Reply to How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So based on this logic the whole time the Langley/Herndon situation was nothing but a farce with no regards to proximity but rather for schools to reach parity. Got it. No one is being discriminated against. Nothing but hypocrites suggesting that An area where hispanics voluntarily choose to self congregate in numbers greater than 70% should be divided up to balance FARMS and that the only way to help these kids is to bring in white and Asians. The Hispanics seem happy with such arrangement so why change it? Are the Hispanics racist as well? Don’t you progressives have any faith in the Hispanics ability to set achieve and match the academic performance of their peers. [/quote]

Let's take this one at a time:

1. If they build a school near Hutchison, and assign the largest ES feeder to Herndon (Hutchison ES) to the new school, that certainly suggests that the western part of the Langley boundary (Forestville ES and say 1/2 of Great Falls ES) could be reassigned to Herndon, which would take the greater proximity of those students of those students to Herndon into account.

2. The notion that Hispanics are voluntarily choosing to self-segregate in Herndon is debatable.  Hispanics live throughout the DC area (MD, VA, DC), throughout NoVa (in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William), and throughout Fairfax (with concentrations along the Route 1 area, Falls Church, Annandale, Springfield, and Herndon), presumably based on where they work and what's affordable.  It happens that Herndon has a concentration of affordable apartments, as do other areas.

3.  It's really not that controversial an idea that, in designing the boundaries of a new school, a school system might aim for a contiguous area that reflects socio-economic diversity.  That is certainly what FCPS did when it opened Westfield and South County (and then later readjusted the South County/Hayfield boundaries).  There are high schools that skew extremely low (Langley) or high (Justice, Annandale, Mount Vernon, Lewis) FARMS, but they evolved in that direction over time, with the differences magnified in some cases by incremental decisions made to address temporary overcrowding problems (Langley, Annandale) or odd feeder patterns (Lewis).  Whatever that means, it doesn't mean that concentrating low-income Hispanic kids at a new school from its inception is a typical or laudable goal.

4.  A new school will only be built if the need for the school exists and the land can be assembled.  But a potential new school that would bring together students from Hutchison, Coates, McNair, Oak Hill, Fox Mill, and part of Floris would reflect the demographics of that general area of western Fairfax, with the largest numbers of students being Asian and Hispanic.  It would not reflect a lack of confidence in the ability of any one group of students to succeed so much as acknowledge the benefits of diversity and the need to offer opportunities to a diverse range of students.

5. Over the past 14 years, the FCPS School Boards have been incredibly cautious and risk-averse when it's come to adjusting school boundaries.  If there is any hypocrisy in the system, it is the repeated pattern of (a) changing boundaries when they can move students to a wealthier school while (b) building additions to keep students from being moved to a less wealthy school.  But the opening of a new high school is different, because there is simply no way to do it without upsetting someone, and the odds are greater that they will simply bite the bullet and try and get it right.  [/quote]

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