Skyview Information for Families of Attending Kids

[Anonymous]

Anyone have a rough final count yet on how many 9th and 10th graders they have for Skyview?

[Anonymous]

Did Skyview admin tell parents they would be running 15 student classes? Where did that number come from?

My kid at another HS had an elective canceled last year and the specific reason from the principal was they only had 28 students signed up which wasn't enough to run the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did Skyview admin tell parents they would be running 15 student classes? Where did that number come from?

My kid at another HS had an elective canceled last year and the specific reason from the principal was they only had 28 students signed up which wasn't enough to run the class.

They might be referring to the number of pods, as there are 14 throughout the building, with about 4-5 classrooms per pod.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Also interesting in today's visit - kids were told that block days will alternate with 1. interdisciplinary teaching of core subjects with flexible time allocations 2. electives and study halls or whatever.

This is already evidence of a new model in education. I am excited for it.

This is true. They seem to be heavily modeling TJ's course schedule with IBET and other teamed courses. Not sure how this would work with a general population.

I would love it if one of you would explain this to me. Please give an example if you can because I just don't understand.

I have heard that Skyview wants to schedule all of the core classes on a single day. So a student would have English, Math, Science, and Social Studies one day, and then other courses like PE, foreign language, electives, the other day. They also want to try and have students rotate through their core classes in the same pod area so that the core teachers would share the same students (similar to IBET in 9th grade for TJ).

That makes sense because most if not all of the kids will come from Rachel Carson which has pods/teams for7th and 8th grade.

All middle schools have "teams" like that.

What makes you think most or "all" of the kids will be from Carson when they made the offer to kids from all high schools?
My guess is the only thing we know for sure is it won't be kids who are into sports choosing to attend. Everything else, who knows.

Because when boundaries are announced, most, if not all kids will come from Rachel Carson (some may come from Franklin if they don't adjust middle school boundaries). The first year or two will not be reflective of the future population.

[Anonymous]

My son is from Carson and was thrilled to find everyone he knows at the Skyview orientation.

If I had to guess, they will group the kids in pods based on what they are taking - it's not as hard to figure out as you might think- the kids taking honors in 9th grade will all be in the same pods together. Maybe one pod will be for the honors kids who already took Algebra 2 so have a higher math.

They are not going to require 32 kids per class. My other kids had far less than that in some classes at Chantilly so I don't know where that statement came from. If there are only 10 kids wanting an elective, then yes, they might not offer it but I think you get to 15-17 and it's a go.

The way the pods work they said is that they flex time allocations on core subjects based on what they are doing - a biology test might get a 2 hour block vs 1.5 hour and other teachers reduce their schedule to fit - they try to align content to reinforce the other subject related concepts. I know a teacher whose is going to be there and they are excited for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have a rough final count yet on how many 9th and 10th graders they have for Skyview?

I know that they have a schoology group for the Skyview kids with about 550 kids in the group. I don’t know if all the kids are in that group or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son is from Carson and was thrilled to find everyone he knows at the Skyview orientation.

If I had to guess, they will group the kids in pods based on what they are taking - it's not as hard to figure out as you might think- the kids taking honors in 9th grade will all be in the same pods together. Maybe one pod will be for the honors kids who already took Algebra 2 so have a higher math.

They are not going to require 32 kids per class. My other kids had far less than that in some classes at Chantilly so I don't know where that statement came from. If there are only 10 kids wanting an elective, then yes, they might not offer it but I think you get to 15-17 and it's a go.

The way the pods work they said is that they flex time allocations on core subjects based on what they are doing - a biology test might get a 2 hour block vs 1.5 hour and other teachers reduce their schedule to fit - they try to align content to reinforce the other subject related concepts. I know a teacher whose is going to be there and they are excited for it.

We are at Westfield and heard something similar from our previous principal--classes are canceled if they don't have at least 30ish (I forget the exact number) of kids.
Neither of my Westfield students have had classes with fewer than 30 kids.

[Anonymous]

What's the staffing formula for high schools?

[Anonymous]

Numbers have dropped substantially especially for 10th graders. They have about 400 for 9th and only 280 for 10th grade. A lot of kids have opted out because of electives, sports, band, leaving friends, etc. Fairfax really messed up, they should have just drawn boundaries and allowed student to opt out if they wanted to. Which is how every other county works.

[Anonymous]

Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

There will be plenty of kids to fill those needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

There will be plenty of kids to fill those needs.

How? If they only have 250 sophomores and need 30 per class to staff it?

[Anonymous]

Most students going to the new school are honors and our math teacher going (phenomenal teacher) said she may pick up an extra class for the top tier math kids. Most new schools are overstaffed the first couple years and the county will just have to deal with it. They saved a lot of money on this new school so they will be okay if they have to pay a teacher a couple of extra teacher 10k to teach an extra class. The will have all the classes covered the only downside is they might be getting a teacher to teach something for the first time like an A seminar but that happens all the time at regular schools and most of the teacher I know going are very good teachers, so they will figure it out. 10th grade classes don’t differ that much but the hiring for when these kids get to 12 grade and want special advance classes might be difficult, but by that time the students will be able to drive themselves to a particular school for a subject. It’s not that hard, schools open up all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most students going to the new school are honors and our math teacher going (phenomenal teacher) said she may pick up an extra class for the top tier math kids. Most new schools are overstaffed the first couple years and the county will just have to deal with it. They saved a lot of money on this new school so they will be okay if they have to pay a teacher a couple of extra teacher 10k to teach an extra class. The will have all the classes covered the only downside is they might be getting a teacher to teach something for the first time like an A seminar but that happens all the time at regular schools and most of the teacher I know going are very good teachers, so they will figure it out. 10th grade classes don’t differ that much but the hiring for when these kids get to 12 grade and want special advance classes might be difficult, but by that time the students will be able to drive themselves to a particular school for a subject. It’s not that hard, schools open up all the time.

How do you know this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going to be very difficult to staff those 10th grade classes with the correct number of students for the formula, and still have Hon/Reg

They really need to do better for the 10th graders. I might be ok with DD having to take one year of online foreign language, but not 3.
And they had better offer plenty of advanced math and APs otherwise I will switch her back. But right now she really wants to go to Skyview.