How would you change the FCPS boundary maps?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The schools along Rte 50 inside the beltway's attendance boundaries are a clusterf_ck - I'm talking Graham Rd, Pine Spring, Beech Tree. And then there's Timberlane - a random school half zoned to McLean - in the middle of all that, and Shrevewood which is very overcrowded. Such a mess.

Yes. I am sour on the whole "attendance island" situation, though. There were changes this summer based on eliminating attendance islands, that did nothing of the sort. The kids on the opposite side of Beech Tree will always be an island as long as they are zoned to a school across route 50. Either open another school on that side, zone them to a school on that side, or don't use that as a pretense to move kids on the opposite side of route 50.

To be clear, the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood was moved to BTES from SHES to theoretically eliminate an attendance island. IMO, it does nothing of the sort. I don't actually have an issue with being moved to BTES, but the logic for it did not make sense to me.

There is technically no island at Beech Tree following the changes, just a gerrymandered boundary.

Look at the map removing commercial properties and roadways, and there certainly is, to me.

[Anonymous]

+100
Eliminate all centers and return to neighborhood schools.

This. Kids do better in neighborhood schools where there is a community.

[Anonymous]

One way or the other, they need to decide how they want to deliver academic services before they make any major changes affecting where those services are delivered. The enrollment assumptions you’d make if schools like Carson remain mega-AAP centers look very different from the assumptions you’d make if there were no centers.

[Anonymous]

What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

diversity is great until your kid is zoned for a school with a 50%+ FARMS rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One way or the other, they need to decide how they want to deliver academic services before they make any major changes affecting where those services are delivered. The enrollment assumptions you’d make if schools like Carson remain mega-AAP centers look very different from the assumptions you’d make if there were no centers.

Carson's AAP center kids would be just fine at their home school. Some would still be at Carson. Others would be at Franklin. Not too many years ago, centers were much smaller and served only the gifted. Now, they take half of some of the feeder elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

OP here. It is not that diversity is bad. The issue is that forcing diversity to exist when it is not necessarily present is pointless. You can say that some parts of Northern Virginia have more white people and other parts have more Hispanic people, etc. and that is true. But the thing is that this is not necessarily a forced decision. I know for a fact that when my immigrant parents moved to Northern Virginia they purposely chose a house in an area with a lot of people from their same country. This isn't to say that there was nobody else living in that area, but there were definitely many people from my parent's country. If you told my parents that in the interest of equity I would be bussed to Great Falls Elementary School or Cooper Middle School or Langley High School they would not be pleased at all. The same thing would happen if you reversed the situation.

Does this say something about the mindset of the people living in this area or more broadly the world? Sure. But the fact is that when you choose to live somewhere there is a certain amount of discrimination inherent in the process. You discriminate based on the quality of schools, based on the cost of the house itself plus maintenance, based on your interaction with the sellers, based on the distance to your workplace, etc. Besides we have neighborhood schools for a reason; you should not have kids going past one middle school to go to another one further away. Same with high school and elementary school. Mind you, I think AAP centers should be done away with since I don't see any indication that those students are necessarily smarter than their peers in any significant way. I also don't think school districts should be drawn based on property values alone. But forcing Edison High School to become richer or Mclean High School to become poorer makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The schools along Rte 50 inside the beltway's attendance boundaries are a clusterf_ck - I'm talking Graham Rd, Pine Spring, Beech Tree. And then there's Timberlane - a random school half zoned to McLean - in the middle of all that, and Shrevewood which is very overcrowded. Such a mess.

Yup, and the Stenwood parents continue to fight allowing kids who are closer to Stenwood than Shrevewood attend. It's absurd.

Stenwood is going to have its boundaries substantially changed when Frisch's Dunn Loring project is finished. Part of Shrevewood will finally move to Stenwood, and much of Stenwood (and part of Freedom Hill) will end up at Dunn Loring.

There’s a zone part of Freedom Hill that seems out of the way-near Pimmit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

diversity is great until your kid is zoned for a school with a 50%+ FARMS rate.

This. Some schools shouldn’t bear the brunt of certain populations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McLean to Marshall and Langley

Marshall to Falls Church

Falls Church to Madison.

Some Madison to Langley

Some of these areas are obvious

And some Madison to South Lakes!

Falls Church to Madison? Which areas? That one I don’t get,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

OP here. It is not that diversity is bad. The issue is that forcing diversity to exist when it is not necessarily present is pointless. You can say that some parts of Northern Virginia have more white people and other parts have more Hispanic people, etc. and that is true. But the thing is that this is not necessarily a forced decision. I know for a fact that when my immigrant parents moved to Northern Virginia they purposely chose a house in an area with a lot of people from their same country. This isn't to say that there was nobody else living in that area, but there were definitely many people from my parent's country. If you told my parents that in the interest of equity I would be bussed to Great Falls Elementary School or Cooper Middle School or Langley High School they would not be pleased at all. The same thing would happen if you reversed the situation.

Does this say something about the mindset of the people living in this area or more broadly the world? Sure. But the fact is that when you choose to live somewhere there is a certain amount of discrimination inherent in the process. You discriminate based on the quality of schools, based on the cost of the house itself plus maintenance, based on your interaction with the sellers, based on the distance to your workplace, etc. Besides we have neighborhood schools for a reason; you should not have kids going past one middle school to go to another one further away. Same with high school and elementary school. Mind you, I think AAP centers should be done away with since I don't see any indication that those students are necessarily smarter than their peers in any significant way. I also don't think school districts should be drawn based on property values alone. But forcing Edison High School to become richer or Mclean High School to become poorer makes no sense.

+1 to all of this. Literally the only boundaries that I would change are where there is overcrowding next to a school under capacity. Part of McLean to Langley (no, that isn’t going to send western GF to Herndon), part of West Potomac to Mt. Vernon, and build the western HS to help all the overcrowded schools in that area of the county.

[Anonymous]

West Po won't go to Mt Vernon. There is near universal local opposition and the local politicians know it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I take from this thread is that DCUM thinks that diversity is not at all important and we should be carving up school districts on property values alone.

OP here. It is not that diversity is bad. The issue is that forcing diversity to exist when it is not necessarily present is pointless. You can say that some parts of Northern Virginia have more white people and other parts have more Hispanic people, etc. and that is true. But the thing is that this is not necessarily a forced decision. I know for a fact that when my immigrant parents moved to Northern Virginia they purposely chose a house in an area with a lot of people from their same country. This isn't to say that there was nobody else living in that area, but there were definitely many people from my parent's country. If you told my parents that in the interest of equity I would be bussed to Great Falls Elementary School or Cooper Middle School or Langley High School they would not be pleased at all. The same thing would happen if you reversed the situation.

Does this say something about the mindset of the people living in this area or more broadly the world? Sure. But the fact is that when you choose to live somewhere there is a certain amount of discrimination inherent in the process. You discriminate based on the quality of schools, based on the cost of the house itself plus maintenance, based on your interaction with the sellers, based on the distance to your workplace, etc. Besides we have neighborhood schools for a reason; you should not have kids going past one middle school to go to another one further away. Same with high school and elementary school. Mind you, I think AAP centers should be done away with since I don't see any indication that those students are necessarily smarter than their peers in any significant way. I also don't think school districts should be drawn based on property values alone. But forcing Edison High School to become richer or Mclean High School to become poorer makes no sense.

Nobody is seriously talking about bussing kids from Graham Road to Langley, but there are boundary adjustments that make proactive impacts on diversity while proving to be minimal logistically.

Does the board think that Timber Lane should be moved away from McLean? It is roughly a 5 minute difference in commute between McLean and Marshall. These are the boundary changes that we are talking about, not 1960s bussing.

[Anonymous]

Nobody is seriously talking about bussing kids from Graham Road to Langley, but there are boundary adjustments that make proactive impacts on diversity while proving to be minimal logistically.

Does the board think that Timber Lane should be moved away from McLean? It is roughly a 5 minute difference in commute between McLean and Marshall. These are the boundary changes that we are talking about, not 1960s bussing.

I live in west Fairfax and am not familiar with Timber Lane. But, I am familiar with boundary adjustments. NO boundary changes are minimal logistically to those affected. NO one wants to be moved--not even those being moved to a "better" school. The only exceptions are those with very small children who think it will enhance their own property values. But, people with kids in school don't want them separated from their current school communities.

[Anonymous]

“ people with kids in school don't want them separated from their current school communities. ”

+1 make what changes you want but schedule them to phase in so kids can stay with their friends and the HS they thought they would go to