns. It is literally 5 to 10 kids per grade in those 2 neighborhoods. Those voice and their valuable feedback were completely drowned out, because they did not have enough numbers to be seen in the 300-400+ online upvotes from.the Emerald Chase families from Reston. They even drowned out the WSHS/Hunt Valley families, who were quite numerous in attendance, because they took over online voting and completely prevented the aregion 4 families from having their feedback heard.

It was so, so selfish and rude.

They should be embarrassed by how they treated everyone else.

That makes sense now. I was virtual and it seemed to be a few of us from WSHS but that neighborhood was overwhelming the whole system. Oh well. I left my comments and also commented on the map tool.

But I see every other meeting being like this too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

I was right, they have a page on their HOA website. https://www.emeraldchase.org/p/BOUNDARY-REVIEW

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It worked for Langley and the FairFACTS families. Don't hate on Emerald Chase cause you can't play the game.

You guys were rude, ignorant and selfish.

And you took away the voice of people in that pyramid.

The Langley and Fairfacts did not do what you did to take away the voice of other schools in the district. In fact, the Fairfacts and Langley folks were generous and helpful to other neighborhoods across the county to help them organize to get their voices heard.

The Emerald Crest families were behaving like selfish jerks.

It's EMERALD CHASE, sad West Springfield lady. Sorry you don't understand how to organize.

How would you feel if all of the rest of the area decides to organize to flood the rest of the meetings with posts saying that rezoning Emerald Chase to Westfield is the best rezoning choice FCPS could make?

Wasn't there and I don't live in that neighborhood, but I do live nearby. Emerald Chase currently goes to Westfield. I'm not sure what they want. I've been paying attention on this forum and I think there was one who was glad to be switched to South Lakes (a few pages ago). Others appear to be against it.
I think there is one parent who objected strongly to the split feeder at Carson --maybe that is why she liked the shift to South Lakes. It's hard to tell on an anonymous forum.

[Anonymous]

I have to speak up for the Langley/Fairfacts folks. We are from the other side of the county. They have been nothing but helpful to us. They shared, and helped us find information. They gave us advice and insight. They quickly caught us up on the rezoning history. They even offered to help us set up community meetings to get information out.

They were nothing but generous, even though they could have just as easily ignored us, as our issues are not their issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like they should’ve flipped the island to Crossfield-Carson-Oakton…….then moved the Emerlad Chase neighborhood out of Carson and into their spot at Franklin.

They never had a place in Franklin. Aren’t they going Oak Hill/Carson/Westfield to Fox Mill/Carson/South Lakes?

I think PP meant Emerald Chase could replace the Navy Island place at Franklin and send the Navy Island to Carson.

Emerald Chase is currently Oak Hill/Carson/Westfield. The options (not sure which options) have them at Fox Mill/Carson/South Lakes.

A few years ago, they were switched from Floris/Carson/Westfield to Oak Hill.

Emerald Chase is in a small pocket that also includes some of Bradley Farm. (I always thought the whole pocket was Emerald Chase, but just learned differently.) It is located along West Ox between 286 and McLearen.

That neighborhood has been flipped between schools way more often than most FCPS families. They used to be at Oakton High School, then Westfield High School, and now probably South Lakes High School. They've also been at two different elementary schools, and now will probably be at a third elementary school. That's all from 2000 to now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

I was right, they have a page on their HOA website. https://www.emeraldchase.org/p/BOUNDARY-REVIEW

ALSO, oh my god, they are not just trying to convince Thru to keep them where they are, NO, they want to go to "better" schools. They want them to completely change their pyramid from Oak Hill - Carson - Westfield to Oak Hill - Franklin - Chantilly. WTF????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

They had hundreds of upvotes, far more upvotes than houses or residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

Emerald Chase might only have 168 houses, but part of Bradley Farm is also part of this change. That adds more houses/families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are they using feedback from these meetings? At the one tonight, most of the people in the room were talking about WSHS, which was the closest to Robinson because that was the meeting for our pyramid. But the online voting were almost exclusively about Emerald Chase. The Thru consulting guy at the meeting said this was the opportunity to allow the public to provide feedback and the best feedback would rise to the top. But doesn't this now mean that every part of this county which has an issue with these maps will need to figure out how game the system for each of these meetings and have a bunch of people on laptops trying to drive up their concerns to get Thru to pay attention? This seems so messed up.

It sounds like one small HOA convinced everyone in the neighborhood to join the call. I looked it up, Emerald Chase is really small. 168 houses.

A small portion of Bradley Farm is also in that pocket with Emerald Chase. I've no idea what the breakdown is in the number. The sign by West Ox just says Emerald Chase. But it is likely a good bit more than 168 in that pocket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like they should’ve flipped the island to Crossfield-Carson-Oakton…….then moved the Emerlad Chase neighborhood out of Carson and into their spot at Franklin.

They never had a place in Franklin. Aren’t they going Oak Hill/Carson/Westfield to Fox Mill/Carson/South Lakes?

I think PP meant Emerald Chase could replace the Navy Island place at Franklin and send the Navy Island to Carson.

Emerald Chase is currently Oak Hill/Carson/Westfield. The options (not sure which options) have them at Fox Mill/Carson/South Lakes.

A few years ago, they were switched from Floris/Carson/Westfield to Oak Hill.

Emerald Chase is in a small pocket that also includes some of Bradley Farm. (I always thought the whole pocket was Emerald Chase, but just learned differently.) It is located along West Ox between 286 and McLearen.

That neighborhood has been flipped between schools way more often than most FCPS families. They used to be at Oakton High School, then Westfield High School, and now probably South Lakes High School. They've also been at two different elementary schools, and now will probably be at a third elementary school. That's all from 2000 to now.

I didn't know that. That explains why they have a community organizer and marketing manager for this effort.