Reply to How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They hired a consultant because they love wasting money.

Them stating at the work session that they weren’t tackling boundaries that day wasn’t racism, which is what was suggested earlier.

Admitting that there was Anti Asian sentiment behind the push to change TJ admissions and going forward anyway? Racist

calling Brabrand “dumb and white” as a reason why he can’t manage correctly? Racist [/quote]

Oh please, learn to read between the lines. Cohen specifically announced during the MGT meeting that she had just then received emails from Daventry parents, literally as the MGT consultant was presenting his PowerPoint, asking her not to reverse the boundary change back to Lewis. Cohen felt the need to publicly reassure them that wasn't happening to take some heat off her back. Call it what you will (classism, elitism, racism, or plain selfishness), but it's glaringly obvious that the reason the Board is so defensive on the topic of boundaries is because they all know the elephant in the room.

And in case you don't know the elephant in the room either: some communities clearly feel threatened that adjustments may lead to more ELL/FARMs populations in their catchment areas.[/quote]

The wealthy don't mind if a small number of ESOL/FARMS kids are moved to their catchment areas.  They do mind very much if they might be moved to a different pyramid.

If you look at the Langley/McLean adjustment, Langley parents made it clear they were fine with having some apartments in Tysons with greater economic diversity moved into their school UNTIL the Great Falls parents realized that moving an area where additional apartments and condos are getting built might increase the odds of western Great Falls eventually getting moved to Herndon.  Then they got Tholen to make sure none of those areas were moved to Langley and that an area further from Langley consisting entirely of existing single-family homes was moved instead.  The Great Falls Citizens Association stated publicly that was the best possible outcome for them under the circumstances.

That is how the game has been played in FCPS for well over a decade.  The South Lakes redistricting from 2008, where the School Board deliberately moved higher-income neighborhoods zoned for Westfield, Oakton, and Madison into South Lakes at a time when South Lakes' enrollment had dropped to around 1400 kids, is ancient history.  The School Board members saw the heat that some took for effecting that boundary change and said to themselves "never again."

They hired a boundary policy consultant a few years ago to kick the can down the road, and because some members like to think that a new boundary policy will result in some algorithm for adjusting boundaries that can be applied mechanically and will take the heat off them, but that's a pipe dream.  And any time they so much as hint that they might do a county-wide review of actual boundaries (as opposed to just looking at boundary policy), the groups like "One Great Falls" and "Voices of Fairfax" spring into action to oppose them. [/quote]

No one at Langley or in GF was making anything clear about Strauss’ very reasonable attempt to reduce crowding at McLean by rezoning an area to Langley.

GF and other parts of the county did become interested when it was made known that the board was about to vote on a new boundary policy that gave no consideration to neighborhoods, that gave board the right to change boundaries every three years, and that prioritized the “right” racial mix in school buildings when deciding boundaries.  They also were going to do a “comprehensive review”, in other words make new boundaries from scratch county wide.

Once this became widely known and they received intense blowback, they cancelled the vote and decided that the boundary between under enrolled Langley and overcrowded McLean should be adjusted after all.  The election was a few months away and the majority dem school board didactic want to lose any seats.

If they really believed in what they were doing they wouldn’t have run away when the spotlight hit their policy making decisions.[/quote]

Anecdotally (on this forum and elsewhere) and at the community meetings in late 2019 there were a lot of Langley parents who indicated they were more than willing to accept McLean students, no matter where they came from, given the capacity imbalance between the schools.

Where the rubber hit the road was when Great Falls realized that FCPS staff wanted to move a growing area of Tysons to Langley. The GFCA convinced Tholen to reject the FCPS staff recommendation in favor of a different option that effectively capped the number of kids who could ever be expected to move into Cooper and Langley. Afterwards, the GFCA education chair had this to say: "[i]Of the three options considered, I think Ms. Tholen's and the Board's decision on option B is the better compromise for Great Falls. It satisfies the various goals well while not excessive on Cooper and Langley's capacities. It is a significant number of students but comes from neighborhoods with little to no future development as compared to other options considered[/i]."

Mind you, this was a Great Falls citizens group weighing in on boundary options that did not involve moving a single student from Great Falls, but only areas in Vienna or Tysons/McLean who might be reassigned from McLean to Langley. And now, thanks to the influence of the GFCA and Tholen, the relief provided is paltry with McLean's enrollment this fall at an all-time high and Langley still well under capacity to provide the GFCA with the buffer they want. The GFCA did say they support an addition to MHS, which is nice, but when push comes to shove they would far rather see McLean kids packed into MHS like sardines than to be close to a situation where someone might argue to move some LHS kids to Herndon.

If anything ever gets put on the table involving Herndon or Westfield that could conceivably touch Langley's boundaries, Great Falls will get Tholen to do their bidding again. She only has one community's interests in mind, and it's Great Falls.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics