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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, Tholen couldn't get the support of her colleagues to get a motion approved to direct Facilities to have a new renovation queue ready by the next CIP.

And she certainly can't get money for an addition at McLean even though (1) [b]it got the cheapest renovation of any FCPS high school in the early 00s[/b], (2) it has the least amount of permanent learning space of any high school in FCPS, and (3) its enrollment is at an all-time high and higher than other schools already getting additions (Madison, Justice).  But she'll get a few hundred thousand to renovate a couple of bathrooms by 2030 and pretend she's a warrior.

School needed a pit-bull on the School Board and got a lazy, ineffective wallflower. [/quote]

Off the top of my head two other schools renovated in the early 00s are getting overhauled and expanded: West Potomac and Madison. (Does the town of Vienna pay for the Madison renovations?) McLean really did get screwed with the first renovation, and it's getting shafted again. Meanwhile, directly adjacent to McLean, the high schools have all the latest bells and whistles: the brand new Meridian HS, the overhauled Langley HS, Yorktown and W-L in Arlington, Marshall, Falls Church, Oakton, etc.[/quote]

As you said - McLean [b]ALREADY[/b] had a renovation, while all those other schools you listed were sitting, patiently waiting their turn.  Kind of seems like McLean will have to wait in line for its turn to roll around again.[/quote]

I don't know if you're intentionally trying to create confusion here to make Tholen look better, but there's a difference between renovations and additions.

Schools are renovated in order based on a renovation queue established by FCPS back in 2008.  All the schools on the queue have been renovated in more or less the order set forth in that queue.

Separately, FCPS has on multiple occasions built additions at schools outside the queue process when those schools were overcrowded.  Over the past decade, at least four high schools have received additions due to overcrowding - South Lakes, Justice, Madison, and West Potomac.  Of the four, West Potomac is the only one that was more overcrowded than McLean when an addition got funded.  And they are building an addition at West Potomac even though nearby Mount Vernon has surplus capacity that could have been used to alleviate the overcrowding there.

Obviously, if they spend money on additions, it delays renovations, but they've been willing to do that in the past because additions cost much less than renovations, and sometimes there are compelling needs for additions.

In McLean's case, the amount that was spent on the school's renovation was the least of any school renovation since the early 00s, and the School Board continues to refuse to fund an addition to the school despite the compelling need.  They are so afraid of appearing to favor McLean that they end up discriminating against the school.  This has been going on for years, and Tholen made a big pitch when she ran for School Board in 2019 that one of her tp[ priorities would be getting McLean scoped into the Capital Improvement Program for a future addition.  Once elected, however, she dropped the ball, and now she just robotically repeats the same BS about how she'd like to see FCPS come up with a new renovation queue - which again totally ignores the fact that FCPS repeatedly has built additions at other schools outside the queue.

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