Reply to Please SOUND OFF if you think FCPS is in decline!

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Please SOUND OFF if you think FCPS is in decline!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I have a feeling a huge percentage of FCPS high school students are far enough away from their schools to qualify for a bus ride. If boundaries could be adjusted in certain areas so that a poorer student rode a few miles further to a wealthier high school I'm sure FCPS could make that happen. They wouldn't even have to be islands. Nobody is talking about busing students across the county (except for Great Falls parents near the Loudoun border - they are already bused across the county to Langley and none of them seem to mind).  
[/quote]

Boundaries should be realistic.  And, there is a big difference between a ten minute bus ride and a thirty minute bus ride.  There is also expense in additional costs to transportation.

I agree that it is ridiculous that kids on the Loudoun line are being bused to Langley--but, right now, Langley is underserved and Herndon is not.  Where would you send the Herndon kids?  Which kids would you put into Langley?  Those at Lee?

I'd love to see your suggestions.  [/quote]

Some Marshall and McLean kids, right off the bat, could be moved to Langley (and there are some poorer kids among them). After all, Langley's F/R lunch rate sits at 2% so it would not take much, nor would it be harmful, to see that number go up a bit. Nothing will turn it into Justice.

With the new Western High School the Great Falls Langley kids near the Loudoun border could be sent to Herndon.

West Springfield and Lee could definitely swap some students. West Potomac needs to send some kids to Mount Vernon. Some Woodson and Lake Braddock students should be returned to Annandale. Some of these would just be [b]undoing[/b] some boundary changes where FCPS moved wealthier students out of poorer schools.

Let me finally say this - if something does not stop this [b]DECLINE[/b] (as is the title of this thread) the number of unattractive FCPS pyramids will only grow. West Potomac - poverty growing; Westfield - poverty growing; Centreville - poverty growing. Those precious GreatSchools scores will drop for these schools, causing more people to avoid them. It generally does not happen overnight, but it slowly creeps in and then it is too late.[/quote]

I don't see them doing anything to the western part of the Langley district until the new high school is built.  In the interim they can move multi-family housing in Tysons out of McLean and Marshall to Langley.  They should have done that already.  The only high schools in the county smaller than Langley now are TJ and Lee.

It would be great if they fixed the mess they've created at Lee, Annandale and Mount Vernon.  The School Board members are way too cowardly and hypocritical to admit their mistakes and fix them; they'll need the cover of some big study that says that's the right thing to do first.

West Potomac is fairly stable because of its location close to DC and the river.  It's not seeing any big jumps in poverty like Herndon, even though some of the elementary schools that feed into it are very poor.

Centreville should be fine in the long term.  The wealthy Willow Springs area logically should move there from Fairfax HS once the new high school is built.

There's not much FCPS can do for Westfield, given its location near the county border.  Builders are still building expensive new SFHs and townhouses out there, but some of the townhouses are not very nice and some people in that general area want the smaller schools in Loudoun.  Building the new high school could help Westfield, too. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics