Level IV AAP: Oakton Elementary
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Anonymous
| Cluster is not the same thing as pyramid. You want to keep all the Oakton HS pyramid students together, not the entire Cluster 8. A cluster has several high schools in it. Either way, this is a huge undertaking that will not be solved easily. |
Anonymous
What a lousy argument since Louise Archer is even farther from Stenwood than that! |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| It is looking like the Oakton HS pyramid is geographically too far-flung to keep together for elementary and middle school. It is probably because the school boundary (if you look at boundary map) is too long and skinny, making travel distances too great. If the boundary were more of a circle, for the same area, the distances between one place and another would not be as great. |
Anonymous
| Agreed, there are no easy solutions. But I do hope that with the new superintendent coming in that changes will be made with the goal of things making sense. The Oakton pyramid doesn't work well for anyone with Carson being at the edge of Fairfax County and Oakton HS practically in the middle of the county. There are probably 5 middle schools closer to Oakton HS than Carson. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
| There seems to be an issue of more high schools needing to be built farther out. Looking at maps above, boundaries for Oakton HS, Fairfax HS, and Madison HS are stretching far out west to accommodate those kids living farther out. This seems to be why the distances for AAP kids to travel to stay in their pyramid, for a small number of AAP centers, would be too great. |
Anonymous
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P.S. Looking at boundaries for Langley HS (stretching west), and Robinson and Lake Braddock HS's (stretching southwest), you also see the HS anchored at the far end of a long skinny geographical area. The long shapes are needed, versus circles, because the schools are closer in and development has happened farther out. So the pyramid elementary schools are going to be farther away from one another, through simple laws of geometry. Can't change the long shapes to circles because the high schools are centrally clustered and there is little capacity farther out. Only solution seems to be to build more high schools farther out to accommodate the new development, or keep the status quo? The specific link I'm looking at is below. (Thank you, 14:03, for the links.)
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/maps/images/maps/handouts/pdf07/highschools.pdf |
Anonymous
| Yes, Western Fairfax has needed a new high school for a long time. |
Anonymous
| It's also really interesting why Oakton, Madison and Fairfax are so close to one another. I wonder why it was planned that way. Oakton should have probably been built further out. |
Anonymous
The Oakton HS area was really different way back when -- farmland. There likely would have been few children to attend a high school farther out at that time. One other solution for AAP centers in elongated OHS pyramid. Space them out more evenly and not anchored at ends of the OHS boundary (though I would be sorry to lose a center at Mosby Woods). (How many actual AAP centers are there for OHS pyramid now, or proposed?) If spaced more evenly over the long shape, there may be more hope of kids staying within their pyramid without impossible commutes. |
Anonymous
The problem is capacity. There is no centrally-located elementary school in the Oakton pyramid with enough capacity for an AAP center. The schools in question are: Navy (new center but no capacity for Waples Mill), Crossfield (has LLIV but parents didn't want a center), Waples Mill (no room for LLIV), Oakton ES (has LLIV), and Mosby Woods (has center filled with non-Oakton HS students). To the administration, it makes perfect sense on paper to move Waples Mill kids to Mosby Woods, where there will be extra capacity once they move all the non Oakton HS kids out. But all those administrators for whom this looks good on paper have likely never driven the route during rush hour. |
Anonymous
| Build new centrally located AAP center that is ONLY for AAP. Then also don't have the problem of general ed feeling somehow "less than" at the AAP center schools. At Mosby could perhaps use the freed-up capacity for a Spanish immersion program. Many in Oakton HS area, including town of Vienna, have expressed an interest in Spanish immersion but the current programs are just too far away. |
Anonymous
| Any 2nd grade center-eligibles from Oakton planning to transfer to Sunrise Valley? |
Anonymous
Because that is where the students were when they were built. Fairfax has grown considerabley in the past 20 years. |