Reply to FCPS High School prestige ranking

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OK, I’ll play as well.

Tier 1:
1. TJ

Tier 2:
2. Langley
3. McLean
4. Oakton

Tier 3:
5. Madison
6. Marshall
7. Woodson
8. Chantilly

Tier 4:
9. West Springfield
10. Lake Braddock
11. Robinson

Tier 5:
12. Centreville
13. Fairfax
14. Westfield
15. South Lakes

Other/tier 6:
16. South County
17. Hayfield
18. Annandale
19. Falls Church
20. Justice
21. Herndon
22. West Potomac
23. Mount Vernon
24. Lewis

[b]Someone should do a similar one for Middle schools :)[/b]
[/quote]

Yes, please![/quote]

Yeah, good idea. Someone should start a new thread.

1) Cooper
2) Longfellow
3) Thoreau
4) Rocky Run
5) Frost
6) Irving
7j Lake Braddock

[/quote]

Longfellow is superior to Cooper.[/quote]

+1.

Nearly twice as many Longfellow students earn admission to TJ as compared to Cooper:

All FCPS middle schools are represented in the Class of 2029:

Longfellow Middle School - 48

Cooper Middle School - 25
Frost Middle School - 19
Katherine Johnson Middle School - 14
Kilmer Middle School - 13
Lake Braddock Middle School - 17
Rocky Run Middle School - 22[/quote]

You'd better hope your Longfellow kid gets into TJ because McLean HS is falling apart and dropping in the rankings.  It had a good principal but now she's gone, too.  [/quote]

Can you tell us more about this? How is McLean falling apart? Like walls crumbling? Plumbing leaks? Tell us more, please (ES mom zoned to McLean, now getting a little worried about my child's safety)[/quote]

DD is a senior there now.

McLean is safe.  Teachers are very good and the student body in the AP and DE classes are serious and academically-driven.

The school board and superintendent hate McLean.  They have long viewed McLean as “benefitting from unearned Asian privilege and white privilege.”  So FCPS neglects McLean and refuses to renovate it, even though it desperately needs it.  McLean isn’t even on the renovation list.  Ironically, McLean is now majority-minority, and the SB still hates it.

Elaine Tholen ran for SB (and won) on a promise to finally renovate McLean, then she  broke her promise and had Langley renovated instead (her kids went to Langley).

Just before DD entered HS, McLean had 21 temporary trailers for the severe overcrowding. They even closed the school tennis court and put temporary trailers on it.  Then they spent a few $$ for a temporary “pod,” which replaced all but 4 of the temporary trailers.  DD said she doesn’t mind the pod because “at least the AC and heating work reliably, unlike the main building.”

Again:  the education at McLean is very good; the new principal is new (too new for me to have any impression of her), but don’t expect the SB and Reid to treat McLean fairly any year soon.  They clearly disfavor McLean at every opportunity.

BTW, I don’t usually comment on McL, but I know another parent (a mom) often does.

- McLean dad

[/quote]

Langley’s need for a renovation was identified in the 2008 renovation queue and completed before Elaine Tholen was elected. She had nothing to do with it. In addition, FCPS authorized a Langley/McLean boundary study shortly before the 2019 School Board election.  Janie Strauss had tried to get a boundary study started earlier and her colleagues rebuffed her because they were already thinking about a county-wide boundary review instead. That idea stalled, and they decided amending the CIP and authorizing a boundary review in September 2019 to address the overcrowding would help get Tholen (a fellow Democrat) elected.

Tholen ran in 2019 pledging that she’d make an addition to McLean a top priority.  So did Karl Frisch, whose district also includes some McLean kids.

Once elected, neither secured any funds for a McLean addition, even though two less crowded high schools were getting additions outside the renovation queue.  Instead, Tholen pushed through a boundary change that only moved single-family neighborhoods to Langley.  That was different from a staff recommendation that would have moved some apartments in Tysons.  Thru Consulting is now proposing to move those apartments to Langley as well.

It can sound paranoid to say the School Board “hates” McLean but both Tholen and Robyn Lady have told people that the other School Board members have little sympathy for the school’s poor physical condition.  Overall, their goal seems to be to invest as little as possible in the school, redistrict as often as possible, and let the school deteriorate.  There are several other older high schools that also got cheap renovations in the early 00s, but they have not been as crowded as McLean so the wear-and-tear probably has not been as great.  They end up having to make a lot of one-off fixes to keep the school running. [/quote]

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