FCPS is turning the new high school purchased to fix crowding into an Aviation magnet school instead of a high school??
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Anonymous
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Listening to the 8/26 work session. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u11acsrpEFo
2:09 Reid convening a think tank. 2:10 Dunne - not just benefitting the western part of the county which has received a disproportionate share from FCPS and the county. Building new schools due to growth and new construction is not a disproportionate share, One might call IB $ spent a disproportionate share. Dunne on no magnet school in the eastern part of the county- oops Bucknell with geographic limits. Edison Global STEM is east. 300 students. Full time- give them a bus and call it a magnet. Never forget the eastern part of FX is what benefitted when the KAA site was let go... |
Anonymous
Do you know what the county got in return for originally transferring the KAA site? Clearly someone in a senior position (maybe in the federal government) was leaning on Fairfax to give the Saudis a place to build a school after they’d been rebuffed a few times but was there a back-door deal to give FCPS something in return? If you just look at the county records on their face it just shows a transfer for $0 but there has to be more to it, no? |
Anonymous
I do not see the county records of the original transfer to the Saudis (McL property owners LLC) from the county. |
Anonymous
I just checked the schools within Mt Vernon District. There are six high schools. I assume that other districts also attend several of those schools: Edison 2284 Hayfield: 2253 Lewis: 1622 Mt. Vernon: 1823 South County: 2087 West Potomac: 2606 The average is just over 2000 Sully *where KAA is located has only one high schoolL Westfield at 2700 These schools-while located in Springfield district have mostly Sully District students: Chantilly: 3000 Centreville: 2281 If you average those three schools, it is almost 2700 a school. There are also quite a few Sully students at Oakton: Navy and Crossfield students. There is still a lot of new construction in western Fairfax, but Sully is in great need for a new high school. Maybe, Sully needs this more than Mt Vernon district right now. |
Anonymous
So make KAA a global STEM for the west side of the county. |
Anonymous
Who was claiming the Mt. Vernon District needed a new HS? No one. Dunne was saying it would not be fair to create a new magnet school, admission to which would be limited to kids at some western high schools, when no similar program would be available to kids further east. Apples and oranges. |
Anonymous
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(cont)
One thing that intrigued me when looking at the numbers at each high school was the Regional distribution. Here is the membership of each region: 1. 36,000 2. 22,600 3. 22,800 4. 37,300 5. 39,000 6. 19,500 So, when the regions responded to the BRAC, it would appear it may be a little lopsided in how many responded and why. It also seems to me that if the due diligence of our School Board members is to be spread out properly, that the Regions should have some attempt at alignment with the magisterial districts. Obviously, since there are 12 magisterial districts, perhaps Regions could be split between two districts. Just a thought. It just seems very odd to me the way the regions are distributed. But, then the Regions don't necessarily align with the pyramids. But, Centreville and Chantilly should certainly be considered Sully schools even though they are not literally in Sully district. |
Anonymous
Western Fairfax has a STEM We do not NEED a "global STEM." We need a regular high school. Look at the numbers. If they don't take advantage of this site now, they are going to have a more difficult problem very soon. |
Anonymous
DP. Did a bit of digging about Edison's "global STEM" program. It's a three-year program 90 students per grade, so 270 in total. Students zoned to Edison have first priority and the only pre-requisite is having completed Algebra I. If Edison kids don't take all the slots, students from any other pyramid are accepted in the order in which applications are received. Those students are treated as "student transfers" under FCPS Regulation 2230 (under the "High School Curricular" category). The curriculum doesn't seem super specialized, but rather existing honors and IB courses with a "practical applications" overlay. In 2024-25, Edison had a total of 179 transfers into the school. Of the 179 transfers, only 60 are identified as pursuant to the student transfer regulation. The "global STEM" program is just one basis upon which someone could seek to transfer into Edison, but if every student transferring into Edison was transferring for the global STEM program, it would still mean that only about 20 of the 90 annual slots were going to out-of-boundary kids every year. If there was a "global STEM" program at KAA with similar features, it's possible that every slot could be filled by KAA students. In that case, it would just be a program lodged within a neighborhood high school. If slots were available to students at other schools, it's unlikely the number would be huge. I don't know when this program got started at Edison. For most of the past decade, Edison has been under capacity, so something like a "global STEM" program may have been intended to attract kids to the school. For the last four years, Edison has been over capacity (101% to 107%), so query whether such a program would have been launched at a school that was already near or over capacity. All things considered, it seems relatively low-profile compared to some of the stuff Reid was talking about at the work session. |
Anonymous
There are not 12 magisterial districts, only 9. Perhaps you're thinking of the 12 School Board members, but three of the members are at-large members. The regions exist for the administrative convenience of Gatehouse. They certainly don't exist because the schools within the regions are similar or near each other, as illustrated by Marshall weirdly being placed in Region 5. |
Anonymous
Thanks for catching that--I was the poster who made the mistake. I should have known better. However, even more reason to align them in some way since the regions don't seem to be balanced at all for "administrative convenience." I really don't understand these regions--more FCPS confusion, I guess. But, ranging from 39,000 to 19,000 students with no serious alignment with geography is puzzling. Region 5 has twice as many kids as region 6. They have 3 rather large regions and 3 rather small. Go figure. |
Anonymous
Right. Western FFX and TJ is already an option. Edison Global STEM is horribly managed to. My DC is starting to wonder if they are in the STEM program or the SPED Program, because his peers are not even completing the assignments given to them and the teachers give a very low amount of work. |
Anonymous
| Novel idea: how about FCPS focus on excellent instruction in every school and work from there. This is not the time to add bells and whistles. |
Anonymous
I just mean "administrative convenience" in the sense that the regions break down FCPS into smaller units, each of which has its own regional superintendents and executive principals. They clearly don't care too much if the number of students within a region is comparable. In that regard, it's not like a magisterial district, the boundaries of which are adjusted every decade in accordance with state/local law to try and ensure "equal representation" on the Board of Supervisors, School Board, etc. If you're thinking it's unfair that FCPS asked each region to provide its top 10 recommendations when some regions have more kids than others, such that Regions 2, 3 and 6 are over-represented and Regions 1, 4, and 5 are under-represented, you might flag that for your School Board member. The intensity of the comments from the regions probably depended more on the extent to which FCPS staff and Thru Consulting were proposing to change boundaries within those regions than the number of students residing within them, but maybe that makes the later meetings that they have committed to hold in every pyramid affected by the boundary proposals all the more significant. |
Anonymous
It's kind of a truism, but if KAA isn't suitable to function as a normal HS without a major investment on top of the $150M purchase price, people have a right to know that. The phrase "bells and whistles" suggests something special or incremental to the norm, but people have been left guessing as to whether a specialized program is the best or only logical fit for KAA in its current configuration. The sooner that gets cleared up, the better. |