Reply to SB Member Anderson on County-wide Boundary Study

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The discussion last night was a bit of a fiasco.  Staff made a presentation and then Anderson wanted the scope of the boundary study narrowed.  There's no reason at all why that couldn't have been worked out with her before staff made the presentation to all the board members.

Then they got all tangled up as to whether this one-off study would be at odds with the county-wide review that they are now openly discussing.  Then the next thing you knew Rachna Sizemore-Heizer was complaining about the number of kids eating in the same cafeteria at Lake Braddock, and Anderson was conflating the renovation queue with the "queue" for boundary changes.

If this type of floundering took place within a private company, people would be getting raked over the coals.

[/quote]

Yikes. It is premature to discuss specific boundaries before looking at the entire picture. They need to do the study while also highlighting a map with known problem areas, so they can get to work when the study is complete. [/quote]

The issue with Glasgow specifically is that it's a 6-8 MS that Anderson and some of her constituents have decided has too many kids, even though it's not especially overcrowded in terms of capacity.  Anderson got the prior School Board to prioritize a boundary study, but it doesn't meet the usual conditions for a redistricting.   Plus, she points to the fact that FCPS has said the maximum target size of a middle school is 1350, but that's based on a MS with grades 7-8, not 6-8.

On the other hand, the other nearby 6-8 MS (Poe, Holmes) have space, so they can move kids if they want.  But once they get into the specifics, which they haven't done yet, they'll realize that the Glasgow neighborhoods closest to Poe and Holmes tend to be higher-income areas assigned to the school, whereas the poverty is concentrated closer to the Arlington and Alexandria borders.  So they could end up with a proposal to shrink Glasgow but further drive up the FARMS rate, and when people realize that they'll get a lot of additional pushback.  It's unclear that Anderson has thought any of this through - she just heard some constituents say Glasgow is "too big" and was off to the races. [/quote]

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