FCPS Boundary Review Updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

Yes! The AAP centers are divisive, unpredictable, and cause too many issues. Should all be local AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Same issue at Thoreau. It’s a three-way split feeder and they aren’t doing anything about it. Guess the consultants just want to make a quick buck by going after some schools and not tackling anything that would actually require some thought.

I don't know anything about Thoreau. I do live in the Carson area. I do not see a solution for Carson. It feeds to South Lakes, Oakton, and Westfield. Some people would say it feeds into Chantilly, as well, because of the AAP center there (which does have a lot of Chantilly kids.)

Franklin feeds to Chantilly and Oakton. Maybe a handful to Westfield.

Franklin cannot take all the Oakton kids from Carson--so Oakton kids must remain at Carson.
I doubt if Hughes can take all the South Lakes kids from Carson.
Westfield kids live the closest to Carson, so there is no other option there.

So, I do not see how this can be resolved. One help would be to have a center at Franklin, too. There are plenty of kids to fill one there.

I don't get this argument. Franklin is under capacity and the only Oakton kids at Carson are the ones from Crossfield. If you leave the Crossfield AAP kids at Carson, that probably leaves you with 60 kids that would go to Franklin. That would be fine given that Franklin is at 80% capacity right now.

The AAP kids from Waples Mill also go to Carson. Getting all those Crossfield and Waples AAP kids back would go a long way towards making the AAP program at Franklin comparable to the one currently at Carson. Maybe then they'd be able to offer more of the courses and extra curriculars that Carson has.

AAP kids from Navy who attend Oakton are also at Carson. I suspect that you end up with a decent contingent of Oakton kids at Carson when you look at the percentages.

Not sure that you will have enough room at Franklin if you put all Oakton kids along with AAP there. Remember, Oak Hill and Lees Corner also currently send AAP to Carson--and there are quite a sizeable amount of them there.

PP here. Just checked dashboard. If I am interpreting it correctly there are around 273 Franklin boundary students attending AAP at Carson. That is certainly enough to justify a center at Franklin. Not sure you can also send Crossfield there, however.

The better solution is to keep everything as is but send Crossfield General ed kids to Franklin so they can make some friends that are actually going to go to their high school.

No, that is not a better solution. Not even remotely. Just send all the Franklin kids back to their base school. They already have a strong AAP program at Franklin. The only problem with it is that it's small. If they send all the Franklin kids back to Franklin, the program will be much bigger, which will eliminate the only weakness it has.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Next to no one wants boundary adjustments. Reid and Frisch really stepped into it with this nonsense.

Agree that few want them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t the right thing to do.

For overcrowded schools, yes. Coates and Parklawn have to be addressed. Chantilly and Centerville should be addressed. It sounds like there are some other large schools out there that need to be addressed but that is very different then altering the boundaries across the County.

Why should Chantilly be addressed now that enrollment is declining and a Centreville expansion will begin shortly?

Coates and Parklawn are the only situations that really need to be addressed. Most of what FCPs is proposing is a lot of CYA bullsh*t intended to paper over FCPs’s incompetent facilities planning - for which the solution needs to be hiring better people and investing more prudently rather than just reshuffling kids.

The Centerville expansion should be cancelled because enrollment is dropping. Chantill and Centerville should have been addressed several years back. Yes, the populations are dropping now so there is not a good reason to adress the issues but there should be a mechanism to look at boundary shifts when a school reaches and will maintain over 100% capacity. We should be preventing Chantilly and Centerville and Coates and Parklawn situations, not reacting too late to do anything that actually helps the situation.

Centreville needs a renovation and expansion. It could pull all of Willow Springs Elementary into it and all of Powell. Also, it has the land. Chantilly could move all its academies to Centreville then.

No school should be expanded to 3000 seats while other schools are closer to 2000. Cap it at 2500.

Yep. We can move all of Willow Springs into Centreville, but then move the rest of Powell to Chantilly, Oak Hill to Westfield, and the rest of Coates to Herndon. An expansion of Centreville to 3000 is absolutely ridiculous.

Rezoning is ridiculous when the population is getting ready to decline.

At some point the population will increase again.

Not in the next 10 years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None of the schools should have even been expanded to 2500. They should have built new schools as planned. That's why the borders are increasingly large and odd-shaped. Mega schools with the population of small towns aren't doing anyone any favors.

You are right but the standard is 2500 now. Expanding a couple of schools to 3000 is utter insanity and an admission of just how poorly managed FCPS has become.

They expanded Westfield to 3000 before they came up with "2000" in order to justify the South Lakes boundary.

The FCPS policy was 2000 for new high schools from the 80s. They violated the policy when they built Westfield (and South County) at 2500. Westfield was nearly immediately expanded to 3100 seats (R-wing and expanded cafeteria). They polished the policy before the slhs redistricting without actually changing the 2000 seat requirement. Sometime later they upped the official policy to 2500.
Just before the RD they also ran a "Capacity Study" that conveniently reduced Westfield's capacity from the 3100 we paid for down to 2900...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

It's much cheaper to bus a few kids to a different elementary school than to hire more teachers for the small number of AAP kids per grade. You'd just go from whining about your kid not getting into the AAP center to whining about them not getting the better student:teacher ratio forced by eliminating the center.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

It's much cheaper to bus a few kids to a different elementary school than to hire more teachers for the small number of AAP kids per grade. You'd just go from whining about your kid not getting into the AAP center to whining about them not getting the better student:teacher ratio forced by eliminating the center.

Teacher here. This is false. Centers are not needed when there is a large peer group. Example: our third grade class had 16 kids get into AAP. 3 left for center and are being bussed there. No teacher needed to be hired cause there already is one. I am fine with sending kids to a center if there is not a large peer group of kids, but when there is, it should not be allowed. It is wasteful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

It's much cheaper to bus a few kids to a different elementary school than to hire more teachers for the small number of AAP kids per grade. You'd just go from whining about your kid not getting into the AAP center to whining about them not getting the better student:teacher ratio forced by eliminating the center.

Teacher here. This is false. Centers are not needed when there is a large peer group. Example: our third grade class had 16 kids get into AAP. 3 left for center and are being bussed there. No teacher needed to be hired cause there already is one. I am fine with sending kids to a center if there is not a large peer group of kids, but when there is, it should not be allowed. It is wasteful.

Sorry for typos. Typed quickly with one hand while holding my son.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

It's much cheaper to bus a few kids to a different elementary school than to hire more teachers for the small number of AAP kids per grade. You'd just go from whining about your kid not getting into the AAP center to whining about them not getting the better student:teacher ratio forced by eliminating the center.

Teacher here. This is false. Centers are not needed when there is a large peer group. Example: our third grade class had 16 kids get into AAP. 3 left for center and are being bussed there. No teacher needed to be hired cause there already is one. I am fine with sending kids to a center if there is not a large peer group of kids, but when there is, it should not be allowed. It is wasteful.

Sorry for typos. Typed quickly with one hand while holding my son.

The budget for transportation for AAP is $8 million. That is very small in a budget over 2 billion. As a teacher, the real issue with keeping LLIV is that the kids in the class are stuck together from 3-6. No one can switch classes if they don’t get along, no one can request that kids not be placed together and eventually, with no new kids, that cohort becomes too sibling like. In that sense, centers help everyone out because the kids can be regrouped every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We should add capacity where needed based on a demonstrated need, not blind speculation about future growth. Otherwise we waste capital dollars.

Adding capacity when a renovation is necessary and then adjusting boundaries is far more cost-effective than trying to play whack-a-mole with expansions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We should add capacity where needed based on a demonstrated need, not blind speculation about future growth. Otherwise we waste capital dollars.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to "catch up" by building a school?

It would be wise to expand Centreville. That neighborhood behind Centreville should be there--not in Fairfax.

It would be foolish to expand Centreville beyond 2500 seats, just as it was foolish to expand West Potomac to 3000. If you want Willow Springs at Centreville then figure out if it’s going to push Centreville above 2500 and, if so, make the case that other schools should be redistricted to take advantage of the hundreds of empty seats at Herndon.

Let us know as well who you’re planning to send to Fairfax in lieu of the Willow Springs kids or if you’re arguing for FCPS to repudiate its longstanding arrangement with Fairfax City and just leave Fairfax as a school for Fairfax City kids.

You don’t deserve a massive addition when actual overcrowding at other schools remains unaddressed just because you want an insurance policy that Willow Springs will get moved.

I think it's reasonable to re-look at the agreement with Fairfax City. Not being able to move the City kids has contributed significantly to the "funny lines" that the consultants seem to desperate to fix. If Fairfax City wants to be part of FCPS, then they need to be part of FCPS completely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FIX RACHEL CARSON SPLIT FEEDER NOW

How would you fix it? Which schools should it feed?

Remove AAP at the middle school level/no student should be allowed to select a center school if their local school has AAP.

+100
But this should go for elementary schools too.

I disagree for elementary schools.

But middle schools are a different story.

ALL centers are redundant and wasteful.

It's much cheaper to bus a few kids to a different elementary school than to hire more teachers for the small number of AAP kids per grade. You'd just go from whining about your kid not getting into the AAP center to whining about them not getting the better student:teacher ratio forced by eliminating the center.

Teacher here. This is false. Centers are not needed when there is a large peer group. Example: our third grade class had 16 kids get into AAP. 3 left for center and are being bussed there. No teacher needed to be hired cause there already is one. I am fine with sending kids to a center if there is not a large peer group of kids, but when there is, it should not be allowed. It is wasteful.

So in this case, are you suggesting a single classroom of 16 AAP kids at the home school? Wouldn't that potentially leave the other classrooms much larger? I'm thinking of our school, for examples, where one class of 16 would mean the other two classes would have 30+ each. How is that fair?

[Anonymous]

As they redraw lines, I hope elementary schools travel together to the same high school. The kids are in school for 7 years together, should be geographically close, and develop consistent friendships groups. 2 years in middle school with different kids might be a necessary evil because of where the schools are located and the Carson/frankin situation. But what if we prioritized keeping elementary school blocks feeding to one high school so their friend groups in high school would at least be familiar and geographically close as well.