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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
FCPS Boundary Review - New Maps
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Anonymous
Have you ever seen the map that shows where the most accidents are in the county? Most of the high incident areas are near the entrances to the high schools. |
Anonymous
I agree that the juniors in 0 hour AP chem should not have been given spots since there is plenty of street parking in front of the school at that hour, but that was a special circumstance, not related to overcrowding. It was because of the former WSHS principal taking staff to TJ. The 2nd AP chem teacher went to TJ this year. WSHS is down an AP chem teacher, not because of overcrowding but because Mr. Mukai was such a strong principal that he has coat tails. 2 admin plus some great teachers followed him to TJ. The main AP chem teacher still WSHS is incredible, one of the nest teachers in the district, so this AP Chem class is very popular. Having only one AP Chem teacher instead of 2 means that either they had to get creative with scheduling, or not let juniors take AP chem. Fortunately, the remaining AP chem teacher always ran a daily morning open chem class for students that WSHS was able to creatively transform into an overflow class. The school is lucky to have such great, dedicated teachers. The class has nothing to do with overcrowding. If the 2nd AP chem teacher (also fantastic) had not followed Mr. Mukai to TJ, there would not have been a need to have an AP chem class before school. |
Anonymous
The thing to address the problem would be to figure out how to stop the nearly 300 Lewis students from transferring to other high schools. Did you read the comments for the Lewis region on Thru's maps? I read every one of the comments from the 3 regions closest to our school. A huge percentage of the comments from Lewis families, perhaps a third of the Lewis comments, were from Lewis families requesting to get rezoned to West Springfield. They were coming from far away neighborhoods like the huge houses near Greenspring. That neighborhood is minutes from Lewis and closer to Hayfield than WSHS, yet a bunch of them were begging FCPS to rezone their neighborhoods to WSHS. There were far more comments requesting that Lewis homes get rezoned to WSHS than suggestions for improving Lewis. |
Anonymous
This is a boundary review exercise, so I would expect the comments/suggestions to reflect what could be done as part of that process- which is happening now- and not some wishlist of suggestions that might take years to implement. Truth is, PP already identified the main driver of pupil placements Lewis. The only “fix” is to add more students. |
Anonymous
And, you could do that by changing IB to AP and reducing pupil placements. But, you prefer to uproot people who are in boundary for other places. I say this is someone who does not live in that area. I see this pupil placement issue in other schools, as well. And, it works both ways. |
Anonymous
DP. Lewis with AP is a slightly poorer Falls Church HS. Falls Church had 244 transfers out last year and Lewis had 251. |
Anonymous
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So if you move 400 students into Lewis, what would stop those kids from immediately pupil placing back out?
If you make Lewis an AP school, wouldn't that nullify most of the reasons why the 300 students leave Lewis? Then its enrollment issues may be taken care of organically- no need to leave Lewis anymore. If you keep Lewis as an IB school and move 400 kids in, especially coming from an AP pyramid, the IB problem perpetuates itself, no? Seems like we're just going in circles here. |
Anonymous
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Pupil Placing for AP should only be allowed junior and senior year.
There are only a handful of AP classes offered to sophomores and none for freshmen. IB does not start in earnest until junior year. Those 2-4 AP classes available to underclassmen should be offered at every school. No freshmen or sophomores should be allowed to transfer schools for AP. If a 11th grade student is committed to either AP (3 classes minimum) or IB (full diploma candidate's only) then let them transfer Junior year. 11th grade should be the only year a student can transfer for AP/IB. This would cut back on AP/IB transfers significantly, and limit it to the students who are transferring for the program vs flight out of a school using the AP loophole. It will also significantly, immediately, improve schools like Lewis and Falls Church who lose so many stronger students to the IB loophole. |
Anonymous
Dumb suggestion. If you want access to AP earlier you should have access to AP courses. And Falls Church is an AP school. |
Anonymous
There are at least 2 AP classes available to freshmen at most of the HS. There are more AP classes available to sophomores. Kids taking AP classes and scoring well on AP exams means fewer classes at college and saving money. My kid would be taking an IB class as a sophomore, since he will be ready for IB Math as a sophomore. His school rarely offers the HL IB math class and he cannot take the IB math exam until he is a senior. We are planning pupil placing so he can take AP Pre Calc in an in-person class as a sophomore and AP Calc BC as a junior. I expect that he will take AP classes as a Feshman. I do agree that people moving for IB classes should be agreeing to aiming for the IB diploma, that is the purpose of the program, earning the diploma. FCPS keeps trying to sell IB as similar to AP in it's flexibility but it is not meant to be a flexible program. |
Anonymous
Falls Church might be like Herndon, students transfer for IB. In fairness, there is no way to know if the Herndon kids transferring to SLHS are transferring for IB or for Japanese. Kids could have taken Japanese while at Hughes for the AAP program and wanted to continue it in HS, which means moving to SLHS due to proximity and language options. I don't know where the Falls Church HS kids are transfering. |
Anonymous
Falls Church kids transfer out for IB. Their transfers should not start until Junior year either. Every student would have access to the same 2-4 AP classes available in 10th grade if they offered the same handful of AP classes at every school. I think Lewis now has the same AP classes offered to underclassmen at the AP schools. So there is no reason to transfer out of Lewis until Junior year. That is the simplest, cheapest way to stop the school transfers. Offer the same 4 AP classes available to underclassmen at every FCPS high school. Don't allow AP/IB transfers until junior year, and only to kids committed to taking the full IB program or a full load of AP classes. If they only want to take 1 AP class, then they can take it online in a supervised class at their base school, or if there is enough interest, the school can create the class. FCPS already does this for Music Theory at the AP schools. They centralize the class at one school, and kids just go first period then return to their zoned school for everything else. Or the can take it online There is no reason to approve freshmen or sophomore transfers for AP/IB when there is an easy, cheap solution. And the minimum AP classes required to transfer should be 3 per year, which is what most students enrolled in AP classes at AP schools take each year. |
Anonymous
Then that is recent because just a few years ago no AP classes were available to freshmen, and only 2, AP Gov and AP computer science were offered to sophomores. All of the freshmen and sophomore AP offerings should be offered at all FCPS high schools, with no AP or IB transfers until junior year when there is a broad selection of classes available. If the kids decide they want to stay at their base school, then that school can start offering a robust selection of AP classes for 11th and 22th grade. I bet if they did this, far more, if not most, of the higher performing students would choose to remain at schools like Lewis, and within a few years the test scores would shoot up, especially if the school transitions fully over to AP. |
Anonymous
It wouldn’t take years to implement if they just went ahead and did it. Hell they expanded 6th grade algebra over the summer and basically sprung it upon the teachers right before school started. You can add more students to Lewis by tightening up the language and AP transfers by adding more courses, and adding MS AAP to Key (and all the other schools that don’t have it). They could also move the technology academy program from Edison to Lewis, which may take a few years if they have to do work on the building to accommodate it. Both West Springfield and Lewis have boundaries that make decent sense in terms of their students not having to travel far to get there and the physical size of the boundaries. |
Anonymous
Better to just rid of IB than give students at IB schools flexibility to take both AP and IB courses when kids at AP schools are provided no similar flexibility. |