FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Centreville is the last high school in the old 2008 renovation queue. At some point they'll release a new queue and they'll have to decide whether the next high schools in the queue are those built after Centreville (Westfield and South County) or whether they are going to prioritize renovations of the oldest schools built decades earlier that got the cheapest "renovations: in the early 2000s. If the latter, they should be renovating Annandale, McLean, Lewis, Madison, and Justice in that order. The idea that they should plow an especially large amount of money into Lewis when it's been losing rather than gaining kids should be DOA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Centreville is the last high school in the old 2008 renovation queue. At some point they'll release a new queue and they'll have to decide whether the next high schools in the queue are those built after Centreville (Westfield and South County) or whether they are going to prioritize renovations of the oldest schools built decades earlier that got the cheapest "renovations: in the early 2000s. If the latter, they should be renovating Annandale, McLean, Lewis, Madison, and Justice in that order. The idea that they should plow an especially large amount of money into Lewis when it's been losing rather than gaining kids should be DOA.

I don't know what Westfield looks like, but South County is in much better condition than Lewis.

SoCo looks younger than its 20 year old age.

Lewis looks like it hasn't been touched since the 1960s.

[Anonymous]

Question -- if you have an elementary school where everyone continues on to the same middle school but then students from that elementary school split off into different high schools, would the elementary school be considered a split-feeder? Or is there different terminology for this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question -- if you have an elementary school where everyone continues on to the same middle school but then students from that elementary school split off into different high schools, would the elementary school be considered a split-feeder? Or is there different terminology for this?

The middle school is the split feeder

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question -- if you have an elementary school where everyone continues on to the same middle school but then students from that elementary school split off into different high schools, would the elementary school be considered a split-feeder? Or is there different terminology for this?

The CIP classifies them at both levels. For example, Wolftrap is a split feeder only at the high school level, whereas Stenwood is a split feeder at the middle school level, then recombines at the high school level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question -- if you have an elementary school where everyone continues on to the same middle school but then students from that elementary school split off into different high schools, would the elementary school be considered a split-feeder? Or is there different terminology for this?

I don't know the official definition, but for the purposes of this boundary adjustment FCPS only seems to care about what happens going from ES to MS and MS to HS. So students from an ES splitting off to different high schools is not something they are trying to eliminate right now -- in fact, they would be creating at least one of these with the proposed adjustments. I assume there are more I am not aware of.

[Anonymous]

Well, that makes things interesting… it definitely does impact boundary changes:

“FCPS’s ongoing One Fairfax policy appears to have birthed other discriminatory policies. For example, according to public reports, in October 2022 FCPS “signed a nine-month, $455,000 contract with an ‘equity’ consultant, whose strategy plan for the Virginia school district promised ‘equal outcomes for every student, without exception.’””

[Anonymous]

Is there a point bringing up TJ again, after it went all the way to the Supreme Court?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, that makes things interesting… it definitely does impact boundary changes:

“FCPS’s ongoing One Fairfax policy appears to have birthed other discriminatory policies. For example, according to public reports, in October 2022 FCPS “signed a nine-month, $455,000 contract with an ‘equity’ consultant, whose strategy plan for the Virginia school district promised ‘equal outcomes for every student, without exception.’””

That is not the Thru contract. And to me, Thru’s scenarios have absolutely nothing to do with One Fairfax and everything to do with randomly moving a puzzle piece to see if it fits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, that makes things interesting… it definitely does impact boundary changes:

“FCPS’s ongoing One Fairfax policy appears to have birthed other discriminatory policies. For example, according to public reports, in October 2022 FCPS “signed a nine-month, $455,000 contract with an ‘equity’ consultant, whose strategy plan for the Virginia school district promised ‘equal outcomes for every student, without exception.’””

That is not the Thru contract. And to me, Thru’s scenarios have absolutely nothing to do with One Fairfax and everything to do with randomly moving a puzzle piece to see if it fits.

I think the THRU contract was awarded in 2024? At that time, I'm pretty sure that One Fairfax type requirements were included. It certainly was one of the points in the discussion of county wide boundary study.
Is the contract available to review?

[Anonymous]

FCPS is no stranger to cases such as this — though it’s surely a headache

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Centreville is the last high school in the old 2008 renovation queue. At some point they'll release a new queue and they'll have to decide whether the next high schools in the queue are those built after Centreville (Westfield and South County) or whether they are going to prioritize renovations of the oldest schools built decades earlier that got the cheapest "renovations: in the early 2000s. If the latter, they should be renovating Annandale, McLean, Lewis, Madison, and Justice in that order. The idea that they should plow an especially large amount of money into Lewis when it's been losing rather than gaining kids should be DOA.

I don't know what Westfield looks like, but South County is in much better condition than Lewis.

SoCo looks younger than its 20 year old age.

Lewis looks like it hasn't been touched since the 1960s.

They added the colorful canopy and new signage in the 2000s. The most recent update was when the signage was replaced with the name change.

For what it looked like prior to that, the FCPS Youtube has a Schools in Profile documentary series from the 1980s. Lee was the focus of an hour long show. You can see how the entrance has since been updated. The interiors look the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how this planned development at Beyer’s could affect enrollment at FCHS, Marshall, McLean, and/or Meridian, and thus the boundaries. The large multifamily development will cross the FCC and Fairfax County lines, so one would presume if you live anywhere in the development, you would have a choice of school systems.

https://www.arlnow.com/2025/05/20/redevelopment-proposal-in-falls-churchs-west-end-passes-first-hurdle/

That is Falls Church City. FCC council has decide they want to turn FCC into Clarendon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how this planned development at Beyer’s could affect enrollment at FCHS, Marshall, McLean, and/or Meridian, and thus the boundaries. The large multifamily development will cross the FCC and Fairfax County lines, so one would presume if you live anywhere in the development, you would have a choice of school systems.

https://www.arlnow.com/2025/05/20/redevelopment-proposal-in-falls-churchs-west-end-passes-first-hurdle/

That is Falls Church City. FCC council has decide they want to turn FCC into Clarendon.

EXCUSE ME ARE THEY GETTING RID OF LAZY MIKE'S????????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how this planned development at Beyer’s could affect enrollment at FCHS, Marshall, McLean, and/or Meridian, and thus the boundaries. The large multifamily development will cross the FCC and Fairfax County lines, so one would presume if you live anywhere in the development, you would have a choice of school systems.

https://www.arlnow.com/2025/05/20/redevelopment-proposal-in-falls-churchs-west-end-passes-first-hurdle/

That is Falls Church City. FCC council has decide they want to turn FCC into Clarendon.

The Fairfax County line goes through the Beyer’s mega-development. Lots of apartments. So there would be some increase in the school age population.