Reply to Will Mclean High School ever be able to upsize

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Will Mclean High School ever be able to upsize"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't understand why the redistricting isn't a top priority in that case, like Kent Gardens was.  You could easily move kids into Marshall or Langley from the outer boundaries of Mclean and that could bring down the number of students to closer to the capacity threshold at Mclean and bring up the numbers at Marshall and Langley, which both had expansive extensions.  Langley looks like a private school campus now.  So, what is taking the Board so damn long to do the redistricting for Mclean.  I'm sure tons of kids would opt into Langley, if given the choice.[/quote]

Here's why I don't think kids will move from McLean to Marshall or Langley:

[u]Marshall[/u]:  Marshall was renovated and expanded in 2014.  However, it was only expanded to 2150 permanent seats and, within a few years, they needed a modular, which is still on site.  In addition, longer-term projections suggest that Marshall could pick up more additional kids from future growth than any other HS in FCPS (McLean is next).  Kilmer MS, the main middle school feeder to Marshall, also has a modular.  It doesn't make sense to redistrict kids to schools that already have modulars.

[u]Langley[/u]:  Langley was renovated and expanded in 2018.  It got a bigger expansion than Marshall (to 2370 seats), but it has been inching closer to full capacity ever since, due to the 2021 Langley/McLean boundary change and the trend towards remote working making Langley neighborhoods further out more attractive.  In addition, FCPS decided some time back to align the MS/HS boundaries in the area, so that all Cooper kids go to Langley and all Longfellow kids go to McLean.  Cooper is also being renovated now, but it's only being expanded to 1120 seats.  As a result, any effort to move more kids from Longfellow/McLean to Cooper/Langley will overcrowd Cooper before it overcrowds Langley.  Finally, Great Falls already fought in 2021 to limit the number of kids moved from McLean to Langley; one can only imagine that, with Herndon HS now renovated and expanded, they'd fight just as hard against moving more McLean kids to Langley.

Instead, what seems more likely is the following:

[u]Falls Church[/u]:  Falls Church is currently getting expanded to 2500 seats, and its main middle school feeder (Jackson) has some spare capacity.  So when the Falls Church renovation is finished, if FCPS hasn't done anything else to address the overcrowding at McLean, such as building or at least announcing plans to build an addition to McLean, it would make obvious sense to move the Timber Lane ES island at McLean to Falls Church.  Timber Lane is already a split feeder to McLean and Falls Church, and the island is closer to Falls Church than to McLean (though closer to Longfellow than to Jackson).  Some might object because Timber Lane accounts for much of the diversity at McLean, but moving the island wouldn't have much impact on the FARMS rate at Falls Church and they often claim that eliminating islands is a good thing.  While there is some growth taking place within Falls Church's current boundaries, such as the new townhouse community near Graham Road/Route 50, it's only a fraction of the growth that Marshall and McLean may see from development closer to Tysons.

[u]Eventual Addition[/u]:  Because McLean serves almost half of Tysons, as well as other areas slated for growth (the area in the county closest to the West Falls Church Metro and downtown McLean), the school needs more permanent seats.  However, given the politics of the School Board, the school will need to wait for a new renovation queue to get published before it gets an addition and/or renovation.  When the next queue comes out, McLean and Annandale will be the most obvious candidates for upgrades (Chantilly is overcrowded now as well, but it is newer than Annandale and McLean, has more permanent seats, and may see kids redistricted to Centreville in the coming years).  [/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