FCPS's "Obvious Elephant in the Room" - Does the West Potomac Expansion Foster Intolerance?
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Anonymous
This is exactly what they should do. And get rid of the addition at West Potomac. Save $36 million or close to it and use it for distance learning, masks, or meals or whatever else is needed for COVID. |
Anonymous
MV has a feeder AAP elementary school. Riverside Elementary, which is right across the street from MVHS, is an AAP center school. It pulls students from all the MV feeder elementary schools. |
Anonymous
| ^^ Also there is still the problem of how the boundaries are drawn. Yes, there are those that people-place, But the would-be Whitman MS walkers are not people-placing- they are in the West Potomac boundary. |
Anonymous
| And maybe use some of that $36M to give MV a middle school AAP feeder? |
Anonymous
Just be aware - $36M is only part of the cost of renovating West Potomac. The recent West Springfield HS renovation/expansion cost over $90M. |
Anonymous
More - went back to the 2015-2019 CIP, here were the budgets for the high school renovations: Marshall - $72M Jefferson - $89M Langley - $75M West Springfield $90M Herndon - $97M Oakton - $96M Falls Church - $93M West Potomac is an odd set up - students have to move between separate buildings. Not sure what was agreed to, but I know parents wanted the county to connect the buildings. They are planning on adding 700 seats. Not seeing how they add that space and connect the buildings for only $36M given the cost of the other renovations/expansions of the other high schools. |
Anonymous
These are complete renovations. They are planning to spend $36 million on West Potomac outside the normal renovation cycle, when West Potomac was not otherwise scheduled for a renovation. Absolutely pathetic. |
Anonymous
| So what if the kids have to move between two buildings? That is true at every school in the county with trailers or a modular. |
Anonymous
The parents feel it is a security concern. I'm not justifying it, just saying that is what the parents were asking for. And I guess the county does only have $36M budgeted for the West Potomac expansion. If they have only budgeted $36M for a 700 seat addition, then either they are doing it in some really cheap way or the costs will rise. Sadly, the 480 seats at Mount Vernon, literally right next door, will go unused while our taxpayer money flies out the door. FCPS is a joke. |
Anonymous
They jack up the projected costs with every new CIP. It is a sham and taxpayers justifiably should be outraged. |
Anonymous
Can you say "Karen Corbett-Sanders and her flunkies"? No one on the board stopped her. No one said, "Hey you know Karen, there are a bunch of seats available next door at Mount Vernon. We should move some students there." You know why, because then they might be forced to take hard looks at their own boundaries. |
Anonymous
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Corbett Sanders says the reason for the WestPo expansion is the student projections in the CIP - not security concerns. She can’t cite security as the reason for her massive addition because then they would have to get rid of trailers and mods at all the schools. But her argument is based on false facts. The CIP projects that WestPo alone will add 150% of the # of students that all 4 high schools serving Tyson’s Corner will add in the next 5 years (250 students for WestPo alone, 100 students collectively for McLean, Langley, Madison, and Marshall). This is demonstrably untrue based on their own documents. It’s made-up numbers to give cover for a corrupt decision, imho.
Regarding the cost of the addition — $36M for the extra seats is far from cheap. “Renovations” and “additions/capacity enhancements” are 2 totally separate concepts in the CIP. Those high schools that get “renovations” are updating the entire school, not just adding seats. That is why they cost $100M+ these days, and those schools have been waiting in the renovation queue, which is now on a 37-44 year cycle. An “addition/capacity enhancement” is basically adding seats to accommodate new growth, outside of the normal renovation queue. The schools getting an “addition/capacity enhancement” get to jump the line, but only to remedy overcrowding. There are only three additions planned in this CIP (WestPo, Justice, and Madison). The other two additions - at Justice and Madison - are only in the $19M range and they are Just adding seats, not updating the entire school. WestPo is an outlier. No addition/capacity enhancement in the history of FCPS has ever cost $36M. Exacerbating the problem, WestPo has added a lot of “while we are at it’s” and is now looking more like a “renovation” rather than a straight line addition of seats. What is more unseemly ... Last year the entire addition for WestPo was budgeted for $16M. This year it is $36M. That’s $20M quietly moved around by FCPS towards WestPo in the last 12 months. |
Anonymous
| I expect the cost will rise again next year. She is the worst. |
Anonymous
Comparing apples to apples -- the 2015-2019 CIP budgeted $14M for the South Lakes addition. See here at p. 12: https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/cipbook2015-19_0.pdf Again, WestPo's addition is presently up to $36M and counting. Justice is at $19M and Madison at $20M. |
Anonymous
| So what can be done at this point to prevent this waste? Clearly what they plan to do at West Potomac is motivated by racism and bias towards the Mount Vernon-area residents, and someone also needs to follow the money trail to see who benefits the most financially from these expenditures. |