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][quote=Anonymous]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]
I think you are spot on with the rezoning for Falls Church HS, but it is a short-term bandaid that won’t make a dent in the long-term challenge that is Tyson’s growth.  Not factored into any of the existing Tyson’s student projections, which estimate up to 600 new students each of McLean and Marshall (which will presently necessitate redistricting with Langley) for approved developments, are conversions of existing Class B commercial space to high-density residential, and updates to existing Tyson’s development plans replacing some of the planned commercial mixed use with residential mixed use.  These telework-induced changes are likely to add hundreds more students.

With Tyson’s projected to become a city with over 100,000 residents within 25 years, with most residential development occurring within 1/4 mile of a metro station, I don’t see why it makes sense to bus high school kids out of the city, along increasingly congested roads, to schools in the suburbs (currently McLean and Marshall, and Langley in the future).  As far as I know, other cities don’t bus high school kids out to the suburbs, and certainly not when public transportation is readily available.

Recognizing how long it takes to stand up a new high school, the County should be looking now at identifying a metro-accessible site for a dedicated Tyson’s high school, so high school kids and parents can travel to and from the school efficiently, without creating unnecessary traffic through suburbs.  Yes, metro-accessible real estate is expensive, but, with currently depressed values for Class B commercial real estate, now would seem like a good opportunity to buy property for a future metro-accessible HS, recognizing that it will probably take another 5 years or more to stand up the school.[/quote]

This is not a bad idea.  Why couldn't you get a developer to contribute to the development costs in Tysons for a HS?  Given the numbers, you could even do an ES, MS and HS in some fashion, sort of what FCCPS did with Mary Ellen and Meridian.  [/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