How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?
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Anonymous
😂 |
Anonymous
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Lewis has course offering issues too because of the large ESOL population and shrinking enrollment (1700).
Courses are dropped or one instance is offered and if it doesn't fit your schedule tough luck for you. West Springfield has 800 more students - so more course offerings for them. The county has essentially become two systems. |
Anonymous
Once more: My DD at a very large high school was not able to take some of those lovely choices because of conflicts. There are usually only one of the "special" courses offered and all do not get again. There are also some that kids want, but not enough kids sign up. As for the foreign languages--that depends on the desires of the population-and the teachers that are available. And, some of those language classes may be split levels. Just because it is in the catalog does not mean it is taught. As for Lewis, they need to get rid of IB. IB is highly structured and limits some of the other opportunities. |
Anonymous
Teaching is hard work, period. This exaggeration that there is one pyramid with all the ELL learners is ridiculous. When have the teachers of Herndon organized to complain to the board that they have too many ELL students? |
Anonymous
Is Herndon overcrowded or under capacity? You aren’t going to get anywhere complaining on DCUM. If you want Elaine to rid your pyramid of enough ELL learners to make it acceptable to you, organize some neighbors that share your views and tell the board what you want. |
Anonymous
I don't disagree that it can happen at the larger schools, but the problem is much worse at some schools and impacts more classes. |
Anonymous
Stop. There are at least 3 Herndon posters here, and I’m one. Herndon isn’t complaining about too many ESOL learners. Our kids are fine. We have better teachers than other pyramids DCUM swoon over within our district and elsewhere in FCPS. You can leave our boundaries alone. Generally speaking we object to some of our neighbors who think they deserve to be treated like a private school and consider themselves everyone else’s betters. If you want fences around who can be in your school, you need to go private. Otherwise you need to accept that FCPS may and should change boundaries and distribute resources fairly across the district — without regard to housing prices. |
Anonymous
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My best bet is that the Hutchinson site gets turned into a secondary school, however it’s purpose would be as a Maximum possible pack of ELL/FRM kids hailing from Herndon/South Lakes/Westfield pyramids by taking in the most impoverished kids in the area from Clearview, Herndon, Hutchinson, Dogwood, Lake Anne, Forest Edge, Coates.
With the most ghetto kids taken out of Herndon HS with now 10 percent or so FARMS rate, Great Falls parents would probably finally accept getting moved into Herndon, which would free up space @ Langley for McLean HS kids and so on. Similarly South Lakes would be back filled with more affluent McNair/Floris kids, and allows relief in the Chantilly/Centreville Area by using vacant slots at Westfield. Both Herndon/South Lakes are shored up immensely in school quality, McLean/Centreville/Chantilly parents finally get relief, with negligible impact elsewhere. By using the centralized Hutchinson site as a poor kids sink per say filled with ~70 percent FARMS kids, you can make everyone happy and only to screw the poor kids in Herndon/Reston whose families vote 80%+ Democrat anyway. Big win with only positive political outcomes for the school board, as long as they can accept 5e hypocrisy. |
Anonymous
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If you are happy with your school then don’t spend emotional energy worrying about what you imagine other parents in other schools might think. It’s not good for your mental health.
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Anonymous
No. Just no. Terrible location for a Secondary school--which requires more space than a high school. And, by the time the school is built, those apartments on Elden St will be gentrified and Herndon mom on this forum won't want to lose them. |
Anonymous
Make it a 3/4 story high school in a boring simple rectangular prism NYC highh school formation and I highly doubt anyone wants to move into High crime Hutchinson for it to be gentrified. Professional class workers have their pick in Oak Hill/Reston Town Center for that. |
Anonymous
I was at Herndon around the same timeframe, and while Westfields was well regarded, Herndon was never more than average (but South Lakes was definitely a school to avoid). None of the classes at Herndon were ever taught in spanish (except Spanish class, obv.) I doubt that has changed. As for not enough APs, I found that the AP offering at Herndon was enough to be rigorous - you could take AP World Hist, US Hist, US Govt, Comparative Govt, Psych, Stats, Physics C, Biology, Anatomy (I think this was an AP), Calc AB, Calc BC, English Lang, English Lit, Computer Science, Latin/French/German/Spanish - all at HHS. We also had astronomy as I recall (one of the few High schools in FCPS with a planetarium) and we had the ability to take 4 years of Fashion Marketing, which I can't imagine was standard practice at most FCPS schools. Did we have every class I would have wished for? Not by a long shot. But it was enough that if you were taking full loads of APs, you certainly had your hands full and were fully equipped to go to a competitive college and kick ass. |
Anonymous
Ghetto kids?!?! WTF? |
Anonymous
I know teaching is hard work in all schools. Most teachers truly care about helping their audience, especially ESOL-specific teachers. But you cannot deny that high concentrations of ELL/FARMs students add pressure onto administrators and teachers because SOL scores and truancy do in fact matter significantly to Gatehouse. When SOL scores are low and truancy is high (as is the norm with ELL/FARMs), principals get moved around in an effort to boost scores and quality of teachers is unjustly brought into question. Frequent changes in principals who come in and lay down the hammer further leads to teachers that want to seek other placements to avoid micro-managers. It is undeniable that the school is put on the hot seat by both the general public and Gatehouse for factors that they cannot control. Of course, every school deals with some of this, but it is magnified when poverty is concentrated. I do not shift the blame to ELL/FARMs, they must be supported. But concentrating them does a disservice to their potential when they are surrounded by high truancy and low academic achievement and see it as the norm for themselves. It is a difficult cycle to break. Most of you haven't lived in the shoes of a URM, and don't know what it's like to actually lift yourself up by the bootstraps out of poverty. |
Anonymous
As to the bolder, I didn’t have to because my parents did that. What you are suggesting is that Gatehouse address average test scores by moving hundreds of kids, disrupting them and their families, instead of moving a handful of principals who can accept or decline the offer to relocate. |