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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A language magnet with an international focus makes SOOOOO much more sense than a ridiculous.left wing social justice indoctrination.  I suggested this years ago before this politically biased new idea took root.

A language magnet within Lewis would immediately fix enrollment issues and raise test scores.  It would be a huge win for this school.

The protest academy?  Not so much.[/quote]

If a school already offers Chinese, does that mean FCPS is going to force kids to go to Lewis to take it?

I guess they could look at languages that aren't offered at many schools (for example, Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese) or aren't offered at all (for example, Hindi, Urdu, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian).  [/quote]

No. But an academy offering less frequently offered languages and maybe history classes and government classes for the countries those languages are from would be cool. And then kids who want to take Chinese or Russian or Japanese or Hindi or whatever languages are there would be able to take a bus to school instead of parents driving them. And it would reduce the need for kids to find a school that has room and can allow students to attend for the language they are interested in. It would be a pretty cool concept. [/quote]

We already have a shortage of bus drivers, ridiculous bus routes/times, and enough pollution from buses.  Are we really supposed to start running extra buses to get kids from Herndon and Great Falls to Springfield and back?

I hope a new School Board is elected next year and that they jettison this academy idea and start reforming Lewis by first eliminating IB.  [/quote]

The buses for Academies run during the school day so it would not add to the bus issue. [/quote]

That limits the window during which students from other schools can avail of Academy courses and makes additional demands on the fleet (and schools end at different hours as well).

This is going to be an expensive boondoggle to try and make Lewis look more attractive without grappling with some of the [b]more fundamental reasons[/b] why this is the case.  [/quote]

The fundamental reason is that Lewis, Herndon, Justice, Falls Church, Annandale, and MVHS have large amounts of affordable housing complexes inside their boundaries that draw immigrants and ESOL newcomers to live in those apartments. No amount of traditional schooling is going to transform a young adult ELL student into a top-tier graduate. Regardless of the miraculous achievements FCPS makes with ESOL students, the traditional SAT/AP/IB/SOL scores will always suffer at these schools. It's truly as simple as that.

If your main concern is buses, I would argue that Chantilly and West Potomac are poorly designated as academies because they are on the extremities of the county and don't make sense geographically like Lewis does.

But that's all besides the point. This is an opportunity to create a worthy academy in a centrally-located, significantly under-enrolled school building in a county that is hungry for selective and advanced programs. The opportunity is there but the implementation needs work. [/quote]

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