FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anyone ever get sick of people who treat our kids as pawns. The ones who pretend that massive disruption in students lives is just a trivial inconvenient consequence and that mental health of students doesn’t matter?

They are awful. Those people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

I disagree with this gambit. If you want to attend Oakton HS pony up the cash to buy a house in Oakton. I don’t want to be fighting five years from now to keep my Oakton address home zoned to Oakton HS to accommodate “zone stability” for the Emerald Chase vultures.

Just because your town name is Oakton and the high school name is Oakton doesn't make it your community high school. Ask all the children all over FCPS who live much closer to one high school and go to a different one. The name doesn't matter, you can't use it as an excuse.

This is the silliest post.

Of course, if you live in Oakton you should attend the Oakton neighborhood high school. If you live in Lorton you should attend the Lorton neighborhood high school. If you live in Falls Church, you should attend the Falls Church neighborhood high school. It really is that simple.

At a minimum, students should be zoned for the high school that shares their home zip code, with all boundary tweaks limited to neighborhoods with zip codes outside of the immediate high school zip code.

You realize there are more than 1 Falls Church “neighborhood” schools right?

They all have different zip codes...

Falls Church high school 22042
Marshall High School 22043
Justice High School 22044

Not to mention the southern portion of McLean HS is also Falls Church (22046)

Whoever is suggesting doing ANYTHING related to school boundaries based on zipcodes really has no clue. Zipcodes are based on logistical convenience for a POST OFFICE from which your particular mail carrier's route originates. They are different in size and scope than schools, not typically co-located, and are not necessarily based on any notion of neighborhood or convenience, even if there does tend to be SOME degree of overlap in some cases with schools, it's by happenstance moreso than by design.

Agree. Some zips have more than one high school and some have none at all. I think there are a lot that apply to this.

If you don't live in the same zip code as a high school, then you would have the current status quo where you (hopefully) go to the nearest high school, but you are at risk of being rezoned every 5 years.

FCPS needs to lock in the closest neighborhoods to each high school if we are going to go through this 2 year process every 5 years. The zip code is an obvious non partial, concrete method to establish a compact area associated with each high school that will not be rezoned.

Or you could just prioritize buying a home as close as you can get to the high school. My neighborhood walks to HS. I think the chances of us ever getting rezoned to another HS- which would require a bus- are approximately 0%.

Great idea! There is a walking distance HS to every address in the county!

While we are at it, I hear the peasants calling for bread. Something about starving. What’s they you say? Let them eat cake? Wow, two amazing ideas in a row. You are on fire.

Location, location, location... We could have had a wonderful home on the cusp of a border but passed and found something not as nice nearby to the school we wanted. If a particular school is important to you then you need to prioritize location. I'm sorry that's just how it is with the nature of this sort of thing.

The Lemon Road ES rezoning takes kids who are literally across the street from Marshall HS and moves them to another HS. These kids could walk toMarshall in 2 minutes but will now have to take a 20 minute bus. So much for those parents' planning, eh?.

They shouldn’t move any of that area around Idylwood that’s currently split between Freedom Hill/Lemon Road/Shrevewood because those lines are going to be redrawn in a few years anyway when Dunn Loring elementary opens.

Does Pimmit Hills walk to Marshall? I’ve only ever seen high schoolers get off the bus there while directly across Magarity there are walkers heading to McLean.

They should move all of Pimmit to
Lemon Road. It makes no sense to have an apartment complex cut in half so if they move buildings, they move schools. They are walking distance to Lemon Road and are closer to Shrevewood and Westgate.

What do you mean by "Pimmit"? Pimmit Hills? Apartments off Pimmit Drive? They aren't the same thing and are on opposite sides of Route 7.

A counter-proposal for the Langley/McLean/Marshall/Madison pyramids:

Langley: Churchill Road, Spring Hill, Colvin Run, Great Falls, Forestville ES; Cooper MS

McLean: Chesterbrook, Franklin Sherman, Kent Gardens, Haycock, Lemon Road (except for area on Marshall side of Route 7), Westgate ES; Longfellow MS

Marshall: Shrevewood, Stenwood, Freedom Hill, Dunn Loring (when it opens), Timber Lane, Westbriar ES; Kilmer MS

Madison: Wolftrap, Louise Archer, Flint Hill, Marshall Road, Vienna, Cunningham Park ES; Thoreau MS

No split feeders except Lemon Road (temporary) unless numbers require adjustments. Route 7 treated as primary dividing line in Tysons area (Westbriar crosses Route 7, but the area is mostly the two malls and office buildings). No more worrying about attendance islands/bridging attendance islands.

McLean can’t absorb both Westgate and Lemon Road. They’re currently split around 80/20 between Marshall and McLean. I’m pretty sure they chose to move Lemon Road over Westgate because it’s smaller (it’s enrollment is 591, but that’s due to AAP transfers, so it’s closer to 450, while when you bring AAP transfers back, Westgate is around 650.) Even if you cut off any recommendations across Rt-7 (the Shrevewood split and townhouses next to Marshall) you could probably only pick up half of Westgate.

You may be right, but on the other hand Franklin Sherman is small and Lemon Road without Shrevewood AAP kids isn't big, so I'd love to see what the numbers would look like if we had access to the SPA data for the HS enrollments.

[Anonymous]

Or they could just move the Spring Hill island- and leave all else to minimize change for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone ever get sick of people who treat our kids as pawns. The ones who pretend that massive disruption in students lives is just a trivial inconvenient consequence and that mental health of students doesn’t matter?

They are awful. Those people.

So are you in Nancy Reagan "Just Say No" mode? Will that work? If so, sign us all up and make it stick.

Otherwise it's a Catch-22 where you either get flawed proposals from a consultant with no local ties like Thru that don't make much sense, or you offer alternatives that might possibly be more palatable (and durable) and get slammed as treating kids as pawns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or they could just move the Spring Hill island- and leave all else to minimize change for students.

If we're talking about McLean, the enrollment impact on Longfellow/McLean of just moving the Spring Hill island would be very close to the impact under Thru's latest proposals.

In that scenario, though, they'd have to abandon the position that "Scenario 1," which involves the elimination of attendance islands, is their starting point, since McLean would still have the Timber Lane island.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

I disagree with this gambit. If you want to attend Oakton HS pony up the cash to buy a house in Oakton. I don’t want to be fighting five years from now to keep my Oakton address home zoned to Oakton HS to accommodate “zone stability” for the Emerald Chase vultures.

Just because your town name is Oakton and the high school name is Oakton doesn't make it your community high school. Ask all the children all over FCPS who live much closer to one high school and go to a different one. The name doesn't matter, you can't use it as an excuse.

This is the silliest post.

Of course, if you live in Oakton you should attend the Oakton neighborhood high school. If you live in Lorton you should attend the Lorton neighborhood high school. If you live in Falls Church, you should attend the Falls Church neighborhood high school. It really is that simple.

At a minimum, students should be zoned for the high school that shares their home zip code, with all boundary tweaks limited to neighborhoods with zip codes outside of the immediate high school zip code.

You realize there are more than 1 Falls Church “neighborhood” schools right?

They all have different zip codes...

Falls Church high school 22042
Marshall High School 22043
Justice High School 22044

Not to mention the southern portion of McLean HS is also Falls Church (22046)

Whoever is suggesting doing ANYTHING related to school boundaries based on zipcodes really has no clue. Zipcodes are based on logistical convenience for a POST OFFICE from which your particular mail carrier's route originates. They are different in size and scope than schools, not typically co-located, and are not necessarily based on any notion of neighborhood or convenience, even if there does tend to be SOME degree of overlap in some cases with schools, it's by happenstance moreso than by design.

The zip codes are fairly compact, and would form a fairly dense compact frozen boundary around each high school.

Look at a map.

The high school boundaries in most areas are very convoluted.

The zip code boundaries are not. They are dense and compact

There are houses in Fairfax county that have Arlington zip codes. There are houses in Arlington that have zip codes in Fairfax County. The zip codes do not align with census boundaries at all. They are based on what is efficient for the post office.

Sure.

So all those houses you descibe will maintain the current stsus quo, and be subject to the rezoning review every 5 years.

Right now, ALL fcps houses are subject to a 5 year rezoning review.

Freezing the houses that reside in the exact same zip code as the high school address will simplify the process and provide some consistency and stability for the residents living closest to the high school addresses.


I will say it again, if your house is located in the exact same zip code as the high school you should not be at rish of getting rezoned from that high school.

This is a lie.

[Anonymous]

My issue with all of this is we’re calling it “comprehensive” school boundaries, which implies making big changes to achieve goals. My wife is from a town in New England, where 4 elementary schools feed to two middle schools which feed to one high school. You have an actual school pyramid. I understand that’s an idea that Dr Reid strives for, but all these proposed changes just end up disrupting thousands of kids without getting us anywhere closer to that goal and in some cases getting us further from that. So you either go all in and create a bunch of actual school pyramids or you maintain the status quo and fix the few spots where you have capacity issues. Otherwise we’ll be doing this every 5 years pushing the same neighborhoods (Emerlad Chase, Hunt Valley, etc) back and forth to make numbers work but not actually accomplishing any of the stated goals of the Superintendent.

[Anonymous]

I will say it again, if your house is located in the exact same zip code as the high school you should not be at rish of getting rezoned from that high school.


This is a lie.

Well, she must live in a zip code shared with a school she likes. There are zips with more than one high school. There are many zips with no high school.
There are many in a different zip who live closer to a high school than many who live in the same zip.

FCPS has around 30 high schools.
Fairfax County has 81 zip codes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I will say it again, if your house is located in the exact same zip code as the high school you should not be at rish of getting rezoned from that high school.


This is a lie.

Well, she must live in a zip code shared with a school she likes. There are zips with more than one high school. There are many zips with no high school.
There are many in a different zip who live closer to a high school than many who live in the same zip.

FCPS has around 30 high schools.
Fairfax County has 81 zip codes.

Great.

Then roughly 30 zip codes would be protected from rezoning mess every 5 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting the ATT site housing into Fairfax is stupid. It's about 3 miles via roads and 66 has to be crossed. Oakton is 1.8 miles which could even be a doable walk especially if they make some fixes on Blake. It's also practically across the street from Oakton ES which currently has more capacity than Providence ES. Providence will be undergoing renovation int he next couple years but it's only to add 4 classrooms. Two would replace trailers. It's more to upgrade to a more modern school design and fix worn out stuff as the oldest parts of the school are from the 50s. The City of Fairfax is going to push back on the county overcrowding City Schools.

Maybe. Take the county kids out of the Fairfax City-owned schools and the average test scores plummet.

Not accurate. In fact, if you take county students out, Providence won’t qualify as a Title 1 school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Anyone ever get sick of people who treat our kids as pawns. The ones who pretend that massive disruption in students lives is just a trivial inconvenient consequence and that mental health of students doesn’t matter?

They are awful. Those people.

I’m beyond sick of them. And this issue. And following this thread. I want my kid left alone. I’ve never voted for a republican but I’m debating whether I’ll ever vote for another Dem in this state. They clearly don’t care about how they’re hurting people. I cannot stand these people. Whoever runs against Sandy Anderson et al next time will get my campaign donations and my vote.

Understand the frustration but there are more issues than school boundaries, so posts where people say they're going to vote against Ds in all local and state elections because of a boundary issue come across as GOP election season spam.

Locally, the schools make up a huge amount of the budget. The problem with the budget is the way they spend it.

You can be all supportive of transgender children. No one should be mean to anyone, but when transgender girls take precedence over biological girls, there is a problem. Our SB is going all in on this and, it appears, willing to give up federal money for trans inclusion in girls' sports and locker rooms.

You can be for equity, without believing that Nardos King is a good choice to build an empire in FCPS. She is highly paid--please tell us what she has accomplished.

You can think the boundaries need adjustment and, at the same time, think that this boundary study has been a fiasco and poorly run.

You can like Michelle Reid, but do you really think she is worth $.5million tax dollars? Do you think her chiefs are all worth over $200K? Do you think they earn it?

Many other places to go with this.

But, if you agree with all the above, thank our SB.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

I disagree with this gambit. If you want to attend Oakton HS pony up the cash to buy a house in Oakton. I don’t want to be fighting five years from now to keep my Oakton address home zoned to Oakton HS to accommodate “zone stability” for the Emerald Chase vultures.

Just because your town name is Oakton and the high school name is Oakton doesn't make it your community high school. Ask all the children all over FCPS who live much closer to one high school and go to a different one. The name doesn't matter, you can't use it as an excuse.

This is the silliest post.

Of course, if you live in Oakton you should attend the Oakton neighborhood high school. If you live in Lorton you should attend the Lorton neighborhood high school. If you live in Falls Church, you should attend the Falls Church neighborhood high school. It really is that simple.

At a minimum, students should be zoned for the high school that shares their home zip code, with all boundary tweaks limited to neighborhoods with zip codes outside of the immediate high school zip code.

I think you're confused. There are no neighborhood high schools. That school wasn't built just for you, it just happens to be named Oakton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

I disagree with this gambit. If you want to attend Oakton HS pony up the cash to buy a house in Oakton. I don’t want to be fighting five years from now to keep my Oakton address home zoned to Oakton HS to accommodate “zone stability” for the Emerald Chase vultures.

Just because your town name is Oakton and the high school name is Oakton doesn't make it your community high school. Ask all the children all over FCPS who live much closer to one high school and go to a different one. The name doesn't matter, you can't use it as an excuse.

This is the silliest post.

Of course, if you live in Oakton you should attend the Oakton neighborhood high school. If you live in Lorton you should attend the Lorton neighborhood high school. If you live in Falls Church, you should attend the Falls Church neighborhood high school. It really is that simple.

At a minimum, students should be zoned for the high school that shares their home zip code, with all boundary tweaks limited to neighborhoods with zip codes outside of the immediate high school zip code.

Sounds like you are making the case for all the homes with a Herndon address and zip code to attend Herndon High School and not Langley.

I don't know anything about or know anyone from that part of the county, but sure.

If the house has the exact same zip code as the high school, they should be zoned for that high school.

I live in Franklin Farm. That means my child should go to Franklin Middle School, mot Carson because they both have Franklin in the name and Franklin Middle School is across the street from our neighborhood. Fix that please, Oakton parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The zip code suggestion is the dumbest idea yet.

Suggest the proponents look up a zip code map of Fairfax County.

And, who gets to go to Madison? Robinson? Lewis? Edison? etc.

You didn't read the post.

I suggested that if the neighborhood shares a zip code with the high school, they should not be able to be rezoned from the high school.

I'm laughing at the Oakton parent who doesn't seem to know that Oakton HS is actually in Vienna and that both Oakton and Madison high schools are in the same zip code. What do you expect parents to do? Pick whatever HS they want to send their child to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emerald Chase parent here definitely not advocating for Chantilly as it’s unrealistic with it being overcrowded. Not sure why anyone thinks that’s event remotely a possibility.

We would like to stay at Oak Hill because it’s the closest school to us and our child struggles a lot with changes. So uprooting them and sending them to another school would be extremely rough, as it would be for all kids.

The County could do themselves a favor and say what their grandfathering policy will be because I think a lot of parents might not have an issue if they knew how it would work.

It is literally on your HOA website.