Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
Dang, that person caught those dastardly WSHS parents. It's so amazing to discover that while they were showing up at all those meetings, armed with enrollment and transfer data, historical background of WSHS boundaries, growth patterns in their pyramid, print outs of FCPS policies, and mileage/commute calculations down to the last tenth of a miles and exact minute, asking for residency checks and enforcement of transfer policy, begging the school board to freeze the boundaries of WSHS until the smaller 5th-8th grade classes replace the much larger 9th-12th grade classes, what the WSHS parents were actually doing was nafariously trying to find a K-5th elementary school from the other side of the county that they had never heard of and didn't know existed, to try to sqeeze into a 7th-8th middle school with no spots for the 6th graders and has no connection to anyone at WSHS.
Amazing! They were caught by dcum trolls.
Wow. Who knew that was what the WSHS parents were actually doing.
All that data, facts collection and organizing was just a smokescreen.
Congratulations WSHS parents, you almost fooled everyone.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
Dang, that person caught those dastardly WSHS parents. It's so amazing to discover that while they were showing up at all those meetings, armed with enrollment and transfer data, historical background of WSHS boundaries, growth patterns in their pyramid, print outs of FCPS policies, and mileage/commute calculations down to the last tenth of a miles and exact minute, asking for residency checks and enforcement of transfer policy, begging the school board to freeze the boundaries of WSHS until the smaller 5th-8th grade classes replace the much larger 9th-12th grade classes, what the WSHS parents were actually doing was nafariously trying to find a K-5th elementary school from the other side of the county that they had never heard of and didn't know existed, to try to sqeeze into a 7th-8th middle school with no spots for the 6th graders and has no connection to anyone at WSHS.
Amazing! They were caught by dcum trolls.
Wow. Who knew that was what the WSHS parents were actually doing.
All that data, facts collection and organizing was just a smokescreen.
Congratulations WSHS parents, you almost fooled everyone.
It will be very interesting to see what type of amendments, if any, Sandy Anderson offers on the 22nd. Some of you seem a bit mentally unwell.
Anyone who followed this boundary process saw people at different schools first objecting to being moved out of their schools and then offering up others to be redistricted instead.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
Dang, that person caught those dastardly WSHS parents. It's so amazing to discover that while they were showing up at all those meetings, armed with enrollment and transfer data, historical background of WSHS boundaries, growth patterns in their pyramid, print outs of FCPS policies, and mileage/commute calculations down to the last tenth of a miles and exact minute, asking for residency checks and enforcement of transfer policy, begging the school board to freeze the boundaries of WSHS until the smaller 5th-8th grade classes replace the much larger 9th-12th grade classes, what the WSHS parents were actually doing was nafariously trying to find a K-5th elementary school from the other side of the county that they had never heard of and didn't know existed, to try to sqeeze into a 7th-8th middle school with no spots for the 6th graders and has no connection to anyone at WSHS.
Amazing! They were caught by dcum trolls.
Wow. Who knew that was what the WSHS parents were actually doing.
All that data, facts collection and organizing was just a smokescreen.
Congratulations WSHS parents, you almost fooled everyone.
It will be very interesting to see what type of amendments, if any, Sandy Anderson offers on the 22nd. Some of you seem a bit mentally unwell.
Anyone who followed this boundary process saw people at different schools first objecting to being moved out of their schools and then offering up others to be redistricted instead.
Yeah, the person who keeps posting that about Bren Mar is being irrational.
My post was tongue in cherk, but at some point all you can do is laugh and poke fun at the absurdity of this person insisting that WSHS parents had the time, energy or inclination to meddle in another pyramid that they have no connection to or interest in.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
And unfortunately, the closest Edison elementary school to Lewis’s attendance area is Franconia. There are absolutely neighborhoods that go to Franconia-Twain-Edison where the kids walk to Edison HS. If they wanted “a closer feeder” they’d be taking kids out of walking distance of a closer school.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
And unfortunately, the closest Edison elementary school to Lewis’s attendance area is Franconia. There are absolutely neighborhoods that go to Franconia-Twain-Edison where the kids walk to Edison HS. If they wanted “a closer feeder” they’d be taking kids out of walking distance of a closer school.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
No, it is not obvious.
Someone from your school was pushing it. Or your own Franconia school board rep.
Most likely no one from WSHS has heard of Bren Mar before today when you keep posting about it.
I’ve read all the posts today and I didn’t see anyone pushing it. I saw the first mention being something like. “Those wshs parents pushing Bren mar park” and everyone chimed in, “who ever said that?” It’s not a thing Gretchen - Stop trying to make Bren mar park to lewis happen. There are zero posts suggesting it
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Spin it however you'd like. We know WSHS parents have been offering up Edison or Annandale feeders to move to Lewis instead of anyone from West Springfield for 18 months.
The illogic in your post is illustrated by the suggestion that Lewis parents wanted families who were "happy to join their school," when no one from Bren Mar Park wanted to move to Lewis.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Spin it however you'd like. We know WSHS parents have been offering up Edison or Annandale feeders to move to Lewis instead of anyone from West Springfield for 18 months.
The illogic in your post is illustrated by the suggestion that Lewis parents wanted families who were "happy to join their school," when no one from Bren Mar Park wanted to move to Lewis.
I know I’m being punked here. And I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls. It’s almost satire at this point. 🙄. I just can’t figure out who is having this much fun making up stories about boundaries just to rile people up
I haven’t been following this issue closely but listed to the meeting from yesterday just out of curiosity and I wanted to see if anyone was still upset in the wolftrap/vienna area.
I had no idea what was going on at Glasgow! Wow that’s not ok! I feel terrible for those families.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Spin it however you'd like. We know WSHS parents have been offering up Edison or Annandale feeders to move to Lewis instead of anyone from West Springfield for 18 months.
The illogic in your post is illustrated by the suggestion that Lewis parents wanted families who were "happy to join their school," when no one from Bren Mar Park wanted to move to Lewis.
I know I’m being punked here. And I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls. It’s almost satire at this point. 🙄. I just can’t figure out who is having this much fun making up stories about boundaries just to rile people up
When you're at the county's most overcrowded high school heading into a county-wide boundary review, and adjacent to the county's most under-enrolled high school, you need a multi-prong strategy to try and ward it off - i.e., (1) the overcrowding at WSHS is just temporary; (2) the people suggesting the boundary should be adjusted are horrible, hypocritical white women; and (3) if you must redistrict someone, redistrict someone else from Edison or Annandale to Lewis instead. And then deny you ever said anything but (1).
Anonymous wrote:I haven’t been following this issue closely but listed to the meeting from yesterday just out of curiosity and I wanted to see if anyone was still upset in the wolftrap/vienna area.
I had no idea what was going on at Glasgow! Wow that’s not ok! I feel terrible for those families.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Spin it however you'd like. We know WSHS parents have been offering up Edison or Annandale feeders to move to Lewis instead of anyone from West Springfield for 18 months.
The illogic in your post is illustrated by the suggestion that Lewis parents wanted families who were "happy to join their school," when no one from Bren Mar Park wanted to move to Lewis.
I know I’m being punked here. And I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls. It’s almost satire at this point. 🙄. I just can’t figure out who is having this much fun making up stories about boundaries just to rile people up
When you're at the county's most overcrowded high school heading into a county-wide boundary review, and adjacent to the county's most under-enrolled high school, you need a multi-prong strategy to try and ward it off - i.e., (1) the overcrowding at WSHS is just temporary; (2) the people suggesting the boundary should be adjusted are horrible, hypocritical white women; and (3) if you must redistrict someone, redistrict someone else from Edison or Annandale to Lewis instead. And then deny you ever said anything but (1).
Edison needs capacity relief too though, especially with the new development. I always said that the capacity at Lewis would be needed when Edison starts to get too over-filled.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
Spin it however you'd like. We know WSHS parents have been offering up Edison or Annandale feeders to move to Lewis instead of anyone from West Springfield for 18 months.
The illogic in your post is illustrated by the suggestion that Lewis parents wanted families who were "happy to join their school," when no one from Bren Mar Park wanted to move to Lewis.
I know I’m being punked here. And I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls. It’s almost satire at this point. 🙄. I just can’t figure out who is having this much fun making up stories about boundaries just to rile people up
When you're at the county's most overcrowded high school heading into a county-wide boundary review, and adjacent to the county's most under-enrolled high school, you need a multi-prong strategy to try and ward it off - i.e., (1) the overcrowding at WSHS is just temporary; (2) the people suggesting the boundary should be adjusted are horrible, hypocritical white women; and (3) if you must redistrict someone, redistrict someone else from Edison or Annandale to Lewis instead. And then deny you ever said anything but (1).
#2 & #3 are the same person.
The mean white woman poster and the strange fixation on bren mar poster are the same troll.
#1 is a whole bunch of WSHS parents, who are not part of #2 or #3.
Anonymous wrote:Do you think school board will amend with new changes from Reid’s proposal or just remove some of her changes? I hope nothing new - maybe just add to list of things to look at in future?
They might put some of the Map 4 changes back into play (WSHS comes to mind)
There are some very upset Cardinal Forest families at Reid's last minute changes that switched that Keene Mill island down near White Oaks, Shannon Station, from getting rezoned to White Oaks elementary and Lake Braddock in Map 4, to Reid rezoning them to Cardinal Forest, putting Cardinal Forest well over capacity, and also rezoning walkable Cardinal Forest neighborhoods from Cardinal Forest to farther away Keene Mill elementary.
Moving Shannon Station to White Oaks in Map 4 eliminated an attendance island and decreased West Springfield High School by around 100 students. It also lowered transportation costs by sending them to a closer school, and sent Shannon Station to equivalent schools with the same programs. The Shannon Station move was low hanging fruit and met every last one of the four rezoning mandates given to the BRAC committee by the school board.
Reid's map keeps everyone at WSHS. Reid keeps the recommendation from Map 4 to move two SPAs from Rolling Valley to Saratoga, but leaves one Rolling Valley SPA from the Parkway area at status quo (Rolling Valley > Key > Lewis), which means that instead of being a roughly 60/40 split feeder between WSHS and Lewis, Rolling Valley is now less than 10% split going to Lewis.
What Reid did to the WSHS maps by keeping Emerald Chase at WSHS and rezoning Rolling Valley the way that she did, puts a huge target on WSHS for mid cycle rezoning in the next year or two.
Sandy Anderson openly stated this at the school board meeting last week. Anderson's term goes through 2028. Rezoning WSHS has been her consistent, stated goal since soon after she was sworn in. If she can find a way to rezone neighborhoods out of WSHS in an off cycle rezoning before her term ends, and move RV into WSHS, then she will definitely try.
If you know the history and follow the process, it is clear that Reid's map, trying to keep everyone happy, is the worst case scenario for WSHS as it means continuous, mid cycle rezoning.
I sincerely hope that the school board adopts Map 4 for WSHS, for at least Shannon Station. Or, if they leave Shannon Station at WSHS, then I hope they rezone SPA 8922 along the Parkway to Saratoga, along with the rest of the Rolling Valley Lewis schools.
In my opinion, that is the best way to protect WSHS from mid cycle rezoning.
One correction to my post.
School board elections are odd years in FairfaxCounty, 2019, 2023, 2027...
The term ends in January 2028, while the election is November 2027, roughly 22 months from now.
This school board has roughly 2 years to continue to make their mark on our kids' education. I think they are counting on voters completely forgetting about this rezoning mess by the next election.
Hard to do that when Sandy Anderson promised that this is just the start and they’re planning to continue looking at a variety of schools starting in January from the superintendent’s list.
Is anyone familiar with her origin story? I’m genuinely curious why she’s so singularly focused on WSHS. How does someone wake up one day and decide that rezoning this one school becomes their life’s mission?
Some people just think they know best. They claim to "care more" than you do. "Savior" mentality.
A white suburban woman knows what is good for poor black, Latino and Asian children than their own parents. These women are the real racists.
Correct.
Those two white women who argued for more boundary changes are just trying to get more kids like theirs in their classrooms. I question their motives. The only one who seemed to be truly crunchy was the elderly woman with short hair who clearly doesn’t have kids in the school district, but even her children probably benefited from the system she is now trying to change.
So some FCPS schools are designated for black, Latino, and Asian students? That is what you can read from your statement.
Lewis is closing in on only 1500 students this year and will almost certainly start next year around 1450 if nothing is done. It is not like the other FCPS schools simply in the NUMBER of students, be they white, black, Latino, Asian, or other.
But they are doing something. They’re looking at stopping transfers out by adding programming. That’s what Reid said.
And it looks like they are going to add Bren Mar Park elementary before the 5 year review. Which also helps relieve capacity issues at Edison so is a good change.
I have no idea why we’re suddenly bringing up a NYT podcast from an entirely different cultural era … definitely not a relevant piece of media in these extremely different times.
It’s not clear it’s a good change. It quickly got tabled for this cycle whereas they went ahead with the other last-minute changes to move kids out of Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church and Holmes/Annandale. They ended up getting a lot of push back from the Beech Tree families, but they hadn’t tabled those changes like they had with Bren Mar Park.
It isn’t a change that is being proposed to add kids to Lewis - rather, it is to take kids out of Edison. Edison needs to get rid of some students in order to accommodate growth in the region - they’ve already broken ground on a large neighborhood in Kingstowne where the old Top Golf used to be and that area will for sure be zoned for Edison. Never mind when the Franconia government center gets redeveloped in a few years. I know BMP would like to end up back at Annandale but Annandale also can’t accommodate more students at this point.
All of Bren Mar Park went to Annandale before 2011. Bren Mar Park ES used to be two different schools - Edsall Park ES covered the area north of the Beltway and west of 395, and Bren Mar Park ES the area north of the Beltway an east of 395. One area is Springfield and the other Alexandria. They closed Edsall Park decades ago. To get to Edison now, the Edsall Park area has to cross both 395 and the Beltway. The Bren Mar area just has to cross the Beltway.
Annandale has capacity to take back the Edsall Park area, and that area would no longer have to cross either the Beltway or 395. The Bren Mar area is better served by Edison. None of these folks want to go to Lewis, and they should not be moved there just to give West Springfield families comfort that someone else is getting moved instead.
So you propose making a split feeder out of BMP and sending some to Annandale and keeping some at Edison? It’s not a bad idea on paper and does get some kids out of Edison - but not sure if it’s enough kids to accommodate the new neighborhoods. And then you run into the K-5/K-6 school problems as BMP is currently a K-5 school whereas the rest of Edison and all of Lewis have K-6 elementaries.
And again - this is not about adding kids to Lewis to prop it up, it’s about reducing enrollment at Edison. I would agree if Annandale could pick up all of BMP, that is where they should go. But they can’t at this point without worsening the crowding there and then creating a spillover effect into Justice, Falls Church, Woodson etc. From a purely logistical standpoint and affecting the smallest number of schools, BMP to Lewis makes sense right now.
The CIP now has West Springfield at 114% this fall and Edison at 103%. Any future adjustments should be based on updated numbers.
Annandale could probably pick up all of BMP if needed but it’s those from west of 395 who would be most receptive to that move.
Their starting point with Lewis needs to be replacing IB with AP, which would curtail transfers. As for Edison, they can monitor enrollments to see if the projected increase in students materializes. They have Edison at 109% in 2030, but that still well below West Springfield’s current and projected capacity utilization.
Some of the elementary feeders into WSHS are heading down to below 90% capacity. All of the feeders are smaller than the classes they are replacing, some significantly like class of 2030 being 150 fewer students than graduating class of 2026.
Yet FCPS continues to show growth at WSHS in spite of the WSHS feeder schools steadily losing enrollment each year.
Either the CIP math ain't mathing at WSHS, or there is something really fishy happening with transfers into WSHS, and possible widespread residency fraud.
WSHS needs a residency check and transfer into the school frozen.
What West Springfield needs is for the parents who are so insecure about being redistricted some day to stop pitching alternative scenarios that move around other people’s kids at other schools instead. It only serves to call renewed attention to which high school FCPS currently considers and projects to be the most overcrowded in the county: WSHS.
How about you mind your business and just give those WSHS parents credit. I didn't hear them advocating for kicking or moving anyone out. They did their freaking homework, they understood the assignment, and they pushed back hard. Do the residency checks, keep limiting transfers, keep watching the declining numbers. Improving programing before you start playing ping-ponging kids around.
Some of them are pushing for Bren Mar Park to get moved to Lewis. Try to keep up.
“Them” Oh you mean the BRAC and Thru who proposed the move and then quickly took it back … I’m sure WS parents wish they were that powerful though, LOL.
The Springfield BRAC members did not have anything to do with this Bren Mar situation.
Not to be snide, but no one in the WSHS pyramid has ever heard of the school and could not locate on a map.
It's ridiculous to suggest you can speak for everyone in the WSHS pyramid.
From reading the thread today, it seemed fairly clear that someone at WS was pushing to move Bren Mar Park kids to Lewis. It's not hard to figure out the motivation: fill Lewis with kids from another pyramid, not West Springfield.
Oh, I never suggested that the idea originated with West Springfield. At some point they realized that Thru had failed to do anything about the under-enrollment at Lewis or Ricardy Anderson's years-long quest to get kids moved out of Parklawn and Glasgow. And they were still messing around with Hagel Circle.
So in December they came up with incremental proposals that hadn't been part of Scenarios 1, 2, 3 or 4. One of them involved moving Bren Mar Park from Holmes/Edison to Key/Lee, whereas Scenario 4 had it staying at Holmes but moving to Annandale. Reid didn't want to say that Thru had dropped the ball, so she said the new proposal was responsive to people at BMP claiming Annandale was too far away. But it turned out people at BMP didn't want to move to Lewis, and felt blindsided, and it got tabled. Note that the off-cycle reference just refers to BMP middle and high school feeders. So that could mean lots of things.
But today, amidst all the complaints about Sandy Anderson still wanting to mess with WSHS, it was pretty clear that one or more WSHS posters was pushing to move BMP to Lewis again. It actually isn't that big a deal, because it's not like they'll have that much influence. But it was awfully silly when claims were made that no one at WSHS had ever heard of BMP before. Some of you have spent the better part of the last 18 months pushing to move kids from Edison rather than WSHS into Lewis.
Actually, Dr. Reid came up with that idea in response to her Brac meeting with the Lewis parents who
1) begged her to find students to move into Lewis, any students
2) expressed anger at FCPS for moving Rolling Valley out of Lewis to WSHS. The Lewis parents arguements at that meeting actually killed Anderson's plan to move those townhouses into WSHS. They were prepared and convincing. Reid basically stated this outright at the following meeting for Region 4
3) told Reid that they wanted families that were happy to join their school, not parents who had been fighting it for 2 years
And
4) Brought information about all the development in the Edison zone around Kingstowne, that will push Edison over capacity. The Lewis parents suggested that FCPS rezone neighborhoods to Lewis from Edison.
If you were paying attention and following all the meetings, you would know all this.
The Lewis parents at that meeting were prepared and effective. This rezoning from Edison instead of WSHS was their baby. They might have expected a different, closer Edison feeder, but they requested Edison kids over WSHS kids. Reid and company picked Bren Mar, the wrong school. It should have been a closer elementary school and not a K-5 school.
And unfortunately, the closest Edison elementary school to Lewis’s attendance area is Franconia. There are absolutely neighborhoods that go to Franconia-Twain-Edison where the kids walk to Edison HS. If they wanted “a closer feeder” they’d be taking kids out of walking distance of a closer school.
I was almost about to repeat what you said.
I don’t know where else you would send Edison kids because the school is already at capacity and there are new developments coming, especially the one at the old Top Golf. You’re either looking at sending some kids to Lewis or to Hayfield. Those are the two closest schools.
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