When are Herndon Middle and Herndon High going to get a break?!??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commute would be an issue. Langley HS is way too far from Herdon. I wouldn't want my kid going that far for HS.

It makes sense to move McLean kids to Langley. Langley is in McLean. It doesn't make much sense to ship Herndon kids all the way to Langley, and i doubt those kids or their parents want to do that.

Why are kids currently being bussed 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question.

+1

THIS.

So more than one person has a problem with reading comprehension. lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they want to "bust up" Langley? Isn't it under-enrolled? Shouldn't we be sending more kids to Langley, not taking kids from Langley and putting them elsewhere?

This is why I thought the plan was to send McLean students to Langley. Not sure where all this talk about Herndon is coming from.

Apparently the sup is on record ( last year or the year before I think) tabling addressing McLean's overcrowding with a boundary change until a new policy on boundary changes in place. This would signal that there is some plan to do a major redrawing for reasons other than an overcrowded school sitting a few miles away from an underenrolled school. I am going to be looking this weekend at those videos from meetings discussing this.

It is complicated. Since 2013, the School Board has had a policy that allows the superintendent to change boundaries on an expedited basis without public hearings, so long as the percentage of affected students at both schools is below a specific percentage. In the past, that policy was used to adjust some boundaries, and it usually resulted in moving kids from higher-income families out of lower-performing schools to schools with more higher-performing students.

When Scott Brabrand arrived in 2017, there was a pending effort on the part of some Springfield parents to get an area moved out of Lee HS to West Springfield HS using the expedited boundary process. In response, Brabrand put a moratorium on expedited boundary changes. And, when the overcrowding at McLean started to get more attention last year, Brabrand reiterated that he would not use his authority to adjust the Langley/McLean boundaries on an expedited basis. Instead, he asserted that he wanted to wait until the Board had considered any adjustments to its current boundary policy that might be deemed appropriate under “One Fairfax.” The Board then spent the better part of the last year discussing possible adjustments to its boundary policy without making any obvious progress.

Finally, FCPS produced a draft of a revised boundary policy, which was discussed at a work session earlier this week. The draft policy eliminated the concept of expedited boundary adjustments, which Brabrand and some Board members claimed lack transparency and do not allow sufficient public input. At the same meeting, however, several Board members specifically mentioned the overcrowding at McLean and suggested that FCPS needed to start working quickly on a solution, most likely involving a shift of kids to Langley, and that this should move forward on a one-off basis even if the Board decides to hire a consultant to look at boundaries on a county-wide basis.

This would have been an additional move to the Daventry move they had taken place just two years earlier. So these expedited boundary changes to get out of Lee were being done piecemeal to stay below the 5% threshold that administrative boundary changes can address. It was a way for neighborhoods to abandon particular schools without full School Board involvement. This is one of the reasons Dr. Brabrand decided to suspend them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commute would be an issue. Langley HS is way too far from Herdon. I wouldn't want my kid going that far for HS.

It makes sense to move McLean kids to Langley. Langley is in McLean. It doesn't make much sense to ship Herndon kids all the way to Langley, and i doubt those kids or their parents want to do that.

Why are kids currently being bussed 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question.

How many times would you like an answer?

Look at Langley’s location. It’s near the Arlington County border. Kids living east attend APS.

To the north is the Potomac River and Maryland.

To the south McLean HS is three miles away and Marshall HS is only five miles away. Kids attend those schools.

Also to the south, Falls Church City is six miles away. Kids there attend FCCPS.

So Langley’s borders can only extend west. In fact, they extend very far west because the houses are on large lots. For the most part Route 7 north of the Toll Road was viewed as the logical dividing line between the Langley boundary and those of other schools - McLean. Marshall, South Lakes, and Herndon.

And even with that big attendance area, Langley’s enrollment is among the smallest in the county.

With the current growth in and around Tysons, more of that area can be assigned to Langley. But one reason why areas closer to Herndon go to Langley rather than Herndon is that Herndon, even with its relatively compact boundaries, has often been overcrowded.

Either the person you are responding to is committed to throwing a tantrum about reality or they have real problems with reading comprehension. Either way, that's something their own parents should have seen to.

I was happy to point out, one more time and in more detail, why Langley kids have to live somewhere.

From now on I’m ignoring the whining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they want to "bust up" Langley? Isn't it under-enrolled? Shouldn't we be sending more kids to Langley, not taking kids from Langley and putting them elsewhere?

This is why I thought the plan was to send McLean students to Langley. Not sure where all this talk about Herndon is coming from.

Apparently the sup is on record ( last year or the year before I think) tabling addressing McLean's overcrowding with a boundary change until a new policy on boundary changes in place. This would signal that there is some plan to do a major redrawing for reasons other than an overcrowded school sitting a few miles away from an underenrolled school. I am going to be looking this weekend at those videos from meetings discussing this.

It is complicated. Since 2013, the School Board has had a policy that allows the superintendent to change boundaries on an expedited basis without public hearings, so long as the percentage of affected students at both schools is below a specific percentage. In the past, that policy was used to adjust some boundaries, and it usually resulted in moving kids from higher-income families out of lower-performing schools to schools with more higher-performing students.

When Scott Brabrand arrived in 2017, there was a pending effort on the part of some Springfield parents to get an area moved out of Lee HS to West Springfield HS using the expedited boundary process. In response, Brabrand put a moratorium on expedited boundary changes. And, when the overcrowding at McLean started to get more attention last year, Brabrand reiterated that he would not use his authority to adjust the Langley/McLean boundaries on an expedited basis. Instead, he asserted that he wanted to wait until the Board had considered any adjustments to its current boundary policy that might be deemed appropriate under “One Fairfax.” The Board then spent the better part of the last year discussing possible adjustments to its boundary policy without making any obvious progress.

Finally, FCPS produced a draft of a revised boundary policy, which was discussed at a work session earlier this week. The draft policy eliminated the concept of expedited boundary adjustments, which Brabrand and some Board members claimed lack transparency and do not allow sufficient public input. At the same meeting, however, several Board members specifically mentioned the overcrowding at McLean and suggested that FCPS needed to start working quickly on a solution, most likely involving a shift of kids to Langley, and that this should move forward on a one-off basis even if the Board decides to hire a consultant to look at boundaries on a county-wide basis.

This would have been an additional move to the Daventry move they had taken place just two years earlier. So these expedited boundary changes to get out of Lee were being done piecemeal to stay below the 5% threshold that administrative boundary changes can address. It was a way for neighborhoods to abandon particular schools without full School Board involvement. This is one of the reasons Dr. Brabrand decided to suspend them.

I'm open to new information that could change my mind.

Was there an overcrowding issue or did the neighborhood just not want to be zoned for Lee anymore? Would this have been an attendance island or did this area adjoin the boundary?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they want to "bust up" Langley? Isn't it under-enrolled? Shouldn't we be sending more kids to Langley, not taking kids from Langley and putting them elsewhere?

This is why I thought the plan was to send McLean students to Langley. Not sure where all this talk about Herndon is coming from.

Apparently the sup is on record ( last year or the year before I think) tabling addressing McLean's overcrowding with a boundary change until a new policy on boundary changes in place. This would signal that there is some plan to do a major redrawing for reasons other than an overcrowded school sitting a few miles away from an underenrolled school. I am going to be looking this weekend at those videos from meetings discussing this.

It is complicated. Since 2013, the School Board has had a policy that allows the superintendent to change boundaries on an expedited basis without public hearings, so long as the percentage of affected students at both schools is below a specific percentage. In the past, that policy was used to adjust some boundaries, and it usually resulted in moving kids from higher-income families out of lower-performing schools to schools with more higher-performing students.

When Scott Brabrand arrived in 2017, there was a pending effort on the part of some Springfield parents to get an area moved out of Lee HS to West Springfield HS using the expedited boundary process. In response, Brabrand put a moratorium on expedited boundary changes. And, when the overcrowding at McLean started to get more attention last year, Brabrand reiterated that he would not use his authority to adjust the Langley/McLean boundaries on an expedited basis. Instead, he asserted that he wanted to wait until the Board had considered any adjustments to its current boundary policy that might be deemed appropriate under “One Fairfax.” The Board then spent the better part of the last year discussing possible adjustments to its boundary policy without making any obvious progress.

Finally, FCPS produced a draft of a revised boundary policy, which was discussed at a work session earlier this week. The draft policy eliminated the concept of expedited boundary adjustments, which Brabrand and some Board members claimed lack transparency and do not allow sufficient public input. At the same meeting, however, several Board members specifically mentioned the overcrowding at McLean and suggested that FCPS needed to start working quickly on a solution, most likely involving a shift of kids to Langley, and that this should move forward on a one-off basis even if the Board decides to hire a consultant to look at boundaries on a county-wide basis.

This would have been an additional move to the Daventry move they had taken place just two years earlier. So these expedited boundary changes to get out of Lee were being done piecemeal to stay below the 5% threshold that administrative boundary changes can address. It was a way for neighborhoods to abandon particular schools without full School Board involvement. This is one of the reasons Dr. Brabrand decided to suspend them.

Yep, it involved some other neighborhoods at Rolling Valley assigned to Lee rather than West Springfield.

One might ask, however, whether Brabrand really needed to impose a complete moratorium. Reassigning kids from overcrowded McLean to below-capacity Langley isn’t the same as moving kids from under-enrolled Lee to West Springfield, which is above capacity.

By tying his own hands while the Board debated One Fairfax for months on end, he ensured kids at McLean would spend at least another year in trailers when it was completely avoidable.

[Anonymous]

Does it makes sense for the current situation where many students attend Langley at 16 miles from their houses when they actually live between 3-6 miles from HHS?

Does it make sense for parents who don't live in Great Falls to obsess over how long our children are on the bus or in the car?

Worry about yourself. We're good over here.

[Anonymous]

"Why are kids currently being bused 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question."

Easy answer: Builders paid off the SB to put all of GF in Langley to get higher prices. People pay a premium to avoid MS13, illegal aliens and other assorted losers.

Hate to be mean but that is the bottom line.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Why are kids currently being bused 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question."

Easy answer: Builders paid off the SB to put all of GF in Langley to get higher prices. People pay a premium to avoid MS13, illegal aliens and other assorted losers.

Hate to be mean but that is the bottom line.

When are you proposing this happened? GF has been expensive for decades. It used to be more expensive than even McLean back in the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Why are kids currently being bused 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question."

Easy answer: Builders paid off the SB to put all of GF in Langley to get higher prices. People pay a premium to avoid MS13, illegal aliens and other assorted losers.

Hate to be mean but that is the bottom line.

Langley was under enrolled. That's why the rest of GF was zoned to Langley in the 90s.

I would believe builder influence for the new developments that have been built in the past 10-15 years.

Is the ex golf course on 7 zoned for Langley? I would be surprised if it isn't.

I'm sure getting zoning approved wasn't a problem given Herndon's increase and the fact that school renovations are in the pipeline for awhile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Why are kids currently being bused 16+ miles to Langley when they live 6 miles from Herndon HS? Please answer this question."

Easy answer: Builders paid off the SB to put all of GF in Langley to get higher prices. People pay a premium to avoid MS13, illegal aliens and other assorted losers.

Hate to be mean but that is the bottom line.

When are you proposing this happened? GF has been expensive for decades. It used to be more expensive than even McLean back in the day.

Someone is trolling. Anyone can look up the history of zoning in the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they want to "bust up" Langley? Isn't it under-enrolled? Shouldn't we be sending more kids to Langley, not taking kids from Langley and putting them elsewhere?

This is why I thought the plan was to send McLean students to Langley. Not sure where all this talk about Herndon is coming from.

Apparently the sup is on record ( last year or the year before I think) tabling addressing McLean's overcrowding with a boundary change until a new policy on boundary changes in place. This would signal that there is some plan to do a major redrawing for reasons other than an overcrowded school sitting a few miles away from an underenrolled school. I am going to be looking this weekend at those videos from meetings discussing this.

It is complicated. Since 2013, the School Board has had a policy that allows the superintendent to change boundaries on an expedited basis without public hearings, so long as the percentage of affected students at both schools is below a specific percentage. In the past, that policy was used to adjust some boundaries, and it usually resulted in moving kids from higher-income families out of lower-performing schools to schools with more higher-performing students.

When Scott Brabrand arrived in 2017, there was a pending effort on the part of some Springfield parents to get an area moved out of Lee HS to West Springfield HS using the expedited boundary process. In response, Brabrand put a moratorium on expedited boundary changes. And, when the overcrowding at McLean started to get more attention last year, Brabrand reiterated that he would not use his authority to adjust the Langley/McLean boundaries on an expedited basis. Instead, he asserted that he wanted to wait until the Board had considered any adjustments to its current boundary policy that might be deemed appropriate under “One Fairfax.” The Board then spent the better part of the last year discussing possible adjustments to its boundary policy without making any obvious progress.

Finally, FCPS produced a draft of a revised boundary policy, which was discussed at a work session earlier this week. The draft policy eliminated the concept of expedited boundary adjustments, which Brabrand and some Board members claimed lack transparency and do not allow sufficient public input. At the same meeting, however, several Board members specifically mentioned the overcrowding at McLean and suggested that FCPS needed to start working quickly on a solution, most likely involving a shift of kids to Langley, and that this should move forward on a one-off basis even if the Board decides to hire a consultant to look at boundaries on a county-wide basis.

This would have been an additional move to the Daventry move they had taken place just two years earlier. So these expedited boundary changes to get out of Lee were being done piecemeal to stay below the 5% threshold that administrative boundary changes can address. It was a way for neighborhoods to abandon particular schools without full School Board involvement. This is one of the reasons Dr. Brabrand decided to suspend them.

Yep, it involved some other neighborhoods at Rolling Valley assigned to Lee rather than West Springfield.

One might ask, however, whether Brabrand really needed to impose a complete moratorium. Reassigning kids from overcrowded McLean to below-capacity Langley isn’t the same as moving kids from under-enrolled Lee to West Springfield, which is above capacity.

By tying his own hands while the Board debated One Fairfax for months on end, he ensured kids at McLean would spend at least another year in trailers when it was completely avoidable.

It was a split feeder that they thought needed to be closed because only a certain number of students were being sent to Lee. But, like Daventry, part of the reason the number was relatively small was because parents from those neighborhoods had been pupil placing out. So there you have it - get enough of your neighbors to pupil place out of your school and then you can just ask your School Board member to get an administrative boundary change done through the Superintendent. It is a insidious process that can crush the lower income schools.

It also points out that one of the previous boundary goals - closing split feeders - can lead to the concentration of poverty. How many neighborhoods are going to lobby to close a split feeder by opting for the poorer school? Especially when there is a wide disparity.

And the number of students attending West Springfield from Daventry increased because of the new, "better" school, thus contributing to the overcrowding forecasted for West Springfield in the next couple of years despite the capacity increase. And then they might add more students (Rolling Valley) to that while Lee is 400 students below capacity. This is what is screwed up about FCPS.

[Anonymous]

I try to stay away from this message board as much as possible but I happened to glance at topics recently and am appalled at the comments. I’m not sure how many of these responders are from the same person, but I think it’s a lot! My kids go to HMS AND HHS and we want nothing to do with the kids from Langley. You may think it’s crazy but I CHOOSE to live in the Herndon Pyramid over Langley. Everyone I know with kids at the school are very much content - dare I say, happy! - at Herndon so stop bashing the school and quit your bellyaching.

[Anonymous]

Herndon pyramid parent here. I do not want Langley kids coming to Herndon schools.
I do wish there was more support for the kids coming from the immigrant and low income communities in Herndon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they want to "bust up" Langley? Isn't it under-enrolled? Shouldn't we be sending more kids to Langley, not taking kids from Langley and putting them elsewhere?

This is why I thought the plan was to send McLean students to Langley. Not sure where all this talk about Herndon is coming from.

Apparently the sup is on record ( last year or the year before I think) tabling addressing McLean's overcrowding with a boundary change until a new policy on boundary changes in place. This would signal that there is some plan to do a major redrawing for reasons other than an overcrowded school sitting a few miles away from an underenrolled school. I am going to be looking this weekend at those videos from meetings discussing this.

It is complicated. Since 2013, the School Board has had a policy that allows the superintendent to change boundaries on an expedited basis without public hearings, so long as the percentage of affected students at both schools is below a specific percentage. In the past, that policy was used to adjust some boundaries, and it usually resulted in moving kids from higher-income families out of lower-performing schools to schools with more higher-performing students.

When Scott Brabrand arrived in 2017, there was a pending effort on the part of some Springfield parents to get an area moved out of Lee HS to West Springfield HS using the expedited boundary process. In response, Brabrand put a moratorium on expedited boundary changes. And, when the overcrowding at McLean started to get more attention last year, Brabrand reiterated that he would not use his authority to adjust the Langley/McLean boundaries on an expedited basis. Instead, he asserted that he wanted to wait until the Board had considered any adjustments to its current boundary policy that might be deemed appropriate under “One Fairfax.” The Board then spent the better part of the last year discussing possible adjustments to its boundary policy without making any obvious progress.

Finally, FCPS produced a draft of a revised boundary policy, which was discussed at a work session earlier this week. The draft policy eliminated the concept of expedited boundary adjustments, which Brabrand and some Board members claimed lack transparency and do not allow sufficient public input. At the same meeting, however, several Board members specifically mentioned the overcrowding at McLean and suggested that FCPS needed to start working quickly on a solution, most likely involving a shift of kids to Langley, and that this should move forward on a one-off basis even if the Board decides to hire a consultant to look at boundaries on a county-wide basis.

This would have been an additional move to the Daventry move they had taken place just two years earlier. So these expedited boundary changes to get out of Lee were being done piecemeal to stay below the 5% threshold that administrative boundary changes can address. It was a way for neighborhoods to abandon particular schools without full School Board involvement. This is one of the reasons Dr. Brabrand decided to suspend them.

Great information! That Daventry whine went on for years. This situation with Lee and West Springfield and possible others in Mount Vernon District might be why that totally weird item is in the draft 1830 - move a residential area based on history of pupil placement!

So misuse of that and an escape hatch stuck in a regulation/policy ? Incredible. Bt no more incredible than the waste of money on an addition at West Potomac when Lee is one over and Mount Vernon contiguous. Such BS … Nice break for Herndon would be to have those IB $$$ hogs go back to AP and use the money at all schools based on need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Herndon pyramid parent here. I do not want Langley kids coming to Herndon schools.
I do wish there was more support for the kids coming from the immigrant and low income communities in Herndon.

Write your school board member and request a budget increase.

You should probably have an idea of where you want the money to go: extra teachers, translation (written/oral)help for parents, tutors, etc.