FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:FCPS news you choose highlighted WSHS cheer/football teams reading to cardinal forest elementary kids. The kind of community building activity that is great for all involved. And yet, the board wants to tear this apart and redo strict a bunch of kids. Hypocrites all of them.

Cardinal forest is safe though.

The school board will tear a community apart to slightly raise test score averages at a different school. It’s vile.

I would hope that parents would vote with their feet (somehow). If boundaries change from HVES-WSHS to Lewis, they’ll refuse to send their DC there and instead go private or flood Gatehouse with demands for pupil placements.

I’d refuse to send my DC to Lewis. My parents did their research and scrimped, saved and relocated so that we could go to the best possible HS pyramid they could afford - and that was:

HVES/Irving/WSHS.

Not criticizing your parents here, but that's not how K-12 education is meant to be. Your parents should not have had to sacrifice their quality of life for some real estate investor's profit or seller's retirement fund, just to get you into a decent situation.

Good homes in good schools should not be held hostage by existing homeowners. Ideally FCPS can make every school acceptable so that the next generations are not in the same situation.

Kids are not political pawns to move around snd disrupt so the school board can declare a One Fairfax equity victory.

-- The school board openly said at the daytime meeting 2 wwwks ago that One Fairfax is their primary goal for rezoning (not attendance islands, academic improvement, students, community or families) The also said that the chief equity officer will be placed on all committees to insure that One Fairfax controls the process.

This rezoning is not about academic excellence, lower commutes, improving outcomes or student well being. It is 100% about One Fairfax. Go watch the entire meeting online.

Coincidentally this is around the time the FairFACTS matter group went silent on facebook. They already had plenty of ammo, wonder if this is the smoking gun for their lawsuit against the SB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS news you choose highlighted WSHS cheer/football teams reading to cardinal forest elementary kids. The kind of community building activity that is great for all involved. And yet, the board wants to tear this apart and redo strict a bunch of kids. Hypocrites all of them.

Cardinal forest is safe though.

The school board will tear a community apart to slightly raise test score averages at a different school. It’s vile.

I would hope that parents would vote with their feet (somehow). If boundaries change from HVES-WSHS to Lewis, they’ll refuse to send their DC there and instead go private or flood Gatehouse with demands for pupil placements.

I’d refuse to send my DC to Lewis. My parents did their research and scrimped, saved and relocated so that we could go to the best possible HS pyramid they could afford - and that was:

HVES/Irving/WSHS.

Not criticizing your parents here, but that's not how K-12 education is meant to be. Your parents should not have had to sacrifice their quality of life for some real estate investor's profit or seller's retirement fund, just to get you into a decent situation.

Good homes in good schools should not be held hostage by existing homeowners. Ideally FCPS can make every school acceptable so that the next generations are not in the same situation.

Kids are not political pawns to move around snd disrupt so the school board can declare a One Fairfax equity victory.

-- The school board openly said at the daytime meeting 2 wwwks ago that One Fairfax is their primary goal for rezoning (not attendance islands, academic improvement, students, community or families) The also said that the chief equity officer will be placed on all committees to insure that One Fairfax controls the process.

This rezoning is not about academic excellence, lower commutes, improving outcomes or student well being. It is 100% about One Fairfax. Go watch the entire meeting online.

Coincidentally this is around the time the FairFACTS matter group went silent on facebook. They already had plenty of ammo, wonder if this is the smoking gun for their lawsuit against the SB.

It wouldn’t make any sense for them to share a potential litigation strategy on FB, when that page is followed by SB loyalists like the Latin teacher who keeps trolling them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS news you choose highlighted WSHS cheer/football teams reading to cardinal forest elementary kids. The kind of community building activity that is great for all involved. And yet, the board wants to tear this apart and redo strict a bunch of kids. Hypocrites all of them.

Cardinal forest is safe though.

The school board will tear a community apart to slightly raise test score averages at a different school. It’s vile.

I would hope that parents would vote with their feet (somehow). If boundaries change from HVES-WSHS to Lewis, they’ll refuse to send their DC there and instead go private or flood Gatehouse with demands for pupil placements.

I’d refuse to send my DC to Lewis. My parents did their research and scrimped, saved and relocated so that we could go to the best possible HS pyramid they could afford - and that was:

HVES/Irving/WSHS.

Not criticizing your parents here, but that's not how K-12 education is meant to be. Your parents should not have had to sacrifice their quality of life for some real estate investor's profit or seller's retirement fund, just to get you into a decent situation.

Good homes in good schools should not be held hostage by existing homeowners. Ideally FCPS can make every school acceptable so that the next generations are not in the same situation.

Kids are not political pawns to move around snd disrupt so the school board can declare a One Fairfax equity victory.

-- The school board openly said at the daytime meeting 2 wwwks ago that One Fairfax is their primary goal for rezoning (not attendance islands, academic improvement, students, community or families) The also said that the chief equity officer will be placed on all committees to insure that One Fairfax controls the process.

This rezoning is not about academic excellence, lower commutes, improving outcomes or student well being. It is 100% about One Fairfax. Go watch the entire meeting online.

Coincidentally this is around the time the FairFACTS matter group went silent on facebook. They already had plenty of ammo, wonder if this is the smoking gun for their lawsuit against the SB.

They had a topic yesterday on the TJ principal, but overall I assumed it had just been quiet because there isn’t much going on until the public meetings get started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS news you choose highlighted WSHS cheer/football teams reading to cardinal forest elementary kids. The kind of community building activity that is great for all involved. And yet, the board wants to tear this apart and redo strict a bunch of kids. Hypocrites all of them.

Cardinal forest is safe though.

The school board will tear a community apart to slightly raise test score averages at a different school. It’s vile.

I would hope that parents would vote with their feet (somehow). If boundaries change from HVES-WSHS to Lewis, they’ll refuse to send their DC there and instead go private or flood Gatehouse with demands for pupil placements.

I’d refuse to send my DC to Lewis. My parents did their research and scrimped, saved and relocated so that we could go to the best possible HS pyramid they could afford - and that was:

HVES/Irving/WSHS.

Not criticizing your parents here, but that's not how K-12 education is meant to be. Your parents should not have had to sacrifice their quality of life for some real estate investor's profit or seller's retirement fund, just to get you into a decent situation.

Good homes in good schools should not be held hostage by existing homeowners. Ideally FCPS can make every school acceptable so that the next generations are not in the same situation.

This x 1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FCPS news you choose highlighted WSHS cheer/football teams reading to cardinal forest elementary kids. The kind of community building activity that is great for all involved. And yet, the board wants to tear this apart and redo strict a bunch of kids. Hypocrites all of them.

Cardinal forest is safe though.

The school board will tear a community apart to slightly raise test score averages at a different school. It’s vile.

I would hope that parents would vote with their feet (somehow). If boundaries change from HVES-WSHS to Lewis, they’ll refuse to send their DC there and instead go private or flood Gatehouse with demands for pupil placements.

I’d refuse to send my DC to Lewis. My parents did their research and scrimped, saved and relocated so that we could go to the best possible HS pyramid they could afford - and that was:

HVES/Irving/WSHS.

Not criticizing your parents here, but that's not how K-12 education is meant to be. Your parents should not have had to sacrifice their quality of life for some real estate investor's profit or seller's retirement fund, just to get you into a decent situation.

Good homes in good schools should not be held hostage by existing homeowners. Ideally FCPS can make every school acceptable so that the next generations are not in the same situation.

This x 1000

Because of the way things are zoned this is a mere dream and can’t be a reality unless you get massive bussing across the county. Even then you get lengthy communes and less family engagement because parents don’t want to drive far after work.

Community does matter

[Anonymous]

There’s something to be said for blooming where you’re planted and not having school
boundaries dictated by a fear of missing out or concern that someone else might be zoned to a “better” school.

[Anonymous]

FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

Girl sell your house and go back.

Bank a few bucks and have a better situation for your kid. They only get one childhood!
It’s worth the hassle to move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

You may have just inadvertently stumbled on a big reason many of us don’t want to move out kids from our “good” pyramid. We want that focus on the “advanced” children that we won’t get at the redistricted school.

I love our community at the “good” school. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a community.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they do not take steps to bolster Lewis’s enrollment this entire boundary exercise will have been a fiasco.

I believe they need to keep their options open WRT Lewis. There was talk in the past of turning it into some kind of IB magnet and distributing the ES feeders to the nearby high schools. This may come up again with the state’s new rules on accreditation. Also there is a lot of residential development in the works in that area, not all of which is zoned for Lewis to be sure but they may need to shift borders in the future like 5-10 years off to relieve Edison.

A magic school / program at Lewis sounds kind of interesting. Look at Montgomery Blair and kids competing to get in to its magnet programs. The downside for the Lewis location is the traffic around Springfield and its location nestled in between freeway interchanges making access difficult, especially if it ceases to be a neighborhood school.

Circa 1987, Jefferson HS ceased to be a neighborhood school and became TJHSST.

I don’t understand why FCPS won’t consider making Lewis into a magnet school or language immersion or some special designation to at least keep the doors open. My own ES is now the Plum Center. Lewis has the smallest population - keep those students there but I don’t know - add vo-tech or academy classes.

Jefferson wasn’t near a high school with over 2700 kids in the mid-80. It was near two other schools with small, declining enrollments.

If either Annandale or Stuart had had over 2500 kids at the time they would have redistricted and kept Jefferson open.

How did Jefferson’s quality compare to those two schools at the time? If there was a large disparity then they definitely wouldn’t have redistricted.

They were more sane back then and not focused on bringing the whole county down to the lowest common denominator.

The disparities were not as large but they still would have redistricted.

In Jefferson’s case, given the declining enrollments at the area schools, moving kids into Jefferson wasn’t an option. It is here with Lewis.

Families don’t think it’s an option until the school quality improves.

This is nothing that Madison, Oakton, and Westfield parents didn’t say before they were moved to South Lakes back in 2008.

People forget that South Lakes used to be the school to avoid. A pariah so the speak. Now it’s generally a desirable middle of the pack FCPS school with solid academics and competitive sports teams.

Absolutely this. For all of those who are scared to death of redistricting the case of South Lakes is a great example of what will probably happen. Back in 2008 NOBODY wanted their kids to go to South Lakes. Then they pulled a bunch of UMC kids from Westfield and Oakton and Madison over and now South Lakes is no longer scary.

Lewis and Mount Vernon do not have "a bunch of UMC" to pull from

They are surrounded by working class and middle class neighborhoods, except for the 2 closest neighborhoods to Lewis, Daventry and Keene Mill neighborhoods.

Rezoning to Lewis would yield very different outcomes than what happened to South Lakes.

There’s no easy way of fixing the capacity issues in that region without nuking the boundaries. If the projections hold true, they could close Lewis in 5 years, but you’d need to completely rework the boundaries of Edison and Hayfield to distribute the displaced students to Mount Vernon and West Potomac.

LOL. Just as like reworking the boundaries of West Springfield to distribute the displaced students to South County and Lake Braddock.

WSHS has one of the most compact boundaries in all of FCPS. Almost the entire zone, except parts of Daventry, the far end of Gambrill and Sangster, are a 10 minute bus ride, with most neighborhoods roughly within 2-3 miles to the high school.

It also has almost 2800 kids and is near a school with slightly over 1600 students. So there’s that.

That discrepancy exists because of the school board and board of supervisors. Let’s not forget that it isn’t due to anything that anyone in WSHS pyramid did.

That may be true but if the goal is to manage facilities and provide students with comparable access it’s also largely irrelevant. The purpose of a boundary change isn’t to punish a community for past sins.

There are board members who have said in private that they are looking to move a particular zip code, regardless of need, so you can drop the pretense that the purpose is pure.

Look at a map. The zip code that makes the most sense to be the one the school board is talking about is 22066.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

You may have just inadvertently stumbled on a big reason many of us don’t want to move out kids from our “good” pyramid. We want that focus on the “advanced” children that we won’t get at the redistricted school.

I love our community at the “good” school. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a community.

This is a lot of fearmongering without anything to base it on. I live in a "shit" pyramid that gets a lot of crap on here and find that my advanced kids get everything they need and more. There is more than enough focus on the advanced kids in addition to the focus the school is placing on helping the lower performing students. I would never trade it for anything to have them be just another number amongst the many overprivileged affluent kids with overachieving parents. Plus, I get a great community to belong to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

You may have just inadvertently stumbled on a big reason many of us don’t want to move out kids from our “good” pyramid. We want that focus on the “advanced” children that we won’t get at the redistricted school.

I love our community at the “good” school. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a community.

This is a lot of fearmongering without anything to base it on. I live in a "shit" pyramid that gets a lot of crap on here and find that my advanced kids get everything they need and more. There is more than enough focus on the advanced kids in addition to the focus the school is placing on helping the lower performing students. I would never trade it for anything to have them be just another number amongst the many overprivileged affluent kids with overachieving parents. Plus, I get a great community to belong to.

Notice how you are telling us your preferences? That’s fine, I’m fine with you having different preferences than I do.

I would never think of telling you that you are fearmongering because you don’t want to live in my area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

You may have just inadvertently stumbled on a big reason many of us don’t want to move out kids from our “good” pyramid. We want that focus on the “advanced” children that we won’t get at the redistricted school.

I love our community at the “good” school. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a community.

This is a lot of fearmongering without anything to base it on. I live in a "shit" pyramid that gets a lot of crap on here and find that my advanced kids get everything they need and more. There is more than enough focus on the advanced kids in addition to the focus the school is placing on helping the lower performing students. I would never trade it for anything to have them be just another number amongst the many overprivileged affluent kids with overachieving parents. Plus, I get a great community to belong to.

Glad you’re so thrilled. I’m sure you agree, then, that kids from other schools don’t need to be redistricted to your pyramid just to improve the average test scores. We wouldn’t want to upset things by burdening you with too many “overprivileged” kids or “overachieving” parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW we moved from a shitty school pyramid to a "good" one and really regret it. The community was a lot better and the children's education was better - more of a focus on the average child whereas in our "good" pyramid, the focus is solely on the "advanced" children.

You may have just inadvertently stumbled on a big reason many of us don’t want to move out kids from our “good” pyramid. We want that focus on the “advanced” children that we won’t get at the redistricted school.

I love our community at the “good” school. It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in a community.

This is a lot of fearmongering without anything to base it on. I live in a "shit" pyramid that gets a lot of crap on here and find that my advanced kids get everything they need and more. There is more than enough focus on the advanced kids in addition to the focus the school is placing on helping the lower performing students. I would never trade it for anything to have them be just another number amongst the many overprivileged affluent kids with overachieving parents. Plus, I get a great community to belong to.

Notice how you are telling us your preferences? That’s fine, I’m fine with you having different preferences than I do.

I would never think of telling you that you are fearmongering because you don’t want to live in my area.

But you're ok with telling everyone what you definitively will or won't get at a "lesser" redistricted school with no actual knowledge of that school at all. Ok Jan.

[Anonymous]

We are zoned for HVES and for us school proximity is everything. The psychological barrier of the commute between our neighborhood and driving to Lewis is real. We want to remain an engaged family that supports our schools but it is not doable if it means a drive through traffic to Lewis. You could reverse Lewis and South County HS and we would want Lewis for proximity (if we are forced out of WSHS).