FCPS Boundary Review - New Maps

[Anonymous]

The multi parcel sale to FX SB of the 4 parcels including what was the KAA site was booked as 8/15/25 on the county tax website. Utilities on the 4 parcels:
Water - only available on the vacant land between the parcel with main structure and Carson MS.
Sewer - available
Gas NA

So public water was NA at KAA. Maybe owners didn't want to pay to connect? I assume FX SB will connect and it will show up as a project on Fairfax Water
https://www.fairfaxwater.org/active-construction-projects

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Dumb suggestion. If you want access to AP earlier you should have access to AP courses.

And Falls Church is an AP school.

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.

Falls Church HS is an interesting example because Luther Jackson is an AAP center, so it doesn’t send its AAP students out of pyramid. It doesn’t have an AAP elementary school. They’re all sent to Mantua, but there isn’t much of a pipeline from Luther Jackson to Frost or FCHS to Woodson. The transfers out of FCHS are pretty dispersed, similar to Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

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.

Good points!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Dumb suggestion. If you want access to AP earlier you should have access to AP courses.

And Falls Church is an AP school.

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.

Falls Church HS is an interesting example because Luther Jackson is an AAP center, so it doesn’t send its AAP students out of pyramid. It doesn’t have an AAP elementary school. They’re all sent to Mantua, but there isn’t much of a pipeline from Luther Jackson to Frost or FCHS to Woodson. The transfers out of FCHS are pretty dispersed, similar to Lewis.

That is largely but not entirely true. There are kids zoned to Mason Crest/Poe/Falls Church who go to Glasgow in the Justice pyramid for AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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.

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.

It would only take 2 years to fully phase out IB.

A full AP program could start next year.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like the 2 biggest issues that need to be addressed prior to rezoning to improve the lowere performing schools are:

#1 Put AAP in every middle school with zeor students allowed to transfer out of their assigned school for middle school AAP.

#2 Phase out IB at every school but one, and replace it with a full slate of AP classes.

Both of these could be accomplished by Fall of 2026.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

They had no qualms about pushing Langley's boundaries far west and south to fill the school (north is Maryland and east is Arlington). Come back when Lewis's catchment area is anywhere near as big as Langley or Robinson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

They had no qualms about pushing Langley's boundaries far west and south to fill the school (north is Maryland and east is Arlington). Come back when Lewis's catchment area is anywhere near as big as Langley or Robinson.

DP. Could you be any more willfully ignorant than this about how boundaries are drawn? What an absurdly conspiratorial take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

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.

They told the teachers about Algebra 1H in 6th grade the week enfore school started. Some parents just found out that their kids were placed in the class this week and only have a few days to opt out or not. It is the worst possible way to implement a program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the 2 biggest issues that need to be addressed prior to rezoning to improve the lowere performing schools are:

#1 Put AAP in every middle school with zeor students allowed to transfer out of their assigned school for middle school AAP.

#2 Phase out IB at every school but one, and replace it with a full slate of AP classes.

Both of these could be accomplished by Fall of 2026.

Idk, seems like the easiest/quickest action to take is to adjust the boundaries now and then take on some of the other suggestions for long-term stability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

They had no qualms about pushing Langley's boundaries far west and south to fill the school (north is Maryland and east is Arlington). Come back when Lewis's catchment area is anywhere near as big as Langley or Robinson.

If you made Lewis’s attendance area as big as Robinson’s, you’d have a school with a population of 4000+. Population density is a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

They had no qualms about pushing Langley's boundaries far west and south to fill the school (north is Maryland and east is Arlington). Come back when Lewis's catchment area is anywhere near as big as Langley or Robinson.

DP. Could you be any more willfully ignorant than this about how boundaries are drawn? What an absurdly conspiratorial take.

It's not conspiratorial, just a recognition that FCPS hasn't had ceilings on how far out a school's boundaries can extend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is one who didn't get parking and she wouldn't want to leave WS just because of parking! A friend at Lake Braddock also said they have way more demand for parking than availability.

But apparently WS has added trailers and were already 300 over capacity last year. Meanwhile Lewis is hundreds of students under capacity. Just saying.

…because 300 Lewis kids pupil place out to LBSS, Edison etc every year, leaving the school under capacity.

Sure. And people pick the WS pyramid over Lewis and the county refuses to do ANYTHING to address the problem.

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.

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.

If you move 300 more families into the Lewis boundary area, won't they also pupil place out? SB will have to start pushing Lewis's boundary in all four directions to find enough kids to fill it if they don't close the IB loophole.

They had no qualms about pushing Langley's boundaries far west and south to fill the school (north is Maryland and east is Arlington). Come back when Lewis's catchment area is anywhere near as big as Langley or Robinson.

If you made Lewis’s attendance area as big as Robinson’s, you’d have a school with a population of 4000+. Population density is a thing.

Of course.

The point, which you choose to ignore, is that they can expand Lewis's boundaries consistent with many prior FCPS actions.

[Anonymous]

No transfer until 10th grade when AP classes start.

No more AAP in middle.