FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, lots to unpack in this article, but I didn’t think that a county-wide data breach would be added to the boundary review debacle mix:

https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fcps-boundary-review-faces-concerns-despite-claims-of-transparency/article_5163cb5c-efab-11ef-b945-5b3343dc4582.html

Kyle McDaniel is such a weird dude. I don’t trust him to make any decisions other than with an eye to his own political future, and of course making sure his own property stays zoned to renovated Oakton. He’s basically Laura Jane Cohen 2.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reid, SB and Board of Supervisors are all incredibly tone deaf. County gets half its budget from Federal funds. If those go away no way to make that up with tax increases on those tax payers that remain. But keep pushing ahead with an equity driven boundary changes. That is a winning plan

+1 - the school board and board of supervisors believe that they are not accountable to us. That’s why they daily ignore the outreach from the community and the deluge of evidence staring them in the face from the boundary meetings.

Shame on them.

Our property taxes are going up, in part, to fund Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay's Covid Memorial, which will cost millions of dollars. McKay thinks ia covid memorial will be a tourist destination (You cannot make this $#@! up.)

"...7News Reporter Nick Minock: Again, back to this COVID memorial that I've heard you talk about in the past. Do you think projects like the COVID memorial for Fairfax County should be put on hold given the personnel emergency at the police department?

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay: I don't. So first of all, our community has been through a lot. And our police department has been through a lot through COVID and there's a desire in our community to have a place where people can reflect. There are a lot of people suffering from mental health. There's people who have lost loved ones lives. They would like to have a peaceful place to reflect. This is a very tiny financial element to making a COVID memorial happen but the Park Authority in the community has been working on this for a while. The details of it aren't completed yet at this stage, but I think it's highly appropriate for a community that has been through what our community has been through, where our country has been through to have a quiet place to reflect upon that and to recognize for future generations who might not have lived through COVID that that has had a lasting, meaningful and in some place permanent effect on people's lives, not just from a mental health standpoint, but from a financial standpoint. We've lost more lives to COVID than anything else recently. And the idea that we shouldn't be able to mark that and to remind people what we've been through. Yeah, I think a county of our size can be a regional hub for bringing people together and reflecting on what we've lost but also our initiative and our drive to move forward and to advance beyond that. And I think there are some therapeutic elements of that...."


https://wjla.com/news/local/fairfax-county-crime-police-shortage-jeff-mckay-crisis-personnel-emergency-covid-memorial-board-of-supervisors-police-pay-public-safety-violence-burnout-kevin-davis-steve-descano-jason-miyares-glenn-youngkin

https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax-county-faces-potential-budget-cuts-to-fire-and-rescue-services/article_f27d17fc-d43d-11ef-b609-8b6962c0cd2d.html

The tax increases are not about improving schools or paying teachers more.

The property tax increases are for a multi million vanity project for a local politician who will probably get kickbacks from whatever entities are awarded to contract to build it.

Who the eff thinks that Fairfax County needs to spend a dime building a covid memorial?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, lots to unpack in this article, but I didn’t think that a county-wide data breach would be added to the boundary review debacle mix:

https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fcps-boundary-review-faces-concerns-despite-claims-of-transparency/article_5163cb5c-efab-11ef-b945-5b3343dc4582.html

Kyle McDaniel is such a weird dude. I don’t trust him to make any decisions other than with an eye to his own political future, and of course making sure his own property stays zoned to renovated Oakton. He’s basically Laura Jane Cohen 2.0.

You really think he wants to stay in Oakton, Ben?

[Anonymous]

So we're cutting middle school after school programs for a covid memorial that nobody asked for? Great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Waples is in pure panic. PTA just assembled a committee for the boundary situation.

Kudos to the PTA. It is great to have some coordinated effort

Had anybody heard anything more about this? Is there a place to sign up? I haven’t seen anything in the weekly Waples newsletter.

This is all that I found on the PTA website:

https://waplesmill.ptboard.com/annlist?ann=448ae761-0fa8-49bf-a74e-0829f4fc39eb~n.9223370297908997675

It’s just a link to the FCPS page on the boundary review.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't mind paying high taxes for commensurate services. We don't get that in Fairfax any longer. We get increasingly high taxes to subsidize a growing low-income population and the promise/threat of boundary changes to paper it all over.

It's not a good value proposition any longer, and they will pay the price eventually as the people they expect to foot the bill leave.

Exactly this. I can swallow a tax hit, even if I know it is being used to subsidize sustaining a low income population within the county. When my family is materially affected by boundary changes and I have no control in the matter, that is when it becomes too much and we relocate. We are preparing for a Spring 2026 listing to move into a 'safe' area that is away from the beltway.

"Safe" how?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could someone explain Reid's vision for UPK. Is it full day? Half day? Everyday?
Certified teachers?

Maybe Reid is talking about UPK because they can’t redistrict based upon DEI factors now. If she doesn’t have a ‘reason” DEI will become more obvious and leave FCPS more open for law suits.

UPK is not just a talking point. If Frisch gets UPK it becomes a political badge of honor. It is the SB equivalent of Obama getting universal health care. Reid is fully committed to and supported in this effort. That is why she got a big pay raise. She is doing the work that the SB wants her to do.

Maybe people won’t notice/care/make the connection between the shiny thing (UPK) and their spiraling real estate taxes. Maybe they won’t make the connection between these SB and Gatehouse actions and local politicians’ increasing vulnerability to casino lobbies as the “quick fix” to mend those ballooning budget gaps. Declining commercial real estate tax revenues are not as burdensome as these bloated FCPS projects.

Maybe all of this gets pushed through because facts don’t change people’s minds, emotions do. And people care about kids and schools. Taxes and budgets are more abstract. To many people, things like budgets are just facts. So FCPS presses on.

But I will notice if my kids get rezoned. So will everyone else who is affected. And the resulting emotions will change many minds. Those emotions will far exceed any “UPK is a good thing” or “let’s make sure everyone gets an equal slice of my pie” feelings. It is a game changer.

I’m saying this because I knew about the UPK push in the spring of last year. I work in ECE in another district and know the push in general and know FCPS is having a very hard time meeting the governor’s push to have all sped pre-k children in inclusion classroom. The ECE department was scrambling to meet this initiative.

At the last work session on the boundary policy, UPK was mentioned, but wasn’t the focus of the boundary push. The board members were like “ it is nice to have, but….” And it has been in the background the entire time, but wasn’t pushed into the fore front until recently. They were publicly playing up a more DEI/capacity angle until the last few weeks with Trump in office. I think they are pushing a different angle on purpose now and leaning back from capacity and DEI to avoid those topics.

I don’t really think people want UPK and even in the field, I am not sold on the idea that pre-k should be part of public schools as elementary schools are not built with 3 year olds in mind. I think this is an angle to get this passed without more fed scrutiny at this point.

Reid stated openly at a community meeting Wednesday night 2/19 for Region 4 that FCPS is pushing forward on doubling down on Equity, CRT and DEI, even if FCPS loses federal funds.

She also alluded that moving 6th grade to middle school is a non negotiable, and will occur as part of the rezoning process.

Buckle your seat belts people.

Squeezing over 40,000 students into middle schools with capacity for roughly 30,000 students means that rezoning is going to be extensive. Lots of our kids are going to be switched from walkable neighborhood elementary schools with plenty of room to trailer parks on an overcrowded middle school campus, possibly far outside the neighborhood schools you selected when you purchased your house.

To accomplish 6th to middle school, as Reid stated on Wednesday will occur, the boundary changes are going to be far more extensive and disruptive than anyone realizes.

Nuclear?

[Anonymous]

Folks are going full “damn the torpedoes, it’s all in on equity” on the Va Governor’s race thread:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/105/1217522.page

Wow.

[Anonymous]

From the Va Governor’s thread:

“It's not the responsibility of the Fairfax Democrats to cower in fear of the consequences of acting on THE BELIEFS AND PRINCIPLES THAT BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER IN THE FIRST PLACE. The consequences of acting on principles of fairness, diversity and acceptance are BETTER SCHOOLS and a BETTER SOCIETY. Fairfax is firmly BLUE. No matter what happens in Richmond, Fairfax should act like it, or else people may as well move to a Republican county.”

So, this teeing up to be quite the issue in the fall. Apparently this rezoning is for BETTER SCHOOLS and a BETTER SOCIETY.

People love it when you tell them what you are entitled to do with their children to make society better. That is a real winning formula.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Waples is in pure panic. PTA just assembled a committee for the boundary situation.

Kudos to the PTA. It is great to have some coordinated effort

Had anybody heard anything more about this? Is there a place to sign up? I haven’t seen anything in the weekly Waples newsletter.

This is all that I found on the PTA website:

https://waplesmill.ptboard.com/annlist?ann=448ae761-0fa8-49bf-a74e-0829f4fc39eb~n.9223370297908997675

It’s just a link to the FCPS page on the boundary review.

The sign up email came Feb 11 titled "Committee Members Needed for WMES School Boundary Review Advocacy". The sign up period for that committee has ended. The link was here: https://waplesmill.ptboard.com/sgnvw

If you aren't in the PTA then maybe you didn't get the email?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the Va Governor’s thread:

“It's not the responsibility of the Fairfax Democrats to cower in fear of the consequences of acting on THE BELIEFS AND PRINCIPLES THAT BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER IN THE FIRST PLACE. The consequences of acting on principles of fairness, diversity and acceptance are BETTER SCHOOLS and a BETTER SOCIETY. Fairfax is firmly BLUE. No matter what happens in Richmond, Fairfax should act like it, or else people may as well move to a Republican county.”

So, this teeing up to be quite the issue in the fall. Apparently this rezoning is for BETTER SCHOOLS and a BETTER SOCIETY.

People love it when you tell them what you are entitled to do with their children to make society better. That is a real winning formula.

The pride cometh before the fall. Seems that the school board believes it can act with impunity. Looking forward to working to prove them wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Waples is in pure panic. PTA just assembled a committee for the boundary situation.

Kudos to the PTA. It is great to have some coordinated effort

Had anybody heard anything more about this? Is there a place to sign up? I haven’t seen anything in the weekly Waples newsletter.

This is all that I found on the PTA website:

https://waplesmill.ptboard.com/annlist?ann=448ae761-0fa8-49bf-a74e-0829f4fc39eb~n.9223370297908997675

It’s just a link to the FCPS page on the boundary review.

The sign up email came Feb 11 titled "Committee Members Needed for WMES School Boundary Review Advocacy". The sign up period for that committee has ended. The link was here: https://waplesmill.ptboard.com/sgnvw

If you aren't in the PTA then maybe you didn't get the email?

I got the email but I did not sign up at the time. Is there any way to participate now? Is anything happening?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got the email but I did not sign up at the time. Is there any way to participate now? Is anything happening?

You'll probably have better luck emailing the PTA on the Contact Us link than asking here.

[Anonymous]

From FairFactss:

BRAC FOIA UPDATE:
After nearly 60-days, FCPS finally provided a limited production of documents related to the selection of BRAC members. The files produced highlight blatant manipulation of the selection process by Senior FCPS personnel.
We are working on a summary of the files and videos, and will share a multi-post review of the production shortly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From FairFactss:

BRAC FOIA UPDATE:
After nearly 60-days, FCPS finally provided a limited production of documents related to the selection of BRAC members. The files produced highlight blatant manipulation of the selection process by Senior FCPS personnel.
We are working on a summary of the files and videos, and will share a multi-post review of the production shortly.

Fcps acts like a criminal enterprise. They blatantly lie and mislead whenever they want.

So much for an objective process.