Reply to Should FCPS Reassign New Affordable Housing from Marshall to Langley?

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Reply to "Should FCPS Reassign New Affordable Housing from Marshall to Langley?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] Great Falls wants to keep Langley below capacity indefinitely for reasons that are obvious, but at some point the adults need to say enough is enough. [/quote]

For reference, approximately 50% of Langley's current student body feeds from Great Falls (GFES, Forestville, and the Great Falls part of Colvin Run).  Regardless of what anyone wants, FCPS isn't magically reassigning Great Falls away from Langley.  You would need to find ~1,000 HS kids to fill that gap.

As much as you might want it to be otherwise, FCPS also isn't moving Forestville (the ES farthest from Langley) out of Langley anytime soon.  That would only be done in connection with a wholesale boundary change and I assure you there is no appetite for that (on the school board, across the general population, or otherwise).  Maybe when the mythical Western High School is built.  But that is many years out.

With regard to the Tyson's development that's the genesis of this discussion, it seems premature when construction isn't even slated to begin until sometime in 2023 (which means it won't open until at least 2024).  Why on earth would the school board take on a potentially complicated boundary issue that is not even ripe?  That would be a political landmine.  It makes no sense.

(And, because I know that the most common response to posts here is the personal attack: I have no horse in this race and personally could not care less about the demographics of any HS student body.)[/quote]

The thread shouldn't be about reassigning kids out of Langley to Herndon.  It's about which pyramid has the most capacity to accommodate further growth in Tysons, in particular the brand-new affordable housing off Spring Hill Road.

However, to the extent that some posters manufacture specious arguments about why Cooper and Langley - which have more capacity than other ES/MS in the area - shouldn't be the obvious schools for these students to attend, it's fair to ask what their motivations are.

And the time to start thinking about these issues is NOW, not after students from these new developments are already attending Kilmer and Marshall.  If we wait until after these students are already attending Kilmer and Marshall, we'll be met with arguments that it's not fair to separate them from other Kilmer and Marshall students living in apartments on the other side of Route 7, etc.

By way of reference, when the Spring Gate apartments were being planned in the early 00s, Marshall was substantially below capacity, McLean was near capacity, and FCPS made an administrative boundary change to reassign the part of Tysons where the Spring Gate apartments were located from McLean to Marshall.  The decision was not delayed on the grounds that it would be a "political landmine."  Had that decision not been made, McLean would be even more overcrowded today, so it can be defended in hindsight, but it's also perhaps not a coincidence that the School Board was quick to act when they could move kids in apartments to Marshall and slow to act when it comes to making use of the excess capacity at Langley by moving some apartments there.

So while you claim not to care about the boundaries or demographics of any particular HS, your post suggests otherwise.  You're advocating for the same inertia and favoritism that has resulted in capacity imbalances and widening disparities among FCPS schools for over a decade.  [/quote]

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