Boundary Review Meetings
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Anonymous
Are you all saying that school boundaries should NEVER change? If you are worried about your child’s mental health because they might get moved to a different school, and -gasp- will have to make new friends, then sign them up at a preK-12th gr private school. Oh, but wait, even kids at private schools transfer in and out. Dang, I guess your best bet might just be thereapy for your kids or homeschooling at this point. |
Anonymous
There were three moves that came up late: (1) eliminating the Mason Crest split feeder and sending the small fraction of Mason Crest kids (@20-25%) zoned to Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church; (2) moving part of Beech Tree from Glasgow/Justice to Poe/Falls Church; and (3) moving part of Belvedere to Holmes. (2) and (3) would have created new split feeders at Beech Tree and Belvedere. (3) originally left the Belvedere kids at Holmes, but that was changed to Annandale since so few Holmes kids would then have been going to Justice. The Mason Crest families in Sleepy Hollow Woods and Columbia Pines seemed neutral or positive about moving, as this would align them with the rest of Mason Crest. The Beech Tree families objected the most because most of Beech Tree would still feed to Justice, and most of Poe would still feed to Annandale. The Belvedere families weren't as vocal as the Beech Tree families, but a few spoke out against moving out of Glasgow/Justice. The "final final" Reid recommendations continue to eliminate the Mason Crest split feeder and move kids to Poe/Falls Church. In essence, Mason Crest becomes to Poe as Bren Mar Park is to Holmes - the one ES feeder to a middle school that attends a different high school than everyone else at that middle school. The proposals relating to Beech Tree and Belvedere are supposed to be revisited in another year. |
Anonymous
DP. What an incredibly spiteful and cynical take. Wouldn’t expect anything less from a Melissa. |
Anonymous
There are two ways to look at it: (1) boundaries should never change (not realistic); and (2) when boundaries need to change, the process needs to be structured in a way that doesn't invite an auction. This boundary study fell into the second category and, for that reason, was a debacle. Karl Frisch is responsible for structuring a process that called for a third-party consultant to do the work that FCPS staff had done better and more efficiently in the past. Reid then hired a completely inept consulting firm. When the incompetence of that consultant became obvious (typically proposing to "fix" problems by creating new problems), things spiraled out of control because Reid then started looking to parents to tell her what to do and auctioning off school boundaries. If you put everything up for grabs, you get the loudest parents both shouting down boundary changes they don't want and shouting for boundary changes they do want. The most obvious example was the complete mess in Vienna involving the Marshall/Madison boundaries (compounded by the fact that they apparently were working with incorrect information about the capacity of Kilmer MS). The School Board owes the entire Fairfax community an apologize for their role in perpetrating or tolerating this garbage. |
Anonymous
Moving kids from over crowded schools to schools with room is not equity, it is common sense. |
Anonymous
DP. More thoughtful still would be to add capacity where it's needed, not where it's simply most convenient to FCPS staff. Adding seats at schools that people don't want their kids to attend, and to which the School Board is unwilling to send kids, is anything but common sense. |
Anonymous
This is the problem. Very few people want to move from their schools, most people are attached to their school because of the community they are in. The school board needs to develop a plan, present that plan, and listen to concerns. If they think that plan is really needed, they need to act on it while understanding that some people are going to be upset. The way the school board handles things is a joke. We are going to give you four options and listen to the families that scream the loudest while moving other neighborhoods or we end up doing nothing because too many people are unhappy and we want to be re-elected. Change is painful, everyone knows that. FCPS makes it worse by turning it into a battlefield. I have no problem with people objecting to moving kids to balance FARMs rates, that idea is not feasible. High FARMs areas exist because those are the pockets of the county that lower income families can afford. There are not many ways to address that that make geographic sense. I understand people at over crowded schools wanting other people to move so that the school is less crowded, most people don't want to move schools. I object to the school board turning those decisions into gladiatorial matches between neighborhoods and then they make matters worse by not making changes. Now there is bad blood between neighbors and schools remain overcrowded. The school board needs to do it's job even when it is not popular. Schools should not be over 100% capacity, especially when there are seats available near by. |
Anonymous
Agreed. The expansions because it is cheaper to do it when remodeling even though we don't need the space were stupid. I don't care that people don't think the school is great. I care that they expanded schools because they could when it wasn't needed. It is not saving money when the space wasn't needed. The money spent on those expansions should have been used to fix the schools that are in need of repair. Students should have been moved to schools with space instead of expanding. But moving schools leads to political uproar so they expanded instead if using common sense. |
Anonymous
It is common sense in extreme situations but if schools have capacity (under 105%) or sufficient capacity to provide robust programming (not sure on that percentage) and we are shifting for a less than 10 percent balance and that balance shifts every few years than it makes no sense. A boundary adjustment is needed because they are adding a new high school just like has occurred when new elementary schools have been built. AAP at every middle school may also result in some necessary shifts. Those items should have occurred before the mostly random ones that are occurring now. |
Anonymous
+1 The idea that the school board receives a CIP year after year and then doesn’t really do anything with it, wasn’t an outlandish point. Doing a comprehensive review to monitor utilization, programming, and transportation isn’t a bad thing. Especially when they’ve struggled with school start times and buses for over a decade. Where they lost the plot was thinking they could implement sweeping changes using an outside firm in a year and everyone would be fine with it. Then they kept on throwing additional variables mid way through the process. The comprehensive review should be used to flag specific sites and programs. That way they can give each community proper focus instead of trying to listen to the entire county at once. They can also scope changes in a way that allows for grandfathering with transportation. The uncertainty and chaos they put the county through over the last 18 months should not be the norm. |
Anonymous
I am the PP, and former middle school teacher. Kids schedules, friends, are overly curated now. They have barely any independence, they are overprotected. Have you seen the college fb parent pages? These kids need to be placed in unfomfortable situations sometimes. Have you heard of parents complaining to their adult kids’ professors and employers about their grades or promotions? It is out of control. Kids need to be able to figure some stuff out on their own, with the guidance of their parents, but not with their interference. Teachers are quitting in droves because their students have trouble dealing with some challenging situations, and the blame is put on the educators. Parents, please model independence for your children. Teach them how to handle non-ideal situations. Things will not always go their way, and that is Ok. *Bullying is a special case, and happens at all schools. Imagine your kid having to attend the less desired school, and all they have heard at home is, “My poor Timmy is now forced to go to this lesser school (with lower quality classmates)”. Instead, maybe you could say, “Hey, I get this is going to be a challenging move, but you will get to make new friends, your school is (possibly) closer, and you will learn some new social skills”. And if this sounds too terrible, then private or homeschooling can be an option. And I agree that giving parents the option to share their opinions on this process was a terrible move by fcps. Families shared their voice in the election of the school board. I am pretty sure there are families in fcps who are pleased with the boundary changes. They just aren’t here voicing their opinions/complaints. |
Anonymous
Families shared their voice in the election? Guafb. None of these school board members ran on a comprehensive boundary review platform. Quite the contrary, they hid this from voters. You don’t want elected officials being held accountable by constituents? You’ve got a very different view of democracy than we do. |
Anonymous
100% agree. The one thing I will add is that the parents of kids at over crowded schools have asked for that to be addressed, they just want it done through expansions and not moving kids. They like their school and don't want to leave but they don't like how crowded it is or the trailers. The County is in a Catch-22. If they move kids from over crowded schools, that parents agree are over crowded, people get upset. If they expand schools, people get upset because that disrupts the CIP and then we end up with unused seats in the future. If kids are moved, the school board turns it into a battle zone, which is awful. If they expand, schools who are having much needed renovations pushed back are justifiably angry. Then the school community is upset if they don't an expansion because other schools got expansions out of turn. Trying to keep everybody happy has led to schools needing repairs, over crowded schools, under crowded schools that have been expanded, and everyone being unhappy. |
Anonymous
. Voters trusted them enough to make decisions. |
Anonymous
How do you suggest we hold them accountable? Unless they have commited a crime, the only legal way I see to hold them accountable, is to vote them out. Every citizen has that option. You are also welcome to run for the board to enact the changes you believe to be the best for your family. |