Reply to Is "Woke" School Board Member Pat Hynes a Hypocrite?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]During the past two years, Hunter Mill School Board member Pat Hynes was a passionate advocate of changing the name of JEB Stuart HS, a school that is not in her district.

When it comes to matters affecting her own constituents, however, it's not clear she's equally committed to equity or fairness.

Specifically, FCPS intends to take up a potential boundary change on February 8th that would move most of the wealthiest neighborhoods currently zoned to Jackson MS to Thoreau MS in Vienna.  This would, of course, drive up the ESOL/FARMS rates at Jackson, which is already about 40-45% low-income.

Jackson MS also has a border with Poe MS, and Poe MS is projected in the latest Capital Improvement Plan to have greater excess capacity than Thoreau, or any other middle school in FCPS, by 2022-23.  Yet there is not a single option identified by FCPS that would move other neighborhoods zoned for Jackson MS to Poe MS instead, or any analysis of the potential impact of a Jackson-to-Thoreau shift on the ESOL/FARMS rates at Jackson that has been made public.

Moving part of Jackson to Thoreau would create a three-way split feeder at Thoreau (Madison/Marshall/Oakton), when Thoreau currently is only a two-way split feeder (Madison/Marshall).  Conversely, moving part of Jackson to Poe would leave Poe a two-way split feeder (Annandale/Falls Church).

No doubt, some in Vienna and Oakton would love to jump to Thoreau, a school that generally serves much wealthier areas than Jackson.  Sadly, there is no sign that Pat Hynes (or, for that matter, Sandy Evans and Dalia Palchik), so passionate about renaming a high school in a district she does not represent, has lifted a finger to ask Facilities staff to explore other options.

Those zoned for Poe MS/Annandale HS district know first-hand how FCPS, through incremental boundary changes, can push a school pyramid that already has a significant low-income population past the tipping point.  Will Hynes sit by idly while the Facilities staff proposes to do the same thing at Jackson MS, which in turn will have a major effect on Falls Church HS as well.

Will Hynes, Palchik and Evans finally pay attention, or will they praise the "One Fairfax" resolution and then ignore it when it actually matters? [/quote]

Don't forget the insidious changes at Lee that saw the F/R lunch rate climb from 27% in 2005 to 55% today - boundary changes and ignoring the fact that families were fleeing via the pupil placement policy (and not acting to put AP back at Lee). Not saying Lee's F/R rate would not have gone up, but perhaps it would be at a more manageable level. Now no one wants to go there - they have ignored the problem long enough where they can't fix it.  [b]One Fairfax is a joke![/b][/quote]

There are some demographic changes that are beyond FCPS's control.  They can't control when people living in residential neighborhoods no longer have school-age children, or when older apartment complexes start renting units to a different demographic.

But FCPS has complete control over the signal it sends when it starts moving single-family neighborhoods out of schools that already have higher-than-average percentages of FARMS and ESOL students.

They did a hatchet job on both Annandale HS and Lee HS through boundary changes.  And they are poised to do the same thing to Jackson MS (and, indirectly, Falls Church HS), which are actually in areas that otherwise might stabilize or improve because of the new development near Dunn Loring and Mosaic.

The families getting the "upgrade" to the higher-SES schools will usually claim they are being reassigned to more "convenient" schools, or that they have more connections to one community than another.  But we all know what is really happening, and the simple fact is that it keeps occurring even when the School Board ostensibly is controlled by "liberal" Democrats.

It is disgusting.  The FCDC wants to replace at least two current School Board members because they were lukewarm about changing the name of JEB Stuart HS, but they don't seem to care at all that other Democratic-endorsed School Board members will vote time and time again in favor of boundary changes that increase demographic disparities among county schools. [/quote]

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