Reply to Fall 2022 Over/Under-Enrollment at FCPS High Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You  :D  get  :D  the  :D  school  :D  district  :D  you  :D  vote  :D  for  :D

Keep voting lockstep with teAM bLuE!11 because of some irrelevant political issues that the hacks are using to manipulate you into turning your $3.2B annual FCPS budget over to a bunch of political hacks who aren't interested in educating YOUR children or preserving YOUR property values. [/quote]

Are you joking? "Team blue" so far has been a conservative's dream come true. No boundary changes along with allowing worsening conditions at the undesirable schools has catapulted property values at the "good" schools. A republican candidate who goes on about removing useless equity policies and truly taking action for equality might actually have to do something that hurts property values.
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The school board often rezoned for capacity when it was run by republicans.

Somehow they managed to do this without tanking property values.[/quote]

Rezoning based on reasonable factors like capacity and distance-to-school has always been an occasional requirement in many public schools. Rezoning based on "racial and social equity" of One Fairfax--shifting kids around like pieces on a gameboard based on their race or parental income level--is a terrible idea. That's what's in store for FCPS---the factors to be considered for rezoning have already been amended along those lines. Nothing conservative about that.

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FCPS has never actually changed a single boundary based on "One Fairfax" principles.  When the School Board took tentative steps along those lines back in 2018, the local Republicans - many from the Langley area - intimidated the hell out of them and they shut it down.  The Langley/McLean boundary change from 2021 - where Elaine Tholen overrode a staff recommendation that would have moved some Tysons apartments to Langley and instead made sure only expensive single-family homes were reassigned - was actually regressive from an "equity" standpoint.  The Republicans from Great Falls will continue to claim the School Board is going to redistrict based on "One Fairfax," and the Democrats will continue to be all talk and no action because they live in fear of vocal parents.

If you're in the "right" neighborhood, it's a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario.  Of course, there are also a lot of folks on the losing end, but recent history shows they get ignored by the School Board.  [/quote]

DP.  I honestly can't count how many time you have posted exactly the same rant.  Here's the thing:  "One Fairfax" nonsense *should* be shut down.  If Langley parents are the only ones bold enough to take action, so be it.  The Democrats *should* live in fear of vocal parents because everything they do is asinine.  It's just too bad [b]more [/b]parents across FCPS don't speak up for themselves too.[/quote]

PP was in response to the same nonsense again from right-wingers about how the School Board is intent on redistricting everyone based on “One Fairfax,” which they have never done and almost certainly never will.  That’s the rant, so there’s good reason to call it out for the scaremongering that it is.  [/quote]

Then FCPS should quit braying about “One Fairfax” once and for all.  Because as long as they act as if that’s their guiding principle (rather than, say, simply focusing on education), there will be pushback.  [/quote]

You might ask yourself why a slogan that now means little more than “we’re all in this together” triggers you so much, or why you’d claim that it’s incompatible with a focus on education.  [/quote]

Because it doesn't mean "we are all in this together" it means "we will focus only on supporting the people who are behind and ignore the needs of everyone else." And the reality is that what they are doing to support the people who are behind is not new or innovative or working so that those kids are falling farther behind and the kids who could be excelling are left to their parents devices to meet their potential. Because the "One Fairfax" bullshit has achieved nothing and is only words with no real action.

If we want to help kids who are ESOL, then we need need ESOL classrooms in ES where there is the strongest chance to help the kids learn English and not mixed classes where the kids are not learning English and the English speaking kids are not getting much out of the class. They do that for MS and HS and it works reasonably well. Why are we not doing this as soon as kids need it in ES? In the name of equity  or diversity? We are dragging out a vital skill for ESOL kids that is needed to get them on grade level across the board AND we are slowing down learning for English speaking kids by mixing the classroom. It is a lose lose situation. But separating the ESOL kids looks bad so we can't do that.

Why don't we have more programs to support kids who are struggling? Why not have normal size classes for kids who are on grade level or advanced at Title 1 schools and spend the extra money on smaller classes for kids who are behind? Have more reading and math specialists to pull into those smaller classes so that the kids who are behind have more individualized attention and a better chance at getting up to grade level? Probably because it would look bad because the classes would be divided by SES, which strongly correlates with race, and god forbid we have kids who minorities in classes as a group because they need more support.

The kids who are behind are falling farther behind and the kids who are on grade level or advanced are not being given opportunities to grow and learn. The parents who are fed up with it are leaving for private schools or are supplementing at home or using programs to supplement. So those parents are making sure that their kids are getting a better education and are being challenged.

And parents fight boundary changes because they don't want to move to a school that is caught in this cycle of failure because of crappy policies and implementation of strategies in the name of equity and fairness. I would rather be in an over crowded high school (my kids school is not over crowded but is close) then stuck at an under performing high school where the school is more focused on equity then meeting the actual needs of the kids. No one wants to move to the schools that are chronically unfilled because the programs at those schools suck. Yes, there is IB or AP but there are not as many offerings because so few kids can take them. At least at a crowded or over crowded school there are more academic options for my kid. And lets face it, many of the MC and UMC kids that you would move to the under crowded schools are not going to be in classes with the kids who are already there. There are a good number of schools where you can point to a school within a school where the AP/IB kids are in their own bubble away from the ESOL and FARMs kids who continue to struggle academically because the programs in FCPS for them suck.[/quote]

I think your perceptions of "reality" may not align with FCPS educators, but perhaps they'll have a populist appeal next fall.

It's a bit odd to pivot from claiming FCPS is going to redistrict county-wide in the name of equity pursuant to One Fairfax to now asserting it's an empty slogan, but the latter ("only words with no real action") is probably closer to the truth.

As was noted in a PP, when handed a chance on a platter to introduce some housing diversity to Langley, the county's least diverse high school, Elaine Tholen and her colleagues made sure that did not happen.  To the contrary, Elaine doubled down on making sure Langley draws almost entirely from expensive, single-family homes.  So forgive those of us who think the idea that they are going to start reassigning kids to schools 15-20 miles away from their houses (as opposed to 3 miles) because of "One Fairfax" is fanciful.

As for your other comments, perhaps you could start a new thread to explore them.  The focus of this thread is on schools that are either well above or well below capacity, and what FCPS might do to address those issues, not on whether their model for teaching for ESOL students is flawed.  Perhaps there is some relationship (if, for example, some parents pull their kids out of schools if they think the ESOL students won't be in ESOL-only classes, leading to their under-enrollment), but otherwise it will likely derail the thread.  In particular, posters might want to debate how you complained that FCPS now "will focus only on supporting the people who are behind," but then spent a lot of time suggesting they focus even more on that cohort. [/quote]

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