Reply to Lee HS Enrollment Falls Below 1700

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Historical perspective.  I started at Lee in 1984.  That year they had redistricted several West Springfield neighborhoods over to Lee.  They did not grandfather siblings.  There was not a big stink because back then the two High Schools were equivalents.  We had 98% of graduates in my class go on to 4 year colleges.  It was very competitive.  Lee also had several State Championship sports teams---particularly dominated boys and girls HS soccer in VA throughout the 80s.

So what happened?  Did they pull out some of the WS neighborhoods that were brought in?  Did they redistrict other neighborhoods?  Did Demographics drastically change?  Demographics were about 20% Vietnamese (area directly surrounding Lee) and the rest Caucasian when I attended.[/quote]

Demographics.  Crime.  Did you hear about the kidnapping/murder at the mall?  They've fixed the mall, but it took years.[/quote]

Boy, you are reaching back like 15-20 years!  There was a kidnapping.  I don't remember a murder.   I think you are trying to make things worse than they are.

And can we just stop with the real estate arguments.  Of course West Springfield is more desired than Lee (as a school).  And by extension, West Springfield homes are more desirable (and yes, it costs more) than homes in the Lee pyramid.  There is no legitimate argument to the contrary.  The whole thrust of this thread is that no one will be zoned for Lee if the IB magnet plan takes hold.  Those who are currently home owners in Lee pyrmaid, get a windfall by getting rezoned to WSHS or Hayfield or South County... .not so much for a rezone to Annandale.   Sounds like the factors bringing Lee down were in play prior to the change in testing rules/ESOL/alternative programs -- but those changes are pushing it further into failing territory.

Maybe now is a good time to buy in Lee pyramid (closest to WSHS)!  Make some $$. [/quote]

A cold turkey switch to an IB magnet is a horrible plan.

There is simply not enough interest or demand for IB to fill a 2200 seat high school.

The rezoning that would need to be done to support this would be significant, resulting in around 20 elementary schools or more needing to be rezoned, along with overcrowding in all the receiving high schools.

Lee would not even be at half capacity if it were solely IB.

The logical path would be to close IB at those other area high schools, and create a school within a school for IB with Lee being the only option for that part of the county.  This might just barely fill the current space available at Lee.

Then, if Interest grows over the next 4 years, gradually rezone one elementary at a time out of Lee, or just rezone neighborhoods from around its perimeter to minimize mass rezoning.

Going cold turkey on such an unpopular program as IB and expecting 500 kids per grade to magically want to switch to IB overnight is doubling down on poor planning.[/quote]

Insider here. I've seen the enrollments and projections. We also followed the previous county that did this decommission and re-opening of an IB magnate. It's going to be more than full if it opens. Each feeder is allocated 70 seats per class, I believe in the preliminary modeling presentation I went to.

One of the interesting things was the survey data from the county that did this. Families who had previously refused or avoided the IB program (because it was used in local, poorer high school -- a school within a school model) flocked to the center because it was uniformly high performing, academically homogeneous, and had a college bound cohort. Suddenly IB was in high demand.[/quote]

That is not happening at Marshall or Robinson.[/quote]

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