Reply to Why is the McLean high pyramid over crowded with crappy buildings and teachers but pays high tax

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP - I think it is terrible to paint teachers with a brush like you did.  There are outstanding teachers and administrators at McLean High.  Really, really great school.  I feel like people are upping these threads to try and change the outcome of the school board election.  McLean is consistently rated one of the best high schools in the state. The teachers are instrumental in achieving that.  - Mom of 2 McLean High kids[/quote]

Yep - the administrators and teachers at both McLean and Longfellow are top-notch.  The facilities are not, and the neglect - when FCPS has built permanent additions to newer, less overcrowded schools like Justice and Madison outside the 2008 renovation queue - appears to be deliberate.

Elaine Tholen ran in 2019 promising to make an addition/future renovation a priority, and then did nothing but cherry-pick some McLean neighborhoods comprised entirely of single-family houses to move to Langley.  Robyn Lady, the Democrat running to replace her, has made it clear she doesn’t give a crap about McLean.

The only hope is to elect Paul Bartkowski, who is running against Lady, to succeed Tholen or hope that Ilryong Moon will take up McLean’s needs if he’s elected as an at-large member. [b]Otherwise the decline of the entire pyramid is guaranteed[/b]It won’t make the schools in other parts of the county any better, but it will make some local Democrats happy. [/quote]

Generally it’s the leftists posting here that are overdramatic.

McLean will continue to be a top pyramid and high school.
The most that will happen is that people moving into McLean will prefer Langley (making those houses slightly more costly) and a few people with even more $$$ to spare will send their children to private.
This may reduce crowding a little over time.[/quote]

The decline won’t happen overnight, but it is already occurring, courtesy of Tholen, and will likely just continue under Lady unless Moon steps up or Bartkowski gets elected. [/quote]

Save the drama. It will be a top school with a deteriorating building.  Massive amounts of people aren’t going to leave McLean or decline to move into the pyramid just because the high school is a crappy facility.[/quote]

It’s already happening. [/quote]

DP.  This is true.

I am tired of the “everything is fine!” crowd.  That crowd assured us that people switching to private during Covid would all come crying back.

[b]Those families are not coming back.  Ever.  The younger siblings are not being enrolled and never will be.  [/b]

Thanks to the LWNJs ruining FCPS, we are headed the way of Baltimore county, where there are many excellent private schools, but the public county and city schools are an unmitigated disaster.[/quote]

Actually the data suggests otherwise (esp. in elementary grade levels). For example the Class of 2031 (figures as of October each year):
SY19-20: 13,614 1st graders
SY20-21: 12,762 2nd graders (-852)
SY21-22: 12,794 3rd graders (+32)
SY22-23: 13,012 4th graders (+218)
SY23-24: 13,258 5th graders (+246)

So it hasn't fully recovered, but seems to be on its way.  Some small fraction of this could be organic growth, but in the years leading up to the pandemic the growth from 1st-&gt;5th for a cohort was &lt;1%. So unless you think there's some new boom of growth of elementary-age-kid families moving into Fairfax County post-pandemic that wasn't there immediately pre-pandemic, it's fair to conclude that a very significant chunk of those +496 students the past 3 years are kids returning to the system who left during COVID.[/quote]

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