Langley vs McLean vs Madison

[Anonymous]

You hear all these rumors but my kid at Langley couldn’t have a better friend group. Each child is different. My kid is academically motivated and an athlete. He has been able to meet so many people and join so many clubs.

One negative that you will have in any school around here is that it is competitive to make the teams whether it is the baseball, volleyball or tennis team, there are so few spots. So many kids get cut from soccer and baseball and so many boys played.

[Anonymous]

OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not a troll. Just trying to get some insight. Many of the posts I've read reference things like sports.
My kids are too young for me to know if I care how good the girls volleyball team is, but my hunch is that we will care more about academics than sports based on their athletic talents (or lack thereof) so far.


Some of our neighbors have experienced fights at Cooper and drug exposure at Langley. Is that just the case everywhere now?
We chose our current home specifically to be zoned for Langley but now that we're hearing more and more about it I'm not sure its a good fit for us. We're trying to figure out if McLean or Madison might be better or if we should look into private schools.

Probably not the case everywhere as much as at schools like Cooper and Langley where kids have access to easy money and parents are quick to “lawyer up” and claim they can do no wrong.

I’d keep talking to your neighbors to find out more. You’re going to run into some people here who are mostly concerned about protecting their real estate values, so take their boosterism with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a troll. Just trying to get some insight. Many of the posts I've read reference things like sports.
My kids are too young for me to know if I care how good the girls volleyball team is, but my hunch is that we will care more about academics than sports based on their athletic talents (or lack thereof) so far.


Some of our neighbors have experienced fights at Cooper and drug exposure at Langley. Is that just the case everywhere now?
We chose our current home specifically to be zoned for Langley but now that we're hearing more and more about it I'm not sure its a good fit for us. We're trying to figure out if McLean or Madison might be better or if we should look into private schools.

Probably not the case everywhere as much as at schools like Cooper and Langley where kids have access to easy money and parents are quick to “lawyer up” and claim they can do no wrong.

I’d keep talking to your neighbors to find out more. You’re going to run into some people here who are mostly concerned about protecting their real estate values, so take their boosterism with a grain of salt.

I will bite. I have heard about vaping in the bathrooms. I know upperclassman have big drinking parties. My underclass child has never been to one of these parties. I mean these same kids will be going to college in a few years so I don’t think this is that big of a deal and every kid in every high school will have some bad rebel kids. The rebels at Langley are not that bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

I don’t think there’s anyway to know if FCPS will address the split feeder situation at Madison until they come out with boundary proposals later this year.

In theory they could have aligned Madison’s boundaries with Thoreau’s and Marshall’s boundaries with Kilmer a few years ago and made both schools AAP centers, but they went in an opposite direction by expanding Thoreau’s boundaries to include areas that also feed to Oakton while keeping Jackson as an AAP center. So that would require a lot of changes to simplify now.

In general you’d find Madison families roll with it and are happy as long as their kids end up at Madison. Lots of kids attend the AAP centers at Kilmer and Jackson, but there’s less of a focus on AAP and TJ generally than in the Langley and McLean pyramids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

Don’t hold your breath. Boundary changes are about to f everything up, not make it better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

Madison in its current state is a mess for AAP cohorts, but if you’re already mostly through ES, it’s less of an issue.

For example, Wolftrap and small pockets of Vienna ES go to Louise Archer for AAP, but then go to Kilmer for MS AAP, while the rest go to Luther Jackson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

Madison in its current state is a mess for AAP cohorts, but if you’re already mostly through ES, it’s less of an issue.

For example, Wolftrap and small pockets of Vienna ES go to Louise Archer for AAP, but then go to Kilmer for MS AAP, while the rest go to Luther Jackson.

The older my kids get, the less it seems whether you went to an AAP center for middle school seems to matter as far as being challenged. Elementary, yes, definitely. Middle school, not so much.

[Anonymous]

My kids are at Cooper and Langley which is newly renovated and looks amazing inside. The kids love going there and learning is fun with so many electives and brand new music rooms. There are so many academic and social clubs at Langley and so many opportunities that the otter schools don’t have. I have other friends in the county and their experience is not so great with bullying and fighting. There is something for everyone in this pyramid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at Cooper and Langley which is newly renovated and looks amazing inside. The kids love going there and learning is fun with so many electives and brand new music rooms. There are so many academic and social clubs at Langley and so many opportunities that the otter schools don’t have. I have other friends in the county and their experience is not so great with bullying and fighting. There is something for everyone in this pyramid.

And yet OP’s own neighbors at Cooper and Langley have reported some experiences that are giving her pause.

I think these posts are mostly coming from Langley posters who think it would be an act of treason to move to another pyramid.

If they find a new house zoned to Madison or McLean that’s within their budget and that they prefer to available Langley properties, that’s where they should go.

[Anonymous]

My kids attend Cooper/Langley. Cooper has definitely had some issues with vaping in the bathrooms (which the administration had addressed) over the past few years. My kids avoided the bathrooms where kids were vaping and haven’t had any problems. First year at Langley, so far everything is going well. My son isn’t super involved in clubs/activities, but seems to enjoy school, has a nice group of friends, likes his teachers, and is doing very well academically. I’m sure there are drinking/drugs/partying in some groups on the weekends, but you would find that at any high school across the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t Cooper just lose its principal? She wasn’t there long before she left for another FCPS middle school.

Yes, she transferred, I don’t know the reason but staff move around a lot in FCPS. She was well liked so I don’t think it was a personal issue.

She’d been a principal at an ES in the Justice High pyramid.

After she took the Cooper job some parents got the state AG to harass her over a college prep program targeted to minority students.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/10/virginia-ag-orders-school-to-stop-racial-discrimination/

No surprise that, when another position eventually opened up in the Justice pyramid, she jumped at the opportunity and left mid-year to move to Glasgow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a troll. Just trying to get some insight. Many of the posts I've read reference things like sports.
My kids are too young for me to know if I care how good the girls volleyball team is, but my hunch is that we will care more about academics than sports based on their athletic talents (or lack thereof) so far.


Some of our neighbors have experienced fights at Cooper and drug exposure at Langley. Is that just the case everywhere now?
We chose our current home specifically to be zoned for Langley but now that we're hearing more and more about it I'm not sure its a good fit for us. We're trying to figure out if McLean or Madison might be better or if we should look into private schools.

Probably not the case everywhere as much as at schools like Cooper and Langley where kids have access to easy money and parents are quick to “lawyer up” and claim they can do no wrong.

I’d keep talking to your neighbors to find out more. You’re going to run into some people here who are mostly concerned about protecting their real estate values, so take their boosterism with a grain of salt.

Sorry, but this is such transparent trolling. As several posters have said, there is not one middle or high school in the country that doesn't have some issues - just depends on the scale. An easy way to compare is to look up safety incidents for each FCPS school. You can clearly see that Langley has had the fewest. And you can also see exactly which schools have the highest rates of disciplinary/safety issues.
https://schoolprofiles.fcps.edu/schlprfl/f?p=108:2::::0_CURRENT_SCHOOL_ID,P0_EDSL:020,0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
We need to move either way because the home we are in now can’t accommodate our family.

I’m thankful for everyone’s insights about all the schools. We weren’t sure if we should use this as an opportunity to reevaluate our pyramid due to what we’ve heard from neighbors.

I hadn’t considered the AAP aspect. Our 2 kiddos are both AAP and our zoned school is our center school so with Langley pyramid we could potentially keep the same friend group throughout their education.
I didn’t realize Madison was so messy for AAP. I wonder if all the split feeding will be addressed with all these new boundary changes?

Madison in its current state is a mess for AAP cohorts, but if you’re already mostly through ES, it’s less of an issue.

For example, Wolftrap and small pockets of Vienna ES go to Louise Archer for AAP, but then go to Kilmer for MS AAP, while the rest go to Luther Jackson.

The older my kids get, the less it seems whether you went to an AAP center for middle school seems to matter as far as being challenged. Elementary, yes, definitely. Middle school, not so much.

It doesn't matter for either elementary or middle. At this point most (probably all) schools offer AAP. There is no need for special centers that mess up all the boundaries and aren't equitable.

[Anonymous]

Reporting isn’t necessarily consistent across schools. One SB member has said some schools underreport because they don’t want to deal with aggressive parents who lawyer up, etc. That may not reflect well on FCPS but at least it’s candid.