FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

They have no such plan nor are they taking other measures to add kids to Lewis. Lewis will continues to decline but Reid and Frisch will pay themselves on the back for changing the boundaries at other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

They have no such plan nor are they taking other measures to add kids to Lewis. Lewis will continues to decline but Reid and Frisch will pay themselves on the back for changing the boundaries at other schools.

Honest question- were you in favor of other people’s kids moving and are you now mad because your kids are being moved?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

This would only work if all transfers were cancelled across the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

This would only work if all transfers were cancelled across the county.

You don’t need to cancel all transfers. Just put in a decent slate of AP classes at Lewis. That closes the AP transfer loophole in most cases. Maybe you’d still have a few transferring out for the highest level math classes or a language, but most would be able to stay. I think long term, they need to move it up in the renovation queue as well, because a nice building goes a long way toward making a school more desirable.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if one of the outcomes of this mess will be removing IB from schools. The School Board has got to see how people leave schools because of it. I really don't get what they see with the program. I think Herndon HS is the main school where kids transfer into IB at SLHS but I am pretty sure that is because it is a way to leave Herndon, not because the parents love IB. I suspect the transfers would happen for Japanese if SLHS went AP.

The diploma rates are dismally low. Thousands of students transfer out of IB schools to AP schools. I fail to see how the County thinks that there is a real benefit to this program.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have the link to the map that identifies where students are transfering to from each school? I have tried searching for it but my google fu is very, very, weak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have the link to the map that identifies where students are transfering to from each school? I have tried searching for it but my google fu is very, very, weak.

Assuming you mean currently, it’s one of the maps available here:

https://www.fcps.edu/facilities-planning-future/facilities-and-membership-dashboards

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

They have no such plan nor are they taking other measures to add kids to Lewis. Lewis will continues to decline but Reid and Frisch will pay themselves on the back for changing the boundaries at other schools.

Coming from a neighborhood where kids were moved to stabilize another school, it is a crappy reason to move other kids. Kids now look for reasons transfer to schools that are stronger, to include the school they had been at, because there are not to same opportunities at the new base school as there was at the old school. It sucks that we are looking to transfer our kid for HS because his current school has not had enough kids to offer the advanced science and math classes that we know he will enjoy. We can either suck it up and let him attend a school with his friends with classes that are not likely to challenge him or transfer to another school where he will be challenged but away from his friends. He will know kids at the school, but it is not the same.

The scores at the school have improved, it looks much better than it did before. It would look even better if the hundreds of kids who transfer out stayed but they have no incentive to do so. Most of the families with kids who take a smattering of honors and higher-level classes are fine at the school. The kids who want a heavier course load and more advanced STEM options all leave.

Moving kids would improve Lewis's scores but do little for the kids who are struggling. They are not more likely to take AP/IB classes. The are not less likely to ditch class. They are not more likely to complete their school work. The fact that there are more kids taking AP/IB classes has zero impact on them. Test scores go up because you have higher scoring kids averaging out the lower scores of the kids who don't care. The drop out percentage will drop because there are more kids who will stay in school. The n umbers will look better but not much will actually improve for the kids who are struggling, failing, and dropping out.

Moving kids to make a school looks better doesn't help anything and only hurts the kids who are moved. You still lose the high achievers because they find a way to move to a school with better class offerings and opportunities. The middle range of kids will stay and do fine. That is about it.

Move kids to fix over crowding but move them in a way that makes sense, so move them to schools that are closer to them. If that means kids from WSHS move to South County, then so be it. Forcing a path to Lewis to try and put a band aid on the larger, societal problems that cause the educational issues at Lewis is not fair to the students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have the link to the map that identifies where students are transfering to from each school? I have tried searching for it but my google fu is very, very, weak.

Assuming you mean currently, it’s one of the maps available here:

https://www.fcps.edu/facilities-planning-future/facilities-and-membership-dashboards

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Moving kids would improve Lewis's scores but do little for the kids who are struggling.

And, then Reid could post about how this boundary study improved the education of our students--just like giving elementary kids a half day Monday improved scores.

There's a saying that goes with that, but it eludes me.

[Anonymous]

I still think the long game is to close Lewis in a few years. It’s one of the few schools where they reduce program capacity year after year to stay right around 85% capacity, which used to be their tipping point for capacity surplus. The program capacity used to be 2000 students and now it’s below 1900.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still think the long game is to close Lewis in a few years. It’s one of the few schools where they reduce program capacity year after year to stay right around 85% capacity, which used to be their tipping point for capacity surplus. The program capacity used to be 2000 students and now it’s below 1900.

My own personal modest proposal for that area (and I realize it’s a very long game thing and also FCPS never has enough money to make big moves like this) is making Edison the vocational/trades magnet for all the pyramids for which it makes sense to go there, since it is pretty centrally located and has a lot of the specialty classrooms already. So it could get any vocational student from Edison, Lewis, MV, WePo, Hayfield, Annandale, Justice, WS, South County, maybe even further out to LB, Robinson, Woodson etc. if it makes sense. Then give Lewis a nice, showplace renovation and expansion and combine the current attendance area for Lewis and Edison. Make it an AP school too. It would probably be the biggest FCPS HS but not by much, and with such a large enrollment, they could really offer a lot of different classes even if the overall student body was not the highest SES in FCPS. Kids would stop transferring out unless they wanted vocational, IB, or a really specialized language, and a nice building would be a showplace for the community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Moving kids would improve Lewis's scores but do little for the kids who are struggling.

And, then Reid could post about how this boundary study improved the education of our students--just like giving elementary kids a half day Monday improved scores.

There's a saying that goes with that, but it eludes me.

Reid's email about the Wednesday thing was such a load of bs. It's like FCPS is trying to make parents even angrier after an already crazy boundary process, budget crisis, calendar problems, class size issues, and now another disruption in the middle of the week to feed the fire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still think the long game is to close Lewis in a few years. It’s one of the few schools where they reduce program capacity year after year to stay right around 85% capacity, which used to be their tipping point for capacity surplus. The program capacity used to be 2000 students and now it’s below 1900.

Turn it into a Vo-tech school. Close it for renovations and use that time to build in the specialty rooms needed for different vo-tech programs. Let kids who want to learn a trade apply and transfer there for their 4 years of HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No county-wide study that leaves Langley untouched and does nothing for Lewis is truly “comprehensive.” Michelle Reid is an idiot who completely oversold what this study was about. They should cancel it and only deal with the few elementary schools that are truly overcrowded. Anything else is unnecessarily messing with boundaries and families to justify the money getting paid to the consultant.

Lewis has over 1600 students according to the school membership on the dashboard.

Around 250 +/-Lewis kids transfer to other schools each year.

FCPS could bring Lewis up to at least 1800 students very easily and cheaply, by getting rid of IB,switching to AP, and adding AAP to Key middle school so the AAP kids don't try to switch to other high schools.

It would be a quick, immediate solution that improved Lewis academucs, brought Lewis to almost full capacity, and avoids the disruption of rezoning.

This would only work if all transfers were cancelled across the county.

I think fcps should eliminate IB, except for one, possible 2 magnet programs serving the entire county.

Based on numbers of students completing the IB program, one magnet should suffice.

It would completely close the IB loophole county wide, a win for everyone but especially for schools such as Lewis.