Reply to Any updates on Mclean/Langley possible redistricting?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]McSpaces has over 700 people on its mailing list now. Hundreds of people showed up at the community meetings in December and left underwhelmed by the lack of data and clear plans.  Over a dozen community members and students from McLean testified at the CIP hearing in January.

The themes have been clear; if FCPS wants community support:

* All current students must be grandfathered
* The middle school boundaries must also be adjusted
* There must be plans for a permanent addition at MHS
[/quote]

Sounds reasonable.[/quote]

I don't know about the permanent addition, because I don't live in that area and know the details.  But, the other two I understand.  That should apply to anytime kids are redistricted.
It boggles my mind that this was not already done.  I live in a boundary where the high school has been bursting at the seams for years.  However, there is no neighboring school that has room, either.  To have a high school right next door that has room and to have this situation just screams a lack of common sense.[/quote]

It's not lack of common sense.  They specifically said (last year) that they would not adjust the boundaries until the new policy was done.

The new policy was being written to prioritize race and socioeconomics. The board discussed bussing and a complete redraw countywide. McLean and Langley are too demographically similar, and adjusting between those two doesn't distribute children properly.

This is why they rushed to amend the CIP when too many parents started paying attention too close to an election, and why not  thing was done for a few months. Now they wait for the consultant.[/quote]

They said when they added McLean/Langley to the CIP last year that this boundary study should be on a separate track than the consultant's policy.

I think the current delays are due to the gradual realization that the consequences of their neglect over the past decade aren't going to be easy to address.  When they finally come up with something, there are going to be unhappy people in the McLean or Langley pyramids.

Many McLean families will be unhappy if they don't grandfather, don't align the middle and high school assignments, pull too many kids out of McLean (weakening its academic electives and extra-curricular programs), or don't make arrangements to expand McLean to deal with the continued growth around Tysons and West Falls Church.

Many Langley families will be unhappy if they move kids to Cooper MS right before Cooper undergoes a major renovation (more trailers), move so many kids to McLean that it increases the odds that the western part of the Langley boundary will need to move to another school, or significantly increase the traffic congestion near Langley (there is only one entrance off Georgetown Pike, and it can already take over 25 minutes to get out of the parking lot after school ends).

They made plans in 2017 to build additions at several other schools less overcrowded than McLean outside the normal renovation cycle:  Justice, Madison, and West Potomac.  They left McLean off that list, because they thought they could save some money by slapping additional seats onto Langley during its renovation (which for years was supposed to take Langley to 2100 kids, but suddenly increased to over 2350).  The plans to expand McLean had already been drawn up, and the former School Board member had told McLean families that an addition would be built at McLean before any kids were moved to Langley.

The new School Board members, or at least Elaine Tholen and Karl Frisch, want to do the right thing by both McLean and Langley, but they have quite a legacy of bad planning and poor communication to undue.  [/quote]

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