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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the Lewis and West Springfield folks need to consider my post from yesterday. Reposting here (it is on page 77).

[color=blue]Here is what I think is going on with Lewis.

The county cannot [b]officially[/b] make Lewis an ESL school (that would be illegal), but through their actions they seem to be pushing it that way.

They slightly shrank the boundaries with this latest map. This could reduce the population further (on track to be around 1450 in a couple of years). Remember, in both 2005 and 2015 the boundaries of Lewis (Lee) were made smaller and the enrollment fell from over 2100 to its current 1539.

At Lewis they stick with a woefully underperforming IB program and have shrunk the language choices to a minimum. They put in a STEM program at Edison next door. All of this allows (and incentivizes) families who live within the Lewis boundaries to pupil place to other schools. These are typically families with more resources that can provide their own transportation and likely get more education support at home.

The end effect is Lewis having more high-needs students and fewer advanced students. This theoretically allows the county to focus on high-needs students while more advanced students transfer to different schools to access more advanced courses. They must think this will make the job for Lewis administrators and teachers easier. The problem is that right now they don’t appear to be getting those high-needs students to perform very well (only so much a school can do without proper influence from the home), and it is doing a disservice to advanced students who have to stay at Lewis (fewer advanced courses, fewer instances of those courses).

If they had addressed this 10-15 years ago they may have been able to avert Lewis from becoming a pariah. At this point Lewis is so far down the high ESL / high poverty line that the thought of moving any students to Lewis is seen as cataclysmic. I think all of this explains why no students are being moved to Lewis.[/color]

This is the only explanation I can think of. Why else would they hold on to IB at that school?[/quote]

If that logic is true, then it is completely inequitable to all the other FARMs and ELL kids at the large high schools like Annandale, Falls Church, Justice, etc, which have larger ELL populations than Lewis by the raw numbers. Why do Lewis ELL kids get special small private school treatment?[/quote]

To some degree it is a tipping point. Once you are below a certain enrollment number [b]AND[/b] have a high ESL population it becomes hard to keep the advanced classes populated (or a variety of languages). So if the county can get advanced students to transfer to other schools that, in theory, simplifies the task at Lewis.

Annandale and Falls Church fell under 2000 students this year, but just barely. Justice is just below 2200. Herndon is still over 2000. So they should still have a decent number of advanced students just based on the higher numbers. So those schools may still be very capable of supporting both ESL and advanced students. (Note: sometimes ESL students are advanced, just looking at general needs).

Mt. Vernon is down to 1755, so it is quickly becoming a problem like Lewis (only 1539 students). Poor and small.[/quote]

Annandale will get more kids with Bren Mar Park moving back to Annandale from Edison.  This is undoing part of an earlier redistricting of kids out of Annandale in 2011.

Falls Church will get more kids with Sleepy Hollow Woods moving from Justice to eliminate the Mason Crest split feeder.  Not sure how they feel about getting moved into Poe, though.

Justice is losing Sleepy Hollow Woods but picking up a small area in Lincolnia now at Annandale that fought out a move from pre-STEM Jefferson to Justice (then Stuart) decades ago.  Justice enrollment will keep going down if some of the immigrant families are forced out or leave voluntarily.

All of these schools are healthier than Lewis.  Annandale has a great principal.  Falls Church is getting a major renovation.  Justice has some wealthy areas the Lake Barcroft/Sleepy Hollow area to go along with the poorer areas.  Lewis just gets treated like dirt year after year.  So does Mount Vernon.  [/quote]

If they were trying to reduce the FARMS percentage at Falls Church, and I'm not sure they really cared one way or the other, picking up Sleepy Hollow Woods and Columbia Pines from Justice does more than picking up Timber Lane north of Route 29 from McLean would have done.  It's 100% single-family houses. [/quote]

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