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]Does everyone see how hard WS posters are fighting the suggestions that any WS kids ever get zoned to Lewis? Any of the other surrounding schools would be fine.

That is what happens when you concentrate all of the poor and ESL students.

FCPS needs a reckoning on this.[/quote]

There's no getting around the fact that there is going to be a concentration of "poor and ESL students", as you say, in a particular area. It's the place they can afford to live!

We live in walking distance of West Springfield so I have no fears personally about shifting boundaries, but in terms of community and neighborhood, definitely Lewis and Edison should be your discussion, not Lewis and WS. I too rolled my eyes a bit when Daventry shifted to WSHS from Lewis, but they are, in terms of how our neighborhoods are laid out, definitely a West Springfield community.

My kids went to Rolling Valley which is also a split feeder. About 10% of our students go to Lewis (the rest to WSHS). Every single family I know personally in that Lewis group moved, placed into a specialty program (like stem at Edison), had divorced parents and chose the other parent's high school (like South County), or chose private high school. They should focus on improving Lewis rather than trying to move kids there who have the resources to just choose somewhere else for high school. It won't help enrollment at Lewis at all to shift a few neighborhoods from West Springfield there. [/quote]

So it’s OK to move students from Lewis to West Springfield, but not in the opposite direction?  Even though it contributes to West Springfield having over 800 more kids than Lewis (about twice as many more kids than Edison)?

We all know that real change will happen at Lewis only when they move families into the school who have the time, skills, and incentives to speak up.  But you all just don’t want to do the work.  If other kids suffer, too bad. [/quote]

The Daventry rezoning went through because there were fewer than 20 high school students from Daventry attending then Lee (Lewis).  It has been a while, but I believe the total number was in the low teens.

However, after the rezoning, high school students started coming out of the woodwork from Daventry.  Kids who were homeschooling high school.  Kids who had switched to Cafholic schools.  Military families with high schoolers who would not buy or rent in a house zoned for Lewis.  Kids who had pupil placed to other schools for languages or special programs.

The amount of high school students living in Daventry increased exponentially overnight, once FCPS rezoned the neighborhood to WSHS.  If I were to guess based off knowing the community, it went from around a 10-20 students who went to Lewis, to easily over 100 the following year after rezoning.

Don't try to kid yourself that rezoning Daventry back to Lewis will bring 100s of WSHS kids to that school.

It would be the same 10-20 students, with everyone else doing what they did before.

Even if it were 100-150 daventry kids, 25-35 kids per grade is not going to transform that school, especially since the kids will be invested more in the West Springfield community and friends theh grew up with.

To get that 500 figure you want, you would need to rezone neighborhoods walkable to WSHS, and neighborhoods deep into the West Springfiled neighborhoods.

Maybe that was the goal of Laura Jane Cohen and the Board of supervisors when they created a back door deal to slice up West Springfield's magisterial districs.  She had a lot of support from those neigborhoods but stabbed them in the back.  I am sure she would do it again in a heartbeat.  [/quote]

WS has over 2500 kids and Edison 2250.  Move 300 from WS and 100 from Edison, replace IB with AP, and provide transportation from Lewis to Edison for rising seniors who want to complete the IB diploma program.

That should get Lewis to over 2000, assuming some attrition and placements to Edison.  It would demonstrate a real commitment to putting Lewis on a stronger footing, unlike just changing the school's name.   [/quote]

It's real easy playing armchair redistricting tycoon and ignoring politics, history, budget, logistics, and reality, isn't it?[/quote]

No, it actually takes a bit of effort to get a handle on the school enrollments and capacities and think through what a feasible plan might entail.  And it would take courage to stand up to snotty, privileged parents who throw road block after road block in your way.

Currently, we have a lazy, fearful School Board, so these discussions are largely hypothetical.  They simply illustrate the possibilities if we had better administration and oversight.  [/quote]

“Road block after road block?”

How exactly are parents stopping the school board from redoing boundaries to balance capacity?”[/quote]

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