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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The reason Langley was ever part of the new western school discussion was due to overcrowding at McLean. The thought process was that the McLean overflow would move to Langley. This in turn would overwhelm Langley and necessitate moving some Langley kids to Herndon.

Population increases due to developments in Tysons and around metro is expected to further burden schools in that area including McLean. The thought of a new Western HS scares the panties off some GF families zoned for Langley because it could create extra capacity at Herndon, especially if the school is built on the proposed Hutchison site. Meaning that the fate of those GF kids closer to Herndon and others on the western edge of the Langley pyramid could land up in Herndon. (The horror!)

If McLean HS doesn’t become overcrowded (again??), then GF families on the edge are “safe” from having to switch schools. They will want to prevent high density housing in the McLean and Langley pyramids that would push them out of Langley and into Herndon.

Even without the mythical Western HS, the western edge of the Langley pyramid COULD be impacted.

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FCPS knows it’s not ideal to be busing kids 10-14 miles to Langley from western Great Falls.

They haven’t had an alternative because Herndon has been full and Langley has been losing kids for the better part of a decade (lots of families sending their kids to privates and neighborhoods full of older people).  But between the growth closer to Langley in Tysons and the additional space that might open up at Herndon if a new school were built to address GE overcrowding at Chantilly and Centreville, they’ve been telling people for years that they will take another look at the Langley boundaries when a new high school gets built.

For example, a developer building a new subdivision in Herndon south of Route 7 tried to get FCPS to make an administrative boundary change a few years ago to reassign the area from Herndon to Langley, FCPS declined and said in correspondence with the developer that it would be premature to revisit the boundaries in that area until a new school was built, at which time all the boundaries in western Fairfax would be reconsidered.  Janie Strauss conveyed a similar message to Langley families, as she publicly acknowledged at a School Board work session in early 2019.

When word of this got out to more people in Great Falls, they went bat-shit crazy. They organized a meeting at Forestville ES in June 2019!and screamed at Strauss for over two hours. The next month they disrupted a School Board work session complaining about boundary changes that were not even yet on the table.

They obviously feel they have the upper hand now that Strauss is gone and has been replaced by Elaine Tholen, who lacks integrity and shamelessly caters to Great Falls. But Tholen is deeply unpopular and will be gone by 2023, and the fact remains that FCPS’s long-term goals include both building another high-school in western Fairfax and revisiting the boundaries of multiple schools that serve students in western Fairfax, including Langley.  The recent challenges at Langley - which has had more bus route delays than any other high school and where there is increasing friction between parents picking up their kids and nearby community residents - suggest those goals continue to make a lot of sense.

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