FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Turn Lewis into a pure Votech school. Move the Academy classes to Lewis, keep the core classes (Math, Science, History, LA), and add traditional votech classes. Set up a school for kids who don’t want to go to college and want to look at the trades. Give them a place where they feel supported and have access to career choices to explore.

I would have no problem with a ELL school that is focused on teaching kids English and getting them caught up in core subjects. Many of the ELL students arrive in school with no or limited academic history. They need a school that is able to address their unique concerns.

You write this as if every kid who lives within the Lewis boundaries would only benefit from vocational options. That is not the case, and it’s educational redlining.

In the other hand, if you’re suggesting that Lewis become a vocational center for students across the county, lots of boundaries would need to change since, among other things, several of the current Lewis feeders would be reassigned to West Springfield. Also, to maintain feeder patterns Key also has to close or be repurposed.

It would be open to all students in FCPS, in the same way TJ is. The County would provide bussing to the school. Lewis kids who don’t want to attend Vo-Tech would be redistributed to HS in the area, the way some posters have suggested if Lewis were shut down.

Vo-Tech schools are something that are fairly common in some parts of the Country. There is normally one that shared by smaller school districts in Massachusetts. It provides a viable option for kids to complete their degrees while finding a trade or path that makes sense for students not interested in college.

We know that there is an issue with absenteeism across the county, part of that is that there are kids who are not interested in academics or college. They might be more interested in attending school if they saw school as a way to learn a trade.

There are already a lot of vocational programs available at Academies in different locations. If you centralize them at Lewis, students closer to Chantilly, Edison, Marshall, etc might be less likely to take advantage of these types of courses.

Perhaps there should be better counseling or more emphasis on what’s available at the Academies, but I’m not persuaded that converting Lewis to a vo-tech school is a good idea.

Edison is next door to Lewis. The two schools are almost walkable to each other.

People who aren't familiar with the traffic and neighborhoods of the area should not be making rezoning decisions for those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you have West Springfield parents complaining that it’s too difficult to get from their nearby neighborhoods to Lewis given the traffic near Franconia and 95, but you’re suggesting that FCPS bus kids from all over the county to Lewis for vo-tech?

Something doesn’t quite add up there.

Our base school is SLHS, we don’t have Academies and there are a good number of kids who could benefit from taking those types of classes but don’t because they are hard to schedule. I know two kids who have said no to Academies because they are hard to schedule but who might have been interested if they were at their school. We cannot put Academies at every school, we have an under enrolled school with a population that might actually benefit from having access to Academies, and people are complaining about how it is hard to get to. Turn that school into a Vo Tech school so that kids who are not interested in college have a place to attend school that offer programs that work for them and don’t have to worry about weird scheduling. We use the space of an existing school more effectively, offer better options to kids who are not interested in college, and are eliminate the local concern about getting too and from the school.

The Vo Tech school in the area I grew up in was a well regarded option for many kids. It was a popular choice. We know that many kids are not interested in college but we don’t provide good options for those kids unless they are at the academy schools and it is easy to attend. Toss in that many of the kids that would benefit from the Academies are coming from families where their parents are less likely to be informed on the different options or how to apply for those options or how to work the scheduling for those options and you greatly limit the effectiveness of the Academies.

Put them in one place, allow kids to choose that option and move to a high school that fits their needs and you can decrease absenteeism, increase the graduation rates for an at risk population, increase the job prospects for an at risk population, and make better use of the space that we have.

What you’re misting is that there has already been a significant investment in the academies, so there are sunk costs. You can’t just declare Lewis a vo-tech school. You’d have to invest more in the facility to make it suitable for that purpose, spend a lot of money to provide transportation to that school, and then figure out how it impacts the existing academies with vocational courses.

If we didn’t have the academies and were starting on a blank slate, maybe it would be a decent model, though I wonder whether kids in Herndon or Centreville who might benefit from such a school would stick with a program miles away in Springfield. But we aren’t starting on a blank slate so it’s not going to happen. The idea is mostly a Hail Mary thrown out by people looking to kill Lewis as a community school.

Kids from springfield go all the way across the county in both directions to access academy classes. The reverse can happen using Lewis as a magnet if the kids have interest, just like kids coming from all over northern Virginia for TJ.

Being forced to deal with that mixing bowll crossing from your neighborhood school just 2-3 miles away with a 10 minite max commute, to across a major highway interchange miles away with a 30 minute bus ride or car commute in the name of equity as an unwilling victim of equity rezoning, is completely different than choosing a longer commute to access a specialized magnet program that will provide you with opportunities and career building unavailable at your neighbohood school.

Rezoning out of your neighborhood school for equity is a completely different school than choosing to attend a magnet program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Turn Lewis into a pure Votech school. Move the Academy classes to Lewis, keep the core classes (Math, Science, History, LA), and add traditional votech classes. Set up a school for kids who don’t want to go to college and want to look at the trades. Give them a place where they feel supported and have access to career choices to explore.

I would have no problem with a ELL school that is focused on teaching kids English and getting them caught up in core subjects. Many of the ELL students arrive in school with no or limited academic history. They need a school that is able to address their unique concerns.

You write this as if every kid who lives within the Lewis boundaries would only benefit from vocational options. That is not the case, and it’s educational redlining.

In the other hand, if you’re suggesting that Lewis become a vocational center for students across the county, lots of boundaries would need to change since, among other things, several of the current Lewis feeders would be reassigned to West Springfield. Also, to maintain feeder patterns Key also has to close or be repurposed.

It would be open to all students in FCPS, in the same way TJ is. The County would provide bussing to the school. Lewis kids who don’t want to attend Vo-Tech would be redistributed to HS in the area, the way some posters have suggested if Lewis were shut down.

Vo-Tech schools are something that are fairly common in some parts of the Country. There is normally one that shared by smaller school districts in Massachusetts. It provides a viable option for kids to complete their degrees while finding a trade or path that makes sense for students not interested in college.

We know that there is an issue with absenteeism across the county, part of that is that there are kids who are not interested in academics or college. They might be more interested in attending school if they saw school as a way to learn a trade.

There are already a lot of vocational programs available at Academies in different locations. If you centralize them at Lewis, students closer to Chantilly, Edison, Marshall, etc might be less likely to take advantage of these types of courses.

Perhaps there should be better counseling or more emphasis on what’s available at the Academies, but I’m not persuaded that converting Lewis to a vo-tech school is a good idea.

Edison is next door to Lewis. The two schools are almost walkable to each other.

People who aren't familiar with the traffic and neighborhoods of the area should not be making rezoning decisions for those schools.

You could live east of Edison, and willing to make the trip to Edison for an Academy program, but not willing to travel the extra distance to Lewis. They are on the same road but they are not next door to each other, except in the sense that they have adjacent boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When will all the rezoning be completely finished?

Never? I mean, the current round of "we haven't really done this in decades" boundary review is likely to be implemented for 26-27 or 27-28 school year, but part of the policy change is to continue these reviews going forward and making small adjustments as appropriate so we don't end up in the same situation we are now where people have such strong entrenched expectations about being entitled to attend certain schools, and to be able to respond to growth and redevelopment in a responsible way in the future, and that entails making reasonable boundary adjustments as one of the tools in the toolkit.

Howard County has been known for years to move boundaries at a comprehensive level on a regular basis. That’s how they’ve maintained fairly well integrated schools in the progressive spirit of Columbia’s founding families.

Also it is why we didn’t move there when we were looking at housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When will all the rezoning be completely finished?

Never? I mean, the current round of "we haven't really done this in decades" boundary review is likely to be implemented for 26-27 or 27-28 school year, but part of the policy change is to continue these reviews going forward and making small adjustments as appropriate so we don't end up in the same situation we are now where people have such strong entrenched expectations about being entitled to attend certain schools, and to be able to respond to growth and redevelopment in a responsible way in the future, and that entails making reasonable boundary adjustments as one of the tools in the toolkit.

Howard County has been known for years to move boundaries at a comprehensive level on a regular basis. That’s how they’ve maintained fairly well integrated schools in the progressive spirit of Columbia’s founding families.

Also it is why we didn’t move there when we were looking at housing.

Should have added that I wanted high performing majority minority schools with stability. Not moving my kids around and crappy commutes for equity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you have West Springfield parents complaining that it’s too difficult to get from their nearby neighborhoods to Lewis given the traffic near Franconia and 95, but you’re suggesting that FCPS bus kids from all over the county to Lewis for vo-tech?

Something doesn’t quite add up there.

Our base school is SLHS, we don’t have Academies and there are a good number of kids who could benefit from taking those types of classes but don’t because they are hard to schedule. I know two kids who have said no to Academies because they are hard to schedule but who might have been interested if they were at their school. We cannot put Academies at every school, we have an under enrolled school with a population that might actually benefit from having access to Academies, and people are complaining about how it is hard to get to. Turn that school into a Vo Tech school so that kids who are not interested in college have a place to attend school that offer programs that work for them and don’t have to worry about weird scheduling. We use the space of an existing school more effectively, offer better options to kids who are not interested in college, and are eliminate the local concern about getting too and from the school.

The Vo Tech school in the area I grew up in was a well regarded option for many kids. It was a popular choice. We know that many kids are not interested in college but we don’t provide good options for those kids unless they are at the academy schools and it is easy to attend. Toss in that many of the kids that would benefit from the Academies are coming from families where their parents are less likely to be informed on the different options or how to apply for those options or how to work the scheduling for those options and you greatly limit the effectiveness of the Academies.

Put them in one place, allow kids to choose that option and move to a high school that fits their needs and you can decrease absenteeism, increase the graduation rates for an at risk population, increase the job prospects for an at risk population, and make better use of the space that we have.

What you’re misting is that there has already been a significant investment in the academies, so there are sunk costs. You can’t just declare Lewis a vo-tech school. You’d have to invest more in the facility to make it suitable for that purpose, spend a lot of money to provide transportation to that school, and then figure out how it impacts the existing academies with vocational courses.

If we didn’t have the academies and were starting on a blank slate, maybe it would be a decent model, though I wonder whether kids in Herndon or Centreville who might benefit from such a school would stick with a program miles away in Springfield. But we aren’t starting on a blank slate so it’s not going to happen. The idea is mostly a Hail Mary thrown out by people looking to kill Lewis as a community school.

Kids from springfield go all the way across the county in both directions to access academy classes. The reverse can happen using Lewis as a magnet if the kids have interest, just like kids coming from all over northern Virginia for TJ.

Being forced to deal with that mixing bowll crossing from your neighborhood school just 2-3 miles away with a 10 minite max commute, to across a major highway interchange miles away with a 30 minute bus ride or car commute in the name of equity as an unwilling victim of equity rezoning, is completely different than choosing a longer commute to access a specialized magnet program that will provide you with opportunities and career building unavailable at your neighbohood school.

Rezoning out of your neighborhood school for equity is a completely different school than choosing to attend a magnet program.

So you keep repeating, but the fact is that the county has no basis to conclude that eliminating Academy programs and centralizing vo-tech programs at Lewis would actually increase the number of students available of vo-tech courses or improve the quality of the instruction.

The SB has given no indication that it is currently pursuing this for Lewis, so it's bizarre that some of you have fixated on this path for that school, but perhaps it speaks to just how fervently you want to derail any discussion of moving kids from other schools to Lewis. However, that certainly should be something the consultants ought to look at given the disparities in enrollment between Lewis and other schools and the impact of those disparities, which have been discussed earlier in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When will all the rezoning be completely finished?

Never? I mean, the current round of "we haven't really done this in decades" boundary review is likely to be implemented for 26-27 or 27-28 school year, but part of the policy change is to continue these reviews going forward and making small adjustments as appropriate so we don't end up in the same situation we are now where people have such strong entrenched expectations about being entitled to attend certain schools, and to be able to respond to growth and redevelopment in a responsible way in the future, and that entails making reasonable boundary adjustments as one of the tools in the toolkit.

Howard County has been known for years to move boundaries at a comprehensive level on a regular basis. That’s how they’ve maintained fairly well integrated schools in the progressive spirit of Columbia’s founding families.

Also it is why we didn’t move there when we were looking at housing.

Should have added that I wanted high performing majority minority schools with stability. Not moving my kids around and crappy commutes for equity

+1. Real race to the bottom mentality

[Anonymous]

I looked at the 2023 election results for the various precincts that send students to West Springfield. They seem to vote consistently for Democrats. Including the School Board at large and their district members. The one exception, for those in the Springfield district, they did narrowly favor Pat Herrity on the County Board.

Point is, the Democrats are the ones who have been all about liberal immigration (or essentially, no enforcement) and they are also the party that is pushing boundary changes. They control the entire school board, and they started talking about boundary changes five years ago. So if you live in the West Springfield feeding precincts and supported the Democrats in 2023, you essentially signed up for boundary changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you have West Springfield parents complaining that it’s too difficult to get from their nearby neighborhoods to Lewis given the traffic near Franconia and 95, but you’re suggesting that FCPS bus kids from all over the county to Lewis for vo-tech?

Something doesn’t quite add up there.

Our base school is SLHS, we don’t have Academies and there are a good number of kids who could benefit from taking those types of classes but don’t because they are hard to schedule. I know two kids who have said no to Academies because they are hard to schedule but who might have been interested if they were at their school. We cannot put Academies at every school, we have an under enrolled school with a population that might actually benefit from having access to Academies, and people are complaining about how it is hard to get to. Turn that school into a Vo Tech school so that kids who are not interested in college have a place to attend school that offer programs that work for them and don’t have to worry about weird scheduling. We use the space of an existing school more effectively, offer better options to kids who are not interested in college, and are eliminate the local concern about getting too and from the school.

The Vo Tech school in the area I grew up in was a well regarded option for many kids. It was a popular choice. We know that many kids are not interested in college but we don’t provide good options for those kids unless they are at the academy schools and it is easy to attend. Toss in that many of the kids that would benefit from the Academies are coming from families where their parents are less likely to be informed on the different options or how to apply for those options or how to work the scheduling for those options and you greatly limit the effectiveness of the Academies.

Put them in one place, allow kids to choose that option and move to a high school that fits their needs and you can decrease absenteeism, increase the graduation rates for an at risk population, increase the job prospects for an at risk population, and make better use of the space that we have.

What you’re misting is that there has already been a significant investment in the academies, so there are sunk costs. You can’t just declare Lewis a vo-tech school. You’d have to invest more in the facility to make it suitable for that purpose, spend a lot of money to provide transportation to that school, and then figure out how it impacts the existing academies with vocational courses.

If we didn’t have the academies and were starting on a blank slate, maybe it would be a decent model, though I wonder whether kids in Herndon or Centreville who might benefit from such a school would stick with a program miles away in Springfield. But we aren’t starting on a blank slate so it’s not going to happen. The idea is mostly a Hail Mary thrown out by people looking to kill Lewis as a community school.

Kids from springfield go all the way across the county in both directions to access academy classes. The reverse can happen using Lewis as a magnet if the kids have interest, just like kids coming from all over northern Virginia for TJ.

Being forced to deal with that mixing bowll crossing from your neighborhood school just 2-3 miles away with a 10 minite max commute, to across a major highway interchange miles away with a 30 minute bus ride or car commute in the name of equity as an unwilling victim of equity rezoning, is completely different than choosing a longer commute to access a specialized magnet program that will provide you with opportunities and career building unavailable at your neighbohood school.

Rezoning out of your neighborhood school for equity is a completely different school than choosing to attend a magnet program.

So you keep repeating, but the fact is that the county has no basis to conclude that eliminating Academy programs and centralizing vo-tech programs at Lewis would actually increase the number of students available of vo-tech courses or improve the quality of the instruction.

The SB has given no indication that it is currently pursuing this for Lewis, so it's bizarre that some of you have fixated on this path for that school, but perhaps it speaks to just how fervently you want to derail any discussion of moving kids from other schools to Lewis. However, that certainly should be something the consultants ought to look at given the disparities in enrollment between Lewis and other schools and the impact of those disparities, which have been discussed earlier in this thread.

I don’t care what school but I do think that we need a devoted Vo Tech school for kids who want to go a route different than college. The Academies really don’t work for kids outside of those schools. The kids who need them the most are most likely kids whose parents know the least about them and are less likely to do the research to find them. They actively interfere with kids learning because they have to miss other classes or give up classes in order to go to the Academy.

Vo Tech schools work and the fact that a county like FCPS does not have a dedicated school for Vo Tech is crazy. I only suggested Lewis because it is well under capacity, it has a population that might actually benefit from the vo tech options, and there are other schools near by that could absorb the kids not interested in Vo Tech.

Part of the discussion with redistricting is figuring out what to do with schools that are low population and what to do with schools that are high population. I believe Lewis and Mt.Vernon are two schools under populated by a decent amount. Lewis is one that might be better served by having kids on busses and not lots of individual drivers because of where it is situated.

TJ came into existence as a STEM magnate when there was a school that was under populated and kids could be shifted, it is not crazy to think that something similar could be done with Lewis or Mt. Vernon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the 2023 election results for the various precincts that send students to West Springfield. They seem to vote consistently for Democrats. Including the School Board at large and their district members. The one exception, for those in the Springfield district, they did narrowly favor Pat Herrity on the County Board.

Point is, the Democrats are the ones who have been all about liberal immigration (or essentially, no enforcement) and they are also the party that is pushing boundary changes. They control the entire school board, and they started talking about boundary changes five years ago. So if you live in the West Springfield feeding precincts and supported the Democrats in 2023, you essentially signed up for boundary changes.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Show us where any candidate running in 2023 said county-wide boundary changes would be a top priority. It was a different group than was on the School Board back in 2018 and a lot of things happened in the intervening years, most notably Covid and all the related issues around remote learning, remediating learning loss, etc.

No doubt the Rs, unhappy that their far-right candidates can't get elected, take some satisfaction from telling people now that "you had in coming," but most of us feel sandbagged that the group elected last fall has pursued this county-wide boundary review when there's not much demand for it and FCPS enrollment is essentially flat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you have West Springfield parents complaining that it’s too difficult to get from their nearby neighborhoods to Lewis given the traffic near Franconia and 95, but you’re suggesting that FCPS bus kids from all over the county to Lewis for vo-tech?

Something doesn’t quite add up there.

Our base school is SLHS, we don’t have Academies and there are a good number of kids who could benefit from taking those types of classes but don’t because they are hard to schedule. I know two kids who have said no to Academies because they are hard to schedule but who might have been interested if they were at their school. We cannot put Academies at every school, we have an under enrolled school with a population that might actually benefit from having access to Academies, and people are complaining about how it is hard to get to. Turn that school into a Vo Tech school so that kids who are not interested in college have a place to attend school that offer programs that work for them and don’t have to worry about weird scheduling. We use the space of an existing school more effectively, offer better options to kids who are not interested in college, and are eliminate the local concern about getting too and from the school.

The Vo Tech school in the area I grew up in was a well regarded option for many kids. It was a popular choice. We know that many kids are not interested in college but we don’t provide good options for those kids unless they are at the academy schools and it is easy to attend. Toss in that many of the kids that would benefit from the Academies are coming from families where their parents are less likely to be informed on the different options or how to apply for those options or how to work the scheduling for those options and you greatly limit the effectiveness of the Academies.

Put them in one place, allow kids to choose that option and move to a high school that fits their needs and you can decrease absenteeism, increase the graduation rates for an at risk population, increase the job prospects for an at risk population, and make better use of the space that we have.

What you’re misting is that there has already been a significant investment in the academies, so there are sunk costs. You can’t just declare Lewis a vo-tech school. You’d have to invest more in the facility to make it suitable for that purpose, spend a lot of money to provide transportation to that school, and then figure out how it impacts the existing academies with vocational courses.

If we didn’t have the academies and were starting on a blank slate, maybe it would be a decent model, though I wonder whether kids in Herndon or Centreville who might benefit from such a school would stick with a program miles away in Springfield. But we aren’t starting on a blank slate so it’s not going to happen. The idea is mostly a Hail Mary thrown out by people looking to kill Lewis as a community school.

Kids from springfield go all the way across the county in both directions to access academy classes. The reverse can happen using Lewis as a magnet if the kids have interest, just like kids coming from all over northern Virginia for TJ.

Being forced to deal with that mixing bowll crossing from your neighborhood school just 2-3 miles away with a 10 minite max commute, to across a major highway interchange miles away with a 30 minute bus ride or car commute in the name of equity as an unwilling victim of equity rezoning, is completely different than choosing a longer commute to access a specialized magnet program that will provide you with opportunities and career building unavailable at your neighbohood school.

Rezoning out of your neighborhood school for equity is a completely different school than choosing to attend a magnet program.

So you keep repeating, but the fact is that the county has no basis to conclude that eliminating Academy programs and centralizing vo-tech programs at Lewis would actually increase the number of students available of vo-tech courses or improve the quality of the instruction.

The SB has given no indication that it is currently pursuing this for Lewis, so it's bizarre that some of you have fixated on this path for that school, but perhaps it speaks to just how fervently you want to derail any discussion of moving kids from other schools to Lewis. However, that certainly should be something the consultants ought to look at given the disparities in enrollment between Lewis and other schools and the impact of those disparities, which have been discussed earlier in this thread.

I don’t care what school but I do think that we need a devoted Vo Tech school for kids who want to go a route different than college. The Academies really don’t work for kids outside of those schools. The kids who need them the most are most likely kids whose parents know the least about them and are less likely to do the research to find them. They actively interfere with kids learning because they have to miss other classes or give up classes in order to go to the Academy.

Vo Tech schools work and the fact that a county like FCPS does not have a dedicated school for Vo Tech is crazy. I only suggested Lewis because it is well under capacity, it has a population that might actually benefit from the vo tech options, and there are other schools near by that could absorb the kids not interested in Vo Tech.

Part of the discussion with redistricting is figuring out what to do with schools that are low population and what to do with schools that are high population. I believe Lewis and Mt.Vernon are two schools under populated by a decent amount. Lewis is one that might be better served by having kids on busses and not lots of individual drivers because of where it is situated.

TJ came into existence as a STEM magnate when there was a school that was under populated and kids could be shifted, it is not crazy to think that something similar could be done with Lewis or Mt. Vernon.

Not going to happen, any more than Frisch's idea about having a stand-alone high school for recovering addicts is going to happen.

The dynamics when TJ was converted were very different, as there were three high schools in that general area (Annandale, Jefferson, and Stuart) that were significantly under capacity. Lewis is an outlier in its area, and in fact is close to another high school with almost 2800 kids and others that are closer to full capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the 2023 election results for the various precincts that send students to West Springfield. They seem to vote consistently for Democrats. Including the School Board at large and their district members. The one exception, for those in the Springfield district, they did narrowly favor Pat Herrity on the County Board.

Point is, the Democrats are the ones who have been all about liberal immigration (or essentially, no enforcement) and they are also the party that is pushing boundary changes. They control the entire school board, and they started talking about boundary changes five years ago. So if you live in the West Springfield feeding precincts and supported the Democrats in 2023, you essentially signed up for boundary changes.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Show us where any candidate running in 2023 said county-wide boundary changes would be a top priority. It was a different group than was on the School Board back in 2018 and a lot of things happened in the intervening years, most notably Covid and all the related issues around remote learning, remediating learning loss, etc.

No doubt the Rs, unhappy that their far-right candidates can't get elected, take some satisfaction from telling people now that "you had in coming," but most of us feel sandbagged that the group elected last fall has pursued this county-wide boundary review when there's not much demand for it and FCPS enrollment is essentially flat.

Well, the party in control in 2019 (Democrats) did signal they wanted to look at boundaries. If you are in an edge community such as Daventry or Hunt Valley, then you should have taken that as a warning. It does not seem that was done. So here we are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the 2023 election results for the various precincts that send students to West Springfield. They seem to vote consistently for Democrats. Including the School Board at large and their district members. The one exception, for those in the Springfield district, they did narrowly favor Pat Herrity on the County Board.

Point is, the Democrats are the ones who have been all about liberal immigration (or essentially, no enforcement) and they are also the party that is pushing boundary changes. They control the entire school board, and they started talking about boundary changes five years ago. So if you live in the West Springfield feeding precincts and supported the Democrats in 2023, you essentially signed up for boundary changes.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Show us where any candidate running in 2023 said county-wide boundary changes would be a top priority. It was a different group than was on the School Board back in 2018 and a lot of things happened in the intervening years, most notably Covid and all the related issues around remote learning, remediating learning loss, etc.

No doubt the Rs, unhappy that their far-right candidates can't get elected, take some satisfaction from telling people now that "you had in coming," but most of us feel sandbagged that the group elected last fall has pursued this county-wide boundary review when there's not much demand for it and FCPS enrollment is essentially flat.

Well, the party in control in 2019 (Democrats) did signal they wanted to look at boundaries. If you are in an edge community such as Daventry or Hunt Valley, then you should have taken that as a warning. It does not seem that was done. So here we are.

.

The important distinction from your last sentence is that Daventry is a neighborhood whereas Hunt Valley is a school. I am a Hunt Valley parent and my only comfort/hope at this point is that I believe that if we remain zoned for Hunt Valley then we are safe, because I don't see a scenario in which the SB will be able to defend, much less accept from the consultants that HV should move to Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the community here so anti-Lewis? (Lewis parent here, by the way.) I have found the academics there to be excellent, with more teacher-parent interaction than I've gotten since the preschool years. The teachers are truly dedicated. My kid is a Level IV AAP grad with pass-advanced SOL scores, but then, so is pretty much half of FCSP, so a typical student. We've found plenty of other parents really happy with the school. 

Where I've found things to be challenging is the money and activities side of things. We're not getting the huge boosts in fundraisers and ticket sales. The sports kids didn't spend years doing travel sports and training. The music kids are using old school instruments in cases held together with duct tape. The houses around the Lewis community are smaller, older structures that don't typically draw higher income families. 

That being said, these kids are doing amazing things with far fewer resources. Maybe give a shout out to the Lewis cheerleaders, who just won their district championship. Or take a look at the Lewis soccer team this spring. These kids work HARD for their successes.

Maybe come walk in the Lewis shoes for a week or two and see how amazing the community is. Meet the parents, the kids, the teaching staff. It's a small school, but with such a BIG heart.

I agree. I working the pyramid and there is a lot of good from that school. Lewis is getting a bad rep and people believe things without doing their own research.

Or some live nearby and are very familiar with the school, students and area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the 2023 election results for the various precincts that send students to West Springfield. They seem to vote consistently for Democrats. Including the School Board at large and their district members. The one exception, for those in the Springfield district, they did narrowly favor Pat Herrity on the County Board.

Point is, the Democrats are the ones who have been all about liberal immigration (or essentially, no enforcement) and they are also the party that is pushing boundary changes. They control the entire school board, and they started talking about boundary changes five years ago. So if you live in the West Springfield feeding precincts and supported the Democrats in 2023, you essentially signed up for boundary changes.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Show us where any candidate running in 2023 said county-wide boundary changes would be a top priority. It was a different group than was on the School Board back in 2018 and a lot of things happened in the intervening years, most notably Covid and all the related issues around remote learning, remediating learning loss, etc.

No doubt the Rs, unhappy that their far-right candidates can't get elected, take some satisfaction from telling people now that "you had in coming," but most of us feel sandbagged that the group elected last fall has pursued this county-wide boundary review when there's not much demand for it and FCPS enrollment is essentially flat.

Well, the party in control in 2019 (Democrats) did signal they wanted to look at boundaries. If you are in an edge community such as Daventry or Hunt Valley, then you should have taken that as a warning. It does not seem that was done. So here we are.

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The important distinction from your last sentence is that Daventry is a neighborhood whereas Hunt Valley is a school. I am a Hunt Valley parent and my only comfort/hope at this point is that I believe that if we remain zoned for Hunt Valley then we are safe, because I don't see a scenario in which the SB will be able to defend, much less accept from the consultants that HV should move to Lewis.

The only option would be to move ALL of HVES - the WHOLE SCHOOL - to Lewis. Which would leave WSHS quite under capacity, and might create an awkward situation in ~10 years if a bunch of development really does happen in Springfield or in Alexandria zoned for Edison if boundaries between Lewis and Edison have to be adjusted again to account for more development. But at the same time, the situation with the school quality and accreditation metrics may force their hands.