FCPS Boundary Review Updates
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Anonymous
Not every lower rated school is losing kids or ignored. Both Justice and West Potomac had growing enrollments and got generous additions outside the renovation queue. If those schools deserved additions, so too do Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid and McLean HS. As for the lower performing schools that are losing kids, we should look at the root causes first before changing boundaries. For example, reinstating AP at Lewis and Mount Vernon would stem a decent number of pupil placements out of those schools (although Mount Vernon may be a special case to the extent military families at Fort Belvoir have special transfer options). |
Anonymous
Very “ME” vs “WE”. Ok, I got it. |
Anonymous
The base population at Westgate is much bigger than Lemon Road because Lemon Road has a large number of AAP students from Shrevewood and Westgate. The SPAs are outdated because Westgate just added a bunch of new townhouses, but at the time of the Kent Garden study, it was 246 vs 356 high school students from Lemon Road vs Westgate. The reason it was moved over Westgate is that it kept the capacity numbers balanced. The problem with Lemon Road and Westgate is you have one half of their boundaries staring across the street at Marshall HS and the other half of their boundaries within walking distance of McLean. They either need to keep them split feeders, and balance them so more than 20% is going to McLean/Longfellow. Or swap around some SPAs so that one school takes everything off RT-7 and the other takes the half closer to 267. |
Anonymous
Your extremist purity test ends up costing the democrats a lot of elections. |
Anonymous
People tend to focus on high schools because they are more important to families, but the machinations involving the McLean and Marshall pyramids are heavily driven by the purported overcrowding at Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid (118% without modulars last year; 153% with modulars, and projected to go up over the next five years). If you look at FCPS's capacity dashboard, it shows big fluctuations in Kilmer's program capacity, from 1272 seats in 2021-22 to 1023 seats last year. I'm not sure if there's ever been an explanation as to why the program capacity declined so much, but it had a big impact on the latest Thru Consulting proposals. With respect to Lemon Road and Westgate, I'm not aware of any large number of McLean parents at those schools complaining that they are 20% of the enrollments vs. the magic 25% used by Thru Consulting. There are things that could be done to adjust those percentages at each school, but they would likely displease some folks. And trying to eliminate the split feeders entirely so that all of Westgate feeds to Marshall and all of Lemon Road feeds to McLean, or vice versa, means splitting the Pimmit Hills neighborhood, which has fed entirely to Marshall for decades, between Marshall and McLean depending on proximity to 267 vs. 7. As always, it would be useful to know what problem we're trying to solve, and whether it's really a problem, here before imposing changes on families. |
Anonymous
| Have we heard anything new about the KAA high school? |
Anonymous
They haven’t disclosed anything. Act first, then come up with a plan. |
Anonymous
Does it? In Fairfax? 1 Republican Board of Supervisors member, 0 Republican School Board members. They could lose a number of seats and still be in full control. While a massive boundary shift might get the School Board in a lot of trouble, some targeted adjustments, even unpopular ones, are not likely to cost the Democrats full control in Fairfax. |
Anonymous
DP. "Targeted adjustments" is a very charitable term for the sort of nonsense that FCPS staff and Thru Consulting have been ponying up so far. |
Anonymous
That's true, but in the end I think they will be smart enough (just smart enough, don't give them too much credit) to be somewhat selective in what issues they address. So they may inflict some pain in certain areas, but not many areas. But once again they have a 12-0 majority and Fairfax is very blue (Blue no matter who), so I see it as a hard climb for Republicans to gain control. Remember, many voters are not very plugged in. |
Anonymous
I wasn't arguing that the Democrats won't retain control of the School Board and Board of Supervisors. They undoubtedly will. The implicit reinforcement of the message "we can do whatever we want, whether you like it or not," however, may not serve the Ds well locally over the longer run. If they plan to inflict any "pain," they ought to have a clear explanation of the benefits that justify it. Spending shit tons of money on projects like KAA and Dunn Loring, while telling other people there's no money for their schools and they should just STFU and expect to be redistricted, doesn't strike me as the most politically savvy of approaches. |
Anonymous
| KAA will be quite popular in Sully. Very few people really want the Dunn Loring school. It's Karl Frisch's personal boondoggle. |
Anonymous
Good point. Let me go talk to the Democratic president, senate, and House. I guess what you are saying is you like the status quo. (To deflect your anticipated response, I voted Harris). Like I said, purity test has cost a lot of elections. |
Anonymous
DP. What's the "purity test" for local politicians in Fairfax? I just see them muddling their way to bad decisions that will degrade FCPS and are the textbook definition of "the juice isn't worth the squeeze." But there doesn't seem to be much ideological purity on display. |
Anonymous
The opposite is NOT fine. The are plenty of us that do NOT want to go from Marshall to McLean! I am so tired of the narrative that McLean is some Mecca that everyone wants to be part of. Exactly. People want to stay at the pyramid that their families chose when they decided to buy in Fairfax County. +100 Totally agree. We have no desire to move to McLean. |